“Pleased to meet you,” I said to the pale-faced king, as though this were an ordinary visit. As though the Athenian people had not just seen a golden chariot pulled by dragons fly through the air and land in the courtyard of their royal palace. Currently we were in the reception room, where I’d been brought refreshments by trembling servants as the royal family decided what to do with this unexpected—and very dangerous—visitor.
“Well met, lady,” the king replied. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, and the guards who accompanied him bunched anxiously around. “I am Aegeus. Pray tell me, what is your name?”
“Medea.” The name stood on its own, with no father or city or husband to anchor it. How strange it felt, and how freeing.
Aegeus nodded. He licked his lips, glancing up as though he did not dare look at me but could not quite help himself. “What remarkable eyes you have.”
“Have you considered my offer?” I asked, ignoring the compliment. “I relayed it to your steward.” Without waiting for a response, I slid off two of the bangles adorning my wrists and placed them on the table between us. “Pure Colchian silver. Worth a fortune.”
“Yes, my lady,” the king said, nodding his head nervously.“But... if the things you requested really are what you say they are...”
I arched one brow and leaned back in the chair. The king quailed at my displeasure.
“You will not get a better offer than this,” I said, indicating the bangles. They’d come with me out of Aea, carried for all these years, but now I yielded them up. A small price to pay for what I wanted. “I warn you, do not try my patience further,” I added darkly. Outside in the courtyard, the dragons screeched.
Aegeus turned and clapped his hands. A dog came rushing in, yellow furred with a fanlike tail, and put his paws up on my leg. He smiled up at me, tongue lolling out, as he must have smiled at Atalanta so long ago. Lailaps, the dog who could catch any quarry he pursued, blissfully unaware of his own divine nature.
I have never loved dogs and gently pushed him off my lap, though I did ruffle his ears in apology. A servant approached with a long, thin object wrapped in cloth, and I took it in my hands, testing its weight. This was the spear that would always find its target.
The treasures of Procris, stolen by her husband Cephalus and passed in turn to his successors, though the current king hadn’t even known what they were until I told him. I would not let them remain here in the home of the man who killed her, gathering dust in some spare room.
Cephalus had died, I learned, from an infected arrow wound. He’d writhed in a fever for six days, though I wished he’d suffered for a fortnight. After all, dying in a comfortable bed was not a privilege he’d given Procris. But how wickedly ironic that the method of his death had been parallel to hers.
The dog and the spear, the treasures of Procris. I felt the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled; this was what Atalanta had wanted. I was none too sure I liked Procris, but Atalanta had. And because I loved Atalanta, I would honor her last wish.
One act of kindness to someone who would never notice or appreciate it. One good deed done for its own goodness. An auspicious start to the rest of my life.
“Thank you, Aegeus,” I said, pushing up from the table.
As I was about to leave, the king called out, “Wait.”
I turned. Aegeus was a decade or so older than me, his hair beginning to thin, but he looked as nervous as a little boy. He squirmed a bit and looked down, ducking his chin. “Well... the truth is, Lady Medea, I was... hoping you might stay here and become my wife.”
My mouth fell open, and I stared at him. I’d arrived here a terrifying stranger, every inch the divine witch, and here was this man trying toflirtwith me. As if a woman alone was an irresistible temptation.
It made a grim sort of sense. If people learned about the meeting between Aegeus and me, they would insist I’d fucked him, being unable to conceive of any other interaction between a man and a woman.
Once I’d dreamed of an honorable marriage with a good king as a way out of my father’s house. Now I knew better.
“You would not want me as a wife if you knew all the things I have done,” I replied, chuckling and shaking my head incredulously. “And I do not want another husband. Besides, there is somewhere I must go.”
To the beginning. To Qulha—yes, let me say its name in my native tongue, not the borrowed language of the Greeks. To the green hills and the storm-tossed sea, to the temple of Hekate. Let me knit up the fractured circle and face the beginning so that I might find its end, and give my unborn son a good life.
Aegeus did not look very pleased at being rejected; his face turned red, and he actually seemed to swell a bit. But there wasvery little he could do, lest he meet the fangs of the dragons who even now peered at us from the courtyard.
I took my place in the chariot and shook out the reins. Soon the dragons were climbing higher and higher into the sky, passing through the wreaths of moisture below the clouds. Lailaps cowered by my legs, his ears laid back against the rush of air. I rubbed his head with one hand; the spear was a reassuring weight in my other. We skimmed over the flat expanse of the water, and slowly, they came into sight: the rolling green hills of Qulha, land of my birth.
I’d forgotten how much the sea sounded like a heartbeat and tasted just like tears.
The shoreline where I’d met theArgoall those years ago was unchanged. I stood so the waves lapped my toes, allowing myself a moment of rest. Lailaps danced in the surf, and behind me the dragons nipped at each other in their harnesses. They were nearly home and giddy with the joy of it.
And so, in my own way, was I. Home. Goose bumps prickled across my skin, and I rubbed my arms. Once, I had fled from this land and submitted to marriage with Jason to avoid being dragged back. Now I chose of my own accord to return, brought back on the winds of morning.
I looked up at the hills, dappled with the scattershot sparkle of the Sheep of the Sun. “Aren’t they beautiful, Atalanta?” I whispered to the wind.
In a few moments we were back up in the sky, circling the city. What I saw astonished me: the fields and farms around the city were withered, and even the walls of Aea seemed grayed and crumbling. The people who stopped on the street to stare up at thechariot, arms raised to point or shade their eyes, seemed dressed in rags. I could never have imagined how thoroughly Perses had drained the prosperity of the land to feed his avarice.
I banked over the palace, coming to rest in the familiar garden with its four rivers of milk, wine, oil, and water, their pungent aroma evoking memories of my childhood. Nearby, roses and lavender still bloomed. The chariot wheels made contact with the ground, and for the first time in twenty years my senses were filled with the sweet scent of Qulhan earth.
