by David Vann
Hills behind outlined and gaining weight, hills that will never be seen again, every voyage a constant receding of anything familiar, and this is at least half the pleasure. Not only what will be but also the leaving behind of all that was.
If she had been allowed, if women had been allowed, she would have been a sailor. By now she would have visited Egypt and every other land. Purest form of freedom.
Low song from the men as they row, because they’re still drunk. Moving easily at the oars, second nature. Some with their eyes closed. Wearing odd bits of animal hides given to them, bracelets of bronze. Like priests at a temple, bending and moaning and bending again, hunching in unison to a quieter god, transported over the surface as if all waters were made for this.
There must be at least one god not filled with rage. Medea closes her eyes and tries to remember, but every image, every name that comes is feared. She hasn’t understood this until now, that rage is god, every weather god, every elemental, all that rise from the earth, all that come from death, all with a will to destroy. Worship a form of fear and perhaps nothing more, but how can that be?
She tries to imagine the quiet god, the god unfeared, without rage, who will not destroy. The god who does not demand to be obeyed, who threatens nothing, some god who would have all sleep and eat and glide across calm water and be content, but this erases all human form. This god would have to take the form of a tree, or grass, or some flower, something without voice or thought or will. Rage that inescapable and human.
21
The Argo slips toward the strait at Ilium, where her father could be waiting. No other boats or sign of people along the shore, no wind, and so it seems the world might be new, not yet populated, the winds not yet begun. The one god of peace not yet given birth to lesser gods who would stir the air and lash the seas and tear up the earth, not yet released havoc.
Argonauts hunched at the oars half sleeping, throwing off animal hides as the air heats. The sky cleared, clouds gone, and a faint breeze begins. Water etched in dark patterns, the mirror gone.
A small fishing boat, and another, and all is slowly built. Huts along the shore, ripples on the water, more men at the oars, Jason looking at the sail, considering. Medea looks everywhere for her father, feels always that he must be near.
A large island ahead on the right, narrow passage between it and shore, and several small protected bays, coves perfect for hiding a ship. Jason alert, and his men, also, looking over their shoulders now.
The wind rising, small waves, and they would use the sail if the passage ahead weren’t so narrow. Trapped and funneled toward whatever awaits.
Jason climbs the yards, stands just above the golden fleece, holding onto the mast. The ship swaying. He’s searching for the mast of her father’s ship, a slim dark line that might be waiting in any cove. Young and muscled and false, not to be trusted, but he is beautiful and he is all she has.
No one looks at her. Not Jason or any of his men. Since they’ve come on board, not even a glance. She inhabits some vacant place in the air. Each man at the oars somehow managing to never look straight ahead as he rows. A strange art to this, drawn to deck and water and sky and nowhere.
So she opens the deck, crawls below and decides she doesn’t care whether her father is waiting along this coast. The hold filled with wine and water and meat and several new fishing nets. She has to push her way through in narrow bands of light from the seams above to reach the rudder posts and the rope coiled there, her bed. The only safe place. She falls easily into sleep, wakes at the sound of the anchor line running over the side, falls asleep again and wakes in the night.
Gentle rocking of the hull, and she waits and listens but hears nothing except the soft creaking of wood and rope. She crawls in darkness through spaces too narrow, panicking a bit, pushing at deck overhead that won’t open, buried. She thinks for a moment the crew could have placed a weight on the hatch to keep her trapped, but then she finds the piece of deck that lifts free.
Released, she stands in that night the only soul awake. They’ve posted no sentry. All sleeping and hoping to be killed. Small cove, a light breeze, the Argo hung at anchor. Protected cove in a protected channel. Darkness of the land, a deeper shadow surrounding.
The Argo too small. She strips and goes over the side, into cool water, swims toward the front of the ship and past its anchor line and keeps going into the channel. Away from land. She doesn’t know how deep it might be here, or what might be waiting below, and this is what she wants, to hang at the top of the world as larger creatures pass beneath, great behemoths that live always in darkness, because she has this same feeling on land, that something always is working below us, movement unseen and waiting, enormity that cannot be known or controlled. Some relief in challenging this directly, waiting here to see whether she’ll be devoured. Eyes covered in white, opaque, teeth curled, breathing water and cold and knowing, somehow, exactly where she is. She does believe that everything below knows she is here.
Medea lies back in the water, floating suspended, looking up into stars. No moon, and this thick, heavy braid across the sky, a kind of cloud more distant, made of pinpoints of light too numerous to be counted. Impossible to reach, impossible to explain, how they hang there, why they give off no heat, how they move or don’t move, how large they might be.
Her arms in the water giving off no correspondent light, no longer any stars below, an occasional hint and nothing more, and this too is impossible to explain, why the liquid stars can be found one time and not another.
What she knows is only that the sea at night is the truest of temples, where all is offered. The Argo no longer close. No safety. She swims farther away, midchannel, hangs suspended over all that can be imagined and cannot be imagined. She offers herself, to be devoured or saved, and all is borrowed. The heat in her body fading, the effort to stay afloat, the precious air. Temple where none can remain.
Her temple to Hekate on land was nothing, she sees now. She might have fallen asleep there one night, slept for years and awakened to find nothing changed. Simple stone, cold and unreachable. She could have shat on the floor and scattered every fire and thrown wine and all would still have been mute. The blood of animals wasted. Only here in the sea is something wagered. Here she offers everything and everything can be taken and nothing remains the same. Every wave and ripple new, every movement below, and blood offered now would bring every tooth near. Blood offered now could not be survived.
Hekate, Medea says. Hekate no less than this sea and all that connects to this sea, and the night above. I’m sorry I thought you smaller. I never will again, and there will be no temple, only coming to you in the night like this.
Heat fading, legs kicking below, arms become tired. Medea remains as long as she can, looking up into that thick braid, but finally swims back toward the Argo. A shadow lost against shadows beyond, but she knows where it will be, and as she comes close, its bow rises against the stars.
Sleeping crew, all unaware, resting on this thin curve of wood. Exhausted and spent and surrendered, and where her father has gone, none can say. Difficult to believe he exists. Some phantom fear, fabricated.
Medea pulls herself up the ropes over the side and stands naked on deck, her skin tight and cold. Drapes linen warm but dirty, smelling of too long on this boat and also of fires on shore. Living like an animal here. How long until they reach Iolcus? She wraps herself and lies in the burial place on the stern, looks up at stars until her eyes close and she’s gone again.
22
A following sea and the sail raised, perfect breeze, some sign of favor. They clear the islands with no sign of her father, enter open water again but the shores narrow ahead, funneling toward the second strait, last place he could be waiting.
Brown linen sail curved and straining, rippling then taut again, capable of infinite shapes. Hunching to one side and then another, revealing the air. Medea feeling some similar tug, lying on deck and staring until there is only the sai
l and the sky and no longer any feeling of a ship or the sea. Pulled upward and she can’t say which is closer: the sail might be recessed far away, the sky nearer. It flows off the edges and falls closer but never reaches her, endless movement which is no movement at all.
The sail no inanimate thing. Terrible in high wind, rigid and merciless and powerful beyond imagining, a thing of fear and will. But even now, in lighter winds, filled with desire, a restlessness, capable even of regret and sorrow, falling along an edge, hunching down, refilling but not entirely, some cost to the past. Only in no air, when it hangs fully slack, does it seem like linen. At all other times, this is impossible to believe.
The sail not a god itself but only the tracing of a god, a more responsive form of temple. Like fire to reveal Hekate. How can we know when we’re worshipping a god and when we’re worshipping only the sign of a god? Wind itself a sign of something else, and even fire, and what hides behind them? The world built in too many layers, a suffocation, all gone mute, sources lost. All we can worship are shadows.
The shores remain far away, low mountains with patches of brown, becoming drier. She’s heard that all will be drier in the next sea, Helios somehow closer in his passing. And she’s heard this strait is very long and pinches close at Ilium, but the shores are so far apart now it’s hard to believe it’s a strait at all. It looks only like a sea.
Sound of the wake, rudders in a stream, and waves building, the upwind blade rising free and plunging again, eager, like some fish made of wood, narrow headed and tireless. Whorls of air caught, twisting like strands of web. Surface flattened and smoothed by the hull, water brightened, aerated, the sound of it a thousand sounds at once, the air become liquid as liquid becomes air.
Argonauts resting behind her uninterested, never looking over the side but only at land in the distance, oars shipped, letting the sail work. Thinking of going ashore and drinking wine, waiting only for wine, so why come on this venture at all? Why not stay at home in a pile and pass out?
Fame, probably, each dreaming of his name sung forever, not realizing no one can remember even four generations back. Almost everyone erased within three generations. Jason may be remembered, but not his men. The list of his crew will never be certain. Demigods in their own lifetimes only, then misremembered shadows, misshapen, then forgotten entirely. Nothing, as if they had never been born. Or worse, become only a name, with nothing left attached.
Floating over these waves unnoticed, unrecognized, insignificant. Jason far away at the bow, resting there, looking back at her, thinking what? He chose her, and she chose him, unthinking, in an instant. Some tie they can’t see that binds them nonetheless.
Medea walks forward, every sailor moving away slightly as she passes, walks beneath the fleece that bows out like the sail and still shimmers, not yet lost all its gold, and stands before Jason.
Are you finished pushing me into the dirt? she asks.
Yes.
His face sincere, no king but only a boy. She sits on deck and leans back against him. His arms around her, and she closes her eyes and does not feel alone. So much must be ignored and erased for her to be here, but she’s willing to do this: some basic animal need, to be held, to spend each night and even the day next to another body. She knows the sailors are watching, knows they think her weaker now, the stories no longer only of fear, but there will still be fear enough.
Held, surrounded, by Jason and the Argo and the sea, listening to the sail and water for the rest of that long day, remembering her younger sister Chalciope and how they lay together most nights for years, as natural as breathing, yet became two different people entirely. Chalciope more foreign to Medea than these Argonauts. Familiar in every way, of course, in her habits and body. The weight of her arm across Medea’s back, scent of her hair. But what Chalciope thought or felt Medea was never able to guess, and Chalciope would never tell. When she was old enough, she lay with their father. Suddenly gone, never to spend another night with Medea again, and never to utter a word of what happened. Content and mute and blank, as difficult to reach as the sky. Always at the side of her father, inseparable. He may have returned to her now. That could be why there is no sign of his ship. Tired of a pointless chase and returning to his other daughter’s bed. But Medea doesn’t really believe this. Nothing will make him stop.
When evening comes, they rise and look carefully at the land now closer on both sides, narrowing. Low hills abandoned at first, the sun buried beyond, then a few fires appearing. Long channel. It seems the Argonauts do not plan to anchor or go ashore.
Ilium, Jason says. Your father could be at Ilium or could have sent riders.
They will sail or row through the night, dangerous. If the channel bends, will they know?
Entering another strange river without fall, another current without source, sped along by something unseen. The wind dying, sail collapsing. Filling again but without power, then curling and hanging uncertain until the men lower the yard.
Returning to the oars as the last light in the sky fades, the water ahead holding that light, a final mirror, deep blue. Jason and the helmsmen lining up in the middle of the wide channel hoping it remains wide, trying to memorize the shore.
Some crossing into another world, to row blind into darkness and steer without reference. Shape of a life. Riding a current unknown.
Outline of Argonauts even when all light is gone, a sense of shadow moving in unison at the oars. Shore passing invisibly, stars appeared above but without light, too far away. Medea on the stern again, behind the helmsmen and Jason, and when she blinks, every shadow relocates, the mass of oarsmen mutable.
They could be passing her father’s ship right now and he wouldn’t know. A good plan. She hopes the night will hold until they’ve entered that larger sea.
Small fires appear along the shore on the left, though none can say for certain where the margin lies. The fires could be far back from the water. Too small to illuminate anything surrounding, and no sense of distance.
The shore on the right without fire or settlement, lost in the black. They could crash into land at any moment, wood breaking on rocks.
They row for hours, long wide channel endless, passage through Nute, and it seems possible the day might never come again. Swallowed and no rebirth, held in this night. Stars above embedded in her flesh, lit only to remind that all is enclosed, that there is a roof to the world. One vein in a body larger than imagining, lost in the vastness of this small nowhere.
Nute, Medea says. Largest god, final and first.
Jason and his men unaware of passing through Nute, unaware there may be no rebirth, that night may extend forever and this channel never end.
Fires more numerous, and these, too, like the stars above, must be embedded along the margins to show passage, a gift from Nute. Darkness unmarked would be too much. Fires even along the darker shore.
Ilium in doubt only before it’s been seen. Vast glow and flames beyond counting. This vein bending to the left, narrowing, seeming almost to end, pinched close and so brightly lit even in the middle of night. Other ships moored along the edge.
Jason speaking softly but pushing his men to row faster, to keep steerage as the current strengthens, a kind of river even faster than the one from her father’s sea. The Argo sliding sideways, then straight, then drifting again. Argonauts visible now in glimpses, faces lit by the glow. The water made of pale gold.
Stone walls lit by torch, a large citadel well defended. Encampments extending to every hill beyond, not as large as Hattusa but larger than her father’s city. Controlling this passage between seas, gateway where the land hooks, the channel bent and narrowed.
Medea is sure they will be stopped by other ships. They reach the bend and row furiously, current sweeping them sideways. Jason encouraging his men.
City of stone among outcrops of rock the same color. Formed rather than built, emerged from the earth long before any human hands could have shaped it, mythic city raised by giants or ev
en earlier. It may appear only in torchlight, at night. It may wink out and disappear during the day, then grow again out of darkness.
Spearmen standing along the walls unmoving, thin sentinels not yet awakened, the Argo insignificant, not recognized as a threat, drifting along out of control, oars reaching into water with little hold.
No pursuers. The city passing lit and impossible, receding quickly, already becoming rumor. The shores ahead with few fires, the channel straightening again, and their passage through Nute continues.
23
There is a time when nothing is in sight, when there are no fires and no shore and even the stars have vanished behind cloud. Rowing into absolute black without belief, waiting for rocks to tear the hull.
Each man alone, and Medea. No instructions to the helmsmen. They plot their own course out of nothing, try not to plot any course at all but only let the rudders run, some earlier belief that a blade of wood in water will find its way, eager for the open sea.
Medea can’t see Jason, doesn’t know whether he has joined the oarsmen or is on the bow looking ahead into the void for some sign, or standing on the yards.
Every sound close, magnified. Each oar dropping into water, creaking of wood and line, breathing of the men, the stream broken by each rudder. Medea strains to hear sounds beyond this, sounds to indicate larger shapes of water and land, but the rest of the world is silent. They can hear only themselves, Argo and the Argonauts and Medea in an oblivion.
The ship rolling just slightly, and no way of knowing whether they’ve come upright. No reference. The passages in Nute unmarked. Bends and turns unrecorded, unnoticed. Passing of all souls, each alone yet riding this same current, passing the same landmarks unseen.