Chapter 35
Medea
Three times Circe anointed me, once with water, once with oil, once with the blood of the freshly slain piglet. To purify
my mind, and my soul, and, finally, my body. When she was done, I felt lighter.
At the center of the table was a vase overflowing with wildflowers, their yellow, pink, and blue heads bowing. Tucked among
them was a stem with an unfurled bud. Heart pounding, I grabbed the unbudded flower and focused my mind to a single point,
whispering a charm as familiar as my own name. The flower did me the service of blooming, petals opening to the air, and relief
filled me.
“My magic has returned.” I met Atalanta’s eyes and saw my smile mirrored on her face.
Circe snorted. “Oh? Where did it return from? Miasma is unpleasant and unlucky, and generally bad for the health. But the
loss of your magic, dear girl, is a thing that’s simply not possible. You might as well lose your own soul.”
She did not give me more than a heartbeat to ponder her words before she rested her chin on a hand and fixed me with her sly
cat’s stare. “Now tell me, how did Aeetes die?”
My relief now turned to fear. I had not lied to Circe, exactly, but arguably I’d deceived her.
Now the bill came due. There may have been other ways to expiate miasma, but none was so sure as a trip to Circe—or so dangerous.
I might find myself among the beasts clustered outside her door.
Worse, so would Atalanta, who had only recently chosen her humanity.
The hearth fire jumped up, illuminating Circe’s face and throwing shadows across the wall so that she seemed even larger than
she really was. From the corners of the room, the watching nymphs whispered to each other.
What is a witch but someone who wields power she isn’t allowed to have? Atalanta asked me once. And Circe certainly had power. I would have to tread very carefully if I wanted to get Atalanta—and
myself—out of this place alive.
“So how did he die?” Circe asked again. “Tortured, poisoned, stabbed in the back? Or perhaps you fed him to his own bronze
bulls—oh, that would be a pretty piece of justice. Come, child, tell me and be quick about it.”
“Why are you so interested in your brother’s death?” I asked, stalling for time. “You have not seen him for many years.” Taking
a seat next to Atalanta, I drew strength from her quiet presence.
“Answer my question, girl,” Circe said, her face darkening. “What happened to Aeetes?”
There was no helping it. I dithered for a moment, then reasoned that Circe had power enough to tell if I lied outright. “Chalciope
got him. At least, I think she did. She was going to overthrow Aeetes, saying his cruelty had become too great.” At the mention
of my sister’s name, I felt a deep pang of sorrow, knowing I would never see her again.
“Little Chalciope has grown up, it seems.” Circe’s brow furrowed. “But if Chalciope killed Aeetes, why did the miasma settle
on you?”
My heart slammed in my chest. “Well, you see . . . I fled with Atalanta’s crew when the fighting began—”
“You ran away?” Circe’s tone was icy. “Your sister took it upon herself to overthrow him, and you ran away?”
“It’s not that simple,” I protested. “Chalciope asked me to protect Jason, the man who saved her sons, and I did. We were being pursued by the Colchian fleet. Absyrtos was with us, but he was dying from an arrow wound—”
“I don’t care about that. You left Chalciope to handle Aeetes by herself?” Circe stared at me in disgust. “You had a chance
to kill him, to end that horrible man’s existence, and you hightailed it away? Instead you killed Absyrtos, probably to keep
your father’s fleet off your ass, unless I miss my guess, and thereby invoked the blood curse. But the child is not the father.
If you want to make the world into the kind of place you wish to live, you must strike at the heart of evil.”
“You chide me for leaving, but you left us first,” I accused.
“Is that what you think?” Circe’s face was hard. “After Hekate died, Aeetes sold me in marriage to the king of the Sarmatians,
the only man in the world who could match him for cruelty. My husband tried to treat me like a broodmare, and I endured his
abuse for a year before poisoning him. For that, Aeetes exiled me here.” With a sweeping hand, Circe indicated the house,
the island, her little domain of Aeaea. “Probably he would have executed me, but by then I was a goddess.”
“A goddess?” I was startled by this revelation. “What do you mean, you were a goddess by then? You weren’t born so?”
Circe considered me, her expression unreadable. “I knew your mother well, little Medea. Very well. We struck up a friendship,
and she taught me much of what she knew about the spells and herbs and chants that make up the practice of magic. Who do you
think helped Hekate discover the elixir of apotheosis? Who tested it for her?”
A voice rose up from my memory. My mother Hekate’s voice, promising me apotheosis and a place by her side, but only after I’d lived my one mortal life.
My oldest longing, my deepest wound. A gift dangled at the end of my life’s journey, but one given to Circe so freely.
I’d struggled so hard to fit into my mother’s expectations and live a life worth immortalizing, while Circe had simply been in the right place at the right time.
Suddenly, I was furious. The legs of my chair shrieked against the floor as I stood. I wanted to throw myself at Circe, to
hurt her as she had hurt me. But if I did, would it be blood or the ichor of the gods that poured from her veins? Would she
always be so far above me, a goddess while I was nothing but a cringing mortal?
“Stand down,” Circe said. “I am not your enemy; save your ire for those who are. And don’t think you can lose your magic,
as you suggested before—you can only become so estranged that your soul no longer knows itself.
“I don’t hate you, little one, even if I am disappointed that you fled from your chance to take down the wicked king. The
purpose of witchcraft is to turn the world into the kind of place you wish to live, but first you must figure out what that
is. The truth is this: Witchcraft is nothing more or less than an ongoing conversation with the living world, and you never
give anyone else the chance to speak.”
My eyes burned with tears. I was aware of Atalanta trying to pull me toward the door, but Circe was not finished.
“You found me bathing in the sea when you arrived. Do you know why?” Circe asked. She stood and walked to the other side of
the table, her fingers trailing across its surface. There was no anger in her now, only a profound sorrow. “I was washing
away the residue of a terrible dream. There was a fire in my house, consuming everything I loved. I did not understand the
meaning then, but I do now.”
Circe’s golden eyes were as remote as those of the hawk she was named for. “You are the fire, Medea, and you will destroy everything you touch unless you learn to own your power. There will never be an end to it until you make one and become more than Aeetes’s daughter.
“Look after my wayward niece,” Circe said to Atalanta. “She will need all the help she can get.” Dimly, I noted this was the
first time she’d acknowledged Atalanta since her rejection.
Infuriated beyond speech, I ran out of the darkened house and into the false cheer of sunlight, so bright it felt like an
obscenity. By now it was nearly afternoon. Circe’s mutated beasts and half-finished experiments cast strange shadows over
the earth, but they fled at the advent of my wailing, giving way before a creature far more terrible than them.
I fell to my knees, wet ground soaking through my skirts. To know that Circe had been given apotheosis while I had to wait
was an insult that could not be borne. Never again would I call myself a priestess of Hekate or perform her rites. I was done
with the gods, I decided. Let Hekate’s altars grow thick with dust. My mother had abandoned me, so now I abandoned her.
And at the end of my life, when Hekate came to offer the elixir of apotheosis, I would tear it from her hands and drink it
down. I would become a goddess and tell them all exactly what I thought of them.
Strong arms gathered me up, lifting me into the air. I thrashed and kicked, fearing that Circe or one of her nymphs had come
to drag me back into her lair. But the arms only held tighter. Gradually, I realized that we were moving in the direction
of the sea, away from Circe’s house.
I looked up to see the face of Atalanta, her gaze fixed on the horizon as she carried me tenderly back to the ship.