faded. They prayed while I carried away the blood to pour over a tree’s wrinkled roots. I would butcher the body later and cook it for their meal.
“It is done,” I told them, when I returned.
He lifted the hem of my cloak to his lips. “Great goddess.”
She was the one I was watching. I wanted to see her face, freed at last from its careful custody.
She looked up. Her eyes shone bright as torches. She drew off her veil, revealing hair like the sun on Crete’s hills. A demigod, she was, that potent mix of human and divinity. And more than that: she was my kin. None had such a golden look except the direct line of Helios.
“I am sorry for my deception,” she said. “But I could not risk you sending me away. Not when I have wished all my life to know you.”
There was a quality to her that is hard to describe, a fervency, a heat that went to your head. I had expected her to be beautiful, for she walked like a queen of the gods, but it was an odd beauty, not like my mother’s or sister’s. Each of her features alone was nothing, her nose too sharp, her chin over-strong. Yet together they made a whole like the heart of a flame. You could not look away.
Her eyes were clinging to me as if they would peel me. “You and my father were close as children. I could not know what messages he might have sent you about his wayward daughter.”
The force in her, the certainty. I should have recognized who she was at first glance, only from the set of her shoulders.
“You are Aeëtes’ child,” I said. I searched for the name Hermes had told me. “Medea, is it not?”
“And you are my aunt Circe.”
She looked like her father, I thought. That high brow and sharp, unyielding gaze. I said no more, but rose and went into the kitchen. I put plates and bread on a tray, added cheese and olives, goblets and wine. It is law that guests must be fed before the host’s curiosity.
“Refresh yourselves,” I said. “There will be time to make all clear.”
She served the man first, offering him the most tender morsels, urging bite upon bite. He ate what she gave him hungrily, and when I refilled the tray, he chewed that as well, his hero’s jaw working steadily. She ate little. Her eyes were lowered, a secret again.
At last the man pushed back his plate. “My name is Jason, heir by rights to the kingdom of Iolcos. My father was a virtuous king but soft-hearted, and when I was a child, my uncle seized his throne from him. He said he would return it to me when I was grown, if I gave him proof of my worth: a golden fleece, kept by a sorcerer in his land of Colchis.”
I believed that he was a proper prince. He had the trick of speaking like one, rolling words like great boulders, lost in the details of his own legend. I tried to imagine him kneeling before Aeëtes among the milk fountains and coiling dragons. My brother would have thought him dull, and arrogant besides.
“Lady Hera and Lord Zeus blessed my purpose. They guided me to my ship and helped me gather my comrades. When we arrived in Colchis, I offered King Aeëtes fair treasure in payment for the fleece, but he refused. He said I might have it only if I performed a task for him. The yoking of two bulls, and the plowing and sowing of a great field in a single day. I was willing, of course, and accepted at once. Yet—”
“Yet the task was impossible.” Medea’s voice slipped between his words easy as water. “A ploy designed to keep him from the fleece. My father had no intention of giving it up, for it is a thing of great story and power. No mortal, however valiant and brave”—at this she turned to Jason, touched her hand to his—“could accomplish those things unaided. The bulls were my father’s own magic, crafted of knife-sharp bronze and breathing fire. Even if Jason yoked them, the seeds he had to sow were another trap. They would become warriors springing up to kill him.”
Her gaze was fixed passionately on Jason’s face. I spoke, more to bring her back than anything else.
“So you contrived a trick,” I said.
Jason did not like that. He was a hero of the great golden age.