Chapter 5
Medea
The little green snake thrashed in my grasp, though I was careful to hold it just under the head so it could not bite me.
Around me burned a circle of tallow candles, illuminating a scroll from faraway Egypt. Carried halfway across the world from
a land where it never rained, the tome of spells had been endlessly useful for refining my witchcraft. After my experiments
with charms against fire, I’d now moved on to the section labeled “Transformation.”
As if sensing what was coming, the snake redoubled its struggles.
It was for Chalciope’s sake that I did this. In the weeks since my sister’s midnight return, she had not snapped out of her
stupor. She spent her days staring out her window, taking only a little food and water.
I’d tried to cheer her with gifts of her favorite foods and bolts of fine silk for dresses. She smiled briefly upon receiving
these and patted my hand, then turned back to look out the window once more.
It occurred to me that the unexplained absence of Chalciope’s husband and children might be the root of her melancholy, but
there was nothing I could do if, as I suspected, Aeetes was involved. Instead I focused on what I could control, losing myself
in the details.
Something grander than food or clothing was in order.
I wanted to distract Chalciope from her secret sorrow just as I distracted myself from the prospect of my hateful marriage to Absyrtos.
I could do nothing to change my circumstances, but I could do this: take refuge in the ability my mother had given me to conjure illusions and work magic and turn one thing into another.
Hence the little green snake.
The snake had begun to relax its struggles, seeing that they were getting it nowhere. It did not protest as I slathered its
body with the poultice, brewed from herbs sacrificed under the full moon.
Over the years, I’d slowly learned the size and shape of my magic. It was best exercised in the service of specific, discrete
goals—turn back fire; create such-and-such illusion; change this creature into that one. I’d arrange the herbs, and the chant would rise, sometimes from the dusty pages of a magical papyrus and at other times
from the depths of my own mind. Far less successful were spells focused on nebulous goals, like my foolish childhood working
for unconditional love.
I breathed in, then out, feeling the power growing in my body like a water droplet about to fall. The core of my witchcraft
woke within me, raising its head like a serpent. My palms itched, a sensation both impetus and invitation.
My voice pierced the silence, robust in authority. “I cast this working in the name of Hekate Soteira, the Savior . . .”
More words followed, twining through the air like incense smoke, building a ladder for my will to climb upon. I grasped the
poultice-slick snake tightly, holding the image of its new shape in my head.
And, slowly, reality bent to give it to me.
The little green snake’s body expanded outward, quickly filling my hands. Legs sprouted from its torso, terminating in claws. A red ruff sprang up from the arch of its long neck.
A dragon stood before me, blinking in stupefaction.
He was about the size of a dog, with a long, narrow body like a weasel, though I sensed he was young and would grow larger
yet. He possessed a crest of red and gold and, most significantly, the ability to fly, a skill of Qulhan dragons that had
been lost to their Greek brethren.
I squealed and clapped my hands. Chalciope would be delighted.
The dragon followed me through the palace, trotting faithfully at my side. He did not snap back to his original shape as cheaper
transformations did, and he seemed to enjoy having feet; perhaps being a dragon was an improvement over being a little green
snake.
Chalciope opened her door, then stifled a scream when she saw what stood at my side. “What is that?!”
“A dragon!” I replied brightly, ruffling his crest affectionately. “I made him myself. His name is Xanthippus.” It meant “yellow
horse” in the language of the Greeks, for his scales were the buttery glow of ancient coins. I liked the way it sounded.
“Medea!” Chalciope’s voice was shrill. “You cannot have a dragon in the palace.”
My joy receded. I’d thought Chalciope would be so awestruck by the gift that she would forget her melancholy, not pepper me
with admonishments like bronze-tipped arrows.
“He’s my new pet,” I explained. “I made him, and I’m going to raise him. I . . . I thought we could raise him together,” I
added wistfully, imagining the three of us dancing in a meadow.
Xanthippus leaned forward to sniff Chalciope, and she recoiled with a shriek.
“What will Father say?” she fretted, chewing her lip. “At least bring that thing to the stables, Medea.”
With that she shut the door, leaving me and Xanthippus alone.
Chalciope’s rejection stung, but my hurt was soon overtaken by the joy I felt in the company of Xanthippus.
How delightful it was watching him discover the world, sniffing plants and taking to the sky. I doted on him as if he were
my own child, feeding him delicacies from my plate and scratching his chin until he rolled on his belly like a puppy. I pressed
my forehead to his, basking in the simple, ineffable feeling of love.
“Someday we will fly away from here in a chariot made of gold,” I whispered to Xanthippus. “You’ll take me to a new kingdom,
and I’ll marry a handsome prince and never return to this awful place again.” A childish wish, but a solace nonetheless. A
brief idyll of happiness, like sunlight falling through a break in the clouds.
Until the day Xanthippus did not appear in response to my summons.
He must be distracted, I told myself, or sleeping. But the stable hands all shook their heads when asked if they had seen him recently, and I could find no trace of him in
our old haunts.
By evening, I was hysterical. It was then that Zaidar, captain of the palace guard, came to my rooms, lifting his helmet to
wipe the nervous sweat from his brow. When I saw Zaidar, I wept even harder, because I knew that he would only come himself
if something truly terrible had happened.
“Please follow me, Princess,” he said, not meeting my eyes.
Zaidar led me down to the bowels of the palace, into the long, dim hallways of the dungeons. He opened one of the doors, and in the wedge of torchlight, I saw the Golden Fleece glittering faintly from the hook it hung upon. And then I saw Xanthippus.
My friend blinked at the sudden illumination, taking to his feet and calling out a greeting. I went to throw my arms around
him but flinched back when I saw the collar fastened around his throat.
My beautiful Xanthippus, his neck enclosed in iron.
I should have known. I should have seen this coming. My father wanted a Minotaur of his own, a pet monster to glorify his
name and guard his treasure. Now, at last, he had one.
And I’d given it to him, all unwitting. I thought I was out of tears, but I began weeping again, feeling as trapped as Xanthippus.
I could cast a charm to remove the collar from the dragon’s neck, but doing so would doom us both. Xanthippus would be dragged
back to this prison, and I’d be accused of trying to steal the Golden Fleece. Aeetes had executed people for less.
My magic wasn’t an escape. It never had been. It was only another reason to control me.
“Your father ordered food and water brought to the beast,” Zaidar assured me. “It will not suffer.”
“That is not enough,” I said, voice quavering. “It’s not just food and water he needs, it’s freedom too.” Xanthippus needed
to wander through the forest and snake across the sky, not stay shackled here to the dark earth. He would die a slow, lingering
death if he did.
Zaidar would not look at me. “The king has spoken. The dragon will remain here to guard the Golden Fleece.”
When my eyes fell upon the cursed pelt glittering in the torchlight, my lips drew back from my teeth in a snarl.
“Everything in this kingdom belongs to Aeetes,” Zaidar said wearily. “Everything.”
My anger boiled over, black and hot. I wanted to tear down Aeetes from his high throne, turn him into a little green snake so that he might know what it felt like to be small. But I would be cut down before I could get
near enough to do any of this. Aeetes was a king with armies at his command, and I was only a lone woman, even if I was a
witch.
I thought of our family: Chalciope’s mother divorced; mine dead in childbirth, though divinely ascended; his current wife,
Idyia, a pale shadow after birthing his heir, Absyrtos. My father ruined the lives of any women he came near, and I did not
flatter myself that I would be the exception.
I had to free myself from his shadow, or else perish in the attempt.
After Zaidar escorted me back to my rooms, I threw on my cloak and fled to the seashore. These long walks cooled my anxious
mind and brought me closer to the earth from which all magic came. But today, the sea did nothing to soothe my rage, and the
slight breath of freedom only emphasized my captivity.
Then I looked up and saw something along the beach that stopped my meandering thoughts short.
The smooth expanse of the beach was disrupted by a ragged tangle of wood, like a tumble of sticks. I recognized the hull of
a ship, half smashed. Dark shapes lay sprawled across the sand.
People.
I broke into a run.
Falling to my knees by the closest, I saw he had lean muscles like ropes and skin browned from the sun. Though his eyes were
closed and his breath shallow, he was not dead. But he would be soon if he could not flee, because my father had issued an
order to kill the crew of any shipwrecked vessel found upon our shores.
I looked down at the unconscious sailor and felt an unfamiliar stirring in my belly. Sympathy. These men had survived a storm, only to have the bad fortune of washing ashore in Aeetes’s domain. My chest tightened; I knew what it was like to live a life measured out by my father’s wrath.
These sailors were each some woman’s son. They were people with thoughts and feelings, and inner lives that would be tragically
cut short if I did not act.
A strange wind rose within me—magic, seeking its expression. I ran to the dunes and plucked a few yellow flowers that I knew
would clear the lungs and restore breath. I hurried back to the sailor and stuffed them in his mouth, whispering a charm.
The man came awake with a gasp, choking for air.
“Do not come into the city,” I said, laying a finger on his lips. “Stay on the outskirts and the necropolis, or King Aeetes
will kill you. There will be food for you at the temple of Hekate. Find it and then make your way home.”
Eyes wide, the man nodded uncertainly. Silently I blessed Melanippe, who had the habit of leaving out roasted offerings on
the shrine that faced the road, so that the poor might avail themselves of good meat. An act of devotion to the goddess, she
said. Only now did I truly appreciate it.
I went to the next sailor and did the same. He stared at me in awe, then followed after his brethren in the direction of the
city.
Watching him go, my chest felt much lighter. I could not change the circumstances that bound me, but I could do this. My act
of mercy was also an act of defiance, a refusal of Aeetes’s orders, and it made my cage feel just a little more spacious.
My mother’s words sounded in my mind: If you have lived a life worth immortalizing, I will give you apotheosis, and you will become a goddess.
The memory of the sailors’ faces rose up in my mind. I might become a goddess someday, but in those men’s eyes, I already was one.
That night, I heard Chalciope’s voice outside my chamber door, calling my name. Footsteps whispered over the flagstones, and
a weight settled on the edge of my bed.
“I should have paid more attention to the work you were doing at the temple of Hekate,” Chalciope said. “When you said you
made the dragon for me, I didn’t understand, I didn’t appreciate it as I should have.”
Under my blankets I lay unspeaking, wondering why she had come.
“I wish you could have met your aunt, Circe,” Chalciope said after a long pause. “I think you would have liked her. She was
like you, strong in magic. A witch.”
The word sent a thrill down my spine, like a chime being struck. “Circe? Why have I never heard of her before?”
“Why do you think? Father, of course. He banished Circe to an island in the western sea and then forbade any mention of her
existence. She is a great sorceress and likes to turn men into pigs. She would marvel at your dragon, I am sure.”
“The dragon isn’t mine anymore,” I said, tears prickling my eyes once more. Even the existence of a faraway witch-aunt could
not distract me from the loss of my friend.
“I understand,” Chalciope said. “Father has taken much from me too.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath before continuing.
“He killed them, my husband and my sons. He said my husband planned treason, plotting to take back the Golden Fleece. Phrixus
never dreamed of such a thing, but Father killed him anyway.
“And my sons. Argus, Cytissorus, Phrontis, and Melas, my sweet, innocent boys.” Chalciope’s voice cracked with grief.
“Aeetes put them in a boat without oars, with only an old tutor to look after them. He wouldn’t shed the blood of his own kin, he said, for fear of miasma.
But neither could he let the sons of a traitor live. ”
Horrified, I sat up and took her hands in mine. Though I’d puzzled at the absence of Chalciope’s sons and husband, never in
my wildest imaginings had I dreamed of something like this.
Now the meaning behind Father’s words was clearer. I won’t have another traitorous son-in-law scheming to take what’s mine. He had been talking about Phrixus, Chalciope’s husband.
“Father wants me to marry Absyrtos,” I blurted out. I’d been waiting to share this with Chalciope, hoping to disperse her
melancholy first, but could no longer contain myself.
Chalciope made a sound of disgust. “Well, I say you won’t.”
“I won’t?” My brow creased.
“No. Because we’re going to kill Father.”