Chapter 60
Medea
Dishes, diapers, and darkness. That was what my world became.
One day, some four years after our arrival in Corinth, I looked into the mirror and did not recognize myself. Who was this
woman with dark circles under her eyes and sagging cheeks? Surely not Medea. But then Thessalus started to cry, and I put
the mirror down to go tend to him.
I loved my son, even if his birth had been an agony. I’d rather stand on a battlefield three times than give birth once, Atalanta said, and now I saw the truth of it. Still, I loved my son, this new possibility born from my flesh. It was this
love that sustained me, even if it took all my attention to prevent Thessalus from shoving new and dangerous things into his
mouth.
After Thessalus lay down for a nap, I carried the laundry to the courtyard. Best to get on with it so I could start supper
next. This was my life, grinding like a wheel, day after day in an endless loop.
Was I ever a priestess and a witch? I wondered, looking down at my hands, chapped from washing laundry in the cold air. When I’d dreamed of having my own family,
was this what I wanted?
The square of sky I could see from the courtyard was overlaid with gray clouds, echoing my mood.
Jason had found a better house for us after his promotion a few months before, one with a large central courtyard and a door painted in bright colors.
But this only meant more to clean, and we couldn’t afford any servants yet. So all the work fell to me.
I bore my labors uncomplainingly, my every act atonement for the death of Pelias. Jason accepted the homage I paid him, but
he never quite looked me in the eye.
Jason. The thought of him was like an unhealed wound. My husband, and yet a stranger, spending every day from morning to night
at the palace. Sometimes I thought Jason hoarded his words the way a desert camel hoarded water. He’d won the acclaim of the
Corinthian king Creon with his wit and eloquence, securing a better life for our family. But when Jason came home, the winning
smile melted from his face and he would sit in silence, as though he’d used up all his conversation and had none at all left
for me. Once I would have begged Jason to share his thoughts with his wife, but now I was simply too tired.
Maybe it was all a dream, I thought as I swirled the laundry through water, watching the cracks in my hands split and bleed. A dream, that I ever rode
upon the Argo, or destroyed a bronze automaton, or matched wits with a sorceress. The Argo’s journey had taken on a golden patina in my memory, because that was where I’d met her.
The thought of Atalanta was a bright star in the darkness of my life, a source of both hope and despair. She said she’d write
and even suggested she might visit someday. But perhaps she’d forgotten me when she went back to her forests, because four
years had gone by without a word. Not once had I received a response to the copious letters I’d sent to Arcadia.
I threw my head back, seeking the coin-like disk of the sun through its veil of clouds. If I was the praying type, I would beg the gods to let her hear me. If I was not forbidden to use my witchcraft, I would magic her into a response. But as matters stood, I was helpless.
A knock on the door echoed through the courtyard, causing me to startle and splash water on myself. I took my hands from the
barrel of laundry and raced across the courtyard, heart pounding. Who could it possibly be? I had no friends in Corinth, and
no one seeking Jason would ever come to his private residence. Though the Greeks believed it improper for a woman to answer
the door of her own home (such strange ideas these people had), I opened it anyway.
A messenger stood there. “For Medea,” he said in an Arcadian accent, and handed me a letter.
When I saw the sticklike handwriting, rife with misspellings, it was as though the sun burst through the clouds for the first
time in weeks, warming the dew on the grass. The world filled with color again, and birds began to sing.
She hadn’t forgotten. At last, at long last, she had answered me.
Breathlessly, I tore open the letter and began to read.