Chapter 77
Atalanta
The doe stepped delicately into a sunbeam falling through the forest canopy, oblivious to my presence. I hefted my spear and
searched the bushes until I found Medea’s face, pale but determined. She gave a sharp nod, the signal that she would move
and startle the deer into flight, driving it into the undergrowth where I was waiting.
My heart sang with the joy of the hunt and the pleasure that came from the company of a trusted companion. I leaped up and
regretted my choice at once. My head swam, and the darkness at the edges of my vision threatened to overwhelm me. No, not again. My mouth felt stuffed with cotton, and my ears rang. Sometimes this weakness, an artifact of my long illness, came upon me
unexpectedly, but this was a particularly bad time.
Oh hell, I thought as I pitched forward, the forest dissolving into a blur all around me. The deer crashed through the forest, and
the last sound I heard was Medea screaming.
When I woke, I was looking at the ceiling of the hut. The rectangle of the door glowed around the pelt hung to cover the entrance.
Someone stirred beside me.
“You’re awake.” Medea was there, leaning down, black curls falling around her face. A single lamp had been lit, perhaps the same one she’d held vigil with last night. The light gilded her features with gold, filling in the lines left by the long years.
Her relief gave way to anger, her face creasing into a scowl. “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me how sick you were. It’s
all through you, I don’t know if I could banish it even with all the magic at my command. How can you stand the pain? It’s
a wonder you can walk.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Karkinos, named after the crab, for the way the tendrils swirled outward like claws to embed themselves
in the farthest reaches of the body. The worst of all maladies, a misgrowth arising from one’s own flesh; this one originated
in my left breast. Well, it was only a matter of time before Medea noticed it, a risk I’d long known. In the same way she’d
once seen the death of Procris in the fire, it seemed Medea could peer into the inner workings of the body.
“How could I have missed it for so long?” Medea muttered, clearly agitated. “So that’s why you were seized with weakness that
day on the path with the water jar. And why you smoke that horrible pipe to treat the pain. How long have you known?”
There was no point in dissembling. “I found it a year before the girl Psyche passed her trial,” I said. “Each new moon, the
lump was larger. I spoke to the girl’s mother, who knew much about medicine, and learned how bad the outcome was. After that,
I put the whole thing out of my mind until it was time to leave Mycenae.”
It was Psyche, in a way, who had brought me to this moment. I recalled her face as I’d seen it a few weeks prior, dirty and
marred by scratches but still resolute. When Psyche was much younger, I told her to marry a man like Meleager. The reason
I hadn’t recommended Melanion was simple: Melanion was not a man.
I regretted this advice now, ashamed that I’d urged Psyche to accept the confines of her world rather than pushing against them.
I might have spoken to her about the love to be found at the margins of society, in the forests or the temples or upon the open sea.
About my own secret loves, unrecognized by the world but glowing like guiding stars.
There are other paths, I should have told Psyche. Follow after them, if they call to you.
But I already knew Psyche didn’t need me to say any of this. She would follow her heart’s desire no matter what the cost.
Hopefully this husband of hers was worthy of it.
After she left, I saddled Kastana and went to Corinth. If Psyche sought her lost love, then so would I.
“Let me help you,” Medea said, drawing me back to the present moment. Her face was filled with horrified understanding, and
her hands fumbled to grab my arm. “I see now, that’s why you came to visit me. Because you knew I could help. Well, healing
magic has never been my greatest strength, and karkinos is oblivious to most treatments, but I have a few ideas. Perhaps we
can—”
“That’s not why I came to see you.” I could see Medea falling back into the trap of fawning usefulness, and I would not allow
it.
Golden eyes flashed up at me, puzzled. I swallowed hard. It was almost painful to drag these feelings into the light of the
sun, but it wasn’t as though I had any dignity left to maintain, having collapsed like a bag of turnips shortly before.
Before I could say anything, Medea spoke.
“There’s something I need to say to you.” Her voice was shaky, and she looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap.
“Do you remember Orpheus? How he rescued his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld but, in the end, looked back and ruined
everything? I have been like Orpheus all these years, looking back at what I lost, but I can’t seem to move on. I loved my
children, but my life contained no joy . . . because you were not in it.”
The meaning of her words sank in slowly, changing the shape of the world. I noticed the uncanny parallels between this moment and that time all those years ago on the Cretan shore: myself supine with Medea above, the scene lit by a single flickering lamp.
How strange the roads of life, which lead to paths you never thought you would follow. Life surprises you, again and again.
Back then I had stolen a kiss from Medea; now I would give her the truth. There was no reason not to be honest, not to take
the risk. Love would still end in death, but this time the death would be my own.
“Even after all these years,” I said, “I never stopped loving you.”
The terror of speaking the words was matched only by the relief of sharing them. The air shimmered like ice about to break.
“I thought of you constantly throughout the last twenty years,” I continued, my voice wavering only slightly. “If my replies
to your letters have been lackluster, if I did not come to visit, know that the distance has been the result of too much feeling
rather than too little.”
“Melanion?” The name was a question on her lips.
I actually laughed a little. “The heart is not a throne, with only one king to sit upon it. Orpheus himself told me that,
long ago.”
The heat of the single lamp seemed to fill the room. I lay back down among the blankets, eyes half lidded with unstated invitation.
If there is to be a kiss, I thought, you must be the one to seek it. After I have crossed all these miles to come to you, cross this final gap for me.
Slowly, inexorably, Medea leaned toward me. Her lips met mine, soft and questioning at first, then hungry. I yielded to her
explorations; how delicious when she indulged her appetites. She rested her forehead against mine, and I breathed in the scent
of her: spices and herbs and milk.
There are moments in life when joy spills in like sunlight through the parting clouds. Moments so perfect you want to hold them like jewels, even as they slip between your fingers. This was one such moment, and it was more than I could have ever imagined.
Medea
In the forest house, Atalanta showed me what Artemis’s nymphs did during nights of the new moon. While Artemis embraced sweet
solitude, the nymphs embraced each other, trading kisses and caresses.
I was as nervous as I’d been on my wedding night, but soon saw there was no reason to be. My tension melted away in the flow
of sensation and new experiences. I had not known I was capable of such pleasures, or that she was.
Over the years my body had become like a foreign land, vast and threatening, but under her hands it was revealed as marvelous.
As we tried it one way and then another, I began to gain a new understanding of my capacity to give and receive pleasure.
If she looked at me like that, with such reverence and awe in the lamplight, then there must be something in me worth loving
after all.
Before, I’d thought that an unrealized dream would be a perfect one. Whenever I was discontented with my life, I could simply
lose myself in imaginings, untrammeled by the bonds of reality. But now I saw that happiness was possible on the earth, and
that it was her, laughing.