Page 105 of This Divine Revelry

The island is like a sunset coalesced. A monument of marble, painted and arrayed so that on every hilltop there is a statue, on every corner a temple. Boats line the harbour, more on the horizon, and as we draw close, a figure detaches from the docks’ crowd, draped in a black veil and a slick, silky chiton like the dark spills across her – swelling over her stomach where evidently a child grows. In my mind, the exit is reached – her. Medea.

They say she’s a murderer. That she killed the woman her husband tried to leave her for. That she buried her own children too. That she comes from a barbarous nation. That she is the violent force behind every one of Jason’s conquests.

But they also say she saved Heracles. Saved Jason. Saved every single Argonaut a dozen times over.

I approach with trepidation.

‘Cousin,’ she intones, her lofty voice echoing even across the breezy port. ‘The portents foretold of your approach. They spoke of a dying god. Of his rebirth. Of a race across the ocean that would bring you to me.’

I step back, a little unnerved. ‘Really?’

‘No,’ she says with a breathless laugh. ‘Hecate told me. In person. She was picking her nails at the time.’

She pushes the veil from her face. Her skin is fair, untouched by the sun – just like mine – and like me she too towers above those around us, her hair an untameable dark weave.

‘Come,’ she says, eyes flitting across me with not so much warmth as intrigue. ‘Walk with me.’

She takes me away from the city, up into the foothills of the neighbouring mountains.

‘Delos has temples to Isis, Serapis, Hadad, Atargatis and many more gods outside the pantheon that traders have brought to these shores. But nothing for Hecate.’

Hecate. Goddess of magic. Medea was her high priestess. She taught her to do all she can do.

Medea stops walking. ‘And yet, you may always find her power at the crossroads.’

The road ahead branches – one path leading up into the mountains, another down towards the coastline where smaller fishing boats are lashed.

Medea crosses to a fallen tree lying in the shadow of another and sits down upon it. ‘Come, Grandfather doesn’t need to hear everything.’ She squints at me in the brightness. ‘You are awfully quiet, Ariadne. That doesn’t tend to run in our family.’

‘Sorry – still shaken from a recent kidnapping, I think.’ I take a seat beside her. ‘Did Hecate really speak to you about Dionysus?’

‘Yes,’ she says – like speaking to a goddess is an ordinary occurrence. ‘Theseus drove me from Athens – I don’t know what’s wrong with us. You, your mother, Circe, especially me – we all have the worst taste in men. Aegeus approved his son’s effort to kill me, even knowing I carried our child. So I ran. But I couldn’t go far, not like this.’ She gestures at her stomach. ‘On the outskirts of Athens lies Eleusis. I knew Hecate was working on something there with the Queen of the Underworld and her mother, the goddess of the harvest. It sounded a safe enough place to claim sanctuary.’

‘And she mentioned Dionysus specifically?’

She nods. ‘Yes – sometimes. She’s not the easiest to follow, though – seems to expect you to know what she’s talking about and keeps going until you catch up. Death and rebirth was a continuous refrain. And she mentioned bleeding a god a number of times. Though it’s not my first time hearing that. Bleed a god, take their power – it’s a rumour heroes have whispered amongst themselves for years. This just might be the first time it’s actually been within their grasp.’

I tense. Perseus had said something like that … He’s going to get weaker – weak enough to bleed.

I’d thought he meant it poetically. Weak enough to kill. And even then, the notion that killing Dionysus might be a route to godhood has always seemed ludicrous – like the Olympians require a set number and would hurry to replace him with the first available hero.

But there’s more to it?

‘It’s true, then?’ I ask. ‘That is how it would work?’

Medea shrugs. ‘Like all rumours, it’s a little warped. But Dionysus proved that immortality can be achieved through a sort of transference. If he had been born of his mother, he’d be just another mortal demigod running around. But stitched up in his father’s thigh, he absorbed divinity. And if he could take immortality from his father’s body, why couldn’t another demigod take it from him in turn? Immortality is a hungry thing – it wants to consume. Some demigods are even born with it outright. But others? Well, if you have immortal blood in your veins, sometimes all it takes is a slight boost, a jolt to take it from a spark to an inferno. A full mortal couldn’t do it; the divinity would burn them up. But a demigod? If they were to capture a god, any god, really – but let’s consider yours the easiest to fall into their clutches, rejected by Olympus and walking the mortal plane as he does – then yes, they could draw that immortality out for themselves.’

My heart pounds and it feels all the more ominous with Delos stretched out before me – all those temples, all the men hungry to erect them for themselves.

Perseus himself, luring me in with the promise of exactly that because he knew how powerful an offer it would be.

Medea traces the grain of the log we sit upon, far too nonchalant for my liking. ‘Unlike those other gods, I’m not sure yours has enough of that fuel to go around. It wouldn’t be Zeus, dripping it into him with each pulse of ichor, never feeling his own depletion. It would likely bleed Dionysus dry.’

‘Oh, just let them try,’ I growl – and she laughs.

‘You know what they’re like – so delighted to have power until they find out someone else has more.’ Her eyes pierce me – shrewd and shockingly light, a yellow so pale it is nearly white, and a marked difference from the black she drapes herself in. ‘But we are strongest when each other is too. Hecate knew this when she brought Persephone and Demeter to Eleusis. And I know this sitting here with you.’

That light within my chest pulses.