more from Ariadne's Dream--Chapter 13
The moon glows full over Lycabyttos, opening and closing its blind eye as clouds drift past Athens' central, jagged peak, and Ariadne zips by on her way to her date with destiny. She's spent all afternoon preparing for her coming out and is wearing her favourite dress: a backless, purple tunic, with an ankle-length trail. She wants to make an impression on as many people as possible at the mysterious gathering to which she's been summoned.As Ariadne stood on Venizelou Avenue, waiting for a passing trolley or cab, she was wracked with guilt and doubt. Over the last few months she had adapted to her loneliness, had made friends with it so it wouldn't torture her. This excursion into the night, along with the all-but-dead hopes it aroused, made her feel like a traitor. She considered, setting fire to the invitation, dropping it into a sewer, and going back home. But when the gods ask you out, you go or risk being turned for your impertinence into a mule, a pig, a weasel--whatever an individual god finds funny, or a group of gods can agree upon after several long-winded and petty arguments.
Before she'd even lifted her hand to hail it, a yellow cab stopped at the corner where Ariadne waited. She handed the driver the invitation and he tore off, taking side-streets and unpaved alleyways, racing around traffic islands until she lost track of where she had come from without establishing the direction in which she was heading. They finally stopped before a nondescript storefront on a closed-down square in a part of Athens Ariadne had never been to before. She got out and asked him to wait, but the driver sped away as she checked the address on the door against the one on the blood-red invitation. Deserted, she cautiously approached the glass door. A white-gloved hand pulled back a red velvet curtain, and someone wearing what looked like an undertaker's hat with a gauzy black veil draped over the brim peeked out at Ariadne, then let the curtain fall back into place. The front door had no handle, so she tapped lightly against the glass with her fingernails and stepped back. She held her breath as the door was pulled open, the curtain drawn aside by the same white-gloved hand.
There are good reasons for Ariadne to be afraid of the invitation, of the night, and of what awaits her beyond the red curtain, but not the ones she assumes. Her social skills will kick in the moment she steps down into the coloured lights and the familiar music that rises from the basement club. The things she has to fear have not yet unveiled themselves. They are like fragments of dreams that you can't make sense of in the morning, but which unnerve you for the rest of the day. And though her instinct is strong and her palpitating heart might have sent her back home under different circumstances, she rejects loneliness.
Ariadne slowly exhaled, then stepped over the threshold, the blood-red curtain falling behind her.