Daedalus and Ariadne stood nearly at the center of the courtyard. From the palace around them arose the murmur of a city coming to life behind the thick gypsum blocks of the walls.

Daedalus carried a large, wound ball of cord and a fist-sized piece of gypsum for marking his lines on the stone facing of the court. In his other hand he held a long, straight staff.

Looking at the faded red lines of the Labyrinth traced on the stone, Daedalus thought back to the first time he had ever drawn this Labyrinth for the Partridge Dance. He had been new at Knossos then, swept away by the excitement of being, for the first time, in the center of civilization.

But most of all, he remembered the Priestess Pasiphae, the glowing, radiant beauty of her. His heart was lost to her the first time he saw her, and it was all he could do to listen to her explanation of the patterns of the Dance. His mind would not hold to the words, always wandering again and again to her Beauty, the beauty of the Goddess glowing through her human form.

In all the years since then, he had never lost that awe that made his heart pound faster even on hearing her name.

She must have been about the same age as Ariadne, he thought. Fifteen, sixteen. Fully a woman in body and spirit, lacking only the experience of years to temper her judgments. And with years, Pasiphae herself, if anything, had grown more beautiful, more desirable. She Who Shines for All, Queen of the Kheftiu.

When she took a husband for King, he lost his own name and took the title of Minos, meaning The Moon's Creature. As are we all, Daedalus thought. Creatures of the Goddess, thirsting for Her love.

And now Ariadne, a haunting echo of the beauty of her mother, calling to his heart like the faintly heard sound of flutes over the hills.

"Come on, Daedalus," Ariadne said. "Let's begin. You're wool-gathering again."

"Yes. Yes, of course," Daedalus said, shaking his head. He wondered why the memories of the young Pasiphae, the copper-haired, the enticing, the wise-beyond-her-years, should haunt him so plaintively. There had been nothing plaintive in their loving -- joyous and free, full of excitement, the exuberance of youth, the golden embrace of the Goddess. And yet the memory was tinged with faint sadness.

"The outer circle needs to come within three or four paces of the grandstand," Ariadne said. She took his arm firmly above the elbow and started to lead him to the edge of the courtyard.

"Ariadne," Daedalus said patiently, "You know nothing of geometry, my sweet. A circle begins at the center."

"But the Dance begins at the outer circle," Ariadne said. "I want you to make this the way the Dance goes, not the way your old geometry goes. You agreed. You did!"

"Yes, and I will," Daedalus said. "But there are certain laws of order in the Universe, and they take precedence over your whim. A circle must be drawn from the center, no matter how you intend to dance it."

"I don't see why," Ariadne said. "Why can't it be the way I want it?"

Daedalus had no answer. The poignancy of the question tugged at him with the same plaintive sadness as his memories. Why can't it be the way I want it?

Suddenly his heart overflowed with a strange, indistinct compound of memory and longing, love and fear, regret and anticipation all mingled together without clear distinction. He looked at Ariadne's innocent face, her clear golden hair down around her shoulders, and tried to imagine what would pass for this shining Goddess-child in the years to come. The loves, the anguishes, the adventures and the regrets as year after year passed, filled with golden mornings and blood-red evenings strung out like beads on the thread of Time.

Why can't it be the way I want it?

He shook his head impatiently, trying to clear his thoughts. He could not understand why this tide of emotion, all tinged with a poignancy that was like regret, had suddenly swept over him.

"We will draw the circles first," he said firmly. "And then you will show me what is needed for the Dance."

Ariadne sighed loudly. "Oh, all right," she said.

"Kiss me," Daedalus said suddenly. "Kiss me, Ariadne."

She threw her arms around his neck and lifted her face to him. Tenderly, Daedalus kissed the soft lips, feeling her firm body pressed against his chest.

"Is that better?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes. That's better. Now, the courtyard is twenty-seven paces wide, from side to side, and fifty paces long from north to south. We will use twenty paces as the diameter of the circle. The center is -- here."

"How do you know exactly where the center is?" Ariadne asked.

"Because I drilled a hole here when I laid out the first Labyrinth," Daedalus said. He pointed to the small circular hole, and placed the long staff in it. "You see? This is the center. This is where your mother and the Minotaur will be during the ceremony. This is the center of the world, where the Moon-cow and the Sun-bull are married .

"This staff is two paces long," he said. "We will do everything in units of two paces, so it will come out even. Here. You take the staff and put it on the stone. Make a mark exactly at the end of the staff, then turn the staff end over end, make another mark and go in a straight line from the center toward the Great Staircase. We will have a straight line that is marked off every two paces out from the center."

"But the maze is curved, not straight," Ariadne objected.

"Ariadne, stop arguing with me. I am teaching you something. Do me the courtesy of listening, and do what I say."

"All right," Ariadne said petulantly. "But I came to dance, not to play with sticks."

"Geometry comes first," Daedalus said.

"I came to dance for you," Ariadne said. "To show you the Goddess. To show you what is in my heart. Because I love you." She sidled close to him and touched his face lightly with her hand.

Daedalus held firm. "Geometry comes first," he said. "Take the staff and mark out the points. You can't understand this all at once. Just do what I say, and you will understand it in the end."

Reluctantly, Ariadne made the marks. When she had reached the front portico of the palace, she called back, "All right, that's done. What now?"

"Now come back to the center, Ariadne. It is always the nature of the maze to come back to the center."

Ariadne brought the staff back, and Daedalus stood it upright in the tiny posthole that marked the center of the courtyard. He carefully tied one end of the long ball of cord to the staff and began to unwind it.

"Take the end out to your last mark," he said. "Then you keep it taut from the staff, and hold your piece of gypsum against the stone, and walk all the way around me until you come back to the beginning. Then you will have made one perfect circle all around, and marked it."

"That's easy," Ariadne said. But in fact, she found that her back ached from bending over the stone before she had completed even half the circle. Sometimes the gypsum flaked, and sometimes it wouldn't flake enough to make the circle clear.

"You do the next one," she pleaded, when she had finished the largest circle.

"No," said Daedalus. "I want you to do it. I want you to understand the perfection of the circle. Now take the cord to the next inner mark and make another circle."

As the sun rose slowly in the Eastern sky, the man and girl fell into a swift and silent routine, laying out a series of five concentric circles, marked in gypsum on the stone floor of the courtyard, each circle exactly two paces apart.

When at last the inner circle had been drawn, Ariadne sat down cross legged in the center. "This is not like dancing at all," she complained. "This is hard work."

"But is it not beautiful?" Daedalus said, sitting beside her. "Is it not beautiful, Ariadne, so perfect in form?" He put his arm around her shoulder and cuddled her to him. He wanted her to see the beauty he saw, the beauty that went so far beyond the chalky marks on the paving stone. To Daedalus, the concentric circles were an image of perfection, an image from a world where all circles were perfect, where all loves were perfect and without regret. He could not communicate what he felt in words, and was frustrated by it.

"It is -- perfect," he said. "It is in balance, everything is equal, it is in harmony, it is -- " He broke off, unable to express the sense of wholeness, of balance, of completeness he felt.

"You love geometry, don't you?" Ariadne said softly.

"Yes."

"As you love me? As you love my mother?"

"No," Daedalus said. "It is different. But it is a kind of love. "

"But your geometry cannot kiss you, Daedalus. Not as I do." She raised her face and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"No. But -- "

"But what?"

"But my geometry will never fail me. It will remain perfect, forever. When the world has forgotten Daedalus, and forgotten Ariadne, the geometry will remain, eternal and perfect, as the Goddess Herself."

"I will never fail you, my sweet honey-man. I will love you always."

Daedalus shook his head, unable again to find the words to express what he felt. Again the poignant tide of remembered loving, of remembered griefs, mingled in his heart and brought tears to his eyes.

"Are you weeping, Daedalus?"

"I am not weeping. The sun is bright in my eyes."