Chapter 37
Medea
The deer stepped daintily through a forest filled with early-morning sunlight. She bent her graceful neck to graze at the
green shoots, ears swiveling around to detect any unfamiliar sound.
I crept forward as silently as possible, not wishing to startle the deer and cause her to vanish like a dream at dawn. The
sun beat down through the canopy of leaves, making sweat trickle down my back. I lifted my spear arm and took a deep breath,
then threw.
To my disappointment, the spear careened sideways and sent the deer leaping through the undergrowth, her tail a white flag
of surrender. My shoulders sagged.
“What was that?” Atalanta emerged from the forest, hands on her hips.
“I think it’s what you call a spear throw,” I replied.
“Hrm. More like the fluttering of an unwell bird.” Atalanta could be a ruthless teacher, I was discovering. “Do it like I
showed you, with your whole body, not just your arm. Throw from your foot.”
“How in the world am I supposed to throw from my foot when the spear is in my hand?!” I snapped.
Atalanta handed the spear back to me and was about to say more, when she caught sight of something in the undergrowth. Following the line of her gaze, I watched as the ghostly shape of another deer appeared.
Atalanta moved behind me. “Pull back,” she whispered in my ear, and obediently I raised my spear arm. She kicked my legs apart
into a proper stance, guiding my aim. Her breasts were like ripe apples pressing into my back, and I suddenly found it very
difficult to concentrate on anything at all.
“Now,” Atalanta said. I could feel her breath tickling the back of my neck.
Yes, now I understood. Throwing the spear was like working magic; you had to let it flow through you into the world. I drew
back and released, throwing with my arm and my foot and the rest of my body, summoning every ounce of strength I possessed.
The spear struck the deer full in the chest. The animal gave a bleat of alarm and crashed through the forest before falling
down. Atalanta whooped in triumph, throwing her arms around me, and I beamed up at her. I’d done it, felt power move through
my hands and mastered a skill that owed nothing to my horrible family. Even my magic was a gift from my mother, but this—this
was something I’d claimed for myself.
As Atalanta kindled a fire to cook the meat, I knelt by the body of the deer. How still the creature was, its black eyes staring
at the sky. Dying so that we might eat and live. Laying my hand on its smooth neck, I murmured the Colchian prayer for the
dead to send its soul to peace.
I watched as Atalanta expertly field dressed the deer and roasted the meat, grateful for what she had shown me. If not for
her, I might have gone my whole life without knowing I possessed this capability.
Abruptly, I was acutely conscious of everything Atalanta had done for me, from teaching me the uses of the spear to protecting me on Circe’s island.
I owed her so much and didn’t like allowing a debt to go unpaid.
Her rejection of my offer yesterday to perform the agreed-upon divination unsettled me.
Merely making the offer wasn’t enough, it seemed; I would have to insist.
“This will do perfectly well for divination,” I said, indicating the liver of the deer. “You wanted to know where Procris
was, did you not? Let’s find out.”
What would I have seen if I’d chosen that moment to look up? Fear on Atalanta’s face, strong enough to stop me in my tracks.
But nothing distracted me from giving her what I thought she wanted against all evidence. Perhaps Circe was right in saying
that I never gave anyone else the chance to speak, instead remaining single-mindedly focused on proving my own usefulness.
I cut open the liver and began to read.
Atalanta
Wait, I wanted to say. Don’t do it. I don’t really want to know where Procris is. Let her live her life and I will live mine, and we will be nothing
to each other but a memory.
But Medea was already bent over the organ. She scowled, then threw the liver on the fire, where it sparked and sizzled.
Medea looked into the flickering fire, its brightness leached by the morning sun. “I see a woman, walking in a forest,” she
said, unblinking, as if in a trance. “A yellow dog follows her, and she leads a donkey. She wears a quiver of arrows strapped
to her waist and carries a spear.”
Procris. It was her, it must be. The breath left my lungs.
“She . . . oh!” Medea covered her mouth in shock. “An arrow hits her. The donkey panics, the dog barks helplessly. A man dashes out of the woods just as she falls. He’s well dressed, and his hair is golden. He knows her, I think. Maybe he thought she was a deer?”
No.
Medea shook her head. “Why doesn’t he do anything? Why doesn’t he help her?”
My eyes burned. I became aware of a high keening sound and realized it was issuing from my own mouth.
No no no.
He thought she was a deer. Had he? The man was Cephalus, I was certain, judging from the description of his fine clothes and golden hair. I recalled
the little cruelties Procris described, the slights, slaps, and shoves leading to this final act of ultimate violence.
Cephalus had conducted an affair with the goddess of the dawn, Eos, a far more ambitious match than a mere princess like Procris.
A hunting accident would be a ready excuse to get rid of an inconvenient first wife.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Medea said.
I staggered to my feet, swaying.
Procris was dead. The earth would no longer know the blessing of her footsteps; the forests would be bereft. A light had gone
out of the world. The bright thread that carried me across the sea and through all the hazards of the journey was abruptly
severed.
“Atalanta.” Medea was trying to take my hands in hers, to soothe me. “Atalanta! Please, talk to me. Who was Procris to you?
A friend, a sister?”
“She . . . she was everything,” I replied.
“If you want to avenge her, I will help you.”
Kill Cephalus, she meant. I considered it briefly, then shook my head.
Vengeance was an unfamiliar concept, picked up from my recent proximity to humans.
Animals rarely bothered with revenge, and I still had an animal’s practicality, even if I had chosen a human life.
Besides, killing Cephalus would not bring Procris back.
She was gone. Untethered, I fell into the abyss.
Love—for me, perhaps for everyone—was always doomed to end in heartbreak or death. Artemis tried to warn me, but I had not
listened. There was a weight on my chest threatening to crush me, and tears burned in my eyes.
“Atalanta, please. Stay with me. Let me help you.” Medea’s face was near mine. Her gentle concern was as intolerable as the
brush of fabric against a burn, and I pulled away. My greatest flaw has always been that I withdraw at the moments I most
wish to connect. But how could I seek solace through love when love was doomed to hurt me?
A bellow echoed through the forests: The voice of Heracles, summoning all the Argonauts back to the ship. Time to continue
our journey.
I ran from Medea back to the Argo, and to the crawlspace under the stairs, and to the merciful waiting darkness.