Chapter 80
Medea
That night, I lay in bed and thought about my former husband. There was no anger left in me, I was surprised to discover,
only a bone-deep resignation and a faint sadness. This was just as well; I didn’t want to expend the effort of hating him.
Jason. Had I ever really known him, my husband of two decades? Hands folded on my belly, I looked up into the darkness and
wondered. The face of the youth I’d first sighted on that Colchian beach so long ago was overlaid by the reddened face of
the middle-aged man screaming obscenities at me in the temple of Hera.
Which was the real Jason? Perhaps even he did not know.
At some point his kindness curdled and his gentleness transformed into a calloused crust. He’d always known how to win people
over, but he never tried to charm me after the death of Pelias. Instead, I used to catch him eyeing me as an animal might
watch the one who caged it, even though he was free to roam the city while I was confined to the house.
Jason wanted me small. But in truth, I was powerful beyond measure.
Beside me, Atalanta was awake. At some point she’d emerged from the depths of unconsciousness, and now she shifted her head
toward mine on the pillow.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Jason,” I replied.
“Why would you do something like that?”
I snorted. “We lived together for many years, it makes sense that I think about him sometimes. Don’t you still think of Melanion?”
Over our days together, Atalanta had told me more about her spouse. I marveled that such a person could exist, neither male
nor female. But I still went sour any time Melanion’s name was mentioned, bitterly envious that they had been able to spend
so much time with Atalanta.
“Often and fondly,” she replied.
Jealousy rose in my chest, but Atalanta nuzzled me affectionately.
“Melanion was a creature of the airy heights,” she said, “not the deep valleys of grief. There were many children in their
household growing up, so they never knew loneliness, and therefore they could never understand a great part of me. Not like
you do. You will always have a special place in my heart,” she added, kissing the tip of my nose. Her words sent a flush of
warmth through my chest, though I still grumbled and rolled onto my back theatrically.
“I just don’t like the way Melanion tricked you with the golden apples,” I said.
Atalanta’s arms twined around me, and she pulled me closer to her chest—careful, naturally, of her left breast, where the
karkinos grew. I closed my eyes as I relaxed into the sharp angles of her body.
“In all fairness,” she said, “the golden apples were more of a joint effort than they might have seemed at first.”