Claiming Ariadne by Laura Gill

all she knew to escape with him. Her great-grandmother, she decided, was a very brave woman.
    Iphame continued, “There’s high ground above Malia. It took us half a day to reach it—running, walking, stumbling breathless in the ashen air. It was so hot and muggy, even though the sun never really came out, it was such hard going. Whenever I wanted to stop, whenever I pleaded with Admaios, he always urged me on. So up we went, climbing the goat path, when we heard the roar. Oh, this was thunder, but not of Zeus’s making. Poseidon shook the ground under us, but above that rumble there was something else, something so ominous and yet familiar, I didn’t know what it was except that it frightened me. Then Admaios seized me by the arm, he spun me about and pointed—there!
    “On a clear day, you can see for many miles across the sea. Ash misted the air. An eerie gray twilight settled on the land, but I saw enough. Malia lay below us, with its narrow streets and houses and palace. Rooftops were blanketed with soft, fine ash like snow. Everything was gray. You could no longer see the pretty washes the people used to color the plaster. Out in the harbor I saw the ships—oh, they looked so tiny! But then, the most curious thing caught my eye. All those ships listed to one side, because, you see, the sea had pulled back. I don’t know how far, just that I saw a long stretch of exposed seabed, as though Poseidon had drawn up the waters like a blanket.
    “I was wondering at that when—oh, gods, Ariadne, you have no idea at the sudden terror I felt, realizing what was happening! Where the sea pulled back, it rolled in again, one long, great, terrible wave that kept coming and coming. It swallowed the waterfront, but it didn’t stop there. Waves barreled down those narrow streets, crashed right over the tops of houses three and four stories high, and everywhere people who heard the roar and came out to see were running, running to save their lives, but you can’t outrun Poseidon when he’s angry. The foaming sea smashed into them, knocked them down, and just swept them along.”
    Ariadne listened spellbound and blinked when she realized her mouth hung agape. She knew about the devastation that struck the northern coast that awful day and night when Kalliste died; it was a tale told in the nursery to frighten the younger children. She knew about the long years of darkness and famine afterward. At Knossos, no one was allowed to forget. Poseidon must be kept placated. Even the faceless Theran goddess, Qe-ra-sija, had a small shrine in his precinct, and her offering bowls were replenished daily with wine, olive oil, or pumice stones.
    “I screamed,” said Iphame. “I wailed and tore my hair. My mother, my father, my siblings—they were all gone in an instant. I would have run back down the hill, for all the good it would have done, but Admaios held me back. He knew the sea wasn’t finished yet. Waves surged past the town to drown the fields and vineyards, it plowed into the sanctuaries and caught the priests who tried too late to run, and it came toward us. Admaios pulled me along and we ran, stumbling and slipping in our haste until we reached the highest ground. Behind us, we heard the god’s roar, we smelled the rushing sea, and we thought, now we’re done for, there’s nowhere else to go.
    “But the sea never came for us. Just as we found a little hollow to shelter in, the waters receded. How long we stayed there, shivering and terrified, I don’t know. Some goatherds found us. They showed us a hut they used when they drove their goats up to higher pasture. They gave us food and built a fire, for the night was so dark there was neither moon nor stars, and when daybreak came—such as it was—we ventured down with them.
    “Oh, it was horrible, the destruction we saw. Complete and utter ruin. On the very slopes we’d climbed, we saw a ship lying broken like a child’s toy, snapped in half, its hull smashed. Huge