How strange the roads of life, which lead to paths you never thought you would follow. Life surprises you, again and again.
Back then I had stolen a kiss from Medea; now I would give her the truth. There was no reason not to be honest, not to take the risk. Love would still end in death, but this time the death would be my own.
“Even after all these years,” I said, “I never stopped loving you.”
The terror of speaking the words was matched only by the relief of sharing them. The air shimmered like ice about to break.
“I thought of you constantly throughout the last twenty years,” I continued, my voice wavering only slightly. “If my replies to your letters have been lackluster, if I did not come to visit, know that the distance has been the result of too much feeling rather than too little.”
“Melanion?” The name was a question on her lips.
I actually laughed a little. “The heart is not a throne, with only one king to sit upon it. Orpheus himself told me that, long ago.”
The heat of the single lamp seemed to fill the room. I lay back down among the blankets, eyes half lidded with unstated invitation.If there is to be a kiss,I thought,you must be the one to seek it. After I have crossed all these miles to come to you, cross this final gap for me.
Slowly, inexorably, Medea leaned toward me. Her lips met mine, soft and questioning at first, then hungry. I yielded to her explorations; how delicious when she indulged her appetites. She rested her forehead against mine, and I breathed in the scent of her: spices and herbs and milk.
There are moments in life when joy spills in like sunlightthrough the parting clouds. Moments so perfect you want to hold them like jewels, even as they slip between your fingers. This was one such moment, and it was more than I could have ever imagined.
Medea
In the forest house, Atalanta showed me what Artemis’s nymphs did during nights of the new moon. While Artemis embraced sweet solitude, the nymphs embraced each other, trading kisses and caresses.
I was as nervous as I’d been on my wedding night, but soon saw there was no reason to be. My tension melted away in the flow of sensation and new experiences. I had not known I was capable of such pleasures, or that she was.
Over the years my body had become like a foreign land, vast and threatening, but under her hands it was revealed as marvelous. As we tried it one way and then another, I began to gain a new understanding of my capacity to give and receive pleasure.
If she looked at me like that, with such reverence and awe in the lamplight, then there must be something in me worth loving after all.
Before, I’d thought that an unrealized dream would be a perfect one. Whenever I was discontented with my life, I could simply lose myself in imaginings, untrammeled by the bonds of reality. But now I saw that happiness was possible on the earth, and that it was her, laughing.
78
Medea
Sometimes we must build with boundless sorrow.
The morning sunlight warmed my skin as I checked the snares. Six rabbits today, a bounty. Enough for a large pot of soup. It seemed that the potion I’d rubbed on the snares, designed to draw the rabbits’ attention and decrease their caution, had been effective. A success, though not all of my magical experiments were.
Since I’d come out of Corinth a few weeks ago, much of my time was spent refining my witchcraft, trying out half-remembered recipes and developing new ones, mostly to treat Atalanta’s illness and moderate her pain. I could not drive out the disease, but I could inhibit its course and strengthen her body to fight against it, giving us more precious time together. Every moment we shared was a gift.
Detaching the rabbits from the snares, I began to field dress them, setting the skins aside for later tanning and entrusting their offal to the earth, where it would enrich the soil. Atalanta had taught me to do this, and I’d picked up the skill readily, since it reminded me of the sacrifices in the temple of Hekate. All around me was the endless circling of life and death; the green plants nibbled by the rabbits, who died and nourished the earth, bringing forth more vegetation. Death and life, a crossroads of sorts where magic might flourish.
On my way back to camp, I stopped by the glen where I’d sown the seeds of wild carrots a few days before. Atalanta liked the taste of these to flavor the stews I made for her. The little plants were still only small green spirals, but as I ran my palm over their leafy tops and chanted the sacred words, the fledgling carrots began to grow. The tops sprouted, tickling my fingers, and the earth cracked as the roots expanded below. I yanked a few ripened carrots free and brushed off the dirt on my skirts, then walked home.
Atalanta was sitting by the fire when I returned, whittling yet another spear shaft. She had become more active with her hands as it became more and more difficult for her to walk, as if industry might keep her illness at bay. She was always fiddling with something, always tinkering and carving, no matter how many times I told her that we already had enough spears, thank you very much.
I rejoiced in my small exercises of magic like a child learning to walk, and Atalanta rejoiced with me. My witchcraft had been many things throughout my life—evidence of my mother’s love, a tool to win the esteem of others, a sacrifice, a shameful embarrassment. But it had never been simplymine. Now, I approached magic without demand or fear, simply reveling in the capability. In response, the world bloomed around me.
“Witchcraft, I think, is like water,” I said absentmindedly, stirring the cauldron over the fire, then preparing the meat and carrots. “Water comes in so many different forms: ice, clouds, the salt water that lapped the hull of theArgo, the pure, crystalline spring water that provides the basis for this soup. Magic reflects you back to yourself, like a still pool.”
“And what do you see?” Atalanta asked. She put aside her carving and leaned forward, propping her chin on one hand.
I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Someone I am coming to like.”
“You’d better like her,” Atalanta said. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
Her gruffness made me laugh, as did the epithet. Her wife. It made me feel like a blushing bride, a cherished companion.
