Chapter 82
Medea
This is not a happy ending, because the story does not end here.
Atalanta sagged against me, her eyes closed despite the glory of the sunrise. When I chided her, she made no response. After
a few moments, it became clear that her eyes would never open again.
There was a faint smile on her lips. Against all odds, she died happy.
I buried her under the same tree where my boys lay. It comforted me to think of the three of them playing together in the
Underworld.
Strangely, no tears rolled down my cheeks. Atalanta was too much a part of me for that, living in my blood and sinew. If I
had not been the one to wash her body and lay her mortal form to rest, it would be easy to convince myself that she was only
sleeping and would be waiting by the fire upon my return. She’d waited in my memories for twenty years, after all; it would
be no trouble to wait a bit longer. Love was not limited by anything so banal as death.
Live, she’d ordered me, and made me believe for the first time that my life really was worth living. There are those who command
a narrow love centered on themselves, as Jason did, and there are those who make you fall in love with life itself. Like Atalanta.
The first wind of morning caressed my face, and I turned toward the east. The two dragons slept curled up with their heads on each other’s backs but stirred when I called them.
Xanthe and Hippos, I’d named them, after their forefather.
The chariot sat in the mist-covered field, the rising sun striking its golden sides.
Where will you go . . . after? Atalanta asked me once, and now I settled on my answer. Yes, I would go back, back to what I feared and longed for.
But first, there was something I needed to do.
When the king walked in, I was drinking wine at his table.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said to the pale-faced king, as though this were an ordinary visit. As though the Athenian people
had not just seen a golden chariot pulled by dragons fly through the air and land in the courtyard of their royal palace.
Currently we were in the reception room, where I’d been brought refreshments by trembling servants as the royal family decided
what to do with this unexpected—and very dangerous—visitor.
“Well met, lady,” the king replied. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, and the guards who accompanied him bunched anxiously
around. “I am Aegeus. Pray tell me, what is your name?”
“Medea.” The name stood on its own, with no father or city or husband to anchor it. How strange it felt, and how freeing.
Aegeus nodded. He licked his lips, glancing up as though he did not dare look at me but could not quite help himself. “What
remarkable eyes you have.”
“Have you considered my offer?” I asked, ignoring the compliment. “I relayed it to your steward.” Without waiting for a response,
I slid off two of the bangles adorning my wrists and placed them on the table between us. “Pure Colchian silver. Worth a fortune.”
“Yes, my lady,” the king said, nodding his head nervously. “But . . . if the things you requested really are what you say they are . . .”
I arched one brow and leaned back in the chair. The king quailed at my displeasure.
“You will not get a better offer than this,” I said, indicating the bangles. They’d come with me out of Aea, carried for all
these years, but now I yielded them up. A small price to pay for what I wanted. “I warn you, do not try my patience further,”
I added darkly. Outside in the courtyard, the dragons screeched.
Aegeus turned and clapped his hands. A dog came rushing in, yellow furred with a fanlike tail, and put his paws up on my leg.
He smiled up at me, tongue lolling out, as he must have smiled at Atalanta so long ago. Lailaps, the dog who could catch any
quarry he pursued, blissfully unaware of his own divine nature.
I have never loved dogs and gently pushed him off my lap, though I did ruffle his ears in apology. A servant approached with
a long, thin object wrapped in cloth, and I took it in my hands, testing its weight. This was the spear that would always
find its target.
The treasures of Procris, stolen by her husband Cephalus and passed in turn to his successors, though the current king hadn’t
even known what they were until I told him. I would not let them remain here in the home of the man who killed her, gathering
dust in some spare room.
Cephalus had died, I learned, from an infected arrow wound. He’d writhed in a fever for six days, though I wished he’d suffered
for a fortnight. After all, dying in a comfortable bed was not a privilege he’d given Procris. But how wickedly ironic that
the method of his death had been parallel to hers.
The dog and the spear, the treasures of Procris. I felt the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled; this was what Atalanta had wanted.
I was none too sure I liked Procris, but Atalanta had. And because I loved Atalanta, I would honor her last wish.
One act of kindness to someone who would never notice or appreciate it. One good deed done for its own goodness. An auspicious start to the rest of my life.
“Thank you, Aegeus,” I said, pushing up from the table.
As I was about to leave, the king called out, “Wait.”
I turned. Aegeus was a decade or so older than me, his hair beginning to thin, but he looked as nervous as a little boy. He
squirmed a bit and looked down, ducking his chin. “Well . . . the truth is, Lady Medea, I was . . . hoping you might stay
here and become my wife.”
My mouth fell open, and I stared at him. I’d arrived here a terrifying stranger, every inch the divine witch, and here was
this man trying to flirt with me. As if a woman alone was an irresistible temptation.
It made a grim sort of sense. If people learned about the meeting between Aegeus and me, they would insist I’d fucked him,
being unable to conceive of any other interaction between a man and a woman.
Once I’d dreamed of an honorable marriage with a good king as a way out of my father’s house. Now I knew better.
“You would not want me as a wife if you knew all the things I have done,” I replied, chuckling and shaking my head incredulously.
“And I do not want another husband. Besides, there is somewhere I must go.”
To the beginning. To Qulha—yes, let me say its name in my native tongue, not the borrowed language of the Greeks. To the green
hills and the storm-tossed sea, to the temple of Hekate. Let me knit up the fractured circle and face the beginning so that
I might find its end, and give my unborn son a good life.
Aegeus did not look very pleased at being rejected; his face turned red, and he actually seemed to swell a bit. But there was very little he could do, lest he meet the fangs of the dragons who even now peered at us from the courtyard.
I took my place in the chariot and shook out the reins. Soon the dragons were climbing higher and higher into the sky, passing
through the wreaths of moisture below the clouds. Lailaps cowered by my legs, his ears laid back against the rush of air.
I rubbed his head with one hand; the spear was a reassuring weight in my other. We skimmed over the flat expanse of the water,
and slowly, they came into sight: the rolling green hills of Qulha, land of my birth.
I’d forgotten how much the sea sounded like a heartbeat and tasted just like tears.
The shoreline where I’d met the Argo all those years ago was unchanged. I stood so the waves lapped my toes, allowing myself a moment of rest. Lailaps danced
in the surf, and behind me the dragons nipped at each other in their harnesses. They were nearly home and giddy with the joy
of it.
And so, in my own way, was I. Home. Goose bumps prickled across my skin, and I rubbed my arms. Once, I had fled from this
land and submitted to marriage with Jason to avoid being dragged back. Now I chose of my own accord to return, brought back
on the winds of morning.
I looked up at the hills, dappled with the scattershot sparkle of the Sheep of the Sun. “Aren’t they beautiful, Atalanta?”
I whispered to the wind.
In a few moments we were back up in the sky, circling the city.
What I saw astonished me: the fields and farms around the city were withered, and even the walls of Aea seemed grayed and crumbling.
The people who stopped on the street to stare up at the chariot, arms raised to point or shade their eyes, seemed dressed in rags.
I could never have imagined how thoroughly Perses had drained the prosperity of the land to feed his avarice.
I banked over the palace, coming to rest in the familiar garden with its four rivers of milk, wine, oil, and water, their
pungent aroma evoking memories of my childhood. Nearby, roses and lavender still bloomed. The chariot wheels made contact
with the ground, and for the first time in twenty years my senses were filled with the sweet scent of Qulhan earth.
From the palace came shouting and the sound of feet running, and a group of men in armor spilled out into the courtyard. They
were trailed by someone who looked like an older, crueler version of Aeetes.
This must be Perses, who had taken Qulha and drained it to a husk, if what I’d seen on the way in was any indication. Even
my cruel father had not injured the spirit of the land itself.
“I am Medea,” I declared, “daughter of Aeetes and rightful queen of this land. Now tell me where Chalciope is.”
Perses hissed through his teeth. They were yellowed, as were his eyes. The blood of the sun ran thin in him, and he had the
same bitter, grasping quality to his nature as Aeetes. Miasma lay over him like a cloak.
“Ah, you must be his other spawn,” Perses said. “The lost daughter.”
I dipped my head and made a polite curtsy. “The one and only. Now tell me where Chalciope is.”
She languished somewhere in the prisons below the palace, in that long and labyrinthine darkness.
I pictured her thin and pale from too long underground, and years older than when I’d seen her last. She would blink in the sudden spill of light as I threw open the door, then cry out in relief when she saw who stood there.
Chalciope would take my hand as I drew her back into freedom, and together, we would start the long process of restoring Qulha.
Perses looked at me in disgust. “Kill her,” he ordered the milling guards.
“You might not find that as easy as you think,” I replied.
He did not, could not, know the nature of the spear I held. In a moment, it was up over the lip of the chariot’s podium and
in the air. Even without its divine magic, I was not too bad a throw. In a flash, the spear passed through one soldier’s throat
and lodged in the chest of another, before yanking itself free and flying back to my hand.
The rest of the guards halted, staring at their fallen comrades, unsure of how to proceed. A few of them inched closer, and
the dragons rose up hissing. At my side, Lailaps began to bark.
“What are you waiting for!?” Perses shrieked, and I saw again the echo of Aeetes in him. My defiance incensed him; he would
dominate anything he could and destroy whatever he could not. “Kill her!”
I laughed, throwing back my head. “Oh, dear Uncle, it’s true that one of us will die here today. But it won’t be me.”
His shrill voice did not perturb me; my mind was clear and calm. The spear was in my hand, but to cast it at Perses himself
would be to invite miasma; he was still my uncle, after all. Fortunately, I was not alone.
I reached down and unhooked the dragons from the chariot. Xanthe and Hippos surged forward with cries of joy, fangs out. The
guards, their nerve shattered, broke and ran. Perses screamed as Xanthe got him in her jaws.
Once, I swore that I would never again be that helpless little girl weeping alone in the garden. This oath, at least, I was
able to keep. As I stood there, among the flowers and the flowing rivers, I knew that I had at last become the queen I was
always meant to be.