I will tear your entrails and eat them for my lunch.
I fixed my gaze on his. “Try,” I said.
For a long moment he stared at me. Then he turned and twitched off through the brush. I tell you, for all my spells, that was the first time I truly felt myself a witch.
At my hearth that night, I thought of those prancing goddesses who carry birds on their shoulders, or have some fawn always nuzzling their hands, tripping delicately at their heels. I would put them to shame, I thought. I climbed to the highest peaks and found a lonely track: here a flower crushed, here the dirt turned a little and some bark clawed off. I brewed a potion with crocus and yellow jasmine, iris and cypress root dug at the moon’s full height. I sprinkled it, singing. I summon you.
She came rippling through my door at the next dusk, her shoulder muscles hard as stones. She lay across my hearth, and rasped my ankles with her tongue. During the day, she brought me rabbits and fish. At night she licked honey from my fingers and slept upon my feet. Sometimes we would play, she stalking behind me, then leaping up to grapple me by the neck. I smelled the hot musk of her breath, felt the weight of her forepaws pressing on my shoulders. Look, I said, showing her the knife I had carried with me from my father’s halls, the one stamped with a lion’s face. “What fool made this? They have never seen your like.”
She cracked her great brown mouth in a yawn.
There was a bronze mirror in my bedroom, tall as the ceiling. When I passed it, I scarcely knew myself. My gaze seemed brighter, my face sharper, and there behind me paced my wild lion familiar. I could imagine what my cousins would say if they saw me: my feet dirty from working in the garden, my skirts knotted up around my knees, singing at the height of my frail voice.
I wished that they would come. I wanted to see those goggle eyes of theirs as I walked among the dens of wolves, swam in the sea where the sharks fed. I could change a fish to a bird, I could wrestle with my lion, then lie across her belly, my hair loose around me. I wanted to hear them squeal and gasp, breath-struck. Oh, she looked at me! Now I will be a frog!
Had I truly feared such creatures? Had I really spent ten thousand years ducking like a mouse? I understood now Aeëtes’ boldness, how he had stood before our father like a towering peak. When I did my magics, I felt that same span and heft. I tracked my father’s burning chariot across the sky. Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.
No answer came, and none from my aunt Moon either, those cowards. My skin was glowing, my teeth set. My lioness lashed her tail.
Does no one have the courage? Will no one dare to face me?
So you see, in my way, I was eager for what came.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS SUNSET, MY father’s face already dipped beneath the trees. I was working in my garden, staking the leggy vines, planting rosemary and aconite. I was singing too, some aimless air. The lion lay in the grass, her mouth bloodied from the wood-grouse she had flushed.
“I admit,” the voice said, “I am surprised to see you so plain after such boasting. A flower garden and braids. You might be any country girl.”
The young man was leaning against my house, watching me. His hair was loose and tousled, his face bright as a jewel. Though there was no light to catch them, his golden sandals gleamed.
I knew who he was, of course I knew. The power shone from his face, unmistakable, keen as an unsheathed blade. An Olympian, the son of Zeus and his chosen messenger. That laughing gadfly of the gods, Hermes.
I felt myself tremble, but I would not let him see it. Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it just the same.
I stood. “What did you expect?”
“Oh, you know.” A slim wand twirled idly in his fingers. “Something more lurid. Dragonish. A troupe of dancing sphinxes. Blood dripping from the sky.”
I was used to my thick-shouldered uncles with their white beards, not such perfect, careless beauty.