* * *

I won’t win your understanding.

I don’t care to. Mark my horrors and tell your children of them. See if they mind you better.

See if they run.

The servant pours. Wine with orange peel fragrances the banquet hall. No one smells poison except the dogs, who whine at their master’s feet. He thinks they beg for scraps and kicks them quiet. I raise my cup to the unsteady maiden at his right and watch the furrow of her brow relax. “To our new wife.”

Her goblet sparkles mercy.

If one peered inside and detected a subtle clouding, or smelled as the dogs did the drops of moly therein, one could account for the girl’s laxity. Creusa sways, so they think, with the giddiness of a tender stomach, or a fresh bride, or a maiden in Jason’s thrall. His hand rests low on her hip, fingers rafting her abdomen. She is his, coveted and claimed, and she will issue him children in his golden image.

He forgets the ones I bore him. More is more is the rule for progeny, if Hera wills, and cunt. Creusa hasn’t time to learn that lesson. I know the reason for this marriage, and it’s not the rosy mythology she sees in her groom and smiles back.

He plays her well. Beard mastered with oil, eyes begging like the dogs, he looks irresistible (and knows it). He and the girl reflect each other: the skin, the teeth, the firmness of form. It hurts to watch her nervous joy. Her innocence. She mistakes his attention for love, so she loves him in turn. Always reflecting, a goodly princess. Together they are Aphrodite and Ares, wrapped in the nacreous showers of desire.

Only I know of Jason’s heart.

Only I know of the poison.

Only I know it isn’t liquid.

Creusa will not drink her death. The moly will ease her suffering as she succumbs to the very trappings of her triumph. Her peplos, once mine, moves like water over her coltish legs. They think my power has animated the garment—as if I’d use my talents to dress a child—but the weightlessness is an effect of the poison that seeps into her tight breasts, down her back and thighs, and behind her perfect ears. Death seals her likeness to the goddess of beauty. She will apotheose, this hour, while she drinks to Jason’s health.

* * *

We got what we wanted, and wanted more. Our insolence whipped the waves. Princess and hero, we fell easily into each other’s ambitions. Though he hadn’t my ichor, Jason had to have something of the gods in those pounding veins. A product of close sun on white caps, and of entitlements owed to charismatic men, he was Zeus on Earth.

I’d regret that analogy.

He married me, I suppose, because I didn’t love him. Not openly or competitively as other maidens had. Parentage made me disdain mortal pursuits. While I learned my aunt’s craft and pledged its practice to Hecate, the Argonaut saw my appeal.

Better said: my usefulness.

Who conquered whom? We volleyed the question in coquetry, ignorant until later that we were already won, strung and animated for the gods’ pleasure. They toyed with us when they tired of each other, including even the illustrious Queen of Olympus, who had a lecher to worry her golden brow.

The men on the Argo alleged that Zeus hadn’t any nipples because, out of jealousy or the throes of love, his wife had bitten them off. They fell like pomegranate seeds into Tartarus, where the Titans skipped them to pass time. You could hear Zeus’s moans—their meaning uncertain—when the clouds thickened and wet the supine earth.

It wasn’t vengeance, quite, but Hera had kept him home for the night.

* * *

I caught the hare in my rosemary. It appeared animal, not a god in disguise, but one must guard against sly visitations. Brown, skinny thing, it chewed the dry needles even as I held it up to the light.

The gardener turned his back. He thought I would brain it for ruining my herbs.

Silly man. They were already ruined by famine.

The fields were cracked, the city wasted. Children sat in potholes and compared sternums. Babies lay too weak to suck. Donkey meat, acorns, and the rare heel of bread worthed more than gold.

We fasted at the palace, until the petitioners left. Then the Argonauts gorged on eel, fig cakes and ritual wine. I should have caught on. I’d have slit their throats while they toasted to sailortown bawds. We had common wine, plenty. They stole from the temple stores for—gods hang them—glory. How else pass the time?

They whined for adventure. They talked of sailing for lotus and leaping bulls at Knossos. How high could Jason jump?

Up Iris’s skirts.

Har-har.

He was rarely available to hear their jests. He rose before dawn to run the shores of Corinth and spar with the upstarts of the royal guard. He broke fourteen-year-olds as a matter of routine, and they were honored to bleed by the hero-king’s fist. In twenty years’ reign he had mastered bow, sword and javelin. He had hardened and honed his figure to perfection. He cut the fat off his meat and was careful with wine, and amid the vigor and scrupulousness, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d woken beside him. Or properly conversed. He tried tonight.

“Aren’t you queen?” He groped me with quizzical fingers. “You’re almost a girl again.”

He meant before the pregnancies, when I could have slid between prison bars. My fasting of late had whittled me down, and not in a glamorous way, I should think. But when did Jason put health over looks? No doubt he wished I could magick my maidenhood back, so he could fuck all the virgins he wanted without guilt. Though the attraction had worn, he still loved me.

My power.

“Don’t delight in hardship,” I said, intercepting his hands.

“Hardship. You needn’t starve on account of commoners.”

“I do nothing on anyone’s account. We’re alike there.”

He wasn’t stupid. “Talk plainly.”

“You should care for the kingdom. You’re the king. Instead, you wrestle boys and call it work. Your men drink and do nothing. Your fields burn out while you tend your vanity, and I—”

 “Yes, what of your flowers and bloodletting?”

I struck him.

He touched his cheek, grinning meanly.

“No,” I goaded him, “keep talking. My mistress is untouchable.”

 “She’s a shadow.”

 “Whose teachings got you a throne.”

“It’s as dry as your cunt.”

 “Spit your poison, love. It’s nothing to mine.”

I pushed past him, too fast. I hadn’t eaten, and with rigorous movement my vision browned at the edges. I clutched the wall and willed its coolness to restore my senses. Jason watched. Then he came over and steadied me. As the fireflies of nausea flickered out, I saw the concern on his lips. He worked to say something.

But a hero never apologizes. And a husband knows his wife.

Jason’s contrition, or the foretaste of it, was enough. I’d given him everything: my help, my hand, my mysticism.

Why not an argument?

“Don’t go out tonight,” he said. “I’ll send for some food.”

I nodded.

We both knew I’d leave once he fell asleep. That he lacked the commitment to stay up to detain me. But, until then, we’d play at companionability. Age made us capitulate, and as it stole ever over us we might temper like bronze stretched to fragility and bent into unfit forms.

Hecate smite me if I broke.

* * *

Nighttime powdered the hill in silver and kohl. The footpath switched upward, craggy and treacherous by the erratic light. The undiscerning traveler might roll an ankle, fall prey to highwaymen, or excite the scorpion’s salute.

This was my terrain.

The cats hailed my passage with throaty meows, rubbing fleas and mange against hunched stone shapes. They fell out of earshot as the path leveled at the mausoleum, where the kings of Corinth rotted in pieces beneath handsome slabs carved with curled beards and birdseed eyes. They looked more Persian than Greek, marking the stone-cutter’s origins or generosity. A shepherdess on a hot day might come in to seek shade and, eyeing the granite visages, fall in love.

It wasn’t a bad thing. One day I would captivate through the artist’s lies.

Dead lavender rattled the gallery columns and sliced the moonlight to gently stirred ribbons. I knew my way over the rubble. The Argonauts had smashed this place on our arrival, asserting Jason’s reign by effacing the past. Since then, no one came here but myself and the garden snakes.

I descended the broken steps to the vault. The coolness suffused me, solidified me. I felt most material in the nocturnal realm, with its furtive creatures and hardly heard sounds. In no other state could I invoke my mistress.

Queen of shadows

Dweller Between

Mother of serpents

Woman in Three

Slayer of giants

Lady of keys

Flesh of ghosts

Hecate

The torches burned low at the end of the tomb. Their light fanned forth, anointing the stone kings. I knelt to receive it.

It touched my knees, crested my thighs and broke over my body. Blinking through the light, I perceived her faces—maiden, mother, and crone—a hair’s breadth from mine.

Many mistook Hecate from her sigils: crossroads, doorways and guard dogs. They thought she presided over illicit affairs. She was much more. I knew her as night terror and shriek, unbalance and off-rhyme. She was my great-aunt and, despite the relation, she terrified me.

Hecate’s three manners shimmered and phased. “You invoke me without tribute.”

I turned up my palms. “The state of Corinth precludes me.”

“I’ve watched your fields brown and throats of babes burn, yet you lounge in the shade,” she said, pinching my arm. Her fingers were ice.

I recoiled. “I’ve been fasting and praying to the gods.”

She hissed in annoyance.

“I’ve oiled the fields in the name of Zeus for rain, Helios for relief, Demeter for harvest—”

“Without honors, too?” Hecate sniffed. “Service and blood endear you to me. What binds you to Demeter? These empty hands.” She grabbed them with her inhuman touch. They turned blue and heavy. The feeling went out. I refused to whimper as my blood congealed, swelling my fingers so that the skin itched and tightened and threatened to blast off the bone.

“The first corn is hers,” I said, “should she allow it.”

“Are you not Queen of Corinth? A sorceress,” she said, “and you pretend to be helpless. I raised you better.” She dropped my hands. They twitched in my lap like shot birds.

I mastered my voice. “What shall I bring her?”

“What she desires.”

I squinted into her changeful face, finding the tired eyes of the mother. “I can’t help that.”

“Then don’t.”

“Not even Zeus—”

“Why should he?”

She had a point. But crossing Hades would violate the natural order.

Hecate slapped something hard into my hands. It was her dagger. My blood welled around the black basalt blade. It was a primitive weapon, bruising as it killed. What could I offer Demeter that the farmers had not? Short of grain, they had sacrificed every animal they could, even the polecats. Now vermin overtook us, fattening off the dead. The farmers tried them, too, but to no avail.

If she required an animal it would have to be rare and meaningful. It must not only honor, but vindicate her. And in the realm of Hades…

I scoffed. “Impossible. And would it not displease you?”

“Find the balance,” she said, fading from visibility, “and strike it.”

* * *

To please the harvest goddess without fruit.

To kill the dog without offending Hecate.

To free Demeter’s daughter from Hades.

I was under no delusion that he would release his young, supple bride. But he might learn some of Demeter’s anguish—not as a husband, but a parent of sorts. With a petty spirit, I found the balance. It was striking it, as Hecate said, that unnerved me. But I feared her, and the ruin of Corinth, more than a little blood.

So I told myself.

I hurried to my cabinet and prepared a tea with my intentions: lemon peel for focus, lavender for calm, and butter of moon jellies for subtlety. With a fishnet cloak and Hecate’s knife, I stepped into her waiting shadow and felt myself borne through the sapphire night. When my feet touched ground again, it sloped gently down toward the mouth of hell.

It reeked of mildew and dangling roots. A noise like bees wafted from the darkness—souls bemoaning their sordid deserts.

What torture would I merit? Would the shades of the Underworld cut up and scatter me? Boil me alive? Toss me into their fleshless dance? Whatever their punishment, it meant more than statues or cursory praise. It meant I had challenged my lot before the gods. It meant I’d made use of my shield and torch, Hecate’s blessing and Helios’s blood. The dark was not so dark, nor the fatal definite.

I was right to come here and most fit to emerge—and make Demeter sprout the fields of Corinth. Mother to mother, I’d turn her head.

I neared the gates. They stood open, always, in wry welcome. Their electrum spires shone dull, greasy gold through garlands of narcissus, whose yellow bells knocked each other in the rancid draft.

Between the gates sat Cerberus.

He faced the ruddy depths. Six ears and three snouts monitored for movement. No soul escaped him. None dared approach, as I did now.

The cloak masked my advance. The guard dog could not see or smell me. Without a sound, I passed through the gates. “Hail, Guardian.”

The rightmost ear of the rightmost head angled toward me. I stopped just shy of passing him—in Hades’ realm, in Hades’ possession—and pulled from my pocket the wayward hare, brown, stuffed and freshly wrung.

I presented the offering with a ceremonial palm.

The right head turned.

I did not meet his onyx eyes as Cerberus sniffed and stretched his jaws. With a small push, I delivered the carcass and recoiled before the sentinel could take more than dead flesh, preferring the living.

The hare crackled in the rightmost mouth, while the middle one snatched for a leg. It got only the tail and growled, while the far head nudged and whined. Warring himself for the satisfaction, Cerberus settled down and secured the carcass between his paws so that all three mouths could slaver and rip until the ground sparkled saliva and bits of bone.

I waited.

Sucking the spine like an apple core, Cerberus finished his meal and settled. The heads went down, one by one. His breathing grew heavy. It had worked. Not the offering, but the moly, funneled down the hare’s throat in its final moments. Betting my life on the tiny white flower, I lifted the dog’s tail and eased its testicles forth. One hand on the sac, I took Hecate’s knife.

The crude basalt punctured the sticky flesh—and stuck. I’d have done better with one of the children’s play swords. Forcing my eyes open despite the bright, red squirt, I tightened my grip and sawed.

The dog’s breath hitched. His hind leg pumped. The moly was small match for such agony.

With a vicious jerk, I tore the scrotum free. Orangey with blood, I ran back through the gates and up the rise, desperate as a fish against the whale’s suck.

I crashed through a cypress wood and found open water, where a boat waited in the star-spat shallows. I half-jumped, half-swam toward the surreal vessel and with great effort hauled myself over the rail. The sails loosed and filled as I panted in the cockpit. I remembered no more.

* * *

The journey took three days. It was not uncommon for me to vanish on errands or retreat in congress with Hecate, but not since Argos’s birth had I spent so long away. And without warning.

Corinth resounded with cries of mourning. Mothers in black placed lilies at the palace wall. I was exhausted, incoherent, and sun-crazy when my boat scraped the beach. And I wasn’t done yet. The thought of the uphill walk made me retch.

Reaching the mausoleum, I knelt in the center and opened my palm over Cerberus’s genitals. They sparkled darkly with my blood. I invoked Demeter’s name.

The smell of old flowers wafted the tomb.

“I offer you the malehood of Hades’ familiar. The women of Corinth stand with you and your daughter. May we one day turn the knife on him.” I kept my gaze low and awaited her verdict.

Her shadow fell over mine. I watched it take shape: a tall woman bending over a supplicant. Her hair tickled my ear.

I suppressed a shudder as a colorless arm reached over my shoulder. I focused on the shadow.

It cradled the offering and nodded. Or sobbed. I favored the latter as the skies opened over Corinth.

I slid down the hill and made for the nursery. The door was ajar, dolls on the floor, children gone to dance in the puddles. Only the baby remained with the wetnurse. Her eyes went wide as I took Argos from her and settled onto the milkstool to sleep.

* * *

When I was a girl, Helios visited me. He wore a white linen tunic and greaves of gold. A queen knows her servants, he’d said, handing me the reins to his chariot. I took them and climbed up but was too short to see over the rail. I tried not to cry.

The chariot rocked as Helios got in. Before my tears fell, he scooped me into his arms and showed me his view of the racers: the iridescent backs, twitching with impatience; the tails, cracking sagacity; the wings, smelling of sky. Their scales were the pale brilliance of sunrays, flicking rainbows off my lashes.

They are yours.

I wanted to see them. I willed their fire on my enemies and their descent on my wedding night.

They didn’t come.

Why should they have? When Jason and I killed the guardian of Colchis—a tinny firedrake, but a dragon nonetheless—I forfeited my right to Helios’s racers. It was the first of many sacrifices I made for the Argonaut.

I still dreamed of scales and reptilian poisons, the sun and wind prior to any city…

and fire.

* * *

We plowed and we feasted. Dignitaries came to witness the bounty of Demeter and the power of the sorceress queen. I was strongly encouraged to join the fun, but I wanted to spend this time with my children, some of whom returned my affection.

At ten years of age the twins, Mermerus and Pheres, were incorrigible: ashamed of their mother and terrified of me. They knocked wooden sabers and watched Jason spar from the parapet, wanting more than anything for him to invite them down.

Tisander, six, said it was hopeless. But they had each other. He cared more for his immediate superiors—his idols and tormentors—than the unnoticing father. The twins pushed him away and mimicked Jason’s forms while Tisander pretended to have fun catching salamanders. When the boredom grew too much to bear, he tried Eriopis, named for her copper ringlets. Jason was lovestruck when he saw them, convinced she would grow into an Amazon. But Eriopis liked nothing more than to braid her dolls’ hair, a waste of her intelligence. She would push Tisander away and mope on Medus’s old bed.

Medus, the eldest, had left before the famine and he stayed away whether he knew about it or not. Inheriting his father’s need for acclaim, he joined the navy at eleven to tour the Mediterranean. A little blood might slake or ignite him, so Jason hypothesized. I knew our son better. He imagined adventure but liked souvenirs best. He must have been drawn to the ivory of Alexandria and foundered in the muddy Delta.

That left Alcimenes, born last year, and Argos. The former was too colicky for personality. The latter was—but I shall soon tell.

As I say, we played. We twisted red buds in each other’s hair. We chased through the fig groves while servants worried if the swine were fat enough to spit already. The Argonauts had gathered a crowd for their pageant. In bright, gaping masks, they recounted the famine and Jason’s triumph over it. The Colchian dragon had not died, they alleged, but followed its foe to Corinth. By day it slithered under the gulf. By night it emerged to breathe fire and poison over the fields, slowly repaying Jason for its near fatal wounds during the grand extraction of the fleece.

The Argonauts must have believed all of it—they went to admirable lengths. For the dragon they crafted a twenty-foot puppet, handsewn with jingle shells like yellow scales. A team of eight danced it about the hall. I heard it was beautiful.

Unfortunately Jason could not enjoy it without me. Fame rang hollow without the assent of loved ones.

So he did love, I thought, as I fitted my crown and entered the hall.

The guests cheered. Dancers in flower garlands beckoned me to join. I humored them in step. At Colchis, I knew how to turn and writhe and enthrall an audience. Now my body curbed these movements. The flesh of motherhood had entombed my maiden self—and I was last to mourn. I never cared for beauty, with my heavy eyes and hooked nose. I had something else, the glow of uncommon knowledge and meaningful service.

I looked for Jason and found him by the wine fountain. He hopped foot to foot in time with the lyre. My jaw dropped. He winked at me, merry and unabashed. Then I understood the cause of his humor. We closed on each other.

“Careful,” I said as he took my waist. I was a sorceress, or so I told myself, as Zeus pulled me onto his thigh.

Bolts crackled in his eyes. He pressed his pelvis against me, and then I knew what it was to be a man in my presence, contending with the magnetism of ichor. It was not loneliness, or pheromones, or a compulsion for punishment, that made me entertain the Almighty’s advance.

So you tell yourself.

“Your presence humbles and blesses us,” I said. “With your permission, I shall fetch you an offering.”

He appreciated the tactful, if feeble, attempt. “I like gifts,” he said, securing me in his arms, “and I prefer giving them.” He reached behind his back and returned with a flower that he tucked over my ear. I caught the bright, yellow petals and heady scent.

Narcissus.

“You know what happens,” Zeus said, “to those who cross gods.”

I played dumb. “Have I displeased you?”

“Hades repulses me.” His voice edged with the truth of it. “But I must repay the wrongs against him. He is my blood, and they are wrongs against me.”

“Tell me you didn’t laugh when you heard.”

His mouth tugged mischievously. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Is it not? Or were you shining your bolts while my people cried out for you? You saw the mass graves on your way in.”

He rubbed his chin. “Medea…”

“They can’t shovel fast enough in this rain. The dirt washes off, and you can see the twig limbs and moldering eyes.”

“Medea.”

“Hades is an embarrassment.” I was feeling brazen. “Were he my brother, I’d kill him.”

Zeus measured me through my husband’s eyes. My skin crawled with the dissonance.

Then the King of Olympus burst into laughter. I felt his abdominals—Jason’s—throb. “Tell me, how may a brother survive your kinship?”

Impertinent god! Crude, flippant, too lighthearted for such power…

His glow, and Jason’s scent, flushed me with longing. Thunder ripped within him and crashed outside the palace. I imagined the world in which my power and his crackled together. What tatters we’d leave the place! He was thinking the same.

A shadow lighted between us.

Queen of Shadows.

Burning with shame, and stunted desire, I disengaged with a shove. I would not be food for lechers, nor prove false in my regard for Hera. As wife, mother and queen, she was my guardian deity. She had my allegiance, if not my ill-gotten passion. How dare Zeus dishonor her.

The Almighty grinned. “Expect my repayment when next I call.”

His presence receded. Jason came to, panting and addled from the god’s visitation, which had not all gone. His appetite lingered in my husband’s loins. Jason got what he wanted.

As always, I helped.

Running like youths through the half-lit halls, we made it as far as the alcove over the garden. The rain wet the ledge and lashed my back, plastering my chiton to the hot folds of me. In the showers of Zeus, we made love.

When he was spent, I pushed back his curls. He flashed me a summary smile and looked off. The garden had grown in with basil and thyme. A second chance of wisteria crept up our wall. Its purple clappers moved to the storm. I kissed Jason’s neck, tasting fresh sweat and cool rain. “Beautiful.”

“Mm.”

He did not mean the herbs. His gaze was trained farther, to the bits of sea visible between the roofs and clotheslines of port. Gray gulf on gray sky, the water did not show. It was indistinct and enigmatic, always enticing. With the famine resolved, Jason could leave. What places begged heroism?

“Stay with me,” I said, latching on again. I let him feel my distress by the gruffness of my tongue. He excited again, this time more vehement than I thought he had strength for. I gasped and grabbed his shoulder blades. They sawed like ships over waves, making me even more sick for him. “Give me another one.”

“One what?”

“A child.”

He grunted, finished soon.

“I have children enough. Sometimes…” He pulled his tunic down. “They play at swords. Beg for stories. Look like me. I can’t stand it.” He shook the rain from his curls and looked deserted without his usual crowd. I felt silly on the ledge—my thighs wet, my back numb—only now understanding my husband’s ambition.

He did not want glory. He wanted to die in it.

I took him to bed. I tried to kiss the fatality from him. I tried to excite him in my mouth. By physical reaction, he complied and left us both ashamed.

Unable to face each other, we slept side by side. The weight of the fleece stifled us.

* * *

I had determined to worship in the woods. I’d relinquish men in waking reality, call them oafs and rapists, only to succumb to them in wine-sweet dreams. I had political acumen and no outlet, as a spare princess. I was simultaneously too much and not enough, no good for suitors.

Then Jason dropped anchor.

My semidivine blood, tutelage by Hecate, and prospects with the rising hero gave me fresh possibility and ever sharpening means. Stronger together, Jason and I struck an accord. I might make him king. And I wouldn’t stop there. We were magnets that melted into each other.

It started when I called him out. “You want my father’s throne.”

“You want your father’s throne.”

I laughed.

Jason was quick to the implications. “Has no one else figured that out? Your family wastes you. They underestimate you.” Something in his tone roused my indignation, not that I had cared before. “What I can’t reckon is how a sorceress by both sun and moon wouldn’t already have staked her claim.”

“No royal wants to be royal,” I demurred, fighting to keep my voice steady. It was the first time I’d dealt with Jason’s perceptiveness. The talk about Colchis had made him out as a pirate, but he had means other than brute strength and a boat. “The kingdom,” I added, “deserves someone who loves it.”

“Yet you helped me.”

He was more than the sum of his spoils. More, perhaps, than the echoes of our atrocities.

No time for sails, we dogged the crew on the oars. This was later, fleeing Colchis under fire of arrows. It was unclear whether the king wanted his son, our hostage aboard the Argos, or the fleece. Settling the matter, I slit the boy’s throat and floated him back.

But hindsight emboldens me. The sacrifice of Absyrtus was a tactical move to enable our escape. It also shut up the insufferable whelp.

His parts kept slipping and rolling over the deck. I piled them like chickenfeed in the excess of my skirt and dumped them over the side. The oars knocked them about and the waves, black with blood, scattered them. The hunt and cobble of Absyrtus’s body would slow my father and his men. If the gods could forgive me this evil upon the dead—kin, no less—

but they wouldn’t.

I took Jason in my sticky fingers. “Come below.”

We married ourselves in the roll of the cabin. I straddled Jason and pierced my thigh with one of his arrows. The blood warmed us. “Swear you will love me.”

“I do.”

“Swear it.”

He swore.

“Should you lust after others, you’ll have no closer companion.”

He swore.

“You’ll remember my kindness and revere my anger.”

He swore.

We were fools.

The belonging of our wants, the future we presumed, the crimes we had goaded and gotten away with convinced us that the cerulean reel of travel and plunder would be enough. It lasted until the scrape of keel. Then love was done with romance.

Our last time was Argos. Jason knelt on the fleece, fingers digging into the folds of my flesh. His stone thighs knocked mine, ramming me to and fro so that my breasts swung like censers. The noise was awful. But he was encouraged. He thrust harder, as if shaking me out for coin, and I seized the damp shags of wool. It was my fault he couldn’t fuck facing me. I encouraged his worst.

The death of the dragon. Absyrtus’s murder. The seizure of Corinth. The complacency afterward. And, when yet another child kicked inside me, I acknowledged nothing but the pleasure of being the Argonaut’s queen. Contrary to popular belief, that wasn’t the reason I named our son Argos.

I needed a humbling, and Hera provided.

My body was a wreck of distension and burst nerves, lips split from screaming. Linen fans beat in time with my convulsions. The pains had begun the night before. I slept on raspberry leaf and moly to gather my strength before the birth. The pain woke me with a fury—and a fear I had never known. Jason had gone hunting ahead of the feasts, having assumed the smooth delivery of yet another son. He returned after dark to find me screaming for the blade. I felt like an animal in snare, immobile and impotent as the hunters closed in. Only their spears weren’t around me but inside, ripping out. I challenge any warrior to such pain. I screamed, “MOTHER!”

I did not expect my mother’s ghost. I didn’t want her. I called for Hera to spring me from my fear, no thought to the sweet, wriggling thing to be born.

The baby slipped free. The midwife slapped and detached it. I thanked the goddess and named him Argos after her hundred-eyed guardian, as she had watched over me. It was perfect. I could think of no better idol to guide my child than the Queen of Olympus, who never faltered despite Zeus’s antics.

I channeled her grace when I first heard of the girl, reserving my questions while my mind raced. Who the fuck is Creusa?

The children were chasing dogwood petals, loosed from their boughs by the spring wind. We didn’t know then that summer would starve us. I felt Hera’s cool lividity as Argos placed a floret in my lap and said, “For the new princess.”

* * *

Supposedly I was alive. I had doubts, but, strangely, what induced them ended up convincing me. I couldn’t be dead, for Hades could not devise such torture as this wedding.

 Jason took the conditions of the city upon him. The unsightlies—beggars, lepers, orphans—were rounded up and set adrift. The streets were repaired and strung with lanterns. The oxen were hastily fattened with molasses. A dozen were spit over tables that creaked with golden platters of caviar and clawless lobster, fried cheese curds with poppy, loaves of olive and pistachio bread, candied dates and baklava with rose. There was wine, water from Thessaly, chestnuts and honey cakes to license more drinking, and even fermented honey, which they called ambrosia. Presumptuous name, and far too sweet, but Jason said he liked it, even as he sucked cucumbers to cleanse his mouth.

The bridal gifts were equally extravagant. He procured a swanskin shawl for winter on the water. He also commissioned a pair of gold armbands in the shape of nymphs, whose fishtails wrapped the arm three times, and an amphora with the Argo painted on. Creusa was the maiden on the prow. I wanted to put my foot through the vessel. But I was on best behavior. Jason’s guard watched me for signs of foul play. Naturally, I must be hysterical at Jason’s divided attention and enact my mad vengeances on the shy, plywood girl (not the wandersome husband who used us both).

These were the shrewd minds who secured the kingdom.

But they took after Jason, who warned me to stay away from her. It grew harder to do so, watching her shrink. She refused food, citing her nerves, and worried up and down the halls. She spooked at the slightest sound and complained of headaches. She sent her handmaid Glauce for herbs, but Glauce, likewise new and witless before the crowds of the agora, ran back in tears. I wouldn’t have cared, but she ran to me.

“Boil these,” I said, filling a pouch with chamomile and peppermint leaves.

The girl burped and ran. I heard her trip farther down the hall. Hera, I prayed, give me patience and dignity.

It was reasonable to doubt the handmaid’s competency. And I was bored. And no one on Earth tells me what to do. I brewed the tea, filled a flask, and ignored Jason.

Heads turned as I made for the bridal suite. It occupied the most sheltered wing of the palace. Seldom traveled, the halls still sparkled from their waxing days ago. Statues of the Olympic virgins lined the expanse. There was Artemis bathing. Athena weaving. Hestia tending hearth. As I neared the bride’s door, lit on either side by standing braziers, a moth flew into the flames. It fell, black and smoldering.

I went in.

The handmaid wasn’t there. Only Creusa, breathing under a towel. She hardly took any room on the extravagant bed. I knew Jason liked that, though he hadn’t yet touched her. He was playing the gentleman this time. Oh, but he’d envy me the license of my sex as I climbed onto the mattress and lay my ear on the girl’s chest. It sounded like the slow glug of water down a drain.

A silvery whine escaped her throat. “Mother?”

“Yes?”

I wasn’t proud. But when else might I interview my wife-in-law? It sounded as if, in the absence of her maid, she had drugged herself. I poked the corner of her mouth. It was sticky.

Poppy residue.

“I’m scared.”

“Of course.” I whispered so she wouldn’t hear my voice. The girl had connections. She knew, or abused, medicine. There was more to her than her innocent figure.

“I’m scared of him.”

“Drink this.” I pushed the flask in her hands and left.

Jason waited outside.

* * *

He grabbed my arm and steered me—jogging to keep with his furious stride—into the recess by Athena’s statue. There he released me with a disdainful fling. My back hit the goddess’s loom. There’s the gentleman. My temper warmed to his, but I wouldn’t speak first.

“What did you do to her?”

“I could ask you the same.”

He trembled with rage. “I haven’t…”

I knew. I stared at his eyes, black and brimming with what a vulgar mind would call paternal instinct. “She loves you because she doesn’t know better. You give her baubles? Give her a mentor, and a turn of the world, and when she grows a backbone, see if she’ll have you.”

“I am king!”

“You’re obsolete.”

Jason blanched. His chest heaved. He brought his fists up and mashed them into his eyes. Before I could stop him, he backed against the wall and sank on his haunches.

“She loves me,” he whispered, rocking back and forth. “She loves me. She needs me.”

A hero was only as good as demand. It occurred to me how little I asked of Jason. I couldn’t, by nature or self-regard, humor him in the way his ego demanded.

He could have his plank bride. He could tug her sleeve for praise and relevance, and until she grew up, they’d be happy.

* * *

It wasn’t my last interview with Creusa.

She found me in my cabinet. As an offshoot of the royal bedchamber, not to mention my private herb store, I was not inclined to welcome her. Worse, she watched me from the threshold. For a while. There were mirrors everywhere, and our eyes met in two of them.

The girl wasn’t getting it.

I put down the knife—I’d been cutting toadstools—and loudly greeted her. “How have I merited this delightful trespass?”

Creusa shot out of sight. I waited. I resumed cutting. She didn’t come back.

I did not ask for another daughter.

I found her beating a hasty retreat through the antechamber. It was only by calling the halfwit guards who had allowed her entrance that I got her to stop.

“What?”

I cocked my head. “You came to see me. Have you come to return the flask, or fill it?”

“I forget.” She tried to smile her way past the guards’ crossed spears.

“I commend your herbal knowledge,” I said. “But do keep your wits about you.”

Slowly, she turned about. “I’m scared.”

“You said that last night.”

“I’m not you.” She blinked back her tears before they could fall and nauseate me. “I need a moment to compose myself.”

“Time never yields.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

I gestured the suite, the fleece draping the bed. “Try me.”

“But you have power.”

“Princess Creusa.”

“Titles. Man’s crop, woman’s bridle. I mean your blood.” Her words charged the air like pressure before a tempest. She wasn’t a dullard. “I grew up to your stories. You never knew danger. When the world tried to heel you, you made it ridiculous. You’re an icon.”

I had considered her youth a deficiency. But the chill she excited by the inharmony of a leaden mind wrapped in fresh curls reminded me of my mistress. I scanned the room for irregular shadows, thinking aloud. “I met Helios once, but I could have been dreaming. Then there’s my mistress, whom I serve every breath. There’s my aunt, who weeps, bleeds and ages, and Jason.”

Creusa held her breath.

“You can never know icons. They hardly know themselves. And if you seek the gods…” I thought of Zeus, the heat and thunder of him between my legs. “Don’t waste your moments. Attach yourself to someone important who cares.”

“Jason.”

I rolled my eyes. “A patroness. Someone who knows you before you know yourself. Someone to take your talents and cut rubies of them.”

Creusa looked timidly at me.

* * *

I started her weeding. It would toughen her up and verse her in plants. Then, depending on her aptitude, it was teamaking or blood magic (my personal prediction; the hawthorn would cut her, and it was careless to bleed in vain).

I envisioned a vast and interactive curriculum. 

 Jason didn’t like it. As soon as he saw us crouched in the garden, he pulled me into the blue shade of the portico. His clothes stuck from exercise, mine from the heat. I had dirt up my forearms and sweat stinging my eyes. But I was composed. Jason looked fearsome and—the girl put it rightly—ridiculous.

“What were you talking about?”

I shrugged. “Your body.”

The look on his face.

I told him to come off it. “Your intended saw how taxed you’ve been, overseeing the festivities, and wanted to make you a restorative tea.”

Whether he believed me or not, he reissued his warning. “Stay away from her.”

“You already said that.”

“I meant it.”

“So we’re to share a husband and not interact.” I tapped my lip in a pantomime of thought. “We’re to keep separate hours. We’re to fuck you in silos. We’re to—”

Jason threw his hands up and stalked toward the nearest guardsman. He muttered something, shooting obvious glances at me, and went inside. No doubt to sample honey cakes for the wedding.

“Bring a taster,” I called after him. He didn’t hear.

* * *

She comes at harvest.

More surprising than the apparition was the echo of command in her voice. Hecate did not deal in cushions or warnings. Pain grounded the practice, she once said.

She hadn’t stopped my elopement with Jason.

I was dreaming of Colchis. Before Hecate claimed me as grand-niece and disciple, I had wanted to become a huntress in the jungle. I carried a sling and attempted to shoot parrots from the branches, but I never came close. My ineptitude wrung from me hot, angry tears; I was a nuisance at court but helpless outside of it. I developed an exquisite scowl and cursed my existence.

As I ran through the palm fronds, Hecate appeared. She had blue plumage and a yellow breast. The perfect target, if I could aim. I tried three pebbles, well directed but falling short, and gave up in a fit of hysterics.

Then I was hovering above, watching myself pound the forest floor.

Her weakness, said Hecate, will weaken you.

But I’ve grown up.

She passed a wing over the scene, and then it was Creusa writhing and kicking. In childbed.

My heart broke for her. I reached forth, ready with a towel to drape over her eyes. She did not have to see the dripping red sheets.

Hecate caught my hand in her talons, punching clean through the skin, twisting tendon and bone. She cawed over my screams. Softness seeps. I love you, Medea. You are sun and wind and desert glass. A flower cannot thrive in you, and when pity tempers the desert, you will be lost.

You are not the only one to favor the girl. Her love will eclipse yours. Her children will displace yours. Troublemakers will raise her up, in hopes of unseating the sorceress queen. Men of Colchis. Men of Iolcus. You and Jason have made enemies. Time to reap the fruits of your love.

I batted Hecate with my free hand. I’d burn her bones for augury. Denying mortality is what destroys us.

Then kill yourself. Her talons slipped free.

I fell.

She comes at harvest.

* * *

I instructed him to start a fire. The darling boy would rub sticks until they smoked, which was near impossible without kindling and flint. He would be well occupied while his mother swung the scythe.

The trees needed shaping. Bowed by sun, wind and recent rain, the cypress had narrowed the skylight over the pool, which would not do for tonight’s rite.

It was my mistress’s Dark Moon.

We would observe it in the woodland hollow, whose location only I knew. I chopped out the undergrowth and red berry boughs, then waved about the treetops, shaving the excess fringe bit by bit. Argos giggled in the green rain.

When the sprigs and trimmings were raked up and burned—I showed Argos how to pile a proper tinder bed—the sky through the cypress aperture had pinked like the smooth lip of a conch. I sat Argos on the moss by the water’s edge. He made a face at the dampness while I retrieved the jug of oil I had brought with us. Crinkles of rosemary and hyssop fragranced it. Tipping the spout over my fingers, I anointed myself in the five vital points: forehead, heart, womb, and footsoles. With an armful of bay branches, I waded into the pool.

The water warmed as I laureled the bank. It didn’t take much to line the circumference; the freshwater pool measured two spears across and declined sharply so that, standing center, I was submerged to the waist. Slender vents connected it to the gulf, allowing wildlife in and out.

I’d come for the eels.

They hunted at night. If I kept still, they would slither around me. The slightest movement would frighten and goad them to bite. I had been nipped, evidenced by the silver crescent above my left ankle, and could use the butt of the scythe to ward them off. But I was the interloper and could only expect their curiosity and defense. In that regard, we were kindred souls.

Their movements popped bubbles on my shins as the tip of the Dark Moon broke through the cypress. On either side of the new moon, it shined on chance encounters and last chances. I recited the invocation:

Crone Divine in the crescent Between,

phase of the Moon goddess named for her gleam;

I honor you, Hecate, and your sister Selene,

Communing in Nyx with a single beam.

Silver the way and Corinth redeem.

The eels answered me in dark stirrings. Their scaleless sides whipped my legs. Suppressing the instinct to giggle and kick, I focused on the surface before me. The water surged and parted around a wet, grinning face.

The eel breached on its side and extended in full. It floated, straight and brown as a tree limb, before shrinking and hardening into a knife. I plucked the blade from the water and willed my city to prosper in the harvest and, resigning to fate, in the marriage of Jason and his bride.

I pricked my right ear. “Selene, make me listen.”

I pricked under the tongue. “Hecate, make me wise.”

I let the tears of pain fall. “Hera, help me know treachery when I see it.”

The sky was pink again when I emerged from my vigil. Argos shivered on the moss bank. I scooped him up with a kiss and carried him home.

* * *

The crabgrass was rampant. I would have words with the gardener, who pruned overzealously or not at all. I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked for Argos.

He capered under the olive trees, shade to shade, holding a doormat behind his shoulders. “I got the fleece!” he cried.

I went back to weeding. Dirt sprayed as I ripped and ripped. The earth was cool and moist under the surface. A reminder of hidden depths and unexpected mercies. Refreshed after the Dark Moon, I wanted to see Jason.

Someone grunted behind me. Heart lighting, I turned.

The bull stared at me. From my seat in the grass, it was giant in stature and white as bone. It had soft curls by the heart-shaped junction of horns, which shined with fresh dew and curved like an archer’s bow into the sky. Helios blazed red through the bull’s ears and eyelids.

 I did not need his warning to recognize the Almighty.

“Come to abduct me?”

Zeus lowered his head. He could gore me if he wanted, or shift me into a companion heifer, like his wife. Cow-eyed, he called her. I could only imagine the depths of Hera’s gaze, rendered comelier by the torments he caused her even now. Courting me.

Zeus spoke in my mind. Does this form not please you? Most women like birds, but you’re a strange cut. Let me guess.

I went around the bull and continued weeding.

How about an aquatic specimen? Why not a crocodile?

Or a Jason?

The grass shifted behind me. By the shape of the shadow, and the salt and cedar smell, I didn’t dare turn.

“I thought you wanted a child.” He ran his hands down my sides, crossed them over my stomach and pulled me against his chest so his words tickled my ear. “You’ve not struggled before, and your courses are strong. The goddess of childbirth must have tired of you or been called away…”

I bristled at the insinuation. Hera would not forsake me. She had no reason to, unless she saw Zeus’s visits and how they affected me. But surely she understood the unwilling attraction. And I hadn’t succumbed, despite the legitimate temptation of my own husband’s muscles thumping behind me.

I broke from his embrasure. “Nothing you say will make me betray her.”

“She doesn’t deserve your love.”

I faced him. “Nor your betrayal.”

He touched my cheek. He traced its softening contour. “I can give you what you want. Jason gets treasure, you get princes. It will be your quest, one of flesh and no less treacherous, and it will keep you warm when he vanishes into the blue. You’ll have him inside you, renewed and promising with the drops of your ichor, stronger than Jason was or will be.”

“But you’re not him.”

“Our child would be a demigod. A favorite among mortals, and a pillar of love: yours for Jason, and mine for you.”

 Love.

The infamous lecher. I tossed my head back and cackled. The sound scattered ravens and turned Argos’s head. He saw his father and brightened. I threw my hand out. “Stay there!”

I needed to end this farce.

 Zeus waved and grinned for the child’s sake. “Oh, Medea. You’re young and confused.”

I wanted to banish him myself. But for all my vehemence and witchery, we both knew I was just clay. I vowed on Helios. “If you abuse me, he will ride his chariot far from this world and leave your people to kill each other in the dark. Go away, and don’t ever inhabit my husband again.”

“I think you do love him,” Zeus murmured.

“It won’t save him.”

 The god took no notice, talking more to himself than to me. “Jason was equally helpless, if memory serves. Perhaps he too…”

“What are you saying?”

Zeus bit his lip. He broke into a slow, blood-chilling laugh. “You witches fancy yourselves for gods. But power runs in the vein. Hera and I are equals in that regard, and it was her will that you and Jason fall in love. When he arrived at Colchis and charmed you onto his cock, the two of you played into her design.”

I bolted my knees to keep from crumbling. “I don’t understand.”

“She bent you together.”

* * *

Hecate rolled an impassive eye. “Does it matter?”

I convinced her with a kick to the nearest king. “But why?!”

“Pelias.”

I stopped pacing the coffins. Pelias had held the throne that Jason was prophesied. He played the gracious host, vowing to crown Jason once the fleece was retrieved. Jason would have go to Colchis and overcome the firedrake, an impossible feat.

But he had me.

Afterward I repaid Pelias’s graciousness. When Jason, unscathed, presented the fleece, Pelias trembled at the jowls and refused to abdicate. I enlisted his daughters to restore the king.

It wasn’t my fault they cut up and boiled him.

But what had the tyrant to do with me and Jason? We were already lovers by the time of his death.

“That’s what she wanted,” Hecate said.

 I didn’t know which part, our love or Pelias’s death, she meant. It hardly mattered. I was a plaything, a pretense, for the goddess’s sport. My feelings, the singular thing a woman may claim as her own, were not.

My voice thinned to a heartsick rasp. “But why?”

My mistress hissed in exasperation. “Pelias shed blood in her temple.”

“She bent us… because someone stained her altar?”

“Don’t be so straight, Medea. It’s crass.”

 It’s unconscionable. All the acts and consequences of our love—the blood we had shed, fulfilling her design—on account of a soiled altar cloth. Hera was cruel.

I would not let others fall prey to her.

* * *

The cry of gulls and the turning of baby waves echoed the lapis cove of the Heraion. Removed from the city by a two hour’s gallop around the peninsula, or a short sail from the palace, the temple compound—with portico, banquet hall, menagerie and pomegranate groves—enjoyed the remoteness of a retreat, and none of the privacy. The cult had coffers to fill. They performed more for tourists than the downtrodden supplicants who needed the queen goddess’s aid. With dances in the banquet hall and orchestrated hymns, they contended with the Delphic sybils for drachmae and offerings, and almost won.

I adored the Heraion when first I’d seen it. I had come to burn incense for Medus’s quickening and hummed the priestesses’ songs for weeks after. The fountain, especially, had captivated. An aqueduct pumped water in from the hills, and as it flowed through a cistern under the pavilion, it gathered power and shot through a central fountain that depicted a flight of peacocks, their tails rendered by the outpouring water. It fanned and quivered like windswept feathers, and on festival nights, the priestesses hung lanterns of green and purple glass to color and animate the limestone work.

It was preferrable to the live birds, who honked and shat over the walkways.

I came now for an audience. I wanted to hear from the goddess’s lips what she had done, and meant to do, as far as Jason and me.

If she answers.

I shivered, then straightened my veil. It itched dreadfully, but Hecate’s warning rang in my ears. I did not believe that the girl plotted against me, but I could not trust her shrewdness in cultivating a circle, knowing what to say and to whom… The only trouble I wanted was that which I caused.

The temple was empty at this early hour, save for the priestess jumping under the statue. She held a wet rag attached to a pole and appeared to be cleaning the goddess’s nose. But she was young, short, and hardly prepubescent.

She saw me and froze.

I lifted the veil, since it was just us two, to show her I wasn’t some specter of the morning. “Give it here.”

The girl didn’t move.

They’re dumber these days. I closed in, forcing a smile.She surrendered the pole and watched as I wiped the dust from the crown and the tip of the scepter. She fled as soon as I returned her implement.

Then it was me and the goddess.

I had so much to ask. Knowing my love for her, knowing that I would have done anything she had asked, were it kill Pelias, fuck Pelias, or fuck Jason and then Pelias—how could she have bent me and Jason together? To what extent were our triumphs and troubles our own? To what extent was our love?

How could she corral us like farm animals in heat?

How could she control us and delight in the artifice?

How could she do the same to Creusa?

The questions burned up my throat. It all started in her temple. She must end it here.

But her limestone gaze yielded nothing. Without pupils, without sight, she could not mark the pain she had inflicted.

She chose not to.

I was beyond help. But my loved ones could yet be spared her depravity.

Leaving no offering, no words, I quit the temple.

* * *

She expected pain on her wedding night. I saved her.

The moly numbed her while the naphtha clung. It wasn’t quite poison, but a distillate of coal and peat, masked by the smells of the wedding feast: wine, hot meat, body odor and sea brine. For close quarters, she wore one rosemary-and-hyssop perfume, another gift from the witch.

I passed behind her, pricking my thumb. The blood of Helios dropped on her train, and with solar potency and spark of ichor, Creusa went up in flames.

 No god will bend her.

She felt nothing. She smiled as the fire engulfed her. She drank as her goblet warped and melted over her mouth. A golden roar, it was the fire I had dreamed.

She fell over the table, spraying caviar and dates, and burned until the Argonauts smothered her with their tunics, which charred and stuck in the bridal slag.

* * *

 Medea!

Ought Echidna have killed her young? The liberation of Creusa had inspired me to think the unthinkable and do what none dared. I imagined Echidna curled over her litter, each pup more hideous than the last. Reading the future in their phosphoric eyes as they bit and ripped her soft, green scratch, she must have foreseen their suffering. Heroes would hunt them and hang their skins for tapestries.

Which was the greater mercy: feed her young or roll over?

Argos lay in my lap, spreading a wet radius that chilled to sit in. He was good to have sat all night on that moss bank. The other children were not so obedient. I tried to have patience with them; they were young and confused. Had they my time and wisdom, they would have stretched their necks for me, or taken the knife upon themselves. But they mewled and kicked and pounded the nursery door.

Born of false love, delivered on futile prayers, dedicated to unfeeling entities, they were made for the gods’ abuse. Hera would bend them. Her son Ares would blood them. Their futures were already plotted and wasted.

They would not hear my reason, and their struggle only made a mess.

“Medea!”

Jason broke through the door and froze. He scanned the floor, the beds, the sparkling walls. It was too much for comprehension. He lurched forward, fell to his knees, and cupped little Argos’s head. I held fast to our son, unwilling to let Jason claim this triumph.

He fell next under the knife.

It stuck between his ribs. The hilt reflected his face, peering down and disbelieving at his own mortality. “Witch,” he burbled. “I loved… I…”

I believed he believed it. My throat stuck as I took his hand. “Set sail, my love.”

Heavier than stone, the body he cherished and persecuted sank against me.

* * *

My back warmed. The sky brightened on the walls. I turned, faced the twilight, and let the breeze clear my eyes as the clouds parted and out glided my grandfather’s chariot.

Their sunstruck scales were blinding as knives as Helios’s dragons undulated toward me. They soundlessly touched down on the balcony. My heart quickened with a feeling better than euphoria. It diffused with each breath, unbunching and reassuring. The dragons slithered closer, and I saw myself in their beaded eyes. I saw belonging.

I reached for the nearest. It shied and ducked right, pulling its brother, and together they turned the chariot about so that the open back faced me. I grinned, wracking my brain for a destination. Where in the land of old legends and dormant quests could a weary queen lay her head?

That was a problem for landing. I stepped up.

“Medea?”

One foot in, I glanced behind me. Jason was there, alive and unstained. The spot where he had died was empty. There was Argos, and the children… And there was Jason, grabbing the ends of the rail on either side of me.

Then I understood. Zeus.

He had put on the dying charade. He had contrived our final sympathy—and contaminated it.

The real Jason, through no fault of his own, was too late. The dragons shook their wings.

“Don’t leave me.” He planted his feet and tugged. Desperation and fear of oblivion wrung his face. He looked years older. It was endearing, but not enough to live a lie.

Stepping both feet up, I peered over the front rail. The dragons shivered, eager to fly. I envisioned Colchis, wiped of buildings and roads. There would be no people or farm animals either. Only the jungle and its elusive birds. Willing such a place to exist, I took the reins.

That was all we had: will, bent by the gods or indomitable.