Queen Sally suggested that Annabeth wear a traditional Minoan dress for her arrival in Crete. Annabeth had always found the Minoan fashions to be shockingly garish and immodest but agreed that this would be a good gesture towards winning the love of her future subjects.

Annabeth wanted the people of Crete to love her, or at least accept her. But having the entire island staring at her painted-up breasts would take some getting used to.
Like her face, Annabeth's chest was coated with make-up made from white clay. Her nipples were colored red with the same ochre used to draw sacred stars on her forehead, cheeks, and chin. 
With her heavy makeup, tight, obscenely low-cut bodice, and full, flouncy skirt, Annabeth looked like one of the ceramic cult statues that Queen Sally kept on her altar to Mother Diwa, the Cretan snake goddess.

Percy walked into Annabeth's cabin on the ship bringing them to Crete. Annabeth spun around so her husband could see her new outfit. The pleats and ruffles on her skirt flared out as she twirled.
"I almost didn't recognize you, " he said.
He leaned in to kiss her but then backed away so he would not mess up her makeup.
"We're almost to Crete. You can just about see the island from the deck."

The royal yacht was the largest craft docked at Knossos. It dwarfed the merchant ships and fishing boats moored beside it at the quay.
Knossos port buzzed with people.
The crews of trading vessels unloaded and unloaded amphorae filled with grain, wine, and olive oil, crates of bronze tools, and the colorful, intricate pottery for which Crete was famous.

Fishermen dragged nets bursting with flounder, mullet, and sea bass from their tottering rafts.
Everyone stopped what they were doing when the royal family and their retinue disembarked their yacht. They fought each other for the best view of the King Poseidon and Queen Sally, Princess Estelle, and the long-absent Prince Percy, and waved, cheered, and whistled as the royals rode past in their chariots.
Annabeth, they eyed with curiosity mixed with suspicion. Some muttered phrases such as "kore Theseos" (Theseus's girl- a reference to Annabeth's ancestor, the first king of Athens) and "Creusa glaukos" (owl princess).  Annabeth smiled and waved with regal composure. 
Behind the docks were market stalls and fisherman's huts. The road to Knossos Palace ran through dusty hills dotted with vineyards and olive groves. Knossos Palace, with its red and black pillars, rose out of these hills.

Annabeth gasped when she saw the semi-legendary palace for the first time.  The labyrinthine complex was ancient even during the Age of Heroes, when Theseus, Annabeth's ancestor, had been sent there as a tribute to the Minotaur.
"Allow me to give you a tour of your new home," Queen Sally said when they entered the threshold.
Knossos Palace was a maze of living quarters, storerooms, workshops, and public halls clustered around a central courtyard on three levels, accessible by winding staircases.  The middle level of the palace consisted of the courtyard and halls for feasting and religious ceremonies. Annabeth admired the frescoes of swimming dolphins, leaping bulls, and processing devotees done in bright blues, reds, and yellows.

Kitchens, workshops, and storerooms made up the lower levels.  There, the grapes, olives, and wool from the surrounding countryside were pressed into oil and wine, spun and woven into cloth, and stored before being redistributed back to the nearby villages.
"The lowest floors of the palace lead into the caves which run throughout Crete," Queen Sally said to Annabeth. "Legend says that the ghost of the Minotaur still haunts those caves."
The workshops, kitchens, and storerooms were cavernous and echoey. Annabeth would hate to find herself in one of them late at night.
Her tour ended on the top level, where the royal family and their court had their private quarters.

After such a long journey on such an oppressively hot day, Annabeth felt like a wilting flower. A comfortable bed in a cool chamber and a long nap were a delicious
prospect.

The slave women assigned to attend Annabeth woke her when the afternoon sun began to subside. They dressed her in a simple robe and lead her to the palace's cult center.

Queen Sally approached the temple's portico, dressed in the heavy, elaborate costume of a Cretan high priestess. She exuded kharis, a divine radiance that drew people to her. Women reached out to touch her garments, kiss her feet, and bless their kourotrophoi: fertility figurines placed on altars when you wish to have a child.

Estelle followed behind Queen Sally, trying to imitate her mother's regal glide. The position of Diwa's high priestess passed from mother to daughter. When Estelle flowered into womanhood, she would be consecrated as the sacred heiress and learn the skills and responsibilities of a high priestess.
"Princess Annabeth," Queen Sally took Annabeth's hands. "All men spring from Mother Diwa's womb and return to her embrace when they die. She is the beginning and the end of all life. If you wish to enter her sacred domain, prepare yourself to humbly serve her and obey her commands."
Annabeth lowered her head. Theseus drove Diwa and her cult from Athens but his descendant stood on the portico of the goddess's temple to offer homage. Annabeth needed Diwa's blessing if she was going to be Percy's wife and queen and the mother of his heirs.
"I beseech Diwa to let me into her sacred domain, " she said. "I need her guidance to please my husband and bear him children."
"You must obey Diwa in both mind and body."
"I'm ready to carry out whatever she asks of me."
Queen Sally put her hands on Annabeth's shoulders and turned her to face the other women gathered at the temple.
"Great Diwa, this woman is sincere in her desire to serve you. Allow her to enter your sanctuary and receive your blessing."
The young priestesses who served under Queen Sally lead Annabeth into the temple as the onlookers cheered.  They removed Annabeth's robe and sang hymns and recited incantations as they splashed her with water from a pool used for ritual purification.  Annabeth emerged from the bath clean and refreshed in both body and spirit.
One of the priestesses, a pretty, freckled girl with large green eyes, dried Annabeth off with a linen sheet.
"Lay down here, Princess."
She gestured to a cot spread with a sheepskin.
Another priestess, a thin, nervous-looking redhead, shaved off the stubble on Annabeth's pubic area with an obsidian blade. With a fine paintbrush, she drew a tree whose branches stretched across Annabeth's womb and whose roots disappeared into the folds of her vulva.

While the henna dried, the priestesses helped Annabeth with her makeup and to arrange her hair into elaborate coils bound with leather fillets and strings of metal and clay beads. They then dressed her in the bodice and skirt she wore earlier that day.
"Take a look, " the red-haired priestess said.
The linen of her bodice and the wool of her skirt were rubbed with olive oil and beaten against a smooth stone so that they gleamed in the lamplight. Her skin looked as pale and as luminous as milk. She radiated some of Queen Sally's divine kharis.

As Annabeth lay in bed that night, the strange and grotesque sights of her first evening in Crete swam through her brain like a school of fish.
All of the city of Knossos gathered in the palace's courtyard for the first night of a feast in honor of Prince Percy and his new bride. Annabeth met the colorful and gaudy representatives of Crete's most illustrious families by the light of a blazing bonfire, whose shadows distorted their forms and faces and made them look like figures from a nightmare.
Queen Sally wielded a heavy double-headed ax called a labrys.

Poppy heads burned on a coal brazier in front of her. Breathing in the smoke made her eyes bloodshot and wild, the look of someone in a trance that brought them closer to the divine.
"Mother Diwa, " she said. "We send you this life-giving blood with aw and reverence. Bless our fields, our flocks, and our vineyards. Bless our hearths and our homes."
She brought the ax down on the neck of a white heifer. The animal's red, sticky blood gushed then flowed into a long, deep basin. Annabeth raised her palms in prayer with the rest of the crowd.
"Great Diwa, " Queen Sally cupped her breasts in each hand and squeezed them. "Bless the earth and all its children."
It had been a long day. Annabeth was too tired to join the dancers who moved arm-in-arm in serpent-like spirals through the courtyard. Percy suggested that they retire for the night.
"What is that?" he said when he saw the henna tree on Annabeth's naked belly.
"I think it's supposed to increase fertility, " she replied.
"Must be my mother's idea. I know she'd like nothing more than a grandchild."
Annabeth threw her arms around his neck and kissed him."
"We wouldn't want to disappoint her, do we?