The cloud-filled sky held its breath. Even the tomb markers seemed to be listening.
Into the silence I spoke a single word. “Mother.” It was like a stone dropped into a still pond, heard by no one and signifying nothing, but I could not help myself.
“Mother,” I repeated. “Don’t forget me. Don’t forget your daughter. Descend and comfort me, I beg you.”
There was no answer. The silence passed, and the world resumed its turning. Birds sang, and a breeze moved through the necropolis. The voices of passersby reached my ears once more.
Shivering, I pulled the hood of my cloak over my head and hurried onward, trying to beat the long shadows of evening back to the palace.
2
Medea
I often cried out for my mother. But for some reason that night she answered.
In sleep, I drifted in the primal void of unconsciousness. Then a torch flared, and the three-faced idol from the crossroads shrine appeared. As I watched, the rough wood took on the softness of living skin and the gouges of the eyes blinked open.
The statue’s central face became an old woman’s, her hair white and her skin like worn leather. As I watched, the face became young, a reflection of my own. Then it ripened to middle age, expanding into handsome richness before slackening once again into wrinkles. And there it stayed in the cycle of time she wore like a mantle.
“I am Hekate,” she said. “To me was given a share of the heavens and the seas and all the earth. I am the goddess of the crossroads. The Soteira, the Savior. Among the people of the northern forests I am known as the Baba Yaga; among the Mesopotamians I am called Nintinugga; the Egyptians call me Hekau. But you shall know me by my true name, Hekate. And,” she added, “I am your mother.”
My mother.The words exploded into my consciousness, filling me with astonishment. My mother! She’d heard me after all. I wanted to run and embrace her, restored to me at last after solong, but found I could not move or speak, frozen in the world of the dream.
“If you doubt,” she continued, “I will show you surety. If you feel powerless, I will show you power. In other words, I will reveal to you the way of witchcraft.”
Hekate raised a hand to my forehead, and light exploded inside my skull. The stream of knowledge came in flashes and sense impressions: the secret names of plants and animals, and the powers of the planets. Hekate revealed to me that the elements of the natural world had a grammar and syntax, and if it pleased me, I might rearrange the letters to spell out the future I desired.
Inside me, a spark flared into life.
“It will take work,” Hekate was saying. “Raw talent must be given form. But this is where it begins.”
I was afraid that this new influx of knowledge might split my mind like an overfilled wineskin, but I gritted my teeth and held firm. When at last the tide receded, I heard a whine at my elbow and felt a cold nose on my arm. The wide black eyes of a dog looked up at me. A hunting hound, like the ones who trailed after my mother’s heels when she was alive, companions still in her godhood.
“But how can it be,” I asked, forcing my numb lips to form words, “that you are my mother? You are a goddess, and she was only a mortal woman. You have the white hair of a crone, and she...”
She never lived to grow old,I tried to say, but my grief choked me.
The apparition’s rheumy eyes filled with compassion. “Oh, my dear girl, do you not know that the immortal gods choose the shapes they wear? We can take the form of an old woman as easily as an eagle or a shower of gold. And why would I not choose the appearance I never had the chance to wear in life?” she added with arueful smile. “I was born a mortal girl like you, but in time I came to command great magic and learned how to brew the potion of apotheosis, which transforms a human being into a god. The souls of gods are much like the souls of humans, you see, once our mortality is set aside.
“Or perhaps I simply joined with something else,” Hekate added thoughtfully. “Something that had been there forever, as long as the earth existed. From the perspective of a fish, the river flows cleanly; for a bird flitting over the waters, however, things are not so simple. So it is for the gods and time. Some say Hekate was Night’s daughter, or that of Zeus. But if you doubt me, Medea, remember this: Your mother has no tomb because there was no body to bury.”
This astonished me. “Father said he threw your body into the sea,” I whispered, “for the crime of dying and leaving him alone.”
“Ah, Aeetes,” Hekate said, her face twisting with rank hatred. “A monster of a man. He cast me out of Qulha after my apotheosis, and his blood draws a circle around you that I cannot breach except in the very rarest of circumstances. But no matter. I have given you witchcraft, the power to make the world into the sort of place you wish to live. And in the moments before your death, I’ll come to you. If you have lived a life worth immortalizing, I will give you apotheosis, and you will become a goddess.”
“Are you leaving?” Panic filled me, and suddenly I was as frantic as a drowning woman. Breaking out of the numbness that gripped me, I fell at Hekate’s feet, clutching her skirts. “Let me stay with you,” I begged. “Please, give me apotheosis now, that I might stay by your side forever.”
Hekate cupped my face in her wizened hands, stroking my cheek tenderly. “My dear girl, you do not know what you ask. A full human lifetime is the greatest of gifts, one I never had thechance to enjoy. There is nothing like it in all eternity, and I will not take it from you.”
A strangled cry tore from my throat. Next to me, the dog whined.
“I will be worthy,” I pleaded, grasping frantically at Hekate’s hem as the dream blurred at the edges. “I’ll be a good daughter, I’ll give you heirs and descendants. And a temple, and worshippers too. Just don’t forget me, please.”
The dream dissolved, and I opened my eyes.
My cry echoed off the stone walls, but I did not weep. There were no tears left in me. Instead, I was angry, burning with fury that I had finally come so close to my mother only to lose her. Hekate had found a way to keep her hunting dogs with her, but not her daughter. And I was angry too at the loss of Chalciope, who enjoyed the double blessing of returning to her husband and leaving our awful father behind.
But my mother had not left me empty-handed.
