Chapter 58
Jason
It is midafternoon, and the cold winter sunlight falls through the window at a steep angle. Jason sits in the rare beam of
light that graces his tiny office in the Corinthian palace, poring over the letter in his hands. Clinging to it, really, like
a piece of driftwood in a raging sea.
The letter states that his esteemed mother, Alcimede, passed away peacefully in her sleep a few days ago. She has been buried
with all honors by her nephew, King Acastus of Iolcus, whose seal and signature adorn the letter.
Acastus, Jason’s cousin, who sits on the throne of Iolcus with the Golden Fleece around his shoulders—the throne that should
have belonged to him. Jason’s nostrils flare, and a roar of blood fills his ears. Perhaps Alcimede grew close to Acastus at some point over the
course of the three years that have passed since Jason went into exile, and the young king fulfilled her yearning for a glorious
son who could bring her the influence she craved.
Or perhaps the reason behind Acastus’s letter is more sinister. Perhaps Acastus orchestrated the death of Alcimede as revenge
for the murder of Pelias, and her eternal sleep was hastened onward by poison or the business end of a blade.
Jason will never know the truth; he can never return to Iolcus except under pain of dishonorable death.
He is now truly Jason Amechanos, Jason the Helpless.
Over the past three years he has sent many letters to the shepherd’s hut at the base of Mount Pelion, but Alcimede returned all of them unopened.
Bleak despair hangs over Jason like a storm cloud, and he sags in his seat. Regardless of the circumstances of his mother’s
death, it is plain to Jason that he failed her. He did not bury his mother, nor was he present to hold her hand as she passed
from this world into the next. He has failed in the most fundamental duty of a son.
He has failed at everything, really.
Alcimede will never meet her grandson Thessalus, who is now about two years old and his father’s only joy. Bright and energetic,
Thessalus toddles quickly around the cramped apartment they rent above a bakery. His bright laughter echoes from the walls,
making Jason feel the closest thing to happiness he has experienced since being sent out from Iolcus.
Every morning, Jason wakes to the smell of bread that he cannot yet afford to feed his family and goes to work in the records
division of the palace in the vain hope that the king of Corinth will someday notice him. His thoughts are no longer of adventure
or rhetoric or how to build a better world, but instead how to secure a promotion. Jason’s world has shrunk to a pinprick
and flattened to grayscale.
Jason decides not to tell Medea about his mother’s death. There is no need to trouble her, he tells himself, since she never
liked his mother anyway. But in truth, Jason does not talk to Medea about much of anything anymore, except household expenses
or the antics of their son. The two of them have fallen into a familiar pattern, laboring in their separate spaces during
the day and crawling exhausted into bed at night.
It isn’t really fair, he knows, seeing her desperate efforts to please him. But when Jason looks at Medea, all he can see
is the thing that exiled him from his home city forever.
The last vestiges of Jason’s idealistic youth die with his mother. His internal landscape shrivels to a dry, dusty desert where nothing can grow. He disappears into his duties, into the rise and fall of each day, moving through life like a sleepwalker.
The letter floats down from Jason’s hand, forgotten. He looks dully into the eye of the yellow sun as it settles on the horizon.
Only when it has set does he rise from his seat and make his way home.