I drew my robe back on, settling it around my shoulders.
“I wish I’d gone to confront Cephalus, the man who killed Procris. I wish I’d ended his life, not for the sake of vengeance but so he could never do to any other young woman what he did to her. At the very least, I wish I’d gotten the spear and the dog away from him. They were her treasures, and it is no justice that they should remain in the hands of the one who murdered her. But there’s no time left for that now.” I sighed.
Medea gave me an odd look. “Come,” she said, arranging the blankets and blowing out the lamps. “Let us sleep. Sunrise will be here sooner than we think, and I for one do not want to miss it.”
In the dream, I walked in a moonlit forest, the trunks of trees rising up all around like the pillars of a temple. This was how I knew it was a dream; in the waking world, I could no longer walk so easily.
Beside me was the goddess Artemis, who seemed surrounded by a cloud of moonlight. A crescent circlet sat upon her brow. She did not speak but instead listened as I spoke.
“Those words you said to me, so long ago,” I said, “that I would never know love without loss. I puzzled over them for so many years. I tried to run from them, but instead love found me again and again. I thought your words were a prophecy, or a warning, or a curse, evidence that my life was doomed. But I see now that it was simply a statement of how things are, and how they have always been. Life is always full of loss, but love makes it all worthwhile.”
Artemis made no answer but instead smiled like a proud tutor when her pupil finally gets a difficult question right.
The goddess vanished, and the forest was replaced by a road lined with cypresses. Distantly, I could see a forest of winter trees wreathed in mist and a bridge. I began to walk, but was soon startled into wakefulness.
“Come,” Medea said, lifting the hide over the door so that gray light streamed into the little hut. “It’s almost time.”
She slung an arm around my middle, half lifting and half carrying me outside. She was stronger than she looked, my Medea. Stronger than anyone gave her credit for. She’d had to do this more and more often as the disease spread and my strength ebbed, carrying me when my own legs were too weak to do it. Mortifying, but she made it so easy to accept her help that I offered no protest. Besides, I refused to miss any of the sunrises I had left with her.
The eastern sky was red and violet, the ball of the sun not yet above the lip of the trees. Peace lay like a blanket on my soul. When I looked back at my life, all I could think was how sweet it was. All of it, even the pain.
After all, how could I want roses without thorns, or the sunwithout snow? Love and loss were part of the tapestry of life. I had been trying to run from my grief, when all I could do was let it pass over me like a summer squall.
Over and over I tasted the belonging I sought, no less true for its brevity. After all, nature does not privilege the flower that blooms for one day over the mountain that stands for millennia. Each of these I turned over in my memory like jewels—the bear, the hunters, Procris, Meleager, Melanion.
Medea.
Her shoulder pressed against mine, a comforting presence as we waited for dawn. My hand found hers, our fingers entwining. Her touch brought a swirl of emotion: affection, joy at what we’d had, sorrow at our inevitable parting. She had chosen me in the end, chosen my little camp out of all the other places the dragon chariot might have brought her. Not merely as a friend, like Meleager, or under duress, like Melanion. Nor as a temporary escape from a husband, like Procris.
What I’d said was true. Even in the fields of the Underworld, I would never forget her.
My eyelids grew unbearably heavy, and I closed them, reasoning that Medea would not be disappointed if I rested for a few moments before the sun came up. In the darkness of my closed eyes the road of cypresses appeared, their tops reaching up to a colorless sky.
Yes, there was one last journey I needed to undertake. And at the end, they would be waiting for me, those I’d once loved. I began to walk, step by step, down the road of hard-packed earth between the cypress trees...
82
Medea
This is not a happy ending, because the story does not end here.
Atalanta sagged against me, her eyes closed despite the glory of the sunrise. When I chided her, she made no response. After a few moments, it became clear that her eyes would never open again.
There was a faint smile on her lips. Against all odds, she died happy.
I buried her under the same tree where my boys lay. It comforted me to think of the three of them playing together in the Underworld.
Strangely, no tears rolled down my cheeks. Atalanta was too much a part of me for that, living in my blood and sinew. If I had not been the one to wash her body and lay her mortal form to rest, it would be easy to convince myself that she was only sleeping and would be waiting by the fire upon my return. She’d waited in my memories for twenty years, after all; it would be no trouble to wait a bit longer. Love was not limited by anything so banal as death.
Live,she’d ordered me, and made me believe for the first time that my life really was worth living. There are those who command a narrow love centered on themselves, as Jason did, and there are those who make you fall in love with life itself. Like Atalanta.
The first wind of morning caressed my face, and I turned toward the east. The two dragons slept curled up with their heads on eachother’s backs but stirred when I called them. Xanthe and Hippos, I’d named them, after their forefather. The chariot sat in the mist-covered field, the rising sun striking its golden sides.
Where will you go... after?Atalanta asked me once, and now I settled on my answer. Yes, I would go back, back to what I feared and longed for.
But first, there was something I needed to do.
When the king walked in, I was drinking wine at his table.
