I stepped out of my bed onto the death-cold tiles of the palace floor. While the rest of the world slept, I walked out into the moonlight-drenched courtyard and looked up at the sky.
The moon was full. It seemed that something very ancient and female rode with her through the trees, and mysteries lurked in the shadows cast by her light. The familiar world was rendered strange under the cover of moonlight and shadow, and anything might be possible.
Lifting my hand, I considered the blood running within my veins. My mother’s blood, Hekate’s. My mind was heavy with the knowledge she had given me, like an autumn tree laden with fruit. The power within me crackled like lightning, seeking its release. Certainly I would need to refine it with practice and study, but the raw potential was there. Waiting.
I looked at the plants around me and saw all their component parts: the living creatures that decayed to make the earth fertile, and the new life nurtured by death. The power that dwelled within the green growing plants, rained down by the stars.
Around me the four rivers flowed. Water mingled with the dark earth and the clear night air. In my heart, a fire burned.
Water and fire. Earth and air. Dark and light. A crossroads, in other words. These were the forces behind the Chaos that had given rise to the speaking gods at the beginning of the world, and these forces belonged to Hekate.
My breath billowed out in the cold air. I could not have what I wanted most—my mother and my sister, whom I was powerless to keep by my side. But I wasn’t helpless anymore. If I had not been given the love of a family at birth, then I’d force the hand of fate to grant it to me.
I set in motion gathering ingredients, moving soundlessly through the darkened gardens. I wrenched some mugwort from the moon-soaked ground and rosemary too, mixing these together with the sweet Qulhan earth and a little of my own blood.
There was little craft or finesse to it, though there was a great deal of passion. I found a tablet of lead and rubbed it with the herbs and earth before running it through the incense smoke. Then I began to carve the words in Qulhan and Greek and Egyptian, so that the gods of every people might know my will. Repeating the words again and again, using a hairpin to drive my wish into the soft lead, over and over.
Give me love unconditional.
Gradually I became aware of my own voice turning the command into a chant, inscribing it into the air as surely as my hand carved it into the lead. I felt the edges of my mind brush up against the shape of the world, like one hand touching another in the dark. With all the strength I could muster, Ipushed.
When the chant abruptly ended, the exultation of power left me reeling. Like a sleeper waking from a dream, I gradually became aware of the cold flagstones beneath my knees and the sharp scent of the dwindling incense, not to mention the dirt ground under my fingernails.
The courtyard remained empty. No one stood there, no loving mother or gentle sister or handsome bridegroom come to take me away from all of this.
Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. Well, it seemed that my magic was not able to summon any whim or desire. No matter. The seeds were planted, I insisted to myself, and someday love would enter my life. Until then, I would work on mastering the intricacies of my witchcraft, learning its strengths and demands.
Feeling rather foolish and very, very cold, I buried the lead tablet in the shadow of the palace before creeping back into bed.
The next morning, I resolved to keep my promise to Hekate.
I surveyed the crossroads shrine, then summoned representatives from the guild of stonemasons. I used my own royal jewelry to pay for the construction, which would no doubt have incensed my father if he found out. But Aeetes never managed to tear his eyes away from the Golden Fleece, the only treasure that mattered to him anymore.
In time, the crude wooden idol was replaced by a statue formed of bronze, and a proper temple grew up from the roadside shrine. Priestesses came from a dozen nations to serve—they were Qulhan, Heniochi, Scythian, and Greek. They bowed before me, the chosen of Hekate and their royal benefactress.
On the day that construction was completed, a great crowd gathered below. I placed two braziers filled with burning herbs on the temple steps, sending up great clouds of smoke. Next to them,I was a lone figure clad in royal purple. Among the milling crowd I noticed Aeetes, his golden eyes blazing. Fear filled me at the sight of my father, but I swallowed it down. Never again would I be that girl weeping alone in the garden, I swore. Never again would I be so powerless.
“Behold the power of Hekate!” I cried out, and threw more incense on the fire.
Out of the smoke, a shape emerged: the full moon, luminous despite the daytime brightness. The crowd gasped. I chanted under my breath, sweat pouring from my brow as I maintained the illusion. The shape of the moon waned to a crescent and then grew back again, wheeling through all her phases in the noonday sky.
Below me, the crowd howled with delight. I looked for the face of Aeetes but could not find him.
When it came time to consecrate the temple, I was the one who held the sacrificial knife to the throat of the black ewe. With a swipe of the blade, I silenced her bleating cries and offered up the sacrifice to Hekate. Young as I was, I already knew that everything worth having was paid for in blood.
Look,I said silently to Hekate as I presented the offering.I promised you worshippers, a temple. I kept my promise.
Will you keep yours?
3
Medea
A life worth immortalizing,that was what would bring my mother back to me. And every day for the next ten years, I strove to live such a life.
In the morning, when rosy-fingered dawn reached through my windows, I leaped out of bed and dressed hurriedly, then ran to the temple of Hekate.
Qulha was—and still is—a land of temples, situated at the intersection between cultures. Some of these temples were dedicated to the animal-headed gods who came with my ancestors out of Egypt; others to the fickle gods of the Greeks, their worship brought on shallow-bellied trading boats. The most ancient shrines were dedicated to the primordial forces worshipped by the steppe peoples, original inhabitants of this land: Tabiti the sun, all-seeing eye of fire, my family’s progenitor. And Tengri, the eternal blue sky, vast and endless.
