‘Afraid of him.’
Euryale had been edging forward, hoping to find her sister by touch. But at this moment, she stopped dead. She asked nothing more; she knew who Medusa meant and what she had endured. ‘Come to me,’ she said quietly.
In a moment, Euryale found her arms filled by her sister’s warm, shaking body. She could not see her eyes swollen with tears, but she felt the wetness soaking her breast. She stroked Medusa’s hair, unfurled her wings and wrapped them around her, like a shell. ‘Let’s go to Sthenno,’ she said. ‘She misses you so much.’
Medusa nodded through her sobs. They made their slow, steady way back to the cave entrance, back to the light. When they reached it, they found Sthenno peering inside, desperate to know what was happening, but staying where she had promised Euryale she would wait. She did not say anything when Euryale put Medusa in her arms, she simply held her, and shushed her, and told her everything would be alright.
Euryale was unrecognisable from the softened creature she had become in the darkness. She stepped away from her sisters, and flew across the shore. She stood at the scar that ran along their beach and she turned to face the sea.
‘You will never touch her again, do you hear me?’ she screamed. The winds did not dare to answer her, and the seabirds kept their silence. ‘Never.’
And with this, she raised herself in the air and smashed her feet onto the scarred rock. There was a tremor, and the sea itself felt fear. She rose again and smashed the scar a second time. This time, the tremor was greater. Once more she drove her mighty Gorgon heels into the ground, and the rock finally gave way. There was an almighty crashing sound as the water rushed away, and a terrible scraping shriek, as the rock split in two. The sky seemed to darken but it did not want to challenge her. She stood triumphant as her portion of the shore rose up, conquering its rival.
The sea had now retreated: it flooded over the lower expanse of rock but could only lap at the pedestal Euryale had created. The Gorgon shore was raised; the sea had receded into the distance, damp weeds and gasping fish left in its wake. She flew back to her sisters.
‘There,’ she said. ‘You never need to be afraid of him again.’
Stone
The first statue is a mistake. But the little bird has been caught so perfectly that you would never know. It is perching on a branch, its small talons wrapped tightly around. It is sleek, and looks soft to the touch: its downy chest feathers have been particularly well done. It sits up, its eyes alert, its beak poised to eat any insect that flies too close. Its wings seem to slot into its long tail feathers, like parts of a child’s toy.
Because it is made of stone, it is missing the colours of the real bird: the beak and the stripes across the eyes should be black, the back a deep red brown, fading to a pale orange. The chest and wings are bright blue, and the throat is saffron yellow.
If someone were to paint these details onto the little bird, it would be exquisite. Even as it is, you can barely resist the temptation to reach out and stroke it.
Part Two
Mother
Dana?
Dana? never doubted for a moment that her father loved her, which is how it was so easy for him to imprison her in a small room with thick walls and almost no light. He didn’t tell her that he had consulted the Oracle, nor did he mention the prophecy it had shared with him: that his daughter would bear a son who would one day take her father’s life. Acrisius was a vain man who had always enjoyed having a daughter and never wanted a son, though he didn’t admit this: he could not have tolerated watching his own body become frail as his son grew stronger. But a daughter was different, and the passage of time pained him less as he watched her grow to adulthood.
He had visited the Oracle in good faith, he told himself, wanting to know that although he had no son, he would have a grandson to inherit his kingdom of Argos. His city was powerful and he was both proud and defensive of it: he did not want to die and have it fall into his brother’s hands. He would rather see it go to a stranger. But most of all, he wanted it to go to his own heir. And so he rode the rocky paths to Delphi and made his offerings to the god and the priestess and asked what his future held. And what he heard was that his daughter’s son would kill him.
He left Delphi a sorry man. As he rode slowly home along the dusty stone-strewn paths, he wondered if he might have preferred not knowing. His daughter was unmarried; he might have spent many happy, unworried years with her and a grandchild not yet born. Perhaps he would be old when the child finally killed him, old and frail with his mind wandering, in need of release. Perhaps it would be an accident: his grandson’s horse rearing, the branch of a tree onto which the child had climbed falling. Acrisius’s own horse trod wearily on beneath him as he thought of how he might die. The Oracle had ostensibly given him an answer, but it had raised a much larger question. He listened to his horse’s hooves striking the ground, and with each sound all he heard was when, when, when. By the time he was nearing home, he had barely spoken for three days. He did not want to die, not now, not soon, not at all. And so he locked his daughter – the only person he had ever loved – in a small cell beneath his palace so she could not produce a baby who would hurt him.
Dana? heard this story through a small gap in the thick walls of her cell. Her maid brought her food each day, liberally seasoned with her own tears: Dana? was loved by everyone, even the men who had bundled her into the cell and walled her up. Her maid interrogated the slaves who’d accompanied her father to Delphi and reported back to his bewildered daughter. Had the king lost his mind, had the Oracle demanded this cruellest of punishments?
Gradually, she came to understand that her father’s fear of death – which had always made him hate his brother, since he looked at his twin and saw an ageing mirror – was the cause of her unhappiness. And because she was a loving daughter and a kind-hearted woman, she sympathized. No one could help being afraid of something. And being afraid of dying must be especially awful, because there was no hope of avoiding it. She knew too that Acrisius – never a sociable man – must be lonely, sitting in the palace with no one but slaves for company and the only person he had ever loved locked away beneath his feet. And yet, she found her sympathy had its limits. How could her father be so afraid of death that he would refuse to live? And how could he be so afraid of his own death that he would hasten his daughter to hers?
She began to wonder how she might free herself from this prison. Bribing the slaves was the most obvious place to start. But then she heard from her maid that the king had freed the slaves who knew his daughter, replaced them with others to whom she was only a name. Each day she was locked away, she could feel herself becoming smaller and paler, more forgotten. She found it increasingly hard to keep track of time, and quickly found she didn’t know how long she had been in the cell. Her grasp on what was and what was not became less and less sure. Certainly, when Zeus appeared above the small cot on which she slept, she was not as surprised as she might have expected to be.
‘How did you get inside here?’ she asked, having opened her eyes to find a large figure glowing gold beside her.
‘I rained in through the gaps in your roof,’ he said.