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He didn’t take his eyes off the creature until he had knelt beside Ariadne. He wanted to take her into his arms, to make sure she was okay, but he knew if he moved too fast, the ophiotaurus would react.
Instead, he stroked her face and muttered her name, and her eyes fluttered open.
For a moment, she looked confused, but when she recognized him, relief flashed in her eyes, and she smiled, though it vanished quickly, and the ophiotaurus emitted a low, hollow sound as a shadow passed over him.
Something was wrong.
He stilled and turned in time to see the cyclops’s hand barreling toward him.
“Stranger,” said the cyclops. His voice was loud and made Dionysus’s ears ring. The cyclops’s fingers closed around him tightly, stealing his breath as he lifted him to his narrowed eye. “Have you come to steal my sheep?”
“No,” said Dionysus, struggling in his grasp. His hands were trapped too close to his body to summon his thyrsus. Even if he could, he’d have no room to use it. “I have not come to steal your sheep.”
“Then you have come to kill me,” the cyclops said, voice rising in rage.
“Are those your only visitors?” Dionysus asked. “Those who wish to steal your sheep and those who wish to kill you?”
“Visitor?” the cyclops asked. “I do not know that word. I know thief. I know murderer.”
“Then allow me to teach you a new one,” said Dionysus.
“I also know trick, stranger,” said the cyclops. “Is this one?”
“No,” said Dionysus. “But if it would please you, I will make an offering of good faith.”
“What sort of offering, stranger?”
“My very best wine,” he said.
“I do not know wine,” said the cyclops.
“Then you shall know today,” said Dionysus. “Let me down and I shall share my drink with you.”
“No tricks?” said the cyclops, wary but curious.
“None,” Dionysus promised.
The cyclops glared at him for a few moments, long enough to make Dionysus think he might choose to crush him instead, but then he set him on his feet.
Dionysus took the opportunity to glance in the direction of Ariadne and the ophiotaurus, but he could not see them, thoroughly hidden in the darkness of the cave.
He took a few careful steps toward the pool in the cave.
“Do you drink this water?”
“Drink, wash, bathe,” said the cyclops.
Dionysus tried not to look disgusted as he summoned his magic and turned the still water into a deep, red wine.
He turned toward the cyclops. “Drink, friend.”
The cyclops looked at him warily but eventually dipped his cupped hand into the wine and brought it to his lips. He paused a moment, as if testing the flavor on his tongue, and then he seemed to purr, pleased. “It is good,” he said, and then he shoved his face into the wine and drained the whole lake.
The cyclops sat amid his sheep as Dionysus waited for the wine to take root, trying his best not to glance too often at the darkness where Ariadne and the ophiotaurus still hid.
“What is your name, stranger?”
“Oh, I am no one,” said Dionysus, unwilling to offer up his name, though he was a god.
