This, Orpheus concluded, was the tale of Heracles.
“Heracles did penance at the command of King Eurystheus and the court of Queen Omphale,” Orpheus declared following the conclusion of his song. “But his debt is not yet repaid and his story is no longer one with ours. We should be on our way.”
“I wondered where the miasma on Heracles came from,” Medea whispered to herself beside me. “Now I know.”
We’d all heard of the great Labors of Heracles. But none of us, it seemed, knew why he had been tasked with them in the first place. The songs usually left that part out.
But where in all this was there room for Hylas, the young man who had looked after Heracles so devotedly and ran his life like atidy ship? Where was there space in the songs for the love they’d shared, crammed into the margins of a story about a man who spent his life making amends?
That evening, I realized with terrible clarity that I was beginning to fall in love with Medea.
We spent the night on the shores of Phineus’s island, Jason having split the difference between the two courses of action laid before him. If Heracles did not return by the morning, Jason announced, then we would leave without him, but it was unseemly not to give a member of the crew the chance to reconsider and return. There was no question of demanding the king’s hospitality once more, so we camped on the beach as we usually did. Medea worked alongside me to prepare the camp.
I was ecstatic to be near her again, which I recognized as a worrying symptom. The allure of her presence as sweet as honeycomb, lending fascination to the most mundane things as long as she was interested in them. I’d felt it with Procris, and now I felt it with Medea. Only the faintest beginnings of love, but unmistakable.
Medea. At some point over theArgo’s long journey she had become a friend, and now she became something more. We had not known each other long, but we did know each other well.
I flinched back from these feelings as I might from a knife’s edge. How faithless the human heart, to set its sights on someone new so quickly. Only a few days had passed since I’d learned of Procris’s death. The goddess’s prophecy held true—I had loved, and lost myself. But then again, perhaps this meant that the inverse was also true.If I did not love, I would not lose.
Yes, it was simple when looked at like that. I’d prune these feelings like an invasive growth of mistletoe and brick up theyawning gap of my vulnerability. Having come to the revelation that I was falling in love with Medea, I decided to bury this truth like a dog hastily hiding a bone.
On the beach, Orpheus was singing again. A little ditty about a god called Eros, who seemed to spend all his time making people fall in love with each other. Then the melody slowed and deepened, the notes becoming darker as it changed to a tale about a girl who had been struck by Eros to love a wandering singer. The girl’s name was Eurydice, and her ankles flashed as she danced at their wedding. Then a serpent sank its fangs into that tender flesh, and Eurydice fell down into the abyss of the Underworld.
Her husband, the singer, went after her. He walked the cypress-lined road into the land of the dead while yet living, winning passage with his music. And when he stood before the throne of the dread queen of hell, he charmed her with his song. Persephone let the soul of Eurydice follow her husband through the shadows of the Underworld up into the light, under the condition that he did not turn around. But just as they were about to step into the living world, the singer turned to look at his beloved. And the form of his Eurydice dissolved into mist.
The sorrow of the tale drove the breath from my lungs. But more than that, something about it made me angry. Leaving Medea to eat her supper alone, I stalked toward Orpheus and confronted him at the fringes of the camp.
“You were the singer, weren’t you?” I demanded. “The one in the song, who went after Eurydice.”
Orpheus did not seem ruffled by my sudden appearance and regarded me with eyes as calm as the lake of the nymphs where Hylas had drowned. Around him, the others continued to carouse. “I was,” he replied. “All that way I traveled, only to lose her again. One might say it was a waste, but love is never wasted.”
The words echoed in my mind.Love is never wasted.
“How can you love Calais if you loved Eurydice?” I demanded. This was why I’d come here—to ask Orpheus how he could sing about his past love with his current one sitting nearby. Orpheus could not really love her if he loved him, and vice versa, or so I told myself. Anything to poke holes in the vastness of his love and, by extension, my own.
Orpheus simply laughed. “The heart is not a throne, with only one king to sit upon it. Or a lyre, played by a single hand. The heart breaks, but it also rises. Love is pain, but so is life and it is no less dear to us. You would do well to remember that. Or, at least, never look back once you’ve made your choice.”
With that, Orpheus left to sit with his lover, Calais, and Calais’s brother, Zetes, who were currently being feted by the rest of the Argonauts for their defeat of the Harpies.
Their revels irked me. Here they were partying, as if Heracles did not roam the woods beyond, utterly bereft. As if Hylas were not dead, and Eurydice too, and Procris and Meleager. As if there were not a thousand reasons to mourn.
I returned to Medea, waiting in our nest of blankets, as though I’d been drawn along by an invisible string. Foolish as it was, I could not bring myself to leave her.
I slid under the covers and pretended to fall asleep immediately. I didn’t want to expend effort concealing my feelings now that I understood that one love did not inoculate against another.
If I did not love, I would not lose. But it had never been that simple.
43
Medea
The night was calm and cool, with a thin drift of clouds over the moon. Inside my heart, though, was turmoil.
What had come over me, back in the library? I had no name for the craving, something like hunger or thirst, that I felt when I looked at Atalanta sitting in the shaft of sunlight.
Mares didn’t run after other mares, and it was the stag that trailed after the doe. Such things were not possible between two women—but they were, I realized, remembering Circe and her nymphs. Not to mention Atalanta’s relationship with Procris.
Atalanta was sleeping beside me now. She had been silent all evening, curling up under the blankets without even saying good night. I feared she might be angry at me, but she had never been one to sit on a slight. Something else troubled her.
