A robed figure stands there. “I come with a message,” a voice says from beneath the cloak. A woman’s voice. This surprises Jason, since women rarely serve as messengers. “Your inheritance is almost finished. Follow me.”
Jason is puzzled; his mother never made mention of any inheritance Aeson left him, except for debts and duties. Against his better judgment, Jason trails the hooded figure through the teeming streets of Iolcus, toward the smell of salt in the air. If his father left him one final message, if there was something he wanted his son to have, Jason needs toknow.
Soon they reach the shipyards, full of vessels carrying treasures from far away. Jason and the stranger walk past legions of men toiling in the blazing sun, sweat glistening on their rippling muscles, and head toward an area where the sound of hammers echoes in the air. Light glitters on the water.
Then Jason rounds a corner and sees it.
A marvel among ships, larger than anything else in the harbor, with curved sides reaching far above Jason’s head. The planks of the hull are fitted so tightly together that not a drop of seawater can get in, and an array of oars bristles at its sides like the limbs of a multilegged insect. Jason cranes his head back and notices the multiple decks: one beneath the sky and another to shelter the rowers, a remarkable innovation at a time when most boats are little more than rickety fishing rafts. Eyes painted on the hull allow the ship to see its way. Above, huge sails snap in the wind.
“This,” the stranger says, “is theArgo. And it is yours.”
When Jason turns toward her, the hooded figure has changed.A woman stands there, or something that looks like a woman, her beauty seemingly carved from stone. She brings to mind an empress dowager; though not young, she makes the loveliness of youth appear garish. She is clearly someone who is used to being in command, and it is equally clear that she is not mortal.
A goddess. The rest of the world seems to recede around them as her peplos robe rustles in the wind of another world.
Jason falls to his knees, forehead pressed against the sun-bleached wood of the dock. He trembles with terror, knowing how quickly divine favor can shift, but even so he cannot quite resist the temptation of peering up at her. She has the dark eyes of a cow, long-lashed and luminous. They are strangely familiar.
“The old woman from the ford,” Jason whispers. The one he carried over the river. She had eyes like that, beautiful in her withered face.
The goddess laughs. “Just so,” she says. “I hope you will forgive the disguise, but I needed to judge what sort of person you were, Jason of Iolcus. And I must say, I find myself pleasantly surprised. Carrying me across the river on your back, what kindness! You are a different sort of man, and you will become a different sort of hero—if you live long enough. And I will make certain that you do.”
“Why, my lady?” he asks hoarsely. “Why did you come to judge me?”
“Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the goddess says. “You hate Pelias as much as I do. A horrible man—he once slaughtered an innocent woman in my temple, I’ll have you know. An awful mess and an unforgivable insult. But nowyouare here. And the prophecy about Pelias’s defeat by a man wearing only one sandal will at last come to fruition.”
Forehead still pressed against the dock, Jason blinks. Now he knows why Pelias stared at his feet in the megaron. Though Jason can’t help thinking it’s not a very good prophecy, since a man might lose a sandal for all sorts of reasons. But he doesn’t say this to the goddess.
Jason feels a cool hand on his head. “I give you theArgoso that you may get the Golden Fleece, Jason of Iolcus,” the goddess says. “Now gather your crew, and know that you travel under the protection of Hera, Queen of Heaven.”
5
Medea
The little green snake thrashed in my grasp, though I was careful to hold it just under the head so it could not bite me.
Around me burned a circle of tallow candles, illuminating a scroll from faraway Egypt. Carried halfway across the world from a land where it never rained, the tome of spells had been endlessly useful for refining my witchcraft. After my experiments with charms against fire, I’d now moved on to the section labeled “Transformation.”
As if sensing what was coming, the snake redoubled its struggles.
It was for Chalciope’s sake that I did this. In the weeks since my sister’s midnight return, she had not snapped out of her stupor. She spent her days staring out her window, taking only a little food and water.
I’d tried to cheer her with gifts of her favorite foods and bolts of fine silk for dresses. She smiled briefly upon receiving these and patted my hand, then turned back to look out the window once more.
It occurred to me that the unexplained absence of Chalciope’s husband and children might be the root of her melancholy, but there was nothing I could do if, as I suspected, Aeetes was involved. Instead I focused on what I could control, losing myself in the details.
Something grander than food or clothing was in order. I wanted to distract Chalciope from her secret sorrow just as I distracted myself from the prospect of my hateful marriage to Absyrtos. I could do nothing to change my circumstances, but I could do this: take refuge in the ability my mother had given me to conjure illusions and work magic and turn one thing into another.
Hence the little green snake.
The snake had begun to relax its struggles, seeing that they were getting it nowhere. It did not protest as I slathered its body with the poultice, brewed from herbs sacrificed under the full moon.
Over the years, I’d slowly learned the size and shape of my magic. It was best exercised in the service of specific, discrete goals—turn back fire; create such-and-such illusion; change this creature into that one. I’d arrange the herbs, and the chant would rise, sometimes from the dusty pages of a magical papyrus and at other times from the depths of my own mind. Far less successful were spells focused on nebulous goals, like my foolish childhood working for unconditional love.
I breathed in, then out, feeling the power growing in my body like a water droplet about to fall. The core of my witchcraft woke within me, raising its head like a serpent. My palms itched, a sensation both impetus and invitation.
My voice pierced the silence, robust in authority. “I cast this working in the name of Hekate Soteira, the Savior...”
More words followed, twining through the air like incense smoke, building a ladder for my will to climb upon. I grasped the poultice-slick snake tightly, holding the image of its new shape in my head.
