Chapter 81
Atalanta
The thing about happiness is that you do not always recognize it right away. It sneaks up on you when you are doing something
else. It appears as a quickening of time, the hours speeding past like swift horses. It comes when you are sitting with her
in the noontime sun, a breeze playing over your skin. When you are sleeping with her body curled into yours, her head resting
on your chest, and you find yourself wishing that this moment will never end. Even though you know it eventually must.
The cloth was warm as it glided across my skin, sponging my body clean. Medea dipped it into a bowl of warm water, then wrung
it out. Several lamps illuminated the little hut, shedding light and warmth over the scene.
Once I’d snapped at the maids in my father’s palace in Arcadia who tried to scrub me, saying that I could do it myself. This
no longer held true. Now, a short walk to the river left me winded, and I slept more and more. There was no pain, and for
that I was grateful for the potions Medea gave me. But this did not change the fact that my strength was rapidly fading.
So I had no choice but to put myself body and soul into Medea’s mercy.
Fortunately, she looked after me tenderly.
I leaned my head back as she gently sponged my neck and collarbones, avoiding the bandage over my left breast that covered the suppurating wound caused by the karkinos.
Her touch was gentle, and a pleasure. This was a woman who had raised three sons, after all, and was used to dealing with far more unruly bath times.
“What do you think the Underworld is like?” I asked Medea as she washed my back. The question nibbled at my mind with increasing
urgency, now that I was coming closer to answering it conclusively.
“I don’t know,” she replied, squeezing out the cloth. “I never had to think about it before,” she added, evoking her divine
parentage and the fate of apotheosis that awaited her. It made me wistful, I had to admit, the thought that I would never
see Medea again after this.
“I imagine it’s peaceful, though,” she continued. “Quiet. The light of the sun and moon cannot pierce the veil of mist that
lies over the fields of the Underworld, and there is no heat or cold there. Only the shades of the dead, wandering for eternity,
seeking and sometimes finding the ones they loved in life. And if they do not, then there is always the river of Lethe, to
bring forgetfulness and wash away all the pain of mortal existence.”
I closed my eyes and tilted back my head. “It will be good to see them again, the ones I lost. Melanion, Meleager, Procris.
My mother.”
Medea pulled back. “Oh, I see,” she said bitterly, dropping the cloth back into the water. “It’s not because you love me best
that you’re here, but only because I’m the most convenient. The only one left alive. Melanion, Meleager, Procris—so many names.
Why would you have cause to remember mine?”
Her face was flushed with anger, and her eyes red with tears. But I had enough insight to see that these were not a reflection
of her true feelings, only her fear.
Taking her hand in mine, I lifted it to my lips and kissed it.
“Love has come to me many times in life,” I said.
“And so has loss, I will not deny that. But by the Far-Shooter, Medea, never doubt that I will remember your name when I walk the Fields of Asphodel. We have laid bare our souls and carried each other through darkness. Do you really think I would forget my own wife?”
Medea dashed away her tears and stared silently at the floor for a long time. Her jaw worked, and she seemed to be thinking
about something. Evidently, she came to a conclusion, because she gave a sharp nod and turned to me.
“Don’t drink from the waters of Lethe,” she beseeched. “The ones that make you forget. Find the ones you loved in the Underworld,
but don’t drink the waters of Lethe and forget me.”
Her earnestness made me chuckle a little. “Very well, I promise that I will not drink of the Lethe. And anyway, there’s nothing
really that I want to forget. I have very few regrets in life, even fewer now that you and I have had this time together.
Although . . .”
I drew my robe back on, settling it around my shoulders.
“I wish I’d gone to confront Cephalus, the man who killed Procris. I wish I’d ended his life, not for the sake of vengeance
but so he could never do to any other young woman what he did to her. At the very least, I wish I’d gotten the spear and the
dog away from him. They were her treasures, and it is no justice that they should remain in the hands of the one who murdered
her. But there’s no time left for that now.” I sighed.
Medea gave me an odd look. “Come,” she said, arranging the blankets and blowing out the lamps. “Let us sleep. Sunrise will
be here sooner than we think, and I for one do not want to miss it.”
In the dream, I walked in a moonlit forest, the trunks of trees rising up all around like the pillars of a temple. This was
how I knew it was a dream; in the waking world, I could no longer walk so easily.
Beside me was the goddess Artemis, who seemed surrounded by a cloud of moonlight. A crescent circlet sat upon her brow. She did not speak but instead listened as I spoke.
“Those words you said to me, so long ago,” I said, “that I would never know love without loss. I puzzled over them for so
many years. I tried to run from them, but instead love found me again and again. I thought your words were a prophecy, or
a warning, or a curse, evidence that my life was doomed. But I see now that it was simply a statement of how things are, and
how they have always been. Life is always full of loss, but love makes it all worthwhile.”
Artemis made no answer but instead smiled like a proud tutor when her pupil finally gets a difficult question right.
The goddess vanished, and the forest was replaced by a road lined with cypresses. Distantly, I could see a forest of winter
trees wreathed in mist and a bridge. I began to walk, but was soon startled into wakefulness.
“Come,” Medea said, lifting the hide over the door so that gray light streamed into the little hut. “It’s almost time.”
She slung an arm around my middle, half lifting and half carrying me outside. She was stronger than she looked, my Medea.
Stronger than anyone gave her credit for. She’d had to do this more and more often as the disease spread and my strength ebbed,
carrying me when my own legs were too weak to do it. Mortifying, but she made it so easy to accept her help that I offered
no protest. Besides, I refused to miss any of the sunrises I had left with her.
The eastern sky was red and violet, the ball of the sun not yet above the lip of the trees. Peace lay like a blanket on my
soul. When I looked back at my life, all I could think was how sweet it was. All of it, even the pain.
After all, how could I want roses without thorns, or the sun without snow? Love and loss were part of the tapestry of life. I had been trying to run from my grief, when all I could do was let it pass over me like a summer squall.
Over and over I tasted the belonging I sought, no less true for its brevity. After all, nature does not privilege the flower
that blooms for one day over the mountain that stands for millennia. Each of these I turned over in my memory like jewels—the
bear, the hunters, Procris, Meleager, Melanion.
Medea.
Her shoulder pressed against mine, a comforting presence as we waited for dawn. My hand found hers, our fingers entwining.
Her touch brought a swirl of emotion: affection, joy at what we’d had, sorrow at our inevitable parting. She had chosen me
in the end, chosen my little camp out of all the other places the dragon chariot might have brought her. Not merely as a friend,
like Meleager, or under duress, like Melanion. Nor as a temporary escape from a husband, like Procris.
What I’d said was true. Even in the fields of the Underworld, I would never forget her.
My eyelids grew unbearably heavy, and I closed them, reasoning that Medea would not be disappointed if I rested for a few
moments before the sun came up. In the darkness of my closed eyes the road of cypresses appeared, their tops reaching up to
a colorless sky.
Yes, there was one last journey I needed to undertake. And at the end, they would be waiting for me, those I’d once loved.
I began to walk, step by step, down the road of hard-packed earth between the cypress trees . . .