Chapter 43
Medea
The night was calm and cool, with a thin drift of clouds over the moon. Inside my heart, though, was turmoil.
What had come over me, back in the library? I had no name for the craving, something like hunger or thirst, that I felt when
I looked at Atalanta sitting in the shaft of sunlight.
Mares didn’t run after other mares, and it was the stag that trailed after the doe. Such things were not possible between
two women—but they were, I realized, remembering Circe and her nymphs. Not to mention Atalanta’s relationship with Procris.
Atalanta was sleeping beside me now. She had been silent all evening, curling up under the blankets without even saying good
night. I feared she might be angry at me, but she had never been one to sit on a slight. Something else troubled her.
Perhaps she was still in mourning for Procris, I thought, feeling a flare of guilt. How uncouth of me to think about kissing
a woman whose lover had so recently died. Besides, I had Jason to consider. My promised husband, the future king of Iolcus.
I would not act faithlessly toward him; I would be a good wife, as he had promised to be a good husband.
But still, sleep eluded me. Around moonset, I gave up and went to tend the embers of the fire.
“The Greeks have three words for love.”
My head jerked up, and I met Orpheus’s gaze across the dwindling fire. He was the only other creature awake on this lonely beach, and his eyes glinted like those of a wolf.
“The first is eros,” Orpheus continued. “Desire. The magnetism that draws two souls together.”
“Like the god in your song,” I replied, thinking of the divine archer.
“Just so. Another is agapē, the love of family. And philia, the love of friends. Storgē, some insist, but I say that is fit only for slaves and tyrants. Most people experience each of these types of love in a
lifetime, but it is rarer to have all of them at once, bound together like a golden braid. If you are lucky enough to find
such love, you must never let it go.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Like one sword meeting another, I
had the sense of magic being laid against mine. Orpheus commanded unseen powers just as I did.
“Because I do not think Hekate would want her daughter to be so troubled. And because I know what it is like to be the child
of a forgetful god. Here is what you must know, Medea: There is the love that is thrust upon us and the love that we choose.
Run after the latter, no matter what gods and men say, and never let it go. Or, at least, never look back.”
Then Orpheus walked away through the darkness. I watched him go, puzzling over his words, before returning to Atalanta.
What was it that I felt for her? Friendship, or something else? I wanted to roll over and bury my face in her hair until she
stirred awake, and talk to her until the sun came up.
But I did not do any of that. Instead, I lay stiffly in the darkness, caught between two opposing poles: the ache of what
I wanted, and the terror of reaching for it.
In the morning, we officially departed the island of Phineus, skimming swiftly over the shallow waves. Heracles had not returned, so we pressed on without him.
Then we heard the voices.
Women’s voices, singing sweetly. Softly at first, spiraling into the morning, then with increasing volume. I looked at Atalanta,
who met my eyes with alarm.
“It cannot be,” she said. “We are too far from land.”
Atalanta flung herself to the railing, and I followed suit. The crew of the Argo also looked around, puzzled, for the source of the sweet voices that wove through the air like gold threads.
The music caught in my brain like a fishhook and pulled. I leaned toward the voices, though the railing cut into my belly
and the sea air ruffled my curls. Medea, Medea, they were calling. Their song was about me!
I needed to hear what they were saying. If only I could get a little closer . . .
“How do they know my name?” Atalanta murmured. Her voice was slurred and her eyes hazy and indistinct, as though she had been
drugged.
The sight of her in such a state shocked me out of my daze. There was magic afoot, and I must counter it—but how? With great
effort, I shook my head clear of the fog that had descended upon it and looked out at the sea. A rocky shoal rose up from
the waters, and it was there that the singers perched. They had human faces and long, shapely arms tapering into feathers.
Their waists terminated in the clawed feet of birds, like the Harpies who had tormented Phineus, but distinct in their own
terrifying way.
Sirens. Bird-women, former servants of Persephone, who sang sailors to wreck on their rocks.
The sirens turned their curiously bright eyes toward me and reached out their hands, redoubling their song. Wax, I thought dizzily. What I needed was melted wax, to stuff into my ears as a bulwark against the sirens’ song. But there was
none here. I felt myself slip once more into complacent daydreams like a luckless bird falling from a nest, anesthetized by
a magic even I could not stand against.
A splash, as one of the Argo’s crew threw himself into the waters, seeking the origin of that haunting music. More were certain to follow, drawn by the
irresistible song, if I did not do something. But how could I stifle the song of the Sirens?
Suddenly another voice sounded out, falling on the eerie voices of the sirens like a hawk on rock doves. A deeper voice, carrying
a battle hymn, one of the heartbeat rhythms that inspires soldiers as they march off to war.
This new sound wound its way into my skull, displacing the song of the sirens. All around me, the Argonauts blinked like sleepwalkers.
The spell broken, some of the crew rushed to take the oars and steer the ship away from the rocky shoal, while others worked
to fish out the unfortunate who had thrown himself overboard.
In the center of it all was Orpheus, hand on his lyre and mouth open in song. His eyes were closed, his face pointed at the
sky.
Unease filled me. If Orpheus knew such magic, what other wisdom might he command? I turned his warning about love over and
over in my mind, wondering what exactly he had meant.