Then two days before the cleansing, my body no longer shadowed Asterion, but, how can I say it, it foreshadowed him. Whatever he was about to do, I did first. If he was going to lie down on the cool floor, I did it first. If he was going to stretch and yawn, I stretched and yawned first. Though our house, it is true, did not follow all the laws of logic, this was of a completely different flavor than Asterion appearing in different rooms of the labyrinth. All those Asterions were also the real, one Asterion. Yet each moved and thought with an individual will, as if the one Asterion was as dense as a hundred people, but without being heavier, without being burdened. They all fit somehow within, simultaneously, in Asterion.

Yes, Asterion had always referred to me affectionately as the other Asterion, but this was taking it too far.

One day passed with me performing every action of Asterion’s in advance. What could I do but surrender? Inside, I began to weep for the loss of my freedom, however limited it might have seemed. What began to take the place of my will was a seed of an unexpected feeling. While I had always had affection and regard for my ward, I would not have said what I felt toward him was what was growing within me. Surely, I thought, this was love. His whole being became something like music to me. Never farther from him than an arm’s length, but never closer, I began to sense that I was fulfilling some new purpose. Once he accepted the new reality, Asterion himself seemed happier than ever. He seemed translucent, and once, when he turned in the late afternoon light, I thought that I could even see through him to the space beyond, for just a moment. A space that seemed to lose all its edges. Perhaps I was becoming Asterion’s soul.

A faint suggestion of the music of my childhood returned to me, at the periphery of my consciousness and memory.

On the morning of the day, I / he walked to the edge of the prison and as I / he put my / his face in the air, I / he sensed a shift in the wind. There was a new odor, faint but distinct, of salt on the wind. And something else very subtle, complex, something that I / he could not identify. An animal? Some kind of rare flower? I / he experienced a strange charge throughout my / his body, as if the air around the labyrinth became ever so slightly heavier. As if the earth below us became denser, tugging, holding us tight.

Never let me go, I said to myself.

Never let me go, Asterion said to himself.

Part Four: Unfurl Before Us

The morning came, as did the nine youths.

The music, or truly the desire for music, grew stronger within me, like a kind of pressure, pushing outward. My skin felt tight.