At some point his kindness curdled and his gentleness transformed into a calloused crust. He’d always known how to win people over, but he never tried to charm me after the death of Pelias. Instead, I used to catch him eyeing me as an animal might watch the one who caged it, even though he was free to roam the city while I was confined to the house.
Jason wanted me small. But in truth, I was powerful beyond measure.
Beside me, Atalanta was awake. At some point she’d emerged from the depths of unconsciousness, and now she shifted her head toward mine on the pillow.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Jason,” I replied.
“Why would you do something like that?”
I snorted. “We lived together for many years, it makes sense that I think about him sometimes. Don’t you still think of Melanion?”
Over our days together, Atalanta had told me more about her spouse. I marveled that such a person could exist, neither male nor female. But I still went sour any time Melanion’s name was mentioned, bitterly envious that they had been able to spend so much time with Atalanta.
“Often and fondly,” she replied.
Jealousy rose in my chest, but Atalanta nuzzled me affectionately.
“Melanion was a creature of the airy heights,” she said, “not the deep valleys of grief. There were many children in their household growing up, so they never knew loneliness, and therefore they could never understand a great part of me. Not like you do. You will always have a special place in my heart,” she added, kissing the tip of my nose. Her words sent a flush of warmth through my chest, though I still grumbled and rolled onto my back theatrically.
“I just don’t like the way Melanion tricked you with the golden apples,” I said.
Atalanta’s arms twined around me, and she pulled me closer to her chest—careful, naturally, of her left breast, where the karkinos grew. I closed my eyes as I relaxed into the sharp angles of her body.
“In all fairness,” she said, “the golden apples were more of a joint effort than they might have seemed at first.”
81
Atalanta
The thing about happiness is that you do not always recognize it right away. It sneaks up on you when you are doing something else. It appears as a quickening of time, the hours speeding past like swift horses. It comes when you are sitting with her in the noontime sun, a breeze playing over your skin. When you are sleeping with her body curled into yours, her head resting on your chest, and you find yourself wishing that this moment will never end. Even though you know it eventually must.
The cloth was warm as it glided across my skin, sponging my body clean. Medea dipped it into a bowl of warm water, then wrung it out. Several lamps illuminated the little hut, shedding light and warmth over the scene.
Once I’d snapped at the maids in my father’s palace in Arcadia who tried to scrub me, saying that I could do it myself. This no longer held true. Now, a short walk to the river left me winded, and I slept more and more. There was no pain, and for that I was grateful for the potions Medea gave me. But this did not change the fact that my strength was rapidly fading.
So I had no choice but to put myself body and soul into Medea’s mercy. Fortunately, she looked after me tenderly. I leaned my head back as she gently sponged my neck and collarbones, avoiding thebandage over my left breast that covered the suppurating wound caused by the karkinos. Her touch was gentle, and a pleasure. This was a woman who had raised three sons, after all, and was used to dealing with far more unruly bath times.
“What do you think the Underworld is like?” I asked Medea as she washed my back. The question nibbled at my mind with increasing urgency, now that I was coming closer to answering it conclusively.
“I don’t know,” she replied, squeezing out the cloth. “I never had to think about it before,” she added, evoking her divine parentage and the fate of apotheosis that awaited her. It made me wistful, I had to admit, the thought that I would never see Medea again after this.
“I imagine it’s peaceful, though,” she continued. “Quiet. The light of the sun and moon cannot pierce the veil of mist that lies over the fields of the Underworld, and there is no heat or cold there. Only the shades of the dead, wandering for eternity, seeking and sometimes finding the ones they loved in life. And if they do not, then there is always the river of Lethe, to bring forgetfulness and wash away all the pain of mortal existence.”
I closed my eyes and tilted back my head. “It will be good to see them again, the ones I lost. Melanion, Meleager, Procris. My mother.”
Medea pulled back. “Oh, I see,” she said bitterly, dropping the cloth back into the water. “It’s not because you love me best that you’re here, but only because I’m the most convenient. The only one left alive. Melanion, Meleager, Procris—so many names. Why would you have cause to remember mine?”
Her face was flushed with anger, and her eyes red with tears. But I had enough insight to see that these were not a reflection of her true feelings, only her fear.
Taking her hand in mine, I lifted it to my lips and kissed it.“Love has come to me many times in life,” I said. “And so has loss, I will not deny that. But by the Far-Shooter, Medea, never doubt that I will remember your name when I walk the Fields of Asphodel. We have laid bare our souls and carried each other through darkness. Do you really think I would forget my own wife?”
Medea dashed away her tears and stared silently at the floor for a long time. Her jaw worked, and she seemed to be thinking about something. Evidently, she came to a conclusion, because she gave a sharp nod and turned to me.
“Don’t drink from the waters of Lethe,” she beseeched. “The ones that make you forget. Find the ones you loved in the Underworld, but don’t drink the waters of Lethe and forget me.”
Her earnestness made me chuckle a little. “Very well, I promise that I will not drink of the Lethe. And anyway, there’s nothing really that I want to forget. I have very few regrets in life, even fewer now that you and I have had this time together. Although...”
