Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
MEDUSA
The crows told me we had a guest. They were always most attentive when someone had come looking for sanctuary. They knew first-time visitors never ate all the food I offered them—the crows would get whatever was left behind when our guests began their journey up to the village.
I gathered up the honey and bread I planned to share with my guest. The jar and cloth-wrapped parcel both settled comfortably in my left arm, disguised by my wing. In my right, I took my spear.
They came looking for strength. That was what they thought they needed.
Sometimes, it was.
Mostly…they just needed something to eat, and somewhere safe to sleep.
My old friend Crowlie swooped ahead of me, her wings open wide. Behind her came her crow family. I smiled at them as they cawed their way noisily though the door, announcing my presence.
A lone woman was standing, answering the summons of my friends.
With one hand she smoothed the bedraggled, but not tattered, finery she wore.
A gauzy veil lay over her eyes. She stood with the posture of someone accustomed to formality.
There were no laugh lines bracketing her mouth, but there were fine frown lines between her brows.
She did not cower as I walked forward, which made my life simpler. Plenty didn’t, but most of those stared in shock, or in horror. This one ran her closed eyes up and down my form as if she was studying me, the almost imperceptible movement of her chin a give-away.
“You are welcome to this place,” I told her, stopping an average distance from her form for a first meeting. She was not seeming to be terrified, but nor was she throwing herself at me, begging for protection. “I am Medusa.”
That made her smile as if I’d told a joke. I glanced over her shoulder, but nothing was amiss, and Crowlie had settled to perch nearby, fluffing out her feathers.
“A pleasure,” the woman said, dipping into a shallow curtsey. “My name is Cassandra.”
Cassandra. There was not a bruise on her, not that I could see. She didn’t hold herself like a terrified woman.
“Have you broken your fast this morn, Cassandra?” I asked her.
“I have not.”
There was…something about that. About the crisp way each word was formed in her mouth.
As if she’d studied and practiced and learned every single way they might spill from her lips.
I resisted the urge to move a little closer, to see where that precision may end.
She’ll tell you, or she won’t, what’s happening, I reminded myself.
You’re a terrifying beast, not a confidant.
“I have bread,” I told her, tipping my spear toward the side where some tables stood, half hidden by a trio of men falling over each other to flee.
I did love those statues. They’d taken me decades to complete, but they’d been worth it.
Nothing helped me digest better than the wide-eyed fear of my attackers, captured in art for all of eternity.
She glanced up at the crows as they happily hopped, swooped, or walked from where they’d perched on rafters and roosts overhead to the side, where the food would be eaten. And she smiled again.
This wasn’t a smile of That was funny. It was a smile of Aren’t they beautiful?
Yes. Yes, they were.
So was she.
I wet my lips and braced myself to guide her over, then withdraw. But she crossed to me, falling in beside me. It was a journey of only eight steps, but I felt her beside me for every. Single. One.
Breathing. Smiling. Unhurried, and unconcerned. Close enough I could have unfurled a wing and protected her from the cool chill on the dawn air.
I fought against the desire to do just that, shifting my spear to one side so I could take the plain jar of honey and set it down, then the bread.
She sighed. “And honey?” She slid onto a chair as if it was the first comfort she’d had in decades, her shoulders drooping and her expression softening. “You’ve done this before.”
“I have,” I agreed, sliding the loaf into the middle. “There’s a small knife in there. Once you’ve filled your belly, you may make your way to the village, if you’d like, or I can—”
“Wait.” She reached out. I froze.
She didn’t touch me, but—it wasn’t because she was afraid. Her hand recoiled as if suddenly she’d remembered her manners.
As if suddenly she remembered it wasn’t safe to ask for more.
“I only go because most visitors prefer me to remain as their guard,” I offered, by way of explanation. There was something a little unnerving about being looked at by a woman with her eyes closed.
She saw me, too. She wasn’t just tracking my movements.
Magick. It might make sense that someone comfortable with the arcane would be comfortable with my form.
“Would you like me to remain?” I offered her, because she’d stayed silent, looking at me as if unsure if she’d just broken an edict.
“Yes,” she said.
It was a firm noise, not at all scared. She wasn’t pleading for protection. Nor was she begging me to help remove the clothes she appeared to have slept in, probably over multiple days. Though two knots were all it’d take me.
Beneath the robes her body was perfectly soft and round.
The sun had left spots on her skin. I settled on one of the stools cautiously, keeping my wings tucked in close so not to alarm her.
She reached out for the bread. Her hands were soft, too, like the rest of her.
Her fingernails had been torn low, but whatever anxieties had driven that seemed far away now as her digits danced adeptly over the cloth.
My mouth watered at the competent way she untied the knot in the wrap of the bread.
“You do excellent work,” she told me, nodding toward the nearby trio of statues.
I regarded them with pride. “The days are long,” I said.
“My days are long, too,” she said, and the lightness of the words, the amusement, drew my gaze back to her. Back to where her fingers pressed into the crust of the loaf and her hands tore it in half, exposing the vulnerable core of it. “And yet I have no artistry to show for my time.”
“I can teach you,” I found myself offering, unthinking.
She set down half the bread, the smile vanishing as if she’d never even considered I’d make such an offer.
I hadn’t considered I might, either.
“Would you?” she asked, no jest in the words. “Really?”
“If you’d like to learn,” I clarified, resisting the urge to fold my wings around myself just a little to shield myself from that gaze.
“Of course. I’d do the same for anyone.” It wasn’t simply because she was a beautiful woman who smiled at my crows, broke her bread with plump, sure fingers and had a tongue as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel.
“What if I make a poor student?” she asked me.
I hesitated, unsure what she wanted of me. “What if you do? I have plenty of stone.”
It must have been the right answer, because she grinned, suddenly. The change in expression lit her whole face and filled her with the sort of joy that one couldn’t fake. “You’re an honest woman, Medusa,” she said, taking the dipper from the honey and drizzling it over the bread.
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done that she’d enjoyed so much, but I was sure she wasn’t laughing at me. It was a shared joy, just for us.
I leant forward, liking the way it felt, warming the pit of my belly.
I’d shared joy with the villagers, of course, and with my crows. I’d had joy all of my own as I watched the storms sweep across the sea and carved away at stone with claws harder than any natural substance.
But this? This was different.
She offered me the bread in her hands, generously honeyed, and I took it out of reflex.
“You haven’t asked how I came to be here,” she said, as she tore off another piece for herself.
“Nor have you asked what happened to me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Why would I pry so?”
“Why would I?”
“Because,” she said, arching her brows now, “unlike you, I arrived in the dead of night and stepped into your home uninvited, and now I’m sitting at your table, eating your food.”
“You’re assuming I didn’t arrive in the same manner,” I told her, and the reminder of how I’d found my way to the isle, the long flight of desperation as I was tossed by the storm and winds, didn’t bring with it the customary heaviness it often did.
I’d been lucky in some ways. Unlucky in others.
Here we were. “And, to clarify, Cassandra…” Her name rolled around in my mouth, taking the perfect length of time to complete linking all of those beautiful sounds together.
I stumbled a little, the shiver of delight that ran up my spine taking me off-guard.
“Everyone is welcome here,” I finished, out of habit rather than thought.
I’d seen all the reactions to that statement. Disbelief, fear, desperate hope, relief, joy. And I suspected I saw some of those in her, too. But she already knew. It was in the set of her shoulders and the way she bit into the bread. She already knew she was welcome. So why was she asking me this?
I leant forward a little more. My hair, reacting off instinct rather than conscious thought, moved toward her too, the snake-like appendages made uneasy noises. “Is something wrong?”
She shot the snake-like hair a look I couldn’t read, with the veil and her eyes closed.
I pulled back and took a deep breath to settle myself.
They coiled back against my skull as I settled.
She appeared to watch this with…curiosity.
“There is,” she admitted. “I…well, I didn’t mean to deceive you by waiting for so long to mention it.
Only I’m unsure how to approach the topic. ”
Anger felt hot and sweet in my limbs. There was no one lurking behind her, chasing her. Not in distance of my spear.
But there was, somewhere.
“You are safe here,” I told her, firmly. “I will make it so.”
“That’s what I wanted to warn you about,” she said, with a sigh. “There’s a young man. He’s coming to attack you.”
I shrugged, caring not for the details. “Let him come. Did he hurt you?” I studied her again, but still, not a hint of a bruise.
“He kidnapped me,” she admitted, tiredly. “He killed my friend. I’m sorry, Medusa. I wanted no part in this.”
Unease rippled up my spine. “No part in…what?”
“They were going to land last night,” she said, the words precise but quick. “I convinced them not to. They’ll return in two weeks, during the new moon. He has two hundred men.”
Two hundred men. I sat back, biting into the bread.
No wonder she’d been scared. Kidnapped, forced to be part of this plot, losing her friend?
I knew how men such as this acted. “I regret what you’ve endured,” I told her, because she was watching me—not anxiously, but as bird watches a fig tree, checking to see how it grows.
It occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t trust her, but…there was nothing about her that worried me. Not in the slightest. She was here because she wanted to be.
She’d tricked them. She was clever enough for it. Look at how she’d tricked me into asking her for information, guiding me through the conversation at every step. Not too soon, not as we’d met, but the moment we’d been getting comfortable. If she’d waited, would I have been more suspicious?
No, I thought, chewing on the bread that would’ve been excellent last night. But many would have. Yes, she was a clever one. Clever enough to trick me, if she’d wanted. But she’d waited here instead.
“I’m glad you know you can be honest,” I told her, surprised at the thought. “That you can come to me.”
“I’m glad you aren’t a kill the messenger type,” she said, laughter in her voice. “…Right?”
“Right,” I agreed, firmly. “Eat. Then you can tell me all about these,” I waved a hand in dismissal, “men.”
The tired sigh she let out was the perfect sound to encapsulate my fatigue at the topic, too. I ducked my head to hide my smile, but I suspected she saw it anyway.
Just the same way she saw all of me.