“You,”he spits, the venom in his voice rocking me back on my heels. I’ve never seen him this angry, and never, ever want to again.“You’ve ruined everything, you’ve tarnished my name forever. I’ll never sit on the throne of my father, and it is all your fault.”
Tears burn my eyes, threatening to choke me. I am aware of my own mewling, pitiful voice, saying, “But this was what you wanted, Jason. What you asked me to do. You told Aeetes that the world was finished with old men like him, and all I did was show Pelias the same.”
“I never wanted this!”Jason howls.
I wonder if he will hit me, though I’ve never seen him strike anyone before. Instead, he simply buries his face in his hands.
After a time, he speaks, calm but cold. “Medea,” he says, not looking at me, “I can’t be married to a woman who does such things. I can’t have a wife who humiliates me like this.”
Terror drenches me like seawater. Is he sending me away, like his mother commanded? Where will I go? I have no home to return to, no friends or family to shelter with. Atalanta is gone, back in her forests. I have gambled all I have on Jason; to lose him now is to lose everything.
No no no. I will file down my teeth, cut my claws. Domesticate myself into the perfect wife. Anything to avoid the horror of abandonment.
In a flurry of weeping, I fall at his feet. “I will be a good wife, Jason, I promise. I’ll keep your home and raise your children. And I will never ever do magic again unless you command it.”
His hand rests on my head. His fingers, clawlike, twine in my hair. “Do you swear it?”
Startled out of my tears, I look up at him. His beautiful hazel eyes seem to have aged a thousand years since this morning. I see what he is asking of me and what I must do to make things right.
My magic is my self. But I see now, as if through Jason’s eyes, how fearful it is, how unnatural. At its basest level, magic is an actof violence against the world, breaking the bones of reality and reshaping them as I choose. Turning little green snakes into dragons, conjuring illusions, reading the future in the livers of birds—of course Jason fears it. Who wouldn’t?
Once, Jason brought me to an isle west of the setting sun in order to restore my magic. Now, I lay it like a beating heart on the altar of our marriage and try not to count the cost. “I will never do magic again unless at your command. I swear this.”
The finality of it closes over me like the sealed door of a tomb.
Jason seems pleased, or at least mollified, and rises to begin preparations for our journey. I remain on the floor, aching with all I have given up.
But it is not for myself alone that I make this sacrifice. After the night in the cave on Phaeacia, a spark has taken root in my womb, growing steadily. A child, Jason’s child, to be born in exile but loved all the same.
54
Jason
As Jason walks through the little rented house, gathering up their sparse belongings, he recalls a summer day long ago when he played together with the daughters of Pelias.
Alcestis, Pelopia, Evadne, and Antinoe, those are their names. They danced in a green meadow, and Alcestis wove a flower crown and placed it on Jason’s head. He remembers enjoying their company. If his mother had her way, he might even have married one of them.
Instead, the daughters of Pelias are murderers, and Jason is an exile.
To Jason’s surprise, it doesn’t displease him that Pelias has met such a horrible end, killed by his own daughters like Actaeon torn apart by his dogs after rendering insult to the goddess Artemis. Blood soaks the world, and that is the price of its turning. Jason sees this now. Chiron called him a bloodless hero, but what is that? Nothing more than a fool.
Jason once carried an old woman across a river in flood and thereby earned the favor of the Queen of Heaven. How far he has fallen since then.
Hera chose him to humiliate Pelias, but it is not Jason who has given the goddess her final revenge—it is Medea. And it is Medea, also, who finally avenged Jason’s father by killing his murderer, a task that Jason never had the stomach or skill to do himself.
Medea has taken his vengeance from him, just as she has taken his throne. Jason thought he was bringing home a kitten, but instead he discovers he has taken a lioness as a wife.
He wonders if his mother will be pleased to learn that she was right after all.
Jason staggers, catching himself on the wall. He sags against it, then slides down to the floor. Free from prying eyes, he finally allows himself to weep.
Gone, gone forever from the city of his forefathers. Never again to walk the soil of his native land or join his ancestors in the family tomb. Never to ascend to the throne of Iolcus that is his patrimony.
It is all her fault. Medea’s. Her plan was a cunning one, he has to admit, ending the old king’s life but placing the murder weapon in the hands of another. But he cannot forgive her for the oversight that has ruined them both.
Jason is crushed between the insatiable urge to get away from Medea and the knowledge that he can never let her go. In that moment, however, he abandons any idea of ever coming to love her.
They must leave the city of Iolcus at dawn, according to the terms of their exile, and will head to Corinth, where his maternal uncle has friends. Perhaps Jason can find some way to eke out a living there. He considers writing to Peleus, but he doesn’t want the scattered Argonauts to get wind of this scandal. Better they should remember him as their glorious leader, not as Jason Amechanos, Jason the Helpless.
