by David Vann
Pelias sits and takes a drink of wine, returns to eating. Some momentary disbelief in his guests, but then they rise and, seeing the sun low, begin to run. Great warriors in full flight, demigod kings not looking back, unsteady from the drink. Only the fisherman gives a backward glance at Medea. Then all are vanished down the steps.
Iolcans all waiting, no one moving. Only Pelias eats. Slow fall of the sun, sound of his chewing close beside Medea. She doesn’t dare look at him.
Fishing boats appearing in the bay, small at this distance, rowing quickly in shadow, unable to know when the sun will touch, fanning out over the waters, scattering to many lands. Rushing to tell the tale of how they fled from Pelias after running his errands.
The sun darkening, wavering as it falls, and all are watching when it first touches. Pelias raises his arm and his guards at the stairs fall away from sight.
Acastus, Pelias says, loud for all to hear. My son. He places his hand on the shoulder of his son sitting beside him, young Argonaut, the only of the Argonauts remaining. Medea hadn’t noticed him during the voyage, hadn’t known he was the son of Pelias. Thin face, dark but not pitted like his father’s. Tell us all, did the Argonauts intend to help Jason take my throne?
Yes.
And is this fleece the golden fleece?
No.
Iolcans, Pelias says. Jason and Medea came here to deceive and destroy. They would make us all slaves. They brought an army from every land around. So what do we do with them now?
He waits, but of course no one speaks.
Acastus will be your king one day, when I am gone. Perhaps we should ask him.
Acastus stands, thin youth unlike a king, quiet in every gesture as if to compensate for his father. Medea is a priestess, he says, in his faint voice. Priestess of Hekate and of the Egyptian goddess Nute. She can fly and travel beneath the sea. Her voice can come from any direction, and she can see into another world and bend this world that we know. She is aided by a scorpion and by some other creature I cannot name, something from deep in the earth. She can also bring wind, and raise the seas. So we should cut out her tongue and her eyes and chop off her feet and hands and keep her in a room of stone, away from the ground and without any windows, unable to touch the wind or the sea or the night. We have to be careful not to touch her blood. I think she is something left over from an earlier time.
Pelias laughs. Sit, Acastus, sit. Only a boy. Medea is nothing. Pelias rises and grabs Medea by the hair, pulls her up and yanks her head back. Call on Hekate now, Medea. Call on her, bring your hellhounds, bend the world, raise the seas. Do something.
Her hair being ripped from her scalp, slow tearing, head yanked so far back she can’t speak. She tries only to breathe.
No, we will not cut out her tongue and eyes and lock her away as something to be feared. She is nothing, and so she will be a slave. A simple house slave to my daughters and nothing more, and we will forget her.
Pelias lets go, and Medea is faint from the pain and lack of breath. Jason reaches for her, helps her to sit.
Jason will be a slave too, forgotten along with his father and brother and mother. I already can’t remember them clearly. Did his father drink bull’s blood or some other poison? Did Promachus drink also, or did I simply bash his head against the stone floor over and over? I can’t remember. Did his mother flee to Chiron, or did she hang herself? These people are so small it’s just impossible to remember what happened to them.
Pelias’ daughters smiling. Several Medea’s age, several much younger, still children. Shy in their viciousness but Medea is sure they will be like their father. Jason, if he were stronger, might rise now and claim his throne, rightful heir. He might demand vengeance for the murder of his father and brother, for the murder or banishment of his mother. He might make all Iolcans rise up against a tyrant with no legitimate claim to power. But the people of Iolcus do seem beaten and pliant, and what Pelias has said about the fleece is true for all to see, and the Argonauts are gone, scattered in fear. Medea does see that if Jason tried now he would only be killed.
She feels a need to protect him, strange feeling. As if she were his mother. He looks young and lost and without hope.
Take that ridiculous mantle off him, Pelias says, and dress them both as slaves. Take them now.
Guards unbuckle the purple-edged mantle and let it fall to the ground with all its unintelligible tales, pull Jason and Medea away along the edge of the terrace toward those stone stairs, Iolcans watching. Some of them smiling. Medea may have to destroy them all, not only their tyrant king.
28
Hovel of mud and sticks, rounded, just large enough to lie down, some human imitation of a hole or den, shelter from sun and night and nothing more. Pine straw for a bed. Rough clothing woven of goat hair, smelling of smoke and sweat and urine.
They spend the night stunned, without speaking, lying side by side, Jason’s feet and head reaching the walls. Medea staring into a future transformed entirely. Her mind won’t extend. It keeps stopping, can’t imagine beyond these walls, can’t imagine beyond this night. Tomorrow something that can’t be reached or prefigured or believed. Medea destroyer of kings. Where is Medea now? Jason closer than ever before and still unknown.
No sky, no stars except through one small hole for smoke, for some fire imagined that can never happen. No room to sit beside it, and the entire hut would ignite. This land burning anyway, exposed, the sun close and no shade, all trees stripped away. A hundred similar huts on all sides of them, connected by dirt and shit.
The earth beneath her solid, unmoving, air close and heavy, everything slowing, a kind of burial. And how many years to be buried alive before being buried below? How many days? Time most frightening of all.
In the morning they are kicked awake and dragged by guards into the stone street before the citadel. Hot sun, hot stone. Pelias descending the wide steps from his terrace above, wearing the hide of a bull, two attendants behind carrying the great horns, yellowed bone heavy and smooth and curled and cruel even beyond death.
Pelias never known, always changing shape, born and reborn from somewhere beyond those massive stones. Spearmen always on every side, all alike and hidden behind helmets, become something other than human.
A crowd gathered, everyone pressing closer to see, and Jason and Medea at the center, held in place.
Iolcans, Pelias says, raising one arm. Jason and Medea would like to be married, so I have come to join them. Slaves who may not be parted.
His men bring heavy wet rope from the Argo, and Medea is pressed close against Jason, embracing him as the rope is wound from their calves upward, pulled tight with each turn, digging in. The two of them crushed against each other barely able to breathe.
The last tie cinched around her head, pressing her face into his neck. Some pose of affection enforced. Medea sucking a bit of air from the side of her mouth.
Pelias’ men step away, she and Jason left to stand on their own in the sun.
I have welcomed my nephew home, Pelias says, and his young wife. I wish them every happiness.
Sandals on stone as he leaves with all his men, and the sounds of the crowd around them, the sun hotter and hotter, without mercy. Sweat from Jason’s neck running into her eyes, stinging. She can’t see or breathe.
The two of them a great weight up high being pulled off center, their legs farther and farther away below, shrinking, a base diminishing. Moments of laughter from the crowd, but most have left before long, only the stones remaining, a hundred smaller suns to match her grandfather above, able finally to punish, hanging directly overhead and pulling back the reins, holding in place, letting all burn.
All the same man: Helios, Aeetes, Pelias. Relentless, unforgiving, erasing all else, and this erasure must be fought. Medea will not fall. She wills herself and Jason upright, swinging above these burning stones, hands and arms and feet going numb, losing circulation. The ropes, tied wet, cinch tighter now as they dry. Practiced cruelty, tortur
e. Her body and Jason’s ground together, bone against bone. Creaking of lines around them, moored to the empty air. Feet becoming stumps, tiny spikes of feeling in otherwise dead slabs.
Jason’s ribs sharpened. Knees become spears. Embrace of death, all set on fire until the world is without orientation. There is no sky, no ground, only burning. They are set free for a moment, weightless, the pain gone from her feet, then they hit stone so hard any last breath collapses. She has gone quiet inside, trying to recede and feel nothing, and she imagines the head of Promachus, Jason’s young brother, smashed against these same stones over and over by Pelias, cannot understand the utter disregard for flesh. Only men can do this. Only men can treat flesh as nothing. And only men could have invented the idea of a king. Iolcans around them, but no one helps, held back by one man given the power of a god. All that would make them human given over and forgotten, no limit to what they will allow. Her arm searing against hot stone, no different from the meat of any goat or lamb. She and Jason have crossed over. They are no better than animals now.
Jason somehow is able to roll them sideways, her shoulder blade crushed. She feels the panic all through her, final struggle same as any animal or insect before annihilation, but then he rocks back harder the other way and she is lifted free. She rests on top of him, no longer against stone, no longer crushed or seared, and he has sacrificed. This is what breaks her, makes her weep though she can hardly breathe or move. Not the cruelty, but the kindness. Jason become real.
29
They are not cut free until the sun goes down. Knives tearing, and Medea wouldn’t know if these were her limbs being severed. All numb and gone. She is barely conscious. No water. Drifting through the air. All day she has tried to remain awake so that Jason will not die. Some belief based on nothing, that if she doesn’t sleep he will still be alive. At first she spoke to him, said his name, told him she loved him, told him not to die. Later she could only think these words, could no longer speak, but his chest still rose beneath her with every breath, slow and reassuring.
Impossible day, and impossible it could end. Separated, rolled onto stone still hot, looking upward into blue fading sky and closing her eyes again. Sound of Iolcans around them, many in the street, and someone props her up, pours water into her mouth. Shock of it, cool spread throughout her entire body. She opens her eyes to see Jason given water also, lies back down and sleeps.
When she wakes in darkness, no torch remains lit, only the moon. Stars washed out. The city turned to milk, stone smooth and cool and white. A world transformed, and no cruelty seems possible. All so still and soft. She’s able to move her arms and legs, stiff and sore and weak but intact. She edges closer to Jason, puts her arm over his chest.
Jason, she says.
He has remained on his back, unmoved since morning, but she feels his hand on her arm. This won’t last, he says. I promise.
Why did your father let your uncle do this?
He loved Pelias. And now everyone is gone. Father, mother, brother. I should have been here. The fleece was my idea. Pelias asked what I would do if I met the man who would destroy me. I said I would send him after the golden fleece.
So he believes you’ll destroy him.
Yes.
Medea watches the moon, familiar and unknowable. All pattern clear and unseen. The story of Pelias and Jason. The story of Medea and anyone else: her brother Apsyrtus, Aeetes, Pelias, Jason, even Acastus. What shape, and when, all of us walking into traps set by ourselves and unremembered.
You have to promise me one thing, Medea says.
Yes.
That whatever happens, we won’t be turned against each other.
How could that ever happen? he asks.
Just promise. For a time when all has slipped and become strange, even then.
I promise.
First love, Medea says. Only love. Pelias would make our wedding monstrous, but he has only made a stronger wedding. We were bound and nearly killed.
Wife, Jason says.
Until death.
Until death, he says.
30
Jason returning each day in darkness. White ghost covered in the dust of stone, curls of his hair the color of milk, some creature born of night and silence and dimly shining, faint replica of her husband lying down to hold her in his arms and then gone. Minutes each day left to them and nothing more. His arm heavy, grown larger quarrying to build more monuments to Pelias. Welts everywhere from whips, on his back and arms and legs and chest. He will do this unnumbered days until his body is old and broken, then they will lay him inside a wall, let him become one of these stones.
Medea rising early with him, in darkness still. No daylight is theirs, all light given over. Slavery a walking sleep, and Medea the lowest of the slaves. She is to serve the daughters of Pelias, but she will never see these daughters. She removes their shit and piss and blood, washes their clothing and pottery, sees every sign of their existence, every leaving, feels its texture in her fingers, smells each of them, knows their scent and health and moods, all without direct visitation, and so in her mind each of them takes on a shape and character, not unlike a god.
Alcestis of every scent from every land, cinnamon and musk and oils Medea cannot recognize, searching always for something behind these fainter and constant that could be called Alcestis, some breath or other trace, and Medea knows she discovered this already from the first moment but somehow can never remember it or give it shape. Polluted by every stronger scent in layer after layer. Suitors are being brought to her, endless suitors, and all that she has worn is enough for a hundred women, finest linen and smoother, lighter cloth Medea has never known, every pattern and color. Most is from Egypt. Without Egypt, every land would remain in barbarity. Every figure made in clay by an Iolcan or Mycenaean or Korinthian is Egyptian, every pattern drawn, the cut of each cloth, until Medea wonders whether there is anything at all that can be called Iolcan.
Alcestis most elusive of gods, not wanting a husband, able to wait centuries. Never able to say no but never saying yes. Becoming nothing, and so every man must want her. She will never contradict any idea of her. She is without limit. She has found some other world to dwell in and no longer feels the roughness of this one, and Medea must find this also. Each moment of slavery become nothing.
Medea is beaten every few days, whether she does her work or not. At first, she worked harder, or refused to work, but now she understands why she is beaten, because the hand holding the stick or the leather strap is also the hand of a slave. Pleasure and self-hate and a refusal impossible marked by each sting, recorded.
What she returns to is scent, buries herself in what has been soiled and discarded, thrilled most by Amphinome and Evadne. Old enough almost for suitors, waiting their turn, impatient, tearing at garments, spilling and breaking.
The younger daughters impossible to separate. Peisidike, Pelopia, Hippothoe, Antinoe, Antiope, Asteropeia. Grimy play, reckless, dirt and leaves without perfumes or oils, but at least two of them are almost the age of Amphinome and Evadne, larger clothing, the beginning of scent, and Medea doesn’t know who these two might be. No one will speak with her. Outcast among slaves, priestess of darkness feared and hated and beaten, foreign barbarian.
Some agreement among slaves and guards, everyone waiting for her to break and then what? What do they believe will be revealed? What do they think she could possibly be hiding? Nute and Hekate far away. Jason knows there is no scorpion in his chest. She has lost all power.
Her only reprieve the sea. Washing clothing at the shore, left alone, burning sun but when it falls beyond the hill all is softened. Gentle surge of waves over her feet. White rock cooled by wet cloth, darker rock below, sea urchins in every hollow. Fish banded yellow and blue, smaller fish like white mottled toads, pairs of eyes and all else camouflaged. Hiding, same as Medea.
She is called from her washing one evening, hurried up to the citadel. Brought to a bedroom large and lavish, walls painted like p
ottery, thin black figures everywhere against white. Woven cloth hanging, stone arranged in pattern on the floor. Two of Pelias’ daughters waiting with whips in their hands, and Medea is left alone with them.
You are Medea, the older one says.
Yes.
I am Evadne.
I know you, Medea says. Hating your sister Alcestis, waiting for her to leave, wanting a man. So desperate you would take any man. I can smell the stink of it in everything you wear.
Evadne fat from sloth, hair oiled black. Lie down on the floor. On your back. No clothing.
Medea strips, watching the other sister, years younger, still a child. What is your name? she asks.
Asteropeia.
Beautiful Asteropeia, Medea says. You fear Evadne, and you should fear her.
Now, slave, Evadne says.
Medea walks to the center of the room and lies down.
Hands over your head, Evadne says, and now Medea is exposed, lying naked on stone, stretched out, her belly and breasts bare.
Evadne steps close, caresses Medea with the end of the leather strap, the lightest touch, watching the leather brush over skin.
I will tell you a secret, Medea says. You will be the only ones to know. Not even Jason knows.
Evadne’s hand stops, the strap resting against Medea’s belly. Tell.
I am pregnant, Medea says.
You lie.
I am the priestess of Hekate and Nute. Nute who swallows the sun each night and gives birth to each day. Ancient god, Egyptian god. Hekate who rules all that lives in the night. And if you kill this child, you will never have your own child. One month when you bleed, the blood will not stop until you die.
Evadne’s arm quick as a snake, the whip invisible, sudden pain across Medea’s bare breasts. Medea curls and howls and sucks at the air. Pain like flame, pulse and rise and heat discovered from nothing, unbearable and then stronger still.