Chapter 33
Jason
Two days after the incident with the Bebrycians, Jason is shaken from sleep by the sound of the hull jarring into rock. He
feels it in his bones, as if the gods have bound the ship’s well-being to his. An ugly, teeth-grating noise.
As Jason runs up the stairs, he can hear Tiphys and Ancaeus arguing.
“Idiot!” Ancaeus shouts. “You’ve run us right into the Planctae.”
The Planctae, the Wandering Rocks. They earn their name from the way they appear to float in the water, though in truth this
is an optical illusion concealing a rocky shoal. A cursory glance confirms Jason’s worst fears: The Argo is wedged in among them.
The sunstruck expanse of water is pockmarked by dark rocks as far as Jason can see. Even if the Argo manages to free itself, it will be only a matter of moments before it crashes into more stones.
“Perhaps we can wait until high tide?” Jason suggests.
“This is high tide,” Ancaeus replies, gesturing at the water.
The Argonauts take turns jumping into the shallows and pushing against the hull to no avail. Even Heracles cannot dislodge
it, his great feet slipping on the rocks. Neither can the wind brothers, Calais and Zetes.
Jason begins to worry. The men are grumbling, just as they did after Lemnos. Sharp glances are cast his way, as if he’s to blame for this current debacle. The crew of the Argo is like a wild horse that bucks under him, balking at his control. Jason does not want another incident like the one with
the Bebrycians, but he isn’t sure he can prevent it.
Or perhaps Jason will find their ire directed toward himself and perish at the hands of his own mutinous crew with the Golden
Fleece around his shoulders.
No. The idea of being cut down so close to victory is unbearable. Jason must free the ship.
An idea occurs to him, and he calls out her name. “Medea!”
A head crowned with black curls turns toward him. Jason opens his mouth to ask her to use her witchcraft, then remembers she
has lost it. How odd—Medea’s witchcraft is so central to his idea of her that he cannot picture her without it.
A melodic female voice cries out from somewhere in the water. “Medea! So it’s true that she is on this ship. Well, I cannot
simply leave you there.”
The wood of the Argo creaks fiercely and begins to move. The crew careens around the deck as the ship rises into the air.
A sparkle of laughter fills the air and flashes of bare arms can be seen in the water. Sea nymphs, Nereids. They are lifting
the Argo over the rocks like children balancing a ball on their fingertips, passing it hand over hand. When the ship is beyond the
hazardous Planctae, it shudders to a halt and sinks back into the water. Jason sways on his feet.
“Greetings to the Argo!” calls the same mysterious female voice.
Jason joins the rest of the crew at the railing and is astonished at what he sees.
Her hair is a dark shining mass that brings to mind underwater forests undulating in the current, and her skin is the color of foam.
She takes the shape of a human woman, but Jason has the sense that her true form is closer to that of the deep-sea fish sometimes caught in trawling nets, fang-toothed beasts that are mostly stomach and teeth. A squid killer, a dolphin eater.
A goddess.
“My name is Thetis,” the sea nymph calls. “Brine born, silver-footed, daughter of Nereus. Hera has sent me. Tell me, where
is the woman Medea?”
Only faith in his divine patroness Hera keeps Jason’s terror in check as Medea steps forward and announces herself.
“Daughter-in-law!” Thetis calls, delighted. “Prophesized bride of my son, Achilles. When Hera asked my help, I was more than
happy to—”
“Thetis!” Peleus crashes into the railing of the ship, rocking back a little at the force. His face is a rictus of hate. “Monster!
Faithless wife, killer of children!”
As Jason tackles Peleus to prevent his friend from further antagonizing the goddess, his mind runs to the recent past. He
recalls meeting Peleus at the cave of Chiron, where he had come with an infant son named Achilles to seek shelter from an
unnamed threat. Now, the truth slides into focus. Jason understands what his friend was running from and who Thetis is to
Peleus.
His wife.
Thetis draws herself up stiffly. Her nails seem to grow, and her teeth are suddenly longer. “Peleus,” she spits. “If I knew
you were here, I would have let the ship crash on the rocks and spill out your life like the yolk of an egg. Though of course
I would have scooped up my precious daughter-in-law first. My dear, are you sure you do not want me to take you away from
these horrible men?” This last is directed at Medea.
Whites showing around her eyes, Medea shakes her head.
“Suit yourself.” Thetis turns back to Peleus. “Now tell me, you worm of a man, what have you done with my son? Where is Achilles?”
“He is with someone who will protect him from you,” Peleus snarls. By now, he has broken out of the hold that Jason and a
few others held him in, and is once more leaning over the rail and glaring at Thetis. “Murderess! I saw you dangle my son
over the fire. A moment more and you would have lowered him into the flames.”
Thetis laughs. She is monstrous but beautiful too, drawing the eye like mysterious lights flashing in dark water. “Is that
what you think happened?” she says. “You fool. I was not trying to kill Achilles, I was ensuring his eternity. The sacred
fire would have burned away his mortality so that only the god remained. Now I will have to watch my child die, alone among
the endless goddesses.”
Peleus slackens, the color fading from his face. “You weren’t trying to hurt him?” He looks like a hunting dog who has startled
a bird into flight and cannot quite tell where his quarry has gone.
“I would never hurt Achilles. By the River Styx, I swear it,” Thetis says, the binding oath of the gods. “The one thing we
have ever agreed on, Peleus, is the love we both hold for Achilles. Whatever you think of me as a wife, do not insult me as
a mother. Now, farewell! And go with the blessings of Hera, Medea of Colchis, until we meet again,” she adds.
Thetis begins to slide into the water, but a shout from Peleus makes her pause.
“I would make amends,” Peleus says, reaching out a hand. “Come visit me sometime on the promontory outside of Phthia, and
we will talk of what has passed between us.”
“No!” Thetis replies. “I don’t want you, I never did.
Zeus bound me to you because of the prophecy that any son I bore would be greater than his father.
My only solace was that the marriage would be short, since you were mortal.
But I was still afraid. Do you remember when you took hold of me on our wedding night and would not let go, even as I flickered between the shapes of birds and wild beasts?
I don’t want to share any more of eternity with you than I already have.
Be on your way, and look after our son. He will be greater than his father, but that is not such a distinction when the father is you. ”
Thetis disappears into the water without a ripple. There is silence on the deck of the Argo, broken only by the slap of waves and the call of the seabirds.
“Well,” Atalanta says, “if that’s marriage, then I’d rather be an alley cat.”
That afternoon, Jason sits next to Peleus for a long time, their shoulders touching companionably. Peleus’s face is buried
in his folded arms.
The Argo skims over the waves, and bright sunlight drenches the deck. Eventually, Peleus speaks, though he does not lift his head.
The words are muffled, but Jason can still make them out.
“It was a mistake, that marriage,” Peleus says. “Men are above women and the gods are above men, but what do you do when you’re
married to a goddess? Still, she gave me Achilles. So it wasn’t all bad.
“The son will surpass his father, the prophecy goes.” Peleus gives a bitter chuckle. “Isn’t that every father’s most cherished hope and deepest fear? That’s
why I’m here on the Argo, so that I might become more than I once was. I must achieve great things so that Achilles will accomplish even greater ones.”
These are the statements of an aching heart and a wandering mind, and Jason senses they do not require answers, only expression. He thinks of his own father, whose memory is the bright star that guides him.
Jason is undertaking this journey for the sake of his father, Peleus for his son. They are like uneasy mirrors of each other.
Peleus sits up and rests a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did,” he says, then walks away.
Jason watches him go, puzzling at his words, then stirs. There is someone he wants to talk to.
He finds Medea deep in conversation with Atalanta. When she sees him, Atalanta slinks off, muttering something about a shift
at the oars. Jason seats himself next to Medea, careful not to touch her; casual contact between a man and woman would be
unseemly.
The two of them sit in silence, only their shadows touching. After some time, Medea speaks. “I do not want to marry that baby.”
She must be talking about Achilles. “I do not think Peleus wants his baby to marry you,” Jason replies.
“So who will I marry, if the one I want has closed himself off from me?”
Jason freezes. The one she wants—is this someone back in Colchis? “If you don’t want to marry me,” he says slowly, “I’ll arrange
a match with anyone you like. On this ship or beyond.”
Medea’s face falls. “You would set me aside so easily?”
“No, no,” Jason says, instantly regretting his words. “It’s just . . . I know you haven’t chosen me, and I won’t keep you
trapped as Thetis was. If the one you want is closed off from you, I will help you back to him.”
“The one I want . . . ?” Medea looks at him in astonishment. “The one I want is you, Jason. But you shut me out and would not talk to me after the Bebrycians.”
Jason had been so sick at what he witnessed that he can scarcely remember Medea speaking to him at all.
The indiscriminate slaughter of the Bebrycians was even worse than the incident with the Doliones; at least the latter was an honest mistake.
Jason leaves a trail of blood wherever he goes, it seems, whether he wills it or no. The knowledge makes him feel ill.
Perhaps he shouldn’t judge Medea too harshly for what she did to her brother, he muses, when his own Argonauts have done so
much worse.
“Share your cares and worries with me,” Medea says, “the way I share mine with you. You were so sweet after you found out
I lost my magic. Please, let me have the chance to do the same. You need to be the good captain with your men, but, Jason,
I’m your wife. Or I will be,” she adds awkwardly. “You don’t need to pretend with me.”
Jason agrees, though he scarcely understands what she is asking of him. “I’m not the son of a god,” he confesses. “I don’t
have unusual strength or speed or anything like that. But I will try, as best I can, to be a good husband to you. I swear
it by the Styx.”
The binding oath, the same invoked by Thetis. The enormity of it settles over Jason’s shoulders like a yoke, but Medea smiles
so brightly that he almost forgets his own disquiet.
Almost.
Some corner of Jason’s mind recalls that Thetis said Medea was prophesized to marry her son, Achilles. To take the destined
wife of a demigod for his own would be an insult beyond bearing. Jason can picture Thetis coming for him, her eyes glowing
above the water and her teeth long and sharp. He will have to navigate many treacherous seas before returning home, and it
would not be wise for him to antagonize the goddess of that domain.
But Jason has made his choice. And he has come to quite like the idea of Medea beside him as he retakes Iolcus. Still, perhaps
it’s best to wait until their homecoming to officially marry her.
“I never want to be like that,” Medea says with a shudder, hugging her knees. “Like Peleus and Thetis, hurling insults at each other in front of everyone.”
Jason agrees. He also does not wish for his domestic life to become a spectacle for a crowd.
“I don’t like Peleus,” Medea adds. “And I certainly don’t want him as a father-in-law. He stares like he wants to undress
me, and Atalanta told me he touched her once. Also, I don’t like the way he treated Thetis. I think you should dismiss him.”
“I’ll consider it,” Jason says, though he already knows that he will never dismiss Peleus. He needs every hand on deck if
they are going to make it back to Iolcus alive. Besides, Peleus has become something like a friend to him.
Jason’s thoughts are interrupted by a cry from the lookout. It seems that the Argo has arrived at the island of Circe.