by Joey W. Hill
“Will you tell me a small part of it?” he said. “Would that make it easier, to do it in pieces?”
“Perhaps. If you will do the same. And you must go first.”
Fair enough, right? But every time she asked, why are you here, it felt like he’d shoveled down another layer to a grave he didn’t want uncovered. But this was why he’d finally turned himself in for some professional therapy, after he’d spent enough time helping subs that he’d seen the mirror reflecting back on him. The poor bastard who’d drawn the short straw at the counseling center JP had chosen had probably checked himself in for patient-induced PTSD after he helped JP, but thanks to him, John was better at opening up. Plus—the deciding vote—Lot had pointed out if he was too fucked up, he’d be no good for her. He wanted to be good for her.
“Maddock told me I’d spent most of my life on the nightmare side of a fantasy, making up roles for myself, living in worlds that weren’t mine, always split between who I was and who I had to be. Why not give myself the chance to enjoy the other end of it?” He sighed. “It was my mother who started it. She was…she was never right in the head. My dad left her because he wanted other women. Lots of other women. Because she was messed up in the head already, that sort of became a catalyst that twisted her up further. She was the first one to read me your story, when I was five. That was right after my dad left.”
He closed his eyes, seeing himself at bedtime, her curled up around him, but not the way a mother spooned protectively around her child. More as if she wanted him to protect her, tell her it was going to be okay. And maybe he’d been looking for a way to make the world safer for everyone ever since, as if that was his mission.
“When she got to the part about you coming to live in exile on an island, she whispered in my ear, ‘Imagine how lonely she must have been, Johnny. Abandoned by everyone, because of something she couldn't change or be.
“Mom was talking about herself, because she was always caught in this narcissistic haze where everything came back to her, but…”
He realized he’d tightened his hand on hers, a little too hard. He eased his grip, but her fingers turned, the talons scraping him a little as she stroked over his knuckles. She was comforting him.
“I think it spoke to something in you,” Medusa said quietly. “Because you were isolated, a child with a mother who could not be one.”
“Yeah.” She’d picked up on it instantly, which didn’t surprise him much. Not since he’d come here and started learning just how many threads beyond the crazy inexplicable fate stuff connected them.
“But if the story had just connected to my fucked up home life, it wouldn't have stuck with me the way it did, the way you did. I think I was meant to be here, but maybe as much for myself as for you. There’s a lot of shit dumped on the path I walked to get here, Medusa. I don’t intend to dump it on you; I dealt with it, but it drives me and connects me to you. I just hope you don’t end up thinking it’s the only thing that does.”
He left it at that, waiting her out. He wanted to give her the option of speaking along the same lines or changing the subject, but he couldn’t help giving her a small nudge.
“Would you tell me something of your own story now? What really happened?”
The air filled with a portentous feeling, a return of that darkness. It meant she was going to grant his request. For a second, he wanted to suggest they do it another time, so he didn’t pull her into bad memories, but he bit it back. He wished he could know all of it through legend and secondhand fact so he wouldn’t have to distress her, ever, but knowing the truth—both of their truths—was obviously critical to getting past her barriers. That was a no-brainer he’d know even if his sharp intuition wasn’t right on top of it. Even if he’d rather cut open his own demons with a rusty knife blade than have her face even one of hers.
“You were told I was…forced by a god and cursed by Athena for the transgression, were you not?” She spoke at last. “I have been told that is the story. Did you believe that nonsense?”
“I’m open to all possibilities, my lady. Otherwise I wouldn’t have believed you existed. You’re a myth in my world, and myths come with a lot of assumptions. For instance, that gods and goddesses can do such things.”
“As if they would care enough to consort with mortals, or protect them from their own folly.” The bitterness in her tone was unmistakable. Since she’d moved her hand back to his chest, he was careful not to hold her, tangle with her fingers or clasp her wrist as would be his normal preference. But he did keep the contact between them, stroking the top of her hand slowly, from forearm to wrist and knuckles and back again.
"Athena did not curse me,” she said in a hard voice. “Nor Poseidon, though He was involved, inadvertently. There was a powerful man, Ukrit, who visited our temple. The senior priestess who did not like us to laugh, Berenike, pursued political alliances with him against other factions in the city. Klotho explained that to me later…for I did not understand any of that. Not then.”
Her talons curved in, pressing against his chest. Now he did move his hand to her wrist, a light clasp, a reassurance that he was here. “When he visited,” she said, “sometimes he would corner me in apparent jest, flirting. I always slipped away laughing, but he made me feel nervous in ways I could not explain. I told no one but my friend Callidora, who was as innocent as I.
“Late one night, when all my other sisters slept, Berenike woke me. She took me to the part of the temple I liked best, the pediment where Athena is fighting the giants. She has a snake shield.” She paused, and he heard a wistful note in her voice. “I liked Her face in that sculpture the best. She is in battle, yet She still looks so wise and kind. Berenike told me to kneel in front of Athena and submit to Her Will, however that Will presented itself.”
He had enough elements of the story to know what was coming. Yet he felt the burning rage he always felt, no matter how often he’d heard this kind of tragedy.
“Ukrit came to me there. He was…there was magic clinging to him, a dizzying power. He told me Poseidon had sanctioned the sacrifice of my virginity to his desires. Despite what Berenike had said to me, and despite that magic, I was a frightened girl and I denied him. But this time…he wouldn’t be denied.”
A man taking what was not given willingly, destroying the beauty of a woman’s soul with his cruelty or lust. JP wanted badly to turn and put his arms around her, but instead she stood behind him like a rigid statue, her voice painting terrible pictures in his mind.
“I fought as hard as I could, but his power rolled over me. It was as if I were drowning. I smelled the deepest, darkest part of Poseidon’s sea and it choked me. He beat my head against the stone until I was insensible. He took my body several times, in shameful ways, telling me there was no part of me that was not his.”
Fucking, goddamn bastard who should rot in hell forever. Why it was worse, hearing it was a man and not a god, JP didn’t know. Maybe because the god story made it more like a fairy tale. A horrible one, yes, but still somehow detached from the grim realities he knew of rape, of violation, of violence and death. Of the horrors men visited upon one another.
She was right to question how he could have believed it was a god who had done such a thing, since only humans tormented one another in such a way. Her hand was shaking, but when he tried to hold onto her, she slipped away and stepped back.
“Medusa, let me turn around. I’ll keep my eyes closed. Let me hold you, offer you comfort.”
“No. There is no comfort you can give me for this. I am simply telling you, and you promised to keep facing the sea.”
“Okay.” He set his jaw, accepting the unacceptable. “Did he take off like the coward he was after that?”
“No. In his mind, he’d done no wrong. Since he’d stolen power from Poseidon to commit the act, he believed it was a sanction from the god himself. And Berenike…whatever it was between them, I was the price she’d promised.” Her tone became dull. “It is ironic tha
t harming a priestess of Athena was an insult to the whole city, even an act of war, if committed by a foreigner. Yet no one knew of this crime, for it was done with the sanction of one of our senior priestesses and covered up by her lies.
“Berenike came after he finished, as if he had some black magic way of summoning her. While I lay there, he told her he would return in several days to take me home as his slave, after they tended to me. He did not wish to be burdened by my care.”
He heard her swallow. “After he departed, Berenike summoned Klotho. She told her as I was no longer a virgin, pure for the temple. I was out of favor to perform her rituals. She made it sound as if I…”
As if Medusa was some kind of base whore who’d taken a lover at the very foot of the Goddess. For some crimes there was no punishment great enough. But he’d met people like Berenike on his own assignments. Medusa had been just a pawn to her. Like Ukrit, she likely hadn’t lost a moment of sleep over what they’d done to the young girl.
Medusa’s voice had broken, but now it steadied again. “She told Klotho a wealthy man was to take me into his home, and he intended to offer a generous donation to the head priestess. Nothing more would be said of it, and there would be no shame placed upon the temple.”
“Humans do evil and blame it on the gods,” Medusa added abruptly. “Athena's only crime was Her apathy, and yet I cannot blame Her even for that. It was my assumption that She would care. I begged for help while he was attacking me, and Her statue loomed over me, inanimate, unresponsive. The wisdom and kindness I saw in Her face…it became a mockery. That was when I knew the gods were far beyond concerns with us. We are here to serve them, not the other way around."
She fell silent, her bitter words adding an edge to the air around them.
“I did say you could tell it in pieces,” he said carefully. “Don’t keep going if it’s causing you too much pain.”
“This part is one piece, and no different today than it will be tomorrow. Berenike left me with Klotho after that. She did not wish to be burdened with my care, either.”
“Klotho tended to you.”
“Yes. She held me for a little while.” Medusa cleared a thick throat. “I was too insensible to realize it then, but Klotho’s anger and frustration on my behalf was deep, down to her soul. She was a true priestess of Athena and knew what a terrible crime had had been perpetuated within the sacred walls of Her temple. She was also frustrated by the political realities that would make it impossible for her to override Berenike or prevent Ukrit from taking me. So she chose another way.”
Medusa took a breath. “When I calmed enough to listen, she told me she had a plan to keep him away from me forever. It would involve witchcraft, twisting the residue of Poseidon’s magic he’d left upon me and combining it with what lay within my own heart. Then she summoned the other priestesses. They were told not to clean me or tend my wounds. That was the hardest part.”
Her voice wavered, then firmed again. “I am ashamed to say I begged for at least a little water and a cloth. Klotho put a kind hand upon me and counseled patience. She told me it would all make sense soon. Mercifully, she allowed them to give me a tonic to make me sleep for a few hours while they prepared. When I woke, she told me more of her plan, and let me know it was my choice. I could take my chances with him, or I could do what she had devised.”
His mind hitched over that. Hearing that a man, not a god, had raped her could be digested without too much of a paradigm shift. Knowing she’d made a conscious choice to embrace the form she currently held pulled him off the track of what he’d always believed.
Choices made under duress could be rightfully considered no choice at all, but after his momentary surprise, it fit with the strength she’d demonstrated to him ever since he’d arrived. She hadn’t capitulated to being a victim. She’d made a choice and had given herself a chance at saving her own soul, rather than losing it to the darkness that swallowed so many victims of violence.
“The stumbling point was Klotho did not know the exact form the spell would take, what it would do to me. She knew only that if we did it, I would forever be free of his desire. I agreed. Begged for it. Will you turn toward this side without looking at me?”
She’d touched his right arm. When he adjusted in that direction, she moved behind him, farther into the water. He heard her bending down, the water splashing. He suspected she was cupping handfuls and letting it run down her arms and legs, anointing herself in the cleansing blue surf.
“She took everything I felt inside and twisted it into the magic. My rage and pain, my sense of betrayal and confusion. I blacked out during the ritual…” She hesitated, and he heard uncertainty in her voice. “I woke…as this. One of the priestesses told me to take what I needed from the stores and make my way to an uninhabited place. I… So much of that time is unclear. I don’t want to remember… Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you at all.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” As her voice broke, revealing even deeper distress, he cursed the inability to touch her once again. Instead, he put everything good about the wish in his voice, hoping it would help. “You tell me only what you want to tell me.”
He wished the priestess had chosen a different way. Just put Medusa on a boat and get her the hell out of there. But a man who could pay for magic that could twist Poseidon’s power and pit it against a priestess of Athena in the temple itself would have had a long reach. And he had the support of a senior priestess who JP hoped was currently rotting in Tartarus.
At different times in his life, he’d had the same thoughts as Medusa about the apathy of the gods. Yet he wondered if she believed it all the time, or only in more despairing moments. He’d been to the Old Temple, the Archaic temple to Athena in Athens. Standing at the base of the old ruins, he’d felt a residual power, and it had been tranquil, enduring. A Goddess still alive in the stones.
“I think the gods care,” Maddock had told him once. “They just see a far fucking bigger picture than we do. And they know we’re tougher than we think we are. The things we do with adversity? You put all of it into a gallery, you’d have a series of masterpieces.”
No argument there. He found her a work of art, in every way. He wished she believed that, and saw the beauty he felt from her, inside and out.
“I am tired,” Medusa said in a small voice. “I will see you tomorrow.”
“Do not go, my lady. Such retellings bring on bad dreams. Please stay with me and I will keep them at bay. Sleep next to me like you did the other night. If you think you can keep your claws to yourself, that is.”
He added the dose of humor even though her story left him feeling anything but. He channeled the anger into a genuine desire to care for her, keep her close so the demons in her story could not have her.
“Maybe.”
He’d been expecting more deliberation, or an outright no, so he suppressed the grim surge of victory.
“You do me honor with your trust, my lady. I made a dessert out of coconut and some sugar I brought. Why don’t we take a little walk, and then we can try it together?”
Chapter Eight
He put the blindfold back on and walked along the shoreline. At first, she walked with him in a silence weighted with what they shared. However, as often happened, the beauty of the world around them, and the chance to walk with someone who understood, made things ease.
She stopped. “Look at this. Oh, I mean…”
Her little stumble warmed him. He extended his hand, and she placed a shell in it.
“It has a pretty color. Purple and pink.”
“It feels as smooth as your skin.” He ran his thumb inside the curve. “When I was young, before they broke up, my parents took a beach trip every year. My mother liked to walk on the beach in the mornings. I’d go with her, swim and look at the shells she picked up. My dad wasn’t a morning person, so he’d come join us later. I’d make sand sculptures while they were talking.”
Which usually turned into arguing and tear
s when his dad couldn’t keep his eyes off the other women on the beach.
“I made a long, long snake one time. It was this wide…” She grasped his wrists and spread out his arms to encompass several feet. “It would have taken ten minutes to walk from the head to the tail,” she said triumphantly.
He was getting accustomed to feeling her snakes sliding over his arms when she moved inside his personal space, like now. She hadn’t commented upon their movements, and he wondered if that was because they’d been part of her for so long she didn’t see their touching him as anything separate from her putting her hands upon him. He was also getting very fond of her increasing willingness to do that.
She walked onward, picking up more shells and putting them in his hands so he could feel their shape. She described their colors to him. Easy conversations about nothing while strolling along a beach. Had she missed doing that? Did she find it surprising that she could fall so easily into doing it now, especially after what she’d shared?
Maybe because of what she shared. When he didn’t ask any follow up questions, but made it clear with his attentive silence she could say more if she wished, she seemed to get even more relaxed. He felt the same. Tit for tat.
At one point they sat side by side on a rock, so close that with a slight adjustment they’d brush hips and shoulders. Perhaps her wing would curve behind him and he’d feel it.
“Was it hard to get used to the wings?” he asked. “To learn how to fly?”
“In the beginning, yes.” She shrugged, because her shoulder did move against him. Then she shifted away, as if she hadn’t realized she was sitting so close. “I was like a fledgling fallen out of the nest without a parent to show her anything. At first, I didn’t use them much at all, but I realized I was not using one of the best weapons I have. Most enemies don’t look for an attack from above. They aren’t prepared to counter it.”