Chapter 5 - The Minotaur Who Couldn't Sleep
In the morning, Felix found the blanket around his shoulders.
He held it in his hands for a long time before carrying it downstairs. Betsy was at the stove, warming water for Apollo.
“You’ll get a sore back sleeping in the hall,” she said.
Felix folded the blanket over a chair. “Then I’ll sit somewhere else tonight.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to find another floor.”
He poured himself coffee. “I heard something outside.”
“What was it?”
Next video in the next chapter.
“A raccoon.”
“You guarded us from a raccoon?”
“It was a large raccoon.”
Betsy let the matter rest until the following night. She woke after midnight and saw light under her door. Felix was downstairs, checking the front lock. When he went out onto the porch, she watched from the window as he walked the perimeter of the yard beneath a clear, cold sky.
The next morning, he had already fed the animals before she rose.
“When do you sleep?” she asked.
“When I can.”
“That doesn’t tell me much.”
“It’s the answer I have.”
She could have pressed him. Instead she handed him Apollo while she made breakfast. Felix sat at the table with the child in his arms. For several minutes, his eyes closed.
Betsy stayed quiet.
Apollo stretched a hand toward Felix’s chin. Felix woke at the touch, alert at once.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Betsy said. “You were resting.”
Felix looked embarrassed. “I need to check the north fence.”
“The fence can wait until after breakfast.”
He stayed, though he kept glancing toward the window.
A few days later, they went together to repair that fence. Betsy carried nails and held the boards steady while Felix hammered. Apollo slept in a sling against her chest.
Felix knew every rise and hollow of the land. He showed her where the creek flooded in spring and which stretch of field caught the earliest sun. When they reached an old oak, he stopped.
Deep cuts marked the bark, too high for a person standing on the ground to have made them.
“Lightning?” Betsy asked.
“No.”
Felix set the hammer down.
“Years ago, men came looking for me,” he said. “They’d heard a Minotaur lived out here. Some wanted proof. Others said they wanted to make the county safe.”
Betsy looked at the cuts again. “What happened?”
“I told them to leave. One tried to rope my horns. Another had a gun.”
Felix rubbed a thumb across a weathered mark. “I pulled the rope away and ran. They followed me as far as this tree. I knocked down the branch above them. It gave me enough time to reach the creek.”
“You could have fought them.”
“I was afraid I would.”
Betsy heard how much the admission cost him.
“Did they come back?”
“Not those men. Others did. They left when they found I kept to my land.”
He picked up the hammer and returned to the fence. Betsy passed him a nail.
“Is that why you check the house every night?” she asked.
“Partly.”
“And the rest?”
Felix drove the nail home. “There’s a child upstairs who can’t tell us when danger is coming.”
Betsy thought of all the nights he had spent alone before Apollo arrived. “Who did you watch over then?”
He didn’t answer for a while.
“My mother lived here with me,” he said at last. “When she died, I kept walking the same path around the house. I knew every sound she used to listen for. I couldn’t seem to stop listening.”
Betsy understood then that he had been guarding an empty house.
They finished the fence before noon. On the way back, Apollo woke and reached toward Felix. Betsy passed him over without stopping to think about it. Felix took him just as naturally.
At the porch, Felix paused. “You don’t have to know all of that to live here.”
“I wanted to know.”
“Most people hear those stories and decide I’m dangerous.”
Betsy looked at the hand holding Apollo securely against his chest. That hand had built a cradle, fixed the fence, and reached toward her frightened child when she asked.
May you like
“You were never the monster they described,” she said.
Felix stared at her. Apollo rested a tiny palm against the Minotaur’s fur, unaware that his mother had just said something Felix had waited years to hear.
