I considered the question. At night, the cave could be damp, but it was roomy, and the rocks made beautiful patterns when the firelight danced on them. But I did miss my old house, and I said as much.
‘You could build a house here, with that view,’ he said. ‘Or I could build one.’
I laughed. ‘Have you ever built a house?’
‘No, but there’s a first time for everything. Just imagine – a nice, cool, whitewashed house, with dividing rooms, and a well in the garden, and a strong roof. You could plant fruit trees. Herb bushes.’
‘But what would you do once you’d built the house?’ I asked. ‘Would you stay in it?’
‘If you’d let me. I could be your … lodger.’
‘Wouldn’t you miss your mum?’
‘She could live here too.’
I had to laugh again. Perseus wanted me and his mother to exist in the same sphere, but there was more than an ocean dividing us. It was unlikely Dana? would want a daughter-in-law with snakes for hair, however similar our treatment had been at the hands of powerful gods. Perseus wanted things neat, organised, controllable, and I was the opposite of all of that.
I remembered Stheno’s urging – to accept my true self, to expect Perseus to do the same.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Your mother’s welcome. I charge low rent.’ He didn’t laugh. ‘Perseus? I was only joking.’
‘No, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just … talking about her, it’s reminding me. I haven’t seen her for so long. I don’t know what Polydectes might have done to her. And if I come back empty-handed, it’s pain of death.’
‘Empty-handed?’
He sighed. ‘You know that mission I’m on?’
‘Yes?’
‘I never wanted it. Polydectes sent me out of the palace so he could get at my mum. I’m sailing, getting lost, sitting on rocks, when she could be his wife by now. She could even be dead.’
Perseus’s voice was shaking. I wanted more than anything to go round the rock and take him in my arms, but I was still so fearful. I recalled again Stheno’s insistence that Perseus had to know my true self in order for me to trust his love. But how to find the words to tell him? How to start that conversation?
‘What is your mission, exactly?’ I said gently, daring myself to creep nearer to his side of the rock.
‘I have to save my mother,’ said Perseus. To my utter surprise, he began to weep.
‘Oh, Perseus. You will. I promise—’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘No one understands.’
‘I will help you, Perseus. I promise. What do you have to do to save your mum?’
I edged even nearer, so that half of me was round his side, his back still turned to me.
Perseus was quiet for a moment. He hunched his shoulders and I watched the fine hairs on the nape of his neck. He took a deep, shuddering breath.
‘My mission,’ he said, ‘is to cut off the head of the Medusa.’
We all have moments in our life when we look back and wonder whether we did the right thing. Whether if we’d said or done something different, a better outcome might have prevailed. I have thought about those moments after Perseus spoke that sentence nearly every day of my life. How afterwards, the unravelling began, how there seemed to be nothing we could do to stop it.
I can’t remember exactly the order in which it all happened, but I do remember recoiling behind the safety of the rock, and pressing against it, as if to find some support in that natural structure that I could not find in myself. My breathing was very shallow, little choking sobs at the top of my throat, as if Athena had put her own hands around my windpipe and was squeezing tight. My blood seemed to have rushed to the lower half of my body; I felt light-headed, airy, my snakes close to evaporation, and yet as if my feet were made of clay.
The Medusa. What did he mean, the Medusa?
My name was Medusa, and I was a girl. Perseus had made me sound like a mythical beast. I didn’t want to be a myth. I wanted to be me. To think you were going to step round the rock and reveal yourself, I thought.
‘Merina?’ Perseus said. His voice was very far away, as if he were talking from the other end of a tunnel.
I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t think in order.
In that moment, I did not feel in danger: I remember that. I thought I was safe, because Perseus still didn’t know about my snakes.
‘Yes?’ I replied, my voice strange, constricted.
‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you, talking about the Medusa.’
In another set of circumstances, I could have laughed; the irony was so rich I could taste its marrow. ‘What’s … the Medusa?’ I managed to say.
My next thought was: Does Perseus know? Is this a game? Any minute now, is he going to come round to this side of the rock?
‘You haven’t heard of her?’ he said.
‘Been on this island four years, Perseus,’ I wheezed. ‘Haven’t caught up.’
‘Yeah, I guess news doesn’t travel this far. The Medusa is a monster. She’s hideous. Her skin’s filthy. She eats lizards for breakfast.’
‘She eats what for breakfast?’
‘Lizards.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said.
‘It’s true! They say she’s got a head of snakes. She’s repulsive.’
Daphne, Callisto, Artemis, Echo and the other serpents on my scalp rose up and started writhing in anger. I clamped my arms across them, and backed away even further into my cave.
‘Do you know anyone who’s seen her?’ I shouted to him.
‘No one’s seen her,’ he shouted back.
‘So how do you know she’s so repulsive?’
‘Everyone says it, Merina. And I just mentioned the head of snakes – isn’t that repulsive enough?’
‘But if no one’s seen her, how do you know she’s even real?’
‘That’s exactly why Polydectes sent me to find her, because he doesn’t ever want me to come back,’ said Perseus, his voice rising and rising in anger. ‘That’s why I have to find it, chop its head off, and go home.’
‘You’re not making sense, Perseus. How can you chop the head off something that isn’t real?’
‘Zeus, Merina, I don’t know! That’s why I’m so depressed. I’ll never get home. I just have to keep believing in the monster. And one day I’ll find it, and chop its head off.’
I leaned against the wall of my cave, my heart thumping. My head, still firmly attached to my neck, was reeling. I fell to my knees and crouched on all fours.
I was famous. I’d had no idea. My name was known as far as Oceanus to Perseus’s city of Seriphos. How, how had this happened? Alekto and Leodes, their wayward tongues? Travelling pilgrims passing by our village, asking questions as to why that house on the hill stood empty? Who used to live there? Well, you’ll never guess …
No, I thought. No mortal word would travel that far.
It had to be Athena.
Athena is a bitch.
‘Do you … really think you could chop its head off?’ I asked him. ‘If you were to meet it?’
I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.
‘If it meant saving my mother,’ said Perseus, ‘then yes.’
I slid on to the gravel of the cave floor and lay on my side. Of course, of course this had all been too much to hope for. I’d always known that inside new things grow the seeds of loss, but I hadn’t expected my loss to be quite so immediate. I hadn’t known how bad the pain would be when hope just falls away.
‘Perseus,’ I said, the tears coming, the words falling out of my mouth before I could really stop them. ‘My whole life, the only man I ever wanted to look at me was you.’
‘What are you talking about? You sound strange. Are you all right? Merina—’
‘Be quiet, Perseus. I’m telling you a story.’
I sat back up, and walked towards the entrance rock, stopping before it and not leaving my side of the cave. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘life just seems like a series of endless questions that you really don’t want to answer. And you can live like that, for a while. For a while you can pretend you’re deaf to the voice inside you. You can pretend to be someone you’re not. You can pretend that the thoughts you’re having, or the way you’re feeling, aren’t really true.’
‘Merina, what are you talking about?’