“You would have to ingest it and speak the words of power. Only those plants fallen from divine blood need no spell to summon their magic. And, I think, you would have to be a witch.”
“A goddess.”
“No,” I said. “My niece was mortal, and she cast spells as strong as mine.”
“Your niece,” she said. “You do not mean Medea?”
It was strange to hear the name aloud after so long. “You know her?”
“I know what is sung by bards and played in courtyards for kings.”
“I would hear it,” I said.
The trees outside clattered in the wind as she talked. Medea had indeed escaped Aeëtes. She had traveled on to Iolcos with Jason and borne him two sons, but he recoiled from her sorceries, and his people despised her. In time he sought a new marriage with a sweet, well-loved princess from home. Medea praised his wisdom and sent the bride gifts, a crown and cloak that she had made herself. When the girl put them on, she was burnt alive. Then Medea dragged her children to an altar and, swearing that Jason would never have them, slit their throats. She was last seen summoning a chariot drawn by dragons to take her back to Colchis.
The bards had been at the story, no doubt, but I could still see Medea’s bright, piercing face. I believed that she would rather set the world on fire than lose.
“I warned her once that grief would come of her marriage. There is no pleasure in hearing I was right.”
“There seldom is.” Penelope’s voice was soft. She was thinking of those slaughtered children, perhaps. I was thinking of them too. And the dragon chariot that was of course my brother’s. It seemed incredible that she would go back to him, after all that had passed between them. Yet it also made a sort of sense to me. Aeëtes wanted an heir, and there was none more like him than Medea. She had grown up trained around his cruelty, and in the end it seemed she had not learned how to hold another shape.
I poured honey onto the yarrow, added beeswax to bind the salve. The air was musky-sweet and sharp with herbs.
Penelope said, “What makes a witch, then? If it is not divinity?”
“I do not know for certain,” I said. “I once thought it was passed through blood, but Telegonus has no spells in him. I have come to believe it is mostly will.”
She nodded. I did not have to explain. We knew what will was.
That afternoon Penelope and Telegonus went off again to the bay. I had assumed after my abruptness last night that Telemachus would keep his distance. But he found me at my herbs. “I thought I would work on the tables.”
I watched him while I ground the hellebore leaves. He had a measuring string, and a cup he had marked and filled to the line with water.
“What are you doing?”
“Testing if the floor is level. Your problem is actually the legs—they are slightly different sizes. It will be easy to adjust.”
I watched him using the rasp, checking and rechecking the legs with his length of string. I asked him how he had broken his nose. “Swimming with my eyes closed,” he said. “I learned my lesson there.” When he was finished, he went out to do the flagstones. I followed, weeding, though the garden scarcely needed it. We discussed bees, how I always wished there were more on the island. He asked if I could tame them like other creatures. “No,” I said. “I use smoke like everyone else.”
“I saw a hive that looks overfull,” he said. “I can split it in the spring, if you like.”
I said I would and watched him scrape away the uneven soil. “The roof drains there,” I said. “Those flagstones will only wobble again after the next rain.”
“That is how things go. You fix them, and they go awry, and then you fix them again.”
“You have a patient temper.”
“My father called it dullness. Shearing, cleaning out the hearths, pitting olives. He wanted to know how to do such things for curiosity’s sake, but he did not want to actually have to do them.”
It was true. Odysseus’ favorite task was the sort that only had to be performed once: raiding a town, defeating a monster, finding a way inside an impenetrable city.
“Perhaps you get it from your mother.”
He did not look up, but I thought I saw him tense. “How is she? I know