Chapter 70
Medea
“But I don’t want to go,” Mermerus wailed, clinging to my waist. “I want to stay with you, Mama.”
“I know, I know,” I whispered into his hair, biting back the way his cries tugged at my heart. “But we must all do things
we don’t wish to do sometimes.”
Pheres was more subdued than his brother, submitting his cheek for a kiss but never tearing his gaze away from the figures
standing on the steps of the palace, waiting to receive him into his new life.
Lifting my head, I fixed them with a malevolent stare: bearded Creon, and his demure wife Glauke, and faithless Jason, flicking
between them. No sign of his bride, the virgin girl Creusa. Probably she was safely sequestered within the palace, her innocence
guarded from this scene of children being torn from their mother.
My lips peeled back in a snarl. Thieves, all of them, stealers of my sons. How long would it be before Creon discreetly disposed
of my boys? Probably no longer than it took his daughter to birth a male heir.
Fortunately, my children and I would be far away by the time that happened.
“Don’t forget what I told you,” I whispered to my sons as we embraced one last time. “When night falls, remember the plan.”
The boys nodded. Tucked inside their bundles of personal possessions were two items carefully wrapped in linen. These, along with the instructions hammered into my sons’ heads until the boys could repeat them word-perfect, would ensure our freedom.
A hand came to rest on Pheres’s shoulder. Jason, smiling down benevolently at his son, conveniently pretending that I did
not exist. “Shall we go inside, then?”
Mermerus gave one tearful glance back at me before his father led him into the palace. Standing alone on the steps, I could
do nothing but watch them go.
If Jason had his way, I would never see my children again. He would pluck the boys from my arms and allow me to grow old alone.
In a pig’s eye! Never would I allow such a thing.
Like a wraith, a reminder of a past now discarded, I wandered back to the house with the red, blue, and yellow door. By then,
my anger was like a physical thing, taking on mass and weight, solid enough to be fashioned into a vicious barb. A cloud drifted
across the sun, filling the street with shadows. Three days had passed since Jason’s betrayal, and I’d used the time well.
My footsteps echoed like thunderclaps down the empty hallway. The servants were gone, and the furniture and tapestries had
been packed away, ready to be moved into Jason’s new domicile or my own. And the boys, of course, were already at the palace
with all their things. The house seemed like a skeleton of itself, or a blank papyrus upon which anything might be written.
In the center of the house was a windowless room where the sun never shone. Usually it was used for storage, but after Jason’s
betrayal I’d quietly cleared it out, thinking it would be useful for my purposes.
Scattered around the room, illuminated by the feverish flicker of a little lamp, was the detritus of witchcraft.
Herbs and simples, stones pried from the earth and dirt dug from a fresh grave.
I had done well with the dress and the crown, smuggled into the palace among my children’s things.
But now, I needed to do something even more ambitious.
Witchcraft is nothing more or less than an ongoing conversation with the living world, Circe once told me, and you never give anyone else the chance to speak.
Perhaps, Circe, but all I had done for years now was listen to Jason speak, when he deigned to talk to me at all.
You are the fire, Medea, Circe said, and you will destroy everything you touch.
Perhaps, dear Aunt, but have you ever thought that some things deserve to be burned to the ground?
I supposed she did. Circe had killed her husband, after all, the Sarmatian king who’d abused her so horribly. Maybe she would
understand what I set out to do.
It was not vengeance I craved but something more elemental. Let my rage burst through my skin and set the world aflame, I
begged the waiting silence. Let me become something more than what I was—a discarded woman. I would not be Procris, murdered
by Cephalus. Or Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus.
The truth is that when great emotions come—fear, love, rage, joy—so does magic. I did not think but simply acted, and the
rest followed. My lips found the thread of the spell in the tongue of my native land, summoning the latent power within the
herbs.
After all, my promise to Jason to never again use my magic without permission no longer held. He had broken the pact when
he took another wife and stole our children.
Gradually I became aware of a flowing torrent of words spilling from my mouth.
“I am the firm hand of fate,” my voice was saying. “I am a Harpy’s wing. I am a wolf crunching a hare. I am an avalanche, a wildfire; I am the law of cause and effect. I am a hammer falling onto an anvil, and that anvil is Jason.
“So spur on the poisons, Hekate, and guard the seeds of flame!” The words echoed against the empty walls.
The energy reached a crescendo and fell. I knelt, panting, on the ground. This was the first time I had uttered my mother’s
name in many years, and the feel of it on my tongue was strange.
Before me was a basin of water, scattered with herbs. But when I lifted my hand above it, I felt a heat like a radiating fire.
Good. Careful not to spill a drop, I decanted the potion into an amphora and waited for nightfall.
After sunset, I stole to the plaza in front of the palace. It was an uncanny feeling, watching the light leach out of the
streets of Corinth. In my many years as a married woman, I’d rarely set foot out of doors at night, since it was considered
indecent. Not that I feared thieves, witch that I was. The amphora in my hands was far more dangerous than any thief’s knife.
Shadows lengthened, and color drained from the world. I tipped my head back and imagined what was happening inside the palace.
The boys would follow my instructions when the sun went down, giving Creusa the dress and Creon the crown. Gifts from our father, Jason, I’d told them to say. He thinks they will suit you.
Creon would accept the token as his due, and a young woman like Creusa who had not yet borne children of her own would not
fail to be enraptured by the two adorable boys. She would immediately put on the dress, kicking out one heel and then the
other to admire the shape of her skirts. Her father would place the circlet on his head.
Neither would know about the curse of sleep I’d placed on the crown and the dress until it was too late.
The old king would stagger, catching himself on a piece of furniture as fatigue dragged him down.
The princess would slump onto her bed as a wave of exhaustion crashed over her.
They would close their eyes and never open them again.
The thought filled me with the dark exultation of victory.
Soon, now.
From my post in the shadows, I watched two small figures slip out of the palace and disappear into the streets. Yes! A silent shout of triumph echoed in my skull. Good. Mermerus and Pheres had delivered the items to the princess and the king,
and now the boys would be on their way to the temple of Hera to wait for me. We had long ago chosen the temple as our meeting
spot in case our family became separated by some disaster, and it would serve that purpose now.
Walking around the outer perimeter of the palace, I splashed the contents of the amphora against the walls. The potion hissed
and steamed where it fell. When I’d completed a full circuit, I retreated into the shadows at the edge of the plaza and paused
to catch my breath.
A moment of hesitation; I hovered at the edge of a precipice. What I was about to do could not be undone. Strangely, Atalanta’s
face rose in my mind. If she were here, she would urge restraint, as she had in the case of Pelias’s daughters. She’d tell
me that there were better ways, that I was better.
But Atalanta was not here. And there was nothing to hold me back.
Raising a hand, I whispered the words of power. And the potion at the base of the palace burst into flame.
The warmth on my skin echoed the glow of triumph within me. No one would pursue my sons and me as we fled. The fire would take care of them all: the sleeping princess, the drowsing king. The palace of Corinth burned, flames licking up the stone walls.
Shouts rent the air as the denizens of the palace poured from the flung-open doors and the residents of nearby houses woke
to the scent of smoke. Some people came running with jugs of water, while others simply stared slack-jawed at the scene.
No one noticed a lone woman watching the conflagration from the shadows. No one noticed me.
I stayed there until the ashes of the palace glowed with red coals, then went to the temple of Hera to collect my sons.