Snakehead

by Ann Halam

  “Leave this place!” he howled. “He has the Medusa! The king is stone. Leave this place!”

  I dropped him. There was panic all around. The gates were open when we reached them; we left the High Place unopposed, the crowd of soldiers parting and fleeing from us. We ran until we reached the ruins of the old shrine and the top of the white steps that led to the cemetery and Seatown. We were alone by then.

  All the world felt strange. We turned and looked back. There was a tightness in the air like coming thunder, but it was the eleventh month, not summer. “Hey,” said Palikari slowly. “It may be because of the Medusa, but this feels like—”

  He’d hardly spoken when the first tremor struck.

  * * *

  There were more tremors that night, followed by a violent rainstorm. It wasn’t earthquake season; maybe we’d triggered them somehow by using the Medusa Head. Or maybe not. In Seatown everybody had been sure the Medusa was to blame when the ground started shaking. But there was no damage down there, except for some mild flooding caused by the rain.

  Days later a party of us went to see what had happened to the High Place. We found it deserted. The encircling wall was down, and some of the buildings, including the king’s house. There were no bodies in the open, either stone or flesh. We did not touch the rubble of the banqueting hall. We made a winter offering of wine and bread in the ruined shrine, and came away.

  Andromeda and I were married at the full moon of the twelfth month. Everyone had moved out of the Enclosure by then. Papa Dicty’s hidden army had come down from the hills, and the people were reclaiming Seatown, though rebuilding would have to wait until spring. Anthe was still in the hospital, but she was going to be allowed up for the ceremony. The night before the wedding the women and girls took Andromeda back to Great Mother’s Enclosure, and they spent the night there, doing important ritual things of the kind that will give you a cracking hangover.

  Or so I’ve been told, by girls with no respect for holy secrecy.

  I was up all night at Papa Dicty’s. I didn’t get very drunk, because I wanted to have a clear head for the wedding. I was getting scared. I thought I would not be able to face her if I wasn’t in complete control. About four in the morning I sat with the boss by the hearth, a cozy refuge we were sharing with Taki the shipping magnate. Brébré the ferret was on my knee. Other members of the men’s party were comatose on the benches, on the floor and, in one case, flat out on a table.

  “D’you remember,” said my good master, “before you left on the Medusa Challenge, I said I wished I could be king of Serifos, and make you my heir?”

  “Yes. And now you are the king.”

  Our dining room had not recovered from the war with Polydectes. There was broken woodwork, scarred plaster. The carved beams above the bar were charred, the walls were black with smoke and daubed with stains we couldn’t get out, and the murals had suffered badly: only fragments of the court ladies survived, ghosts of a past that would not return. The boss looked at them and smiled ruefully.

  “Hmm, maybe. But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Perseus. You are the son of Zeus, your mother is the Argolide princess. And what can I say about Andromeda? A young woman of astounding worth and truly remarkable talents. You both belong in a bigger world than this little island, and the Mainland is the place to be these days. Do you realize you’re already the heir of a kingdom up there?”

  I looked into my wine, feeling torn in two. I loved Serifos. But once you’ve traveled, and mixed in great affairs, you change. You want to do something.

  “Moumi would hate to go back, and I couldn’t go without her.”

  “I’m not sure about that. Your mother is a proud woman, and she’s Achaean to the bone. Deep in her heart I think Danae would love to go back to Argos in triumph. To be the one who changes the customs that allowed her to be treated that way.”

  I kept on looking at my wine. I could feel him watching me, smiling … letting me go. He knew my mind, better than I knew it myself. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. He patted my shoulder. “Time enough. Just think about it.”

  “What about you?” I asked, glad to change the subject. “Will you build a palace for yourself in Seatown? You can’t rule Serifos and run a taverna.”

  “Ah.” He grinned. “Now that’s another thing…. Frankly, I don’t want to give up Dicty’s. I’ve been thinking, maybe we’ll do without having a king for a while. We’ll need some kind of Militia, but we’ve proved we don’t need a king for that. We’ll need to get together and make decisions about public affairs, but we know how to do that without a king.”

  I’d heard about this new idea. Our matriarchs were very pleased with it. They didn’t see it as having no king, however. They said, Of course, when Papa Dicty is king, he’ll involve us in his business, as is proper. I laughed and shook my head.

  “You’re going to spend your entire life in the Town Meeting, boss.”

  “Well, well. We’ll see.” He got to his feet carefully, stretched his back and rearranged Taki, who was snoring alarmingly loudly. The shipping magnate muttered something like Cuddle up, Rosey … and snuggled contentedly into his corner. “Put the lamps out, Perseus, if there are any still alight. I’m off to bed.”

  The gates of the Enclosure were decked in winter garlands: olive and bay; laurel and myrtle with their bright berries. There were flowers everywhere inside, woven into garlands and strung to and fro overhead: creamy hellebore and shell-pink daphne, hothouse violets, winter crocus, white starry spikes of asphodel. Scented braziers were doing their best to subdue the winter chill. I thought of Palikari and Anthe’s wedding, which would be in the spring; but I didn’t envy them. This was our day, these were our garlands, everything was right.

  The men led me to the bathing place, being as cheerful and loud as their hangovers would allow, and left me at the door. Then it was Holy Mother again, with her hot oil, hot water and the bronze scraper. It was freezing in that cave. I was surprised there wasn’t ice on the cold douche. I stepped out, wrapped my towel around me, sat down and put my head in my hands. Andromeda … I could hear her screaming at me as she lay on the rock of sacrifice, her black eyes blazing. Leave me alone! This is mine! Her courage, her pride, her backbone. Great Mother help me.

  “I don’t think I can go through with this,” I said. “I’m not her equal, I’m not ready. Holy Mother, what if I ever get on the wrong side of her?”

  She whipped away the towel and tossed a long, fine linen tunic over my head. “Stand up. We haven’t time for you to sit around moping and whining.” She fussed with the shoulder brooches, tugged me about so that the tunic draped right, and then produced a new belt, with the harpe and the kibisis strung on it. I recoiled. I’d given the Medusa Head, and the rest of the supernatural gear, to the nuns for safekeeping. The thing in that strange bag was not the same to me as the terror and beauty of the Medusa. It was a weapon, a gruesome horror. I’d been hoping I would never have to touch it again.

  “It’s my wedding. Do I have to carry those things? They should be locked up.”

  “Don’t argue. They’re your honors; of course you wear them.” She handed me Athini’s shield, and looked at me thoughtfully. “Hmm. I don’t often do this. But just for once … You won’t get on the wrong side of her, Perseus. You were not born to lose her. You’re going to love that girl forever, and she will love you too.”

  “Until we die.”

  “No, no, no. Forever.”

  She touched my brow, the way my father had touched me once, and I understood what she was saying. Andromeda had traveled with me through the gates of life, through the gates of death, from the River to the Garden. She had ridden Pegasus. She was no longer mortal.

  I walked out into the shadowless light of a winter morning, the weight of the shield on my shoulder. I stooped for a wreath to be put on my head, with that promise ringing through me, and yet imagining that I’d had another kind of life: I was the prince of Serifos, about to meet the b
ride my family had chosen for me. Maybe we were in one of the big, beautiful rooms of my adopted grandfather’s classic seaside mansion. The guests were famous heroes, princes and princesses, kings and queens, mingling with my old friends. The crowd would part and she would come toward me, this Haifan princess I had never met…. And there she was, in her dark red dress with the flames woven on the bodice, under a delicate mantle worked in purple thread. Andromeda. Her black eyes meeting mine, a shock of joy …

  S’bw’r.

  S’bw’r.

  I took her hand, and everyone started cheering. We were pelted with sweets and flowers, the musicians played, the Seatown dance troupe danced around us. We were about to be led to the sanctuary, with further pelting. And then, in the middle of the uproar, the gates opened all by themselves. A young man in a cloak and hat stood there, a flower-wreathed staff in his hand. With him were a tall woman in black armor with a white, sternly beautiful face; and an older man, tall as Athini, with curling dark hair and beard, who wore a sea-colored tunic under a gray mantle flecked with white. Everyone knelt. The Supernaturals were not themselves, as Andromeda and I had seen them. They were cloaked in human bodies, but nobody could mistake them. They advanced on us, through the ranks of our people. Andromeda’s patron set his hands on her shoulders, raised her to her feet and kissed her gently on the brow.

  “My blessing on this marriage,” said the God of Making and Breaking, whom the Greeks call Poseidon. “The art you carry in your mind, Andromeda, is the greatest power in the world. Ride the winged horse, open the springs.”

  My half sister Athini gestured briskly for me to stand up, folded her arms and said: “You’ve got something of mine, Perseus.”

  Ah, well. Different strokes. I gave her the kibisis, with great relief.

  “The harpe chooses to stay with you. But I’ll have my shield back.”

  I handed it over. The kibisis had vanished, somehow. “Do you understand what you two did yet, Perseus?”

  “I understand that I don’t know,” I said cautiously.

  This seemed to be the right answer. Great Athini held up the shield. On the outer face, which had been blank metal, was an image of the Snakehead, beautiful and terrible. She showed all the crowd. “Medusa, my emblem, is back where she belongs.”

  Then Athini led me to the sanctuary; Poseidon led Andromeda. The ancient statue of Great Mother knelt on her red-and-black plinth. The Supernaturals bowed.

  I looked at Andromeda and she looked at me; both of us were shaking.

  “Are you all right, Perseus?”

  “Just about,” I muttered. “Are you?”

  ‘Yes.”

  All kinds of thoughts went through me: memories of the future, memories of the past, the way she said I’ll hold your tunic on the dock at Naxos. I was terrified, but I was not afraid. I knew that she was immortal, the same as I was. Our love would shine and burn, constant as the ever-living stars. The dark water would not part us. We would be together forever, in that world where truth is real.

  Snakehead is a fantasy based on the story of Perseus and Andromeda and the Medusa Head—the most mysterious and maybe the greatest of all the Greek myths. Although my retelling may seem very different from the well-known version (about a hero, a monster, and a helpless princess), I took a lot of my ideas from the ancient sources, and from the ancient history of the Mediterranean. It’s true that alphabetic writing seems to have been brought to the Aegean, from the Phoenician city-states, sometime around the eleventh century BC. It’s true that there was a Great Disaster thirty centuries ago that destroyed the island of Fira (now better known as Santorini), and dealt the incredible Minoan civilization a blow from which it never recovered. It’s true that the Minoans honored women, that they had a culture of peace and plenty, and that they seem to have worshipped one god. It’s also true, you may like to know, that Perseus and Andromeda are the only pair of lovers in Greek myth to live happily ever after.

  As for the importance I’ve given to Andromeda and Cassiopeia, you have only to look up into the night sky to understand my reasoning. The ancient Greeks named hundreds of constellations—but only two are named after women: Cassiopeia, the Ethiopian queen of ancient Haifa, and her daughter, whose Greek name means “great thinker, ruler of men.” After thirty centuries you can look up and see their fame, still shining there—along with Perseus and the Medusa. And right beside Andromeda, her hand on his mane, you’ll see Pegasus, the fountain horse, opener of the springs of knowledge.

  Myths get rewritten all the time. People change the plot because they’ve forgotten what it was supposed to be about. Events get switched around to suit the beliefs of different times. Words get misheard, creating nonsense where there used to be plain meaning; and then people become fond of the nonsense. Some rewriters (or re-tellers) decide to keep things simple: there was a hero, he killed a monster, he rescued a princess. Some try to recreate something long lost, by faithfully respecting the scraps that remain—including bizarre and mysterious images such as a winged horse being born from the neck of a decapitated Gorgon. Snakehead is not a work of literary archaeology. It’s my own invention, a fantasy set in the ancient world, with added jokes about the present day. But the jokes (including Aten the Peruvian, the fish and chips, the Yacht Club kids) are meant to remind you that there was once another world as vivid, as troubled, as intelligent, and as “modern” as our own. In my story—about vital knowledge being passed on; about the nature of the human mind, both monster and beauty—I’ve tried to show that the myth of Perseus and Andromeda is still what it always was, and to uncover the dazzling, grownup work of art hidden in the hero tale.

  If you’d like to find out more about my research for Snakehead, try the page I’ve posted on my Web site: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/Snakehead.htm.

  NOTABLE PLACES IN THE

  STORY, REAL AND

  MYTHICAL

  Serifos, Naxos, Paros, Milos, Kriti (Crete), Keros, and Fira (Santorini) are all real islands in the Aegean, in the Greek Mediterranean. All of them except Crete belong to the group of islands known as the Kyklades, or Turning Islands: in modern English, the Cyclades.

  The Twelve Islands, or in modern English the Dodecanese, is another real group of islands farther to the east.

  Parga is still a port on the northwest coast of the Greek mainland. Nearby you can visit the river Styx, and the Necromanteion, the Oracle of the Dead: an ancient place of pilgrimage known as the entrance to the underworld. The Styx was believed in ancient times to be—somehow—both a real, mysterious watercourse, and the river that the dead crossed to reach the afterlife.

  The Garden of the Hesperides, supposed to be found on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains, in what is now Morocco, is the lair of the hideous Gorgons in the story of Perseus. Mysteriously, in other tales it features as a kind of Garden of Eden, an original paradise.

  Haifa was probably sited where modern Jaffa is now, next door to Tel Aviv on the coast of Israel. I’ve been there, and I’ve been shown what is supposed to be the rock of sacrifice, “Andromeda’s Rock.” But I wouldn’t be too sure that it’s the real thing.

  Achaca Really, the Achaean League didn’t exist until long after this time, but I’m following Homer, who used the same anachronism for the Greek federation that went to war against Troy in his historical epic of the Bronze Age, The Iliad.

  Many thanks to Dana Facaros, whose excellent guidebook to the Greek Islands has been a good companion on all my trips to the Cyclades, for allowing me to use the quotations from a classic hymn to Charon as my “Dark Water” song in chapter 3. And to Gilly and Robin Cameron-Cooper, who rented us their beautiful house on Naxos, my writing retreat for the summer of 2005.

  ANN HALAM was born and raised in Manchester, England, and after graduating from Sussex University spent years traveling throughout Southeast Asia. She now lives in Brighton, England, with her husband and their son. Besides being a children’s author, Ann Halam writes adult science fiction and fantasy bo
oks as Gwyneth Jones. Her most recent title for Wendy Lamb Books was Siberia.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2007 by Ann Halam

  Map copyright © 2007 by Laura Brett

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Laurel-Leaf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Laurel-Leaf and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,

  visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition

  of this work as follows:

  Halam, Ann.

  Snakehead / Ann Halam.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Compelled by his father Zeus to accept the evil king Polydectes’s challenge to bring the head of the monstrous Medusa to the Aegean island of Serifos, Perseus, although questioning the gods’ interference in human lives, sets out, accompanied by his beloved Andromeda, a princess with her own harsh destiny to fulfill.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89533-3 (Gibraltar

  lib. bdg.)

  1. Perseus (Greek mythology)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Andromeda (Greek mythology)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Perseus (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 2. Andromeda (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 3. Gods, Greek—Fiction. 4. Goddesses, Greek—Fiction. 5. Mythology, Greek—Fiction. 6. Fate and fatalism—Fiction. 7. Seriphos Island (Greece)—Antiquities—Fiction. 8. Greece—History—To 146 B.C.—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H1283Sna 2008