by David Vann
18
Carved into a hill, ancient tombs in rock. Place of ancestors. Dried skulls within, measuring time. Royal tomb, opened now, rocks pulled away from the entrance. Cyzicus and Cleite waiting in shade, lying together under the sky one last time. A better wedding, Medea thinks. Lying there peacefully, a summer morning, yellow and white butterflies lofted and falling, suspended in nothing. No shouts or wine but only a stillness and the reassuring sound of small stones pulled away and tumbling, quiet work in a field.
More tombs opened lower on the hill for his men. Who first decided to bury here? And why bury the dead? We don’t know the origins of anything we do. We might live in a place where the heads of the dead are chopped off and flung into the air again and again, passed among every person in the city, thrown twice by each pair of hands, and this would be the way things must be.
This nameless people removing stone after stone, opening the past, grown quiet, touching the sacred. Hollows never forgotten, a parallel city in which one might open her mouth to speak and all would wait centuries to hear. Imagine sitting long enough that your clothing falls away to dust.
Several Argonauts will take up residence, foreigners in the city of stillness, buried far from home, lying alongside those they’ve slain or who would have slain them. Some desire to reach for a spear preserved, suspended. Abandoned by Jason, who works to free the tomb of Cyzicus. Jason political, every act of his calculated, and this she must remember. No loyalty in him.
What his men think she doesn’t know. They labor now at the rocks as they do at the oars, dumb as cattle, mute. She will never believe they are kings and demigods. Bare backed and burned by the sun, no better than slaves. The shadows around them shortened, the sun high overhead, and they are silvery with sweat as if spun by thread of spiders, long reaching arms only tracings in light, no substance, no flesh. Bright outlines in the air, wavering in every slight breeze.
Shallow tombs, enough only to keep the dead from being eaten. When all are opened, everyone gathers, people appearing from the trees on all sides, brought together without signal. They speak the name of Cyzicus as he is pushed inside headfirst among the bones of his ancestors, dark place from which no one returns. Voices rising as Cleite is pushed in with him, a greater lament for the queen.
Jason standing at the entrance, first among mourners, first in worship of himself. Medea should join him, she knows, but she remains where she is, at a distance.
Every ritual should be at night, by fire. The day too solid and hard, nothing shifting or becoming, all made smaller. The Hittites burn their dead, and a king’s burial lasts for thirteen days. Immolated at night for every god and dark corner of the world to see, the fire extinguished with wine. His bones oiled and wrapped in a double layer of fat, something to be devoured. To provide a rich life afterward, perhaps, but it seems also a way to call the wolves. Hellhounds of Hekate, misshapen creatures of the weather god of the sea, and every other demon waiting to tear and scatter and consume.
This burial of Cyzicus only a body placed in stone, and another body, and another, stacking of firewood. Most ancient of rites, leading all the way back before memory, simple burial in a cave. But these people have no priestess to lead them, only a few old men wearing bones and mumbling to themselves, incoherent, making nothing from nothing. An old rite become too old, gods far away and sleeping, all their good work with Cleite reduced.
Slain Argonauts placed in their foreign tombs, Jason presiding, saying a few words. Each man apparently was the finest of all men, the bravest in battle and strongest, despite being so easily killed, and each a king in some land that must overlap or expand infinitely to make room for so many kings. Minyans liars, a people of outrageous words and no particular deeds.
Heat of the day moving in, all wobbling a bit as they stand, grown dizzy and bored, wishing Jason could have fewer words. And the dead are not great performers themselves. They lie there, then are stuffed away. A stomach grumbles, a few thoughts of food.
She sees now why her father hangs the dead from trees in untanned ox hides. Grove at the edge of the city never forgotten. Spinning in the breeze, sacks of flesh in the open air. Men eternal, associated with the sky, only the women forgotten below. Over time, the city will be ringed by the dead, and none will leave or enter without passing these strange cocoons.
Her father out there somewhere still, looking for the remaining pieces of his son, unwilling to hang only part of a prince.
Unclear what gods her father worships, what gods might be angry if a sack is only half full. Helios his father, but does he believe this? The weather god of the sea, unnamed, faceless, is a god he might fear after this voyage, but Medea suspects her father believes in no gods except himself. Ox hides a barrier, perhaps, from all that would devour, some mythical power of the ox to keep hellhounds and every other creature away, but Aeetes most likely believes the air is empty, holding no form beyond what we know. This grove of the dead a monument only to his own rule, even the dead remaining his subjects.
What if all people hung their dead in trees, and not only the men but the women too? Are there enough trees in Egypt? How many have died in a land that old? Trees burdened until their limbs bend and finally are torn off and the bodies turned to mush are heard from far away as they land, soft pats on the earth, a kind of rain. Forests of the dead to cover and seed the world again.
Stones and caves a form of erasure. How deep was this cavern when it was first found or dug? The rock soft enough to enlarge. Do Cyzicus and Cleite lie on dirt and rock or on layer after layer of bones that have decayed into dirt? None here can say. Old men mumbling in conversation with nothing. All bodies disappeared and narrow entrances filled again with stones, lives sealed away and forgotten.
Sun falling through the sky in its endless succession of days, and all labor cyclical. Closing these tombs with stones only to open them later again. What Medea must do is make her life matter. Her days must be recognized and remain and not be buried and lost. How to do this unclear. Surrounded on every side by erasure.
Jason looks oiled, laboring among the stones, back rippling. Aware of being watched. Not taking water or rest. Young king in his fabled days before he was king. Stories will be told. The rock alive, and he will have torn at the mountain itself to free a proper burial place for his friend Cyzicus. Throughout this journey, giants of every kind will have fallen at his feet, giants of stone and water and sky. If enough people repeat the stories for long enough, Jason will become something that cannot die, but he also will have been erased, because the actions are too large and impersonal. The stories will reveal nothing about the real man who lived. Medea would have something more personal, something remembered and caught and frozen that can be only her, some moment none can fully understand or forget.
19
A feast, to remember the fallen. Goat meat cooked in blood, gruesome reminder of battle and yet none seem to notice. Pieces of liver and heart and brain bobbing with the meat in each dark bowl, as if organs could have been taken from the dead to rejuvenate the living. Some elixir to eat another man’s heart or devour his brain. Egyptians remove all and pickle each as a separate dish.
Sheep slaughtered also, roasting over fires, and torches everywhere, the night a conflagration. Some refusal from deep within us. Burning all darkness away, denying death.
Wine and drunken shouting, no longer still, no longer reverent. Restarting the world after this abrupt pause. Reclaiming all for the living. And a new king, a cousin of Cyzicus, older, presiding at the steps to his new home.
No people brave enough to live without a king. In every land Medea has heard of, there must be a king, or a queen made into a king, Hatshepsut wearing a beard. Some male figure as defense against the gods of sea and air and darkness and death. Some center. Jason at his side, and Medea, and the most important of his people. It doesn’t seem that a king should be made like this. Her father Aeetes descended from Helios, all history erased. That’s the true making. Descended fro
m a god, containing the beginning and the end. Not some selection made from low necessity.
Medea hates this one more than any other, because he is nothing and has been made a king anyway. An average man, sucking at bones and eyeing young women, not talking with Jason because there’s nothing to say. No vision, no plans except to fuck and try not to be killed.
We need to leave, Medea tells Jason. He’s drinking and looks at her as if from underwater. My father is coming. If you stay here, you die.
Jason holding a leg bone, waving it now to indicate all who are feasting and drinking. It does seem obvious that nothing will happen until night is over and the men have slept through most of the next day. But Medea insists.
You’ll lie here fat and drunken and watch his spear pushed into your chest. All for nothing, for a non-king. Medea points at the new king. It’s unclear whether he understands what’s being said. He shares the language of Ilium, and Medea is using a butchered blend of her language and Jason’s. He looks down at his meat.
Fat smeared around his mouth, same as Jason’s. Shining cave holes in torchlight, devouring. Stupid pointless feasting, boring and unbearable.
Medea stands and takes a torch. I’m going to the Argo, she says. If I have to wait, I’ll burn the ship.
She uses the torch to part the crowd, steps over bodies, veers away from all who lurch and leer and yell incomprehensible things. Ritual dissolved and collapsed. Men shouting in each other’s faces in different languages, understanding nothing, crazed grins that deny the dead and anything sacred. Cyzicus and Cleite buried now in stone, in silence, separated from the living, beginning the slow count of endless days and nights undistinguished. Medea is surprised to feel an overwhelming loneliness, as if she too is buried in stone and cannot be reached. Coldness without end, absence forever of warmth and light and movement.
Nothing binds her to anyone. If she dies, not one person in this world will mourn. She walks alone and invisible down that hill from stone into mire and then into forest, a shape only that passes through air and leaves no trace, seems not to touch ground.
Trees in torchlight shifting to the side, following their shadows, circling behind her, leaning in from above. Her breath held, fear immediate. Running now, and the flame a hive, angry and loud, feeding on nothing. A noise too close, hiding all that comes near. Medea runs as fast as she can, flying through that night, every slope veering and tipping and the world itself shaken by every hard footfall.
Lost and no path, only blind flight until a hill falls toward a mirror, a sea too calm to be called a sea, only a pool of dark water waiting and catching flame.
No sign of the Argo, no sign of her father. No other lights. She runs along the very edge, in sand and rock, her feet nearly in the water, where the trees won’t reach her, and hopes she’s going the right direction, nothing familiar, no moon to guide. Pounding along the shore.
Shadow. The Argo begins as shadow, some felt weight in darkness, some part of the mirror that won’t reflect, dull surface hung in the air then warming, taking shape and color, a deep brown to match flame.
Some creature impossible, a curve suspended between water and sky, waiting. It seems she could simply walk across the water to reach it. All distance gone, and liquid become solid, light the only element. Whatever surface we can see can hold us.
But the water at her ankles now cool and refusing, and she finds the small boat they use to ferry. She’s careful with the torch as she slips the oars into their loops of leather and pushes away from shore.
Unbelievable that she ran in fear. The forest at night is where she has lived all her life. It must be her father. Out there somewhere, and she can feel him coming closer. Source of fear. She knows it’s time to run.
Argonauts forgetting, pausing for too long, lying drunken on a foreign hillside as if all the world is theirs. They don’t understand her father and what he will do.
Gliding so smooth over the water. A sweep of the oars and then pause, and all so quiet. Breath of flame from the torch, small liquid sounds beneath, drifting backward into darkness. A world held perfectly level, Medea suspended at the margin. All below and all above held in their place, all without disruption.
She would rather be this. She would bring all together, in balance and quiet. Rule without sound, without rough movement. All held and caught and perfect.
But she knows she is meant to destroy, and she knows she is not done. Pelias will be next, and if she were to stay here, she would destroy the new king, simply because his existence is a kind of insult. Where does this originate in her? Why can’t she rest?
Born of no mother, so perhaps she was forged. Some other metal lighter than copper and more liquid than tin, fused more completely and fusing still, strange element that never cools, some molten core and veins tracing shape and pattern from nothing, form from darkness and some intent that can be only the nature of the material itself, inseparable and without location, no less elemental. Born to destroy kings, born to reshape the world, born to horrify and break and remake, born to endure and never be erased. Hekate Medea, more than god and more than woman, alive now, in the time of origin.
20
Medea alone on the Argo, old sagging ship hunched and listing, settled into the sea. Foul smell of her brother, overpowering in the still air. She stands above him at the stern, torch in hand.
Dark and fused into wood, moist growth seeping beneath what has dried and hardened. Pieces of him that found no use, her father’s ship gone for too long, and difficult to believe her father would recognize the shapes now.
She sets the torch in the bindings of a rudder, kneels and uses a long wooden spoon from the cookery to sever the largest piece from the deck. Pushing in between wood and flesh trying to free what might have been his chest. Somewhere in there, a rotted heart liquefied. The spoon emerging shiny with drool, and the smell too much. Medea retching over the side and returning to her work. Taste of bile.
A creature grown to the wood, tentacles suctioned. She has to yank upward with both hands and the spoon slips and she feels spray on her face.
She tries not to breathe. Stabs the spoon in along every edge, pries upward and hears sucking sounds of her brother releasing his hold. Rib cage flexing. She levers the spoon beneath while grabbing his shoulder with her other hand, peels him back, finally, and is able to roll him overboard. Heavy splash and a few drips and ripples extending in firelight.
Other misshapen lumps adhered to the wood, and Medea works at each of them, delivers this meal to the depths. Who knows what feeds below, some scent in darkness and the will to devour. She scrapes and pries until every last piece of her brother is gone, then she dips a length of linen into the sea and uses it to scrub at the deck, dips it again and again until the wood is almost smooth, wrings out the last of him and stands breathing hard in the night.
No movement, no sound, as if nothing lives beneath the surface and even the winds will never return. Still air, warm and without shape, her torch long since died out, gone mute. Only the smell of it and the smell of rot and the smell of the sea. The Argo as unmoving as land.
Medea goes forward and lies on deck just ahead of the mast, curls on her side to wait. Womb inside womb, the Argo, the sea, this night, and whatever encloses the night.
She wants to sleep, but too much is uncertain. Where her father is now, whether he will find them, where they will sail, what Iolcus will be, what Jason will be, what she will be. Pelias and the long succession of kings in every land. Her home that she’ll never see again, the mountains and rivers and temple to Hekate left empty.
The golden fleece stretched directly above her along the lower yard, shedding its gold onto her now, sifting through darkness like a sky fallen and falling still. Fleece that is nothing. Her father would have let them go if not for his son.
She did not need to kill her brother, perhaps. Difficult to know. We can never see the other path.
She’s awakened by shouts from shore, Jason and his drunkards. Th
ey want the small boat to ferry. She sits up and sees flame, all their torches lighting the trees above like a low sky that follows, pulsing. They stand at the edge of reflection in this narrow band between water and heavens, giants seen from far away but behaving like children, petulant cries. Smooth mirror and they could be caught here forever, but then Jason wades in, disrupting the surface, creating a wake and sinking until he’s only dark movement without feature.
Medea lies back down, last moments of rest before she’ll be trapped again on the stern. Sound of the small boat knocking against the side as Jason climbs in. Splashing and struggle, then calm sound of oars, regular and fading. The Argo rocking gently.
The men come aboard stinking of sweat and smoke, animal fat and wine. Stumbling and slow, lying in heaps on the deck, useless crew. She retreats behind the rudder posts to avoid being stepped on.
Torches everywhere. They may burn the ship down themselves, flames dangerously close to the lower yard and sail. Cursing as they haul meat and water and wine, all in an ugly mood. Demigod complaints.
Endless trips rowing back and forth, the small boat never going straight, slow arcs and corrections, and by the time they’ve finished and are pulling this boat onto the deck, the sky has paled and the sea become opaque light blue.
Flat calm, all waters extending as one, reaching all the way to Colchis and Iolcus and beyond, filling every hollow in the land and seeming to rise, a slow swelling. Their own ripples soft and fading. Medea could live on the sea. More alive than any forest.
Some thrill to setting out as they raise the anchor stone and take to the oars. A half crew only, the rest lying on deck, but some deep pleasure in gliding across that calm. Medea at the stern looking back toward the light. The smallest of wakes, no more than a seam, and small whirlpools evenly spaced to either side where each oar has dipped, silent vortices spinning themselves out and vanishing.