“You do not believe me?”
“You have said many things of my brother that I do not recognize.”
“Let me introduce you then. Do you know what my father’s favorite sport is? Men come often to our isle, looking to prove themselves against a wicked sorcerer. My father likes to set the captains of those ships loose among his dragons and watch them run. The crew he enslaves, stealing away their minds so they have no more will than stones. To entertain his guests, I have seen my father light a brand and hold it to one of those men’s arms. The slave will stand there burning until my father releases him. I have wondered if they are merely empty shells, or if they understand what is being done to them and scream inside. If my father catches me, I will find out, for that is what he will do to me.”
It was not the voice she had used with Jason, that cloying sweetness. It was not her gleaming self-assurance either. Each word was dark as an axe-head, heavy and unrelenting, and my blood drained at every blow.
“Surely he would not hurt his own child.”
She scoffed. “I am no child to him. I was his to dispose of, like his seed-warriors or his fire-breathing bulls. Like my mother, whom he dispatched as soon as she bore him an heir. Perhaps it might have been different if I’d had no witchcraft. But by the time I was ten I could tame the adders from their nests, I could kill lambs with a word and bring them back with another. He punished me for it. He said it made me unmarketable, but in truth, he did not want me taking his secrets to my husband.”
I heard Pasipha? as if she whispered in my ear: Ae?tes has never liked a woman in his life.
“His greatest wish was to trade me off to some sorcerer-god like himself who would pay with exotic poisons. None could be found except his brother, Perses, so he offered me to him. I say my prayers every night that that beast did not want me. He has some goddess of Sumeria he keeps in chains for a wife.”
I remembered the stories Hermes had told me: Perses and his palace of corpses. Pasipha? saying, Do you know how I had to keep him happy?
“It is strange,” I said, the words weak even to my own ears. “Ae?tes always hated Perses.”
“Not now. They are closest friends, and when Perses visits they talk of nothing but raising the dead and bringing down Olympus.”
I felt numb, barren as a winter field. “Does Jason know all this?”
“Of course he does not, are you mad? Every time he looked at me, he would think of poisons and burning skin. A man wants a wife like new grass, fresh and green.”
Had she not seen Jason flinch? Or did she not want to see? He shrinks from you already.
She stood, her dress bright as a cresting wave. “My father pursues us still. We must leave at once and drive on to Iolcos. They have an army not even he can stand against, for the goddess Hera fights with them. He will be forced to turn back. Then Jason will be king, and I queen at his side.”
Her face was incandescent. She spoke each word as if it were a stone she built her future with. Yet for the first time she seemed to me a creature clinging to a precipice, desperate, its claws already slipping. She was young, younger than Glaucos when I had first met him.
I looked at Jason, drugged, his mouth hanging open. “You are sure of his regard?”
“You suggest he does not love me?” Her voice sharpened in an instant.
“He is still half a child, and full mortal besides. He cannot understand your history, nor your witchcraft.”
“He need not understand them. We are married now, and I will give him heirs and he will forget all this like a fever dream. I will be his good wife, and we will prosper.”
I touched my fingers to her arm. Her skin was cool, as if she had been walking a long time in the wind.
“Niece, I fear you do not see all clearly. Your welcome in Iolcos may not be what you imagine.”
She drew her arm away, frowning. “What do you mean? Why would it not be? I am a princess, worthy of Jason.”
“You are a foreigner.” I could see it, suddenly, as plain as if it were painted before me. The fractious nobles waiting at home for Jason’s return, each jockeying to match their daughter with the new-made hero and claim a piece of his glory. Medea would be the one thing they would agree upon. “They will resent you. Worse, they will suspect you, for you are the daughter of a sorcerer and a witch in your own right. You have lived only in Colchis, you cannot know how pharmakeia is feared among mortals. They will seek to undermine you at every turn. It will not matter that you helped Jason. They will push that aside, or else use it against you as proof of your unnaturalness.”
She was staring at me, but I did not stop. My words were tumbling out, catching fire as they went. “You will find no safety there, no peace. Yet still you may be free from your father. I cannot undo his cruelties, but I can ensure that they follow you no further. He said once that witchcraft cannot be taught. He was wrong. He kept his knowledge from you, but I will give you all I know. When he comes, we will turn him away together.”
She was silent a long moment. “What of Jason?”
“Let him be a hero. You are something else.”
“And what is that?”
In my mind I saw us already, our heads bent together over the purple flowers of aconite, the black roots of moly. I would rescue her from her tainted past.
“A witch,” I said. “With unbound power. Who need answer to none but herself.”
“I see,” she said. “Like you? A pathetic exile, who stinks of her loneliness?” She saw the shock on my face. “What, do you think because you surround yourself with cats and pigs, you are deceiving anyone? You do not know me for an afternoon, yet you are scrabbling to keep me. You claim you want to help me, but whom do you really help? ‘Oh, niece, dearest niece! We will be the best of friends and do our magics side by side. I will keep you close, and so fill up my childless days.’” She curled her lip. “I will not sentence myself to such a living death.”
Restless, I had thought. I was only restless in those days, and a little sad. But she had stripped me to my skin, and now I saw myself in her eyes: a bitter, abandoned crone, a spider, scheming to suck out her life.
Face stinging, I rose to meet her. “It is better than being married to Jason. You are blind not to see what a weak reed he is. He flinches from you already. And you are what, three days married? What will he do in a year? He is led by his love for himself—you were only expedient. In Iolcos your position will rest on his goodwill. How long do you think that will last, when his countrymen come crying that the murder of your brother brings a curse to their land?”
Her fists were clenched. “None will learn of my brother’s death. I have sworn the crew to silence.”
“Such a secret cannot be kept. If you were not a child you would know it. The moment those men are out of earshot they will start their gossip. In a day, the whole kingdom will know, and they will shake your trembling Jason till he falls. ‘Great king, it was not your fault the boy died. It was that villainess, that foreign witch. She carved her own kin, what worse evils does she work even now? Cast her out, cleanse the land, and take a better in her place.’”
“Jason would never listen to such slander! I delivered him the fleece! He loves me!” She stood fixed in her outrage, bright and defiant. All my hammering had only made her harder. Just so must I have seemed to my grandmother when she said to me: Those are two different things.
“Medea,” I said. “Listen to me. You are young, and Iolcos will make you old. There is no safety for you there.”
“Every day makes me old,” she said. “I do not have your years to waste. As for that safety, I do not want it. It is only more chains. Let them come at me if they dare. They will never take Jason from me. I have my powers, and I will use them.”