‘Medusa, if there ever were someone, a boy, for example—’
‘Why would there ever be a boy?’
‘If there ever were, you must never deny who you are, or pretend to be the woman you think he would want you to be. You’ll be walking on a lonely road that leads to nowhere.’ I stared at her. ‘If he truly likes you, Med,’ Stheno went on, a little breathlessly, running a handful of gravel through her fingers as she warmed to her subject, ‘he will take you for who you are, and consider himself lucky to know you.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Stheno threw down the gravel and batted her wings. ‘Oh, what’s the use tiptoeing! Medusa, I know.’
‘Know what?’
‘I do have eyes, Med. We’re not in Athens, we’re on a desert island. A small desert island.’
‘So?’
‘So if a boat moors in the cove, I’m going to see it. And I’m going to wonder who sailed in on it. And I’m going to go exploring.’
I couldn’t speak. Visions of Euryale tying Perseus up for trespassing, or throwing him back on his boat, never to see him again, passed through my sight …
‘And I’m going to notice the changes in my sister,’ Stheno went on, interrupting the catastrophes blinking like fireflies across my vision. ‘Her dreams, her secret smile. The fact she’s fallen in love.’
We sat in silence. The relief of telling the truth, of sharing this reality, was too tempting. ‘I’m sorry, Stheno,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t invite him—’
‘I’m not angry, my darling,’ Stheno said. ‘Don’t you dare apologise! You’ve done enough of that.’
I could feel tears rising to my eyes. My sister’s heart was bigger than Mount Olympus. She reached for me and put her arm around my shoulder. ‘I’m right, though, aren’t I?’ she said.
‘You are.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s Perseus.’
‘Well, that’s his name, but who is he?’
I realised then that there was not much I could tell. Of course I felt I knew Perseus. I’d made him a mix of a real boy and the fantasies I couldn’t resist building in my mind, as if I were a god, and my life a celestial canvas. But the truth was, when faced with a question like that, I simply did not know that much about him.
It was not a pleasant realisation. The small world that Perseus and I had been constructing together now seemed made of gossamer in the face of an outsider’s scrutiny, even an outsider as gracious as my sister.
‘Does Euryale know about him?’ I asked, unable to hide the panic in my voice.
‘No. Don’t worry. I saw his boat, and then I saw him as I was flying back one day. Euryale didn’t see him. You were very fortunate. I pushed the boat further into the cove. She won’t know.’
‘Please, I beg you, Stheno, please don’t tell her. She won’t like it.’
‘I know she won’t like it,’ Stheno said. ‘But what’s this Perseus doing here?’
‘He’s … travelling. Seeing the world a bit. You know.’
‘I see. Lucky him.’ Stheno sighed. ‘So he just … came here by accident?’
‘He was lost.’
‘Right.’ My sister gave me a hard look. ‘He doesn’t know about you, does he? You’ve been hiding it?’ Her eyes flicked to the top of my head.
‘Well, I didn’t think it was the best opening line: Hi, I’m in voluntary exile – oh, and I also have a head of snakes.’
But Stheno wasn’t laughing. ‘But do you like him? I mean, really like him?’
‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘And does he like you?’
‘I think so. What he knows about me, at least.’
Stheno looked away, towards the invisible horizon hiding behind the entrance rock. ‘You’ll have to tell him, you know. He has to be able to deal with it.’ Then she added, with uncustomary ferocity, ‘He has to be good enough.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘That’s just it, Med – I don’t think you do. I don’t think you really know what that means. If you have to contort yourself like your snakes to get him to really see you, if you have to chop parts of yourself off, or hide your heart and mind – your entire self – to attract him, then you will live your life like a pauper in a queen’s body.’
‘But, Stheno, why would he ever like me?’
‘You’re worth dying for, Medusa. You’re wonderful. You’re the greatest joy in my life.’
‘Stheno—’
‘I want a man to treat you as if his happiness had found a home.’
‘I’m not that special!’
‘Never let me hear you say that again. Everyone deserves to be loved. People have never been nice enough to you, Med. Ever. They’ve been jealous and greedy, and then cruel and judgemental, and every time, you’ve believed what they had to say about you. So I don’t want you to have your heart broken over the first bidder.’
‘Who says he’ll break my heart?’
‘Just because one man is being nice now, doesn’t mean he always will be.’
‘So what do you want me to do, Stheno? Never try something sweet, just because it might go sour in the years to come? How is that a way to live?’
She stood up and moved towards the open air. ‘If these wings were taken off me now, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t feel like me. So I wouldn’t hide them for any man. A man who truly loved you, would also love those snakes.’
‘I know you want to protect me,’ I said. ‘But I have to make my own decisions now. I’m not a little girl.’
Stheno began to rise from the ground and started hovering round me in circles. ‘But a little girl is somewhere still inside you. I see her. And I know she wants to be seen.’
‘No.’
‘You think that when you grow up, you shed old selves as your snakes their skins, discarded and forgotten forever? No. There are days of my childhood that feel like yesterday. I know you carry your pain. I know you’re scared of your snakes.’
‘Stheno. Look at my head. My childhood could belong to someone else!’
She lifted herself higher into the sky, her arms folded. ‘We’re all changed, Medusa, but I’m still your sister. And I want you to take care of yourself before this goes too far. If you trust him, then tell him about the snakes.’
‘You’re forgetting something. Remember what Athena said – Woe betide any man fool enough to look upon you!’
Stheno shrugged. ‘Well, that’s a risk he’ll just have to take. Sometimes it pays to be a fool.’
I felt miserable. ‘Promise you won’t tell Euryale. Promise you won’t tell?’
But by now, my beloved sister had opened her arms wide, and was beating her wings hard against the air, rising up and up above the caves, off into the blue.
For all my protestations that the old me was dead and that I was changed, the conversation with Stheno echoed inside me long after she’d flown away. I think I’d protested so much because I knew she was telling a truth.
I did want to be seen. I did want love – on my terms, as the person I truly was, snakes and all. And she had also reminded me that it was not weak to admit wanting such a thing. If that’s what you wanted, it was perfectly natural. No woman is an island – unless she’s been forced there by a bunch of strangers.
I resolved that when I next saw Perseus I would tell him the part of my story that I’d been most scared to share, even more than what had happened with Poseidon in the temple.
I would tell him how Athena had changed me, how these snakes that writhed and wriggled above my hairline were no temporary state of affairs, but were intrinsic to my soul, to my spirit, my wakened days and slumbering nights. I would tell him how my real name barely began to touch who I was. And I’d promised, hadn’t I? I trusted him. I’d made the first promise I truly wanted to keep.
And when I told him everything, then he would see.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Later that day, Perseus and I were sitting in our normal places, either side of the entrance rock. The afternoon had taken on a calm quality, the sea beyond the cliff as glassy as a mirror, reflecting back nothing but the echo of a cloudless sky.
‘Do you like living in a cave?’ Perseus asked suddenly.