Chapter 68
Medea
After Atalanta left, I took to my bed and did not rise. Eirene looked after the boys, shooting me resentful looks, and Jason
was a familiar absence.
Not that it mattered. I lay there insensible, wandering in a labyrinth of memories.
You would never have had to chase me. I wouldn’t have run from you.
What had she meant by that? I searched Atalanta’s words for hidden meaning like a treasure seeker panning river silt for gold.
And what about that parting statement, about her camp on Mount Geraneia?
She’d said she wouldn’t run from me, but she left me in the dust all the same. She’d chosen the forests over me, as I’d once
chosen Jason over her. There was a grim beauty in the symmetry of it.
I was not free to follow her, as she should well knew. A thousand responsibilities tied me here; after all, I had two young
sons. Besides, I was no more suited to a life in the woods than I had been twenty years ago. If Atalanta wanted to be with
me, she could have stayed here in Corinth. But she hadn’t.
Anger filled me, and I was driven at last from my bed.
It was nighttime by then, and I was the only one in the house still awake.
I went to the central hearth fire, nothing but glowing coals at this hour, and stoked it into a blazing fury.
Then I fed it with the letters taken from the bottom of my clothing trunk, years upon years of letters from Atalanta.
The flames consumed the stilted words that I could picture her shaping so carefully, her noble form bent over the papyrus.
How easily they burned. Soon there would be no memory of our bond, no physical sign of it.
Maybe then I’d be free from this longing.
When my grim task was finished, I ran back to bed and threw the blankets over my head. I stewed in darkness, emerging only
when Jason opened the door.