Danae

by Laura Gill

  Not content to take leave of them at the door, I followed the men to the enclosure, a sturdy construction of wood and stones where the elders had posted two sentries to guard against horse thieves. Diktys and Eurymedon collected the mare. We embraced, I admonishing Eurymedon one last time to remember his manners and stay safe, and charging Diktys with looking after him.

  We walked together up the sandy path leading from the village to the road linking Pelargos with Livadi and Chora. Snorting, the mare trod obediently beside her handlers. A salt-laden marine mist shrouded the scrub and the road ahead; it would dissipate before midmorning. I snuggled deeper into my shawl, half-wishing I could accompany the men.

  The subsequent hours dragged on as tediously as honey dripping from a comb. In the weaving house, my fingers fumbled with the weft threads, my work was sloppy, and Keremaia noticed. Irritation momentarily flickered across her face, but in the years since she had found out my secret she had also developed a modicum of patience. “Pick out the threads,” she sighed, “and start again.”

  Panope threw me a sympathetic look; her attention was divided between her work and her daughter’s, as Klytie had just started working at her mother’s trade. How much easier the task of motherhood might have been had I borne a daughter. There would have been no terror in the chest, no angry youth threatening to leave home to become a mercenary, because I never would have left the Mountain.

  No use thinking that way. My fingers unraveled the uneven weft. Yet what would Diktys and Eurymedon be doing now? I imagined Polydektes taking pleasure in making them wait. Palace officials would register the gift of a dun-colored mare. At some point, Diktys and Eurymedon would be summoned into the megaron, or perhaps Polydektes and the kin of the dead men would step outside to inspect the horse, to criticize the selection and find flaws, even though Diktys knew his horseflesh and would never have chosen a defective animal.

  Then it was mid-afternoon, time to leave the weaving house, and they did not return. Then late afternoon. Helios’s chariot sped toward the west. Brassy sunlight slanted through the doorway amid purpling shadows as I prepared supper, and still no word. The knot in my stomach tightened further. Solitude made a terrible companion in my distress. I should not have refused Panope’s earlier offer of company.

  So I took down the household gods, kissed each and held them, and prayed. Had Polydektes provoked Eurymedon into losing his temper and starting a brawl in the megaron? Were he and Diktys imprisoned, about to be executed, or already dead?

  That was it. I had to do something, anything. Kissing the idols again, I replaced them in their familiar niche, and seized my shawl and prepared a bundle of bread and cheese. If Diktys and Eurymedon were not coming home, if Polydektes had instigated some mischief, then I must go to them and sort everything out.

  Just as I left the house wrapped in my shawl, ready to make the trip to the palace myself, they appeared on the path, shoulders slumped, footsteps plodding. Fearing they might be injured—what had Polydektes done to them?—I hastened toward the path calling their names, noting to my alarm how unenthusiastically they responded.

  “What’s wrong?” Both men looked like they had just walked in a funeral procession, and Eurymedon would not even meet my gaze. “It didn’t go well?”

  “Worse,” Diktys croaked.

  I ushered them inside and shut the door. Diktys insisted on splashing water on his face and honoring the gods before telling me anything. Eurymedon hunkered down by the hearth, head hanging, hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles showed white. Was I going to have to pry each and every detail from them? “What happened?” I asked. “Eurymedon, did you do something?”

  “Nothing!” he hissed. “Nothing! Everything Diktys told me, and it was no good!” Exploding into movement, he rose, seized a ceramic platter, and hurled it at the wall; the dish broke into pieces and the impact left a dent in the plaster.

  Just as he fixated on the ladle lying on the hearth curb, Diktys strode over and grabbed his arm. “Enough!” Eurymedon wrenched free; he left the ladle alone, but remained standing there, glowering with arms crossed.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “It was the kinsmen,” Diktys said. “They took the horse but suddenly changed their minds about accepting the rest. We were supposed to negotiate for fairer terms of compensation, but instead... It’s impossible, what they’re demanding, and Polydketes, that smug bastard, he knows it. He planned this all along. I’ll wager the incident with his bastards was planned, too.” With each word, Diktys raised his voice that much higher, so by the end he was shouting at the rafters.

  I stood there, watching, listening, unable to help if they did not supply more details. “What’s impossible? What are they demanding?” The knot in my stomach had become a leaden weight, ice-cold. There was nothing left for Eurymedon to surrender, unless it was himself as a bondsman, or... Had Polydektes insisted on having me? Was that the price of compromise? I sucked down an uneasy breath. Yielding to that loathsome man was execrable, but not entirely out of the question if it would spare my son. “Are you going to tell me, or must I guess?”

  “I can’t.” Eurymedon forced the words out. “I don’t even believe it, myself.”

  Diktys came over to me, gently took my arm to steady me, and in a tight but low voice said, “Impossible is the Gorgon’s head.”

  There was a pregnant pause, where, repeating the words in my head, I refused to process them. Sounds without meaning.

  “What?”

  “What I just said, Dorea.” Diktys tightened his grasp, and gave me a little shake. “They’re demanding that Eurymedon bring them the head of the Gorgon Medusa.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “The creature that makes men turn to stone if they look at her?” Did such a being even exist? “Impossible!”

  “So we both said.” Diktys nodded toward Eurymedon. “But they insisted, and then taunted the boy, saying he didn’t have the courage. They goaded him into it, and my conniving, rotten brother just stood there and let them.”

  Several moments passed as a heavy silence descended on the house. Eurymedon stared at the glowing coals in the hearth. Diktys stayed by my side. I stared at the earthen floor, at the footstool draped with Diktys’s favorite sheepskin, and tried to collect myself. Fetching a Gorgon’s head? Eurymedon being assigned a quest out of a hero-story? Such might be expected of a son of Zeus, except that I perceived no honor in it, only regarded it to be a wretched way to dispose of a rival, an evil of which only a villain like Polydektes could conceive.

  Then, slowly, Eurymedon began to relate the entire tale. “Polydektes and his followers and the kinsmen walked out onto the aithousa after he made us wait in the court for a half a day. The grooms brought the horse. They inspected her, and then Polydektes asked if that poor beast was the best I could do.” When he sat, we joined him. “I took your advice, Mother, and let Diktys do the talking. He defended the horse, said she was a good animal, and asked why Polydektes was such a poor host.” Thorough though my son was in conveying his narrative, he was nevertheless practically choking with outrage; the apple in his throat bobbed furiously.

  “Polydektes just raised his cup to Diktys—and he hadn’t even offered us any—and asked again if that paltry mare was the best the grandson of King Acrisius could do. ‘And here I thought the Argives knew their horseflesh,’ he sneered at me. ‘You should have brought something worthier of your Argive blood, and your status as a son of Zeus.’ Then he laughed and said to his companions, ‘Oh, yes, my dear friends. This fisherman’s boy claims to be the offspring of the greatest of gods, can you imagine that?’ I never said any such a thing, Mother!” Eurymedon clenched and unclenched his fists. “Not even when everybody laughed and said you—you probably spread your legs for a satyr, because I’m so vicious and unruly.”

  “They said what?” When I threw him a questioning look, Diktys just shook his head.

  Eurymedon turned bright red. “I’m sorry, Mother. They said other
things about you, too, but I won’t repeat them.”

  “They were trying to provoke him to violate the sanctity of the king’s house,” Diktys grumbled. “Polydektes just stood there and encouraged it, and when that didn’t work he tried another tactic, called Eurymedon a coward. Dared him to discharge his debt the way only a trueborn son of Zeus could. They made a game of it, all of them suggesting various monsters Eurymedon should slay instead of letting his mother buy him bales of wool and jars of olive oil with the jewels Polydektes had given her. Then they agreed he should bring back a Gorgon’s head.”

  “I thought they were joking,” Eurymedon muttered. “Gorgons don’t really exist, do they? But Polydektes and the kinsmen weren’t joking at all. The king even swore Makednes had narrowly escaped their clutches on one of his adventures. Then, when I refused them, Polydektes taunted me, asking if I was a coward. They all started chanting, ‘Coward!’ That’s how it happened, Mother. I just lost control and shouted that I wasn’t a coward, that I’d do what they demanded and bring back the monster’s head, so I could turn them all to stone with it.”

  “You weren’t thinking when you did that,” Diktys told him.

  Eurymedon’s nostrils flared. “So you kept telling me all the way back.”

  I could scarcely believe what I heard, though it was just like Polydektes to taunt and bully his enemies. “You’re not going anywhere or slaying anything.” I could not keep my voice from quavering. “Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the palace myself and talk some sense into the king. If I can somehow persuade him to—”

  “No!” both men urged simultaneously. Diktys took hold of me, as if he thought that he could physically prevent me. “Polydektes planned this, right down to the incident with his sons and the murder, I’m certain of that,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do—or if there is, I forbid you from doing it.”

  Furious, I met his eyes. “You’re not my husband, Diktys.”

  “And you’re not his concubine.”

  “I’m your son, and I forbid it!” Eurymedon exclaimed.

  Again, he, not even a grown man, presumed to speak for me. “So the pair of you expect me to simply sit here and do nothing?”

  Their lack of response bespoke their guilt. Yet after a few moments, Diktys made a suggestion. “There’s a sanctuary to Zeus down the coast, in the hills overlooking Ganema. I know the priest. Eurymedon, you and I should go there tomorrow with an offering and ask your divine father what you should do.”

  Diktys retired before the rest of us, and, judging by the rapidness with which he started snoring, suffered little trouble in falling asleep. The midnight run awaited, and nowadays, with middle age swiftly advancing, he needed extra rest and refused to belabor himself with worries. He and Eurymedon would travel to the sanctuary of Zeus, my son would seek the god’s guidance, and that, as far as Diktys was concerned, was that.

  The mother that I was, on the other hand, never stopped worrying. After Diktys retired, I moved closer to my son to entreat him in whispers. “Don’t undertake this foolish quest. Run away, far away. Become a mercenary if you must, or settle on another island and become a fisherman there. Whatever Polydektes and his louts taunted you with, however they goaded you, it doesn’t matter.” Merciful gods, permit common sense to prevail with my headstrong child! “There was no honor in what they did, so refusing them won’t matter.”

  Turning, Eurymedon patted the arm I had twined around his. “You think Polydektes didn’t account for that? When he got what he wanted, he came down from the aithousa and patted my cheek as though I was a baby, and called me an obedient boy, and then said if I tried to run away he would sack Pelargos and have everybody, even you, sold into slavery.”

  I shivered despite myself. Of course Polydektes would make such a threat, when his father had harshly suppressed all resistance to his rule. “Diktys and I will leave Seriphos, then. I wanted to take you away years ago, remember?”

  “And the neighbors?” Eurymedon asked softly. “They won’t want to leave.”

  “True.” I leaned my head against his shoulder for the reassurance of his presence. “How do they even expect you to find the Gorgon’s lair?”

  “Medusa and her sisters dwell in Libya, they say. Makednes went there several times, but Diktys doesn’t know how he found the Gorgons, or if he really did. But he knows that Libya lies far to the south and east, and it’s many days’ sailing from here. Maybe I could get passage by doing a stint as an oarsman. After that, I don’t know.” He sighed heavily. “Sometimes the shepherd visits, or the old woman—you know, how they sometimes come to me. I kept looking for them today, and they weren’t there. I suppose the only thing left is to go with Diktys to the sanctuary.”

  That he seriously contemplated undertaking this adventure unsettled me, even though I acknowledged his lack of options. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  “I don’t really want to go, either, Mother.” The quaver of uncertainty that crept into his voice emphasized his youth, and made me want to cling to him that much closer. At that moment, I would have pursued the quest for him, if I thought I could. “I was stupid, letting their taunting get to me, and now there’s nothing I can do.”

  Since Polydektes had abandoned all pretense of trying to court me or show respect, I could not count on remaining safe. Had I made a mistake in refusing him? “I’m not sure it would have made any difference.” The whole incident—the taunting, the forced kiss, even the attempted rape—it had been deliberate. Polydektes had not lost control of his sons; he had enlisted them in whatever scheme he had devised to hurt me. “Yes, you lost your temper, but if you hadn’t fallen into his trap today, he would have tried something else.”

  Nuzzling against him, drinking in his scent and the feel of Eurymedon—my only son—I chastised myself for not having gone to Chora in his place, for not having realized the danger in time to prevent it. Then again, now that he was becoming a man, I could not always be there to safeguard him. “Diktys should go with you,” I murmured. “He knows his way around the Aegean. He has experience.”

  “No, Mother.” Eurymedon enclosed my shoulders with his muscular arm. “His place is here. I don’t want to drag him into this madness and leave you unprotected.”

  I drew away from him. The firelight did little to conceal his pallor, or to soften the furrows marring his brow and the corners of his downturned mouth. “You need to rest, Eurymedon. There’s still the midnight run to think of.”

  Sleep came hard. All I managed was a half-doze haunted by snake-haired women with forked tongues, whose gaze I could somehow meet without being petrified, but whose ears were deaf to my entreaties that they leave my son alone. Snakes could not actually hear—Sostrate had taught me that. Nonetheless, I tried communicating in signs; my hands kept signaling the wrong thing, and I found I possessed no control over my body to correct myself. And all the while I kept searching the Gorgons’ underground lair with its walls of melting stalactites in which I glimpsed the tormented faces of previous adventurers, and its upthrust stalagmites that were men perpetually caught in flight. Always seeking Eurymedon, never finding him.

  The next thing I knew, it was just past dawn, and Diktys was shaking me hard. “Wake up. Eurymedon’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Beyond the sobering realization that I had somehow overslept, part of me yet remained caught in the tendrils of my dream. I expected frozen faces to appear out of the shadows, and serpentine women to slither out and hiss at me. My mouth tasted of dust, and the musty odor of snakes and underground haunts clung to my nostrils.

  “Dorea!” My shawl landed on my head where Diktys flung it. “He wasn’t on any of the boats. Nobody’s seen him on the beach.”

  Blinking, I returned to reality. “Then where is he?” I peeled the shawl from my head to wrap around my shoulders. How could Eurymedon have simply gone missing? Later today, he and Diktys were supposed to visit the sanctuary of Zeus in Ganema. “Have you checked the sanctuary?” The village sanctuary, where a y
oung man desperately in need of guidance might go before setting out for parts unknown.

  “We’ve already searched there.” Diktys did not give me time to wash or tend the hearth, but hastened me outside into the morning chill. He carried a spear; Eurymedon had absconded with Diktys’s sword. “I’m taking Alkmaeon and four others to search the road to Ganema. The market women are already searching the docks in Livadi. I just don’t want you staying here alone. Huamia and Philagra will spend the day with you.” Mother and daughter, swathed in threadbare brown shawls, met us on the path leading to the sanctuary.

  Everything was happening too fast, and without anyone bothering to consult me. “What is this? There are chores...” I appealed to the two women for some explanation, but their faces betrayed nothing except concern. “I don’t need protection.”

  Philagra took hold of my arm. “A woman waiting alone is a bad thing.” Huamia, meanwhile, clasped me by the other arm. “Worrying by yourself attracts evil spirits. Come, you can help watch the grandchildren.”

  At least the women let me fetch my shoes, which Diktys had forgotten, and make the customary offerings to the household gods and the house snake, before instructing me to cover my head and follow them to Huamia’s house. “If the king’s men come for you while your men are away, they won’t easily find you,” Philagra explained. “And while they’re searching the village, you’ll have time to escape to the sanctuary.”

  The constant presence of the women, who did not even let me relieve myself alone, quickly suffocated me. I was no fool. Diktys had engaged them to protect me from myself, because without them chaperoning me, he and I both knew I probably would have gone straight to Chora to demand an audience with the king.