Chapter 22
Jason
Images sear themselves into Jason’s mind like brands into flesh.
Medea with an axe in her hands. Blood pooled on the deck. The stiff marble of a severed limb, meat hanging off one end. And
on the other, a hand with fingers outstretched.
Jason reaches the railing of the ship just in time to disgorge the contents of his stomach into the roiling sea.
It is no surprise that he would be saved once again—that divine favor would preserve him—yet now Jason sees the terror of
it. He is saved but has no say over the nature of that saving. This is what it means to have cultivated power in the way that
he has, through charm and persuasion. The precise mechanisms are always in the hands of another.
His distaste for the act is secondary to the fact that he feels outdone.
This woman, this foreign woman, has proved herself more of a man than him.
Because Medea’s plan works. The Colchian fleet turns aside, delayed by its grim task, and the Argo continues unmolested across the Euxine Sea. The crew cheers.
As he looks at the small form of Medea slumped with exhaustion on the deck, Jason feels a surge of fear. What exactly is she
capable of, this woman he promised to take as his wife? How well does he know her, really?
If Medea would do something like this to her own brother, what might she do to Jason?