Bright Air Black

by David Vann

  A hundred voices at once, everyone rising from the ground. Terror in all, because all need to be ruled. It is not possible to live without a king. No one wants a moment like this, the world unordered. They would put a goat on the throne before they’d leave the throne empty.

  Jason light blue at dawn, the white dust of marble transformed. He looks like a god, cut from the air, emanating his own light. He raises his thick arms, shaped by the quarry, and finally there is only one other voice, Acastus, thin whining demanding the guards kill, but no voice of a king, and the guards wait, for now.

  My father was king, Jason says. Murdered by his brother after seeing his wife and younger son also murdered. Acastus is stained in that blood.

  And you are stained in my father’s blood, Acastus yells, murdered by your barbarian wife.

  Jason lets his arms fall and watches Medea. All have gone silent. The sky brightening, her grandfather climbing the far side of the world. Her fate will be decided now, she knows, and not by her. Very strange. She didn’t foresee this moment.

  True, Jason says for all to hear. Medea blames Peisidike, but we all know the daughters of Pelias must have been tricked. Medea worships Hekate, worships night and darkness. She cut her own brother into pieces and has murdered Pelias in the same way. This is my barbarian wife, covered in blood. If the people of Iolcus tell us to leave, we will leave.

  Voices everywhere, eruption like birds on an island, rookery without wings. These people just as stupid as birds, flaring up and veering as a group, settling again, then rising. Anyone could rule them, but she has restored true birthright, given the one destined to be king, and for this he has betrayed her. Father of her children, the man for whom she killed her own brother and left everything.

  Statue cut from stone, a man without blood, without pulse, without feeling. He stands watching her as the birds circle. Medea and Jason the only two still points, all else in motion. All will happen too quickly. All her work will be undone. And there’s nothing she can do, betrayed so completely.

  Acastus is gathering men, his father’s guards, surrounded by spear points. Jason only waits. Something in him not meant to rule. He willed this moment. He wants to be outcast.

  Sky white and burning, the sun nearly risen. Medea must go to her children. But she’s looking for Asteropeia, the only one true. Swallowed somewhere in this crowd. Voices rising, saying the name of Acastus, choosing slavery again. The comfort of spear and throne and all ordered as it was. She will never see Asteropeia again.

  Medea runs for her children, away from this crowd, through stone streets abandoned and foreign, city that could have been hers. She expects to find them killed, throats slit, left to bleed out in the dirt. If there is enough of Pelias in Acastus, this will have been done already.

  Hillside of hovels, home for years, endured for nothing, her life held in suspension, whipped and burned and wasted, and she knows she will find her children slaughtered but runs toward them anyway. Is there any choice?

  Homes like urns, not much larger, mud and stick. She weaves between them, slows as she comes close. No movement, no living being, no sound here. She stands before her cave hole and knows that all the kings in the world cut into pieces and cooked will not be enough to make up for this.

  There is no air to breathe. She kneels and crawls into darkness and reaches for bodies. Warm, still warm, and she feels movement, sobs as she feels each part of them, checks each arm and leg and head to find all intact and no blood. My babies, she says.

  We’re not supposed to talk, they tell her. We’re not supposed to move.

  Yes, she says. Hurry. And she pulls them from shadow as the first sun cuts through the olive grove on the slope above, turning each tiny leaf to pale gold. We have to run. Keep the sun at your back, and don’t stop.

  Down through other hovels, along dirt tracks away from the citadel, the world jolting, shaken, she pulls her small sons off their feet, drags until they run again, ignores their cries. She doesn’t look at them, only clamps down hard on thin arms. Thistle and all else that would tear and scratch grown along the path, not wide enough for three, her children screaming at her now, but she doesn’t care. They’ll survive a few scratches. She has gone beyond blood and breath and muscle, runs from some other source, untiring. The gods must feel this, the earth spread beneath and passing without effort, distance collapsed. She has grown taller, her limbs stretching, feet no longer touching ground, as weightless as shadow.

  5

  Nothing grows here without thorn or spike. Ground of stone white and red and black, veins raised up in endless small ridges crumbling, backs of beasts buried long ago, earth-giants looking downward. In the distance, combined, all somehow looks brown, broken mountains baked. All that grows keeps low, vines without green, pale discs burnt and still alive, catching at her sons as she drags them along. Even the tufts of yellow grass have spikes in their seeds.

  Every settlement ends this way, in wilderness abrupt and complete, place of wind and beast and the gods. No olive or fig or grape. But Acastus will follow.

  Looking over her shoulder as she runs, for spear and shield and dust, listening for feet. Hekate, she calls. Let every beast of rock and earth rise up in their path. Make us unfound. Lose us in a wasteland.

  She runs and runs toward nothing, her shadow slipping closer, shifting over that ground, shrinking. No longer any cries from her sons, stumbling weight she pulls along. No longer weightless herself but stiffening, legs rigid and painful, throat torn.

  If she stops, they’ll be killed, but finally her legs lock and she’s standing in place directly under the sun on earth white and blinding. She drops the arms of her sons, looks down to see her hands covered in blood. The skin just above their wrists torn and bleeding but not cut deep.

  They lie unmoving on the ground, curled inward like two seeds, but she can see them breathing hard.

  Shade, she says. We need trees. And water.

  Open raised valley between hills, no water in sight, but at the base of one hill, a cut of small pines. She pulls her sons to their feet, tells them to follow, staggers toward shade.

  Grove in a desert, receding, farther away than it looks, long twisting path through low scrub and rock, the earth never smooth, even the air thickening to slow them, but they do reach the trees and lie down in pine straw. Sun directly overhead, so they hide close to the trunks, burrowed in, and Medea watches the path from Iolcus.

  Ashen spears and shields, same in every land, all unthinking, blind power of men. She expects them to appear at any moment, unstoppable, without need of water or rest or reason except command. Medea has never had an army. She has always had to work alone. No less effective in killing a king, but still, what was it like for Hatshepsut, long ago, to command an army, thousands of men, and a navy? She built her ships on the Nile, then her men took them apart, piece by piece, and carried over the desert to reassemble at the sea and sail to the land of Punt. Ships as large as the Argo. What was it to know that power?

  Hatshepsut without children, without weakness. Wearing her beard, untouchable, and further back in time, closer to the gods and origins, but also alone.

  Medea keeps a hand on Aeson, her older son, named for Jason’s father. His face scratched now, thin red lines and the flesh swelling pink on either side. Hair uncut, slave unwashed, but that has ended. He looks like Jason, but unimaginably soft. She crawls closer to put her lips in the hollow between eye and nose, perfect hollow. Her first baby. Scent of him, still new. And when he’s grown into a man?

  Medea closes her eyes, keeps her lips against his skin, and falls closer and closer, her foot over her younger son, the three of them alone in oblivion. They won’t be taken from her, flesh of her flesh, the only kingdom she owns. She will lead them through wilderness, cross this desert, until they can find some new place to form new lives. Whether Jason will be there, she doesn’t know. Untrue, betrayer, no father or husband.

  When she wakes, the shadows have stretched back toward Io
lcus, air still and hot. Large grasshoppers like sentinels all around, rigid, waiting to be flung. Large dark eyes without centers, voids, bodies woven from grass, here now and then gone.

  No soldiers on the path, no traders or travelers, all empty beneath the sky. But Medea waits. They can’t outrun an army. They can only hide and spend the night here, and if tomorrow there is still no sign of Acastus or his men, she’ll know they’re safe.

  Acastus as king. She would like to return with her own army and scatter every stone of Iolcus until it looks no different from any other hillside and there is no sign left. She would erase even the memory of Pelias, and all his descendants. If not for Jason, she could have done that. Made slaves for six years, then he hands the throne to the son.

  He appears on the path far away as if summoned by her thoughts. Jason carrying twin sacks tied around his shoulders, hanging in front. Still dusted white. Bulked shadow, blight on the land, solitary traveler, and she considers not calling out to him. Her sons asleep. Hidden in this grove far to the side. She could watch him pass and never see him again. Is there anything that binds, anything left beyond history and obligation? Untrue heart that would leave her alone and feel nothing. He would let her pass and not call out. My barbarian wife, covered in blood. His words.

  So she would let him pass. But he’s walking heavily under those sacks. He’ll have food and water, and though she can do without, her sons cannot. Jason, she calls, and all other forms her life might have taken vanish. This moment locks her again into a future with him, and who can say what that will be?

  Aeson rouses from her yell, and Promachus, too. He should not have been named for Jason’s murdered younger brother. Nothing that has been done can be undone, and the gods should not be reminded.

  Jason stops, head alert, tries to gauge direction. Small and far away still, open flats curving upward into hills, shaped by some hand enormous, abandoned since. Very little green, few trees, all visible and exposed, but her voice hidden. He turns to one side then another, searching, and even now, if she doesn’t call again, some other life might still be hers.

  Aeson and Promachus too tired to rise for their father. But Medea, slave to these sons, calls Jason, stands and steps clear of the trees.

  No answering call, but he sees her. It will be the four of them now. This will be the first day they ever spend together. Life they might have had.

  Jason careful with the sacks when he arrives, bending and tilting to lay first one on the ground and then the other. His skin wet.

  Is Acastus following? Medea asks.

  No.

  Why not?

  He’s afraid of you. All will fear you, always, and we will never have lives.

  That fear was your chance. Do you think any king has ever ruled without fear?

  You know nothing about kings.

  Medea laughs. I know nothing about kings. Stupid barbarian, woman-animal.

  Jason doesn’t answer. He takes a goatskin from one of the sacks, tips back water, offers none to her.

  That city was mine, Medea says. You have taken away the city I won.

  Jason looks back toward Iolcus, away from her, mute. His arms streaked, small brown rivers removing the white silt of stone, his skin of the past six years washing away.

  You were a slave, Medea says. You would have been a slave the rest of your life, and your sons, too. All that you owe me is becoming too large. Brother, father, family, home, golden fleece, the Thracians who would have overtaken, the death of Pelias who made you a slave. Our sons, royal heirs to all the kingdoms you refuse. How will you repay?

  You have drowned everything in blood. Blood can be repaid in only one way. Your death will be a vengeance by all the gods greater than Hekate. They will scatter pieces of you to every corner of the world. They will do what you did to your brother and Pelias, but there will be a thousand pieces. And no one will mourn you.

  Medea smiles. What gods? Where is Poseidon? The great waves Pelias promised, to wash us all away. And Athena, builder and protector of nothing. You stole your ship from the Egyptians. Your gods are mewling wet things without eyes.

  Jason puts his hands over his ears. Enough.

  6

  Korinth. Jason says they are going to Korinth. The next city where he will not be king. Track that could be leading anywhere, night spent on the ground with snakes.

  Sky without cloud, without shelter. She and Jason and their sons mute and stumbling along until they fall from hills into a great long valley. Shadow along its hidden edge, long trough running toward the sea.

  This way, Jason says. Soaked in sweat, carrying the sacks of water and food. Kreon knows me, knew my father, knows generosity to friends. We’ll be welcome in his home.

  Maybe we can be slaves, Medea says.

  Jason continues down the path.

  I like being whipped, Medea says, and Aeson and Promachus are old enough now. Their hands can harden to any task.

  Valley that extends beyond sight, the world growing again. How many of these places exist without her?

  Sun falling, a day of exile ending. Feet blistered and raw, her sons limping. Strange peace. A light breeze in evening, the air cooling. It might be better if they never reach another city. The four of them only, wandering across the earth, walking farther each day until there is no speech or thought, only movement. This might be how she and Jason could know each other and no longer betray.

  They spend the night under oak trees near a dry stream-bed. Leaves like small hands blotted against a darkening sky. Lobed hands, silent, black on blue, a multitude. Her sons pushing in close. She lies on her back with her arms around them, their heads on her breasts. To spend the entire night together like this is a gift she had never imagined possible. To hear them breathe and feel their tugs and kicks in sleep, burrowing in deeper.

  Jason a shadow somewhere else on this ground, separate.

  Trees looming above thick like a second surface, and stars filling every gap, traces of a great golden fleece hung unreachable, known imperfectly from below. All that one could ever dream of is here. Body of Nute, without end.

  The next day, Jason ranges far ahead, even with the burden of his sacks. Valley floor, dry yellow grass, occasional oaks, and this lone figure bare under the sun receding. Something in him that would never stop but only keep walking, toward nowhere. Lost husband, lost father. Medea doesn’t know what would bring him back. Nothing in her, certainly.

  Empty world same as when it began, unchanged, without time. Medea and her two sons might be waiting a thousand years before Hatshepsut will be born. No sign, nothing to give reference.

  Aeson and Promachus, names used again, lives returned and repeated. Names that would take away more than they would give, her sons burdened by ancestors. She doesn’t know why she allowed this, but perhaps because she had no ancestors at all herself, beyond her father, and missed their weight. Some comfort in reaching back, some assurance, but these were unfinished lives, cut short, and won’t they demand something still?

  Shape of her sons’ lives unknown. Released now from slavery, begun again. Remnants of Aeetes, walking in a foreign land, and will they ever see Colchis? Is it possible to be from a place one has never seen?

  They walk this long valley for three days, staying away from settlements, avoiding all other humans. Medea has too much time to think of great Aeetes. Endless valley, sound of her own footsteps lost in the steps of these two sons, and she has spread his seed, serves him still. Heirs in another kingdom, his influence widening. How can she end all kings when she has carried them within her, betrayed by her own womb? Can any king ever be killed? Pelias, too, lives on through Acastus and so many daughters. His heirs will multiply. He will never be fully erased.

  Each night, though, she lies with Aeson and Promachus pulled close, pieces of her own body, and can’t imagine the world without them. As necessary as moon and sun and water, and not belonging to her father. Reclaimed in darkness, belonging only to her.

  Cyzicus
left no heirs. Does he remember the feel of Medea’s body on his, first embrace after death? Does he long for her? Shadows, each of us living in multiple forms. Medea’s body is with Jason wherever he lies on this ground, and with Cyzicus, and with her sons, and with Asteropeia, perhaps even Aeetes, and also alone. The gods will demand something too, each of us lying down with Nute each night, and Hekate’s arms reaching up from below.

  Valley in which one might wander forever, sealed away from Iolcus and Korinth. Small streams falling from dry mountains, bare trickles enough to refill the sacks of water. Jason hanging back to let them drink and eat, then walking ahead again, mute fragment of earth. Rejoining at night to sleep, gone at first light.

  Hills in the distance, hung before them unreachable, folds in the air. Without roots, no connection to the valley floor, lost somewhere in waves of heat. At the edge of where gods dive through land to keep it from dissolving into nothing, margins left imperfect, unformed. All hardening beneath Medea’s feet.

  Her younger son falling behind, so she carries him on her back, his mouth on her neck, wet as he loses himself in sleep. Weight of him slumped, hills gaining color, deepening into brown and even red, smooth slopes become sharp, outcrops of rock and the valley rising, tilting.

  They climb in shadow, Aeson before her, Promachus on her neck, leave the valley and find Jason in last light as if he were a remnant god, not yet fled.

  Your sons are still alive, she says.

  He has left the sacks on the ground, goatskins of water, the last of the food. Salted fish, dried meat, all that makes the tongue burn.

  We’re not far now, he says. Two or three days. Through these hills and another valley, shorter, and a few more hills.

  What will we eat?

  I’ll kill something, he says. Or we’ll just wait. It’s only two or three days. We have water.

  And who could want more than that?