Chapter 51
Medea
When we arrived in Iolcus, a celebration was waiting.
People had seen the Argo’s sails from far away and brought food and wine down to the beach. Most blessedly they carried water, which we gulped down
eagerly. Musicians played and fires were kindled, and the citizens of Iolcus welcomed back the returning heroes.
I watched it all from my seat next to one of the bonfires, forgotten in the flurry of activity. Just Jason’s foreign wife,
left to look on silently as the Iolcans admiringly stroked the Golden Fleece, paying no attention whatsoever to the woman
who had given it to him.
Save for the Fleece, we had little to show for our journey. The treasures from Phineus had been washed away in the storm or
else lost in Libya, when we threw everything extraneous from the Argo to ensure its lightness. At least I still had my jewelry, not to mention my witchcraft.
A tall shape sat down next to me. My heart skipped a beat as I looked up into the face of Atalanta.
“You mentioned, once,” she began, addressing a patch of sand near her feet, “that you wanted to exchange letters after our
journey ended. Do you still wish to do that?”
“Yes! Yes, very much,” I replied, overjoyed at her presence. “And I was serious about having you come visit once I’m settled in Iolcus. We have more time now that death is not imminent, but . . . I don’t want this to be the last time I ever see you.”
“You know,” Atalanta said, drawing her arms around her knees. “I had a dream once, in which the goddess Artemis told me that
I would never know love without loss. You were only playing a part in making the prophecy come true, and I cannot fault you
for that.”
“Well, I was also trying to avoid being dragged back to Colchis and killed,” I replied hotly. For some reason it stung to
think that everything Atalanta and I had shared on the Argo’s journey was reducible only to some god’s blabbering. Not our own choice, but that of forces in place long before our births.
“I know,” she replied.
Unwilling to waste these last moments with Atalanta on petty irritations, I took a deep breath to soothe myself. “What will
you do, when all this is finished?” I asked, gesturing at the celebration around us and the distant shape of the Argo beyond.
Atalanta opened her mouth to answer when she sighted something over my shoulder that made her eyes go wide. She launched herself
at me, pitching us both over into the sand. The wiry, panther-like strength of her lean body against mine sent a thrill through
my belly. Pinning me to the ground, she held up a hand and something struck it.
Her weight lifted, leaving me rather dazed. She was up and shouting in a moment, flinging back the object. A discus.
“Watch where you throw that!” Atalanta shouted at a laughing Peleus. “You could have killed her, you fool!”
“Relax, huntress,” Peleus said, his words slightly slurred. He must have helped himself to more than a little of the celebratory
wine. “Nobody got hurt.” He gave me an odious grin, and I recalled Atalanta’s story about how he’d groped her early on in
the Argo’s journey and tasted the point of her knife for the insult.
“I challenge you,” Atalanta declared. “If I win, you will throw that stupid discus into the sea.”
Peleus laughed. “I accept. We’ll sort it out with pankration, a man’s sport.”
A spike of anxiety went through me. Pankration, savage anything-goes wrestling, was favored among the Greeks and abhorred
as senseless violence among all other civilized people. Moreover, Atalanta was at a disadvantage, being slighter and smaller
than Peleus. The sport had been banned on the Argo by edict of Jason . . . but now that the journey was over, the rules no longer held.
A crowd gathered, Argonaut and Iolcan alike, as Atalanta and Peleus started to circle each other. Peleus stripped off his
clothing, while Atalanta wore her usual chiton. Peleus barked insults—what did Atalanta know about pankration anyway? didn’t
she need a man to fight for her?—but Atalanta remained as silent as a hunting cat, the sharp dagger of her attention focused
on Peleus.
She moved so quickly that it was hard to make out what was happening. Peleus may have been bigger, but he was drunk on wine
and overconfidence, and Atalanta had spent her childhood wrestling bears. In one swift movement, she grappled Peleus and bore
him down to the ground. He landed on his back and was immediately pinned by a knee to the breadbasket and forearm at the throat.
Peleus choked out his surrender, and after a moment, Atalanta let him up. The crowd roared with delight.
“Into the sea with it,” Atalanta shouted, indicating the discus. She glowed with the flush of battle. Her hair had come free
of its braid, drifting around her face, and the firelight danced across her features. I remembered Atalanta as I’d first seen
her, holding off the Colchian soldiers on the beach outside Aea. I’d thought she was a goddess then, and certainly nothing
in heaven or on earth was more magnificent than her.
I shook myself, pushing away these thoughts. Atalanta took her seat next to me, taking a swig of beer that some celebrant had placed in her hands. She did not lean her shoulder against mine, but neither did she move away. I took this as a good sign.
“I’ll go back to the woods after this, I think,” she said, looking out at the sea. “I have been longing for tree trunks that
reach up into the night sky and the scent of green leaves.”
“What will you do when you get there?”
“Bathe, probably, and then take a nap. I have grown very fond of baths. And naps too.”
I scrunched my nose playfully. “No, I mean, how will you spend your days?” I said, immensely curious about how Atalanta would
find a place for herself in the ordinary world. I wondered at the journeys that would lead her far away from me, and hopefully
back again.
She frowned. “I’m not sure yet.”
Atalanta didn’t need to ask what I would be doing. As Jason’s wife, I’d go with him to claim the throne that was his birthright
and reign as his queen. I would bear his children, and together we would rule over the city.
Atalanta and I sat for a time in companionable silence, watching the celebration. A question burned inside me, and at last
I gathered up the courage to speak it.
“Do you think . . .” I said, fiddling nervously with a bracelet. “Do you think, before you leave, perhaps we might watch one
more sunrise together?”
A smile curved her lips. “I would like that,” Atalanta said. “I would like that very much.”
When the sky lightened, I rose from the bedroll I shared with Jason.
He was still sleeping, exhausted from the excesses of the previous night.
I stroked his hair, smiling fondly at his repose and feeling a little guilty at leaving him.
But we would have many years together, and I had only a few more precious hours with Atalanta.
So I slipped out of the tent into the gray dawn.
A familiar shape was sitting on the beach. Atalanta saw me and thrust out her chin in greeting. I took my place next to her
and watched as the sunrise began to paint its colors across the sky—gold and indigo, blush pink and coral.
I moved a little closer and leaned against her like dogs or horses do. She did not draw away but instead leaned back, and
that gave me hope. Hope that I had not seen the last of this entrancing, marvelous woman, that she would honor my invitation
to exchange letters and visits.
There, caught between the ending of my old life and the beginning of the new, I suddenly recalled a vivid memory of my youth
when I dropped a pail of water. I’d been swinging it to and fro on my way to the temple of Hekate, when suddenly the handle
slipped from my hand and flew through the air, spilling its contents everywhere.
What struck me most about the memory was not the mess or the frustration of wasted effort, but the brief beauty of it. The
perfect arc the pail described in the air, and the spray of water fanning out like a flurry of diamonds, each droplet winking
in the light. A moment of sublime loveliness before everything came crashing down.