When Hephaestus showed her the model bird, she looked briefly furious, as though someone were playing a cruel trick on her. Then she snatched it from him and he worried he had made the wrong trinket again and that she would hurl it to the ground or smash it against the walls of the forge as she had done once or twice before with other figurines she had not liked.
But once she had it in her hands, her expression softened. He watched in silence as she turned the model over and examined its folded wings. She lifted it to look more closely at its flexed feet, and then lowered it again to examine the beautiful soft brow line he had created. She scratched at the top of its head, cooed as though it could hear her. He said nothing. The model was so realistic that its living counterpart grow irritated and pecked at her fingers until she stroked him instead. She laughed to see the bird’s jealousy.
This statue she did keep.
Euryale
Sthenno and Euryale never really slept, only tried to so that Medusa did not feel left out when she grew tired. So on the night she was cursed and her screams pierced the blackness, they were awake and they ran inside the cave to try to save their girl from whatever was hurting her. But there was no one there, no man, no animal. Euryale caught sight of a scorpion scuttling away in her torchlight and stamped on it just to be certain.
Their flickering light fell on Medusa, who had buried her face into the crooks of her arms. Her hands, though, were lost in a seething mass of snakes. Sthenno had given up hoping that Medusa would have snake hair like she and Euryale did, and yet here it was at last. But whatever had caused the change was clearly causing her terrible pain. Sthenno ran to her and put her arm around Medusa’s shoulders.
‘Darling, what happened?’
But Medusa could not reply, and Sthenno hugged her close. Euryale stood back, because Sthenno had dropped her torch and she didn’t want them to be swathed in darkness. It took her a moment to see that something had changed, that now there were two snake-covered heads together. She had always loved Medusa’s tight black curls, of course. Medusa was beautiful, her hair perhaps more than anything. But now, with snakes writhing around her instead of hair lying inert, she looked . . . Euryale tried to put the thought into words. She looked right. She looked like her sisters, like a Gorgon, like an immortal creature.
Sthenno held Medusa and rubbed her shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, darling. I know, your beautiful hair. You loved it so. Don’t cry.’
Euryale didn’t want to scare these new snakes with fire （her own were well used to such things by now） so she still held back. But Sthenno looked up and beckoned her, so she drove the base of her torch into the hard sand, and approached Medusa slowly. She need not have worried: the snakes didn’t rear or hiss. Her snakes – and Sthenno’s, and Medusa’s – tangled and untangled themselves contentedly, as though they all sprang from a single head. But Medusa still shuddered and wept. Even Euryale could see that although she preferred the snakes, Medusa did not.
And where had they come from? Their sister was mortal, they both knew it. And the only way you could tell she was a Gorgon by looking at her – unless you knew already – was if you noticed her wings. In all other regards she had always looked like an ordinary human girl. Had the snakes just sprouted fully formed from her head? Euryale couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to have them. But then, she also couldn’t imagine what it was like to feel pain. Unable to offer anything else, she took her sister’s arm and held it to her chest.
Gradually, Medusa’s sobs eased.
‘Did the snakes just appear?’ asked Sthenno.
‘No,’ Medusa said. ‘She made them.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘A goddess. She was here, in the cave. She was angry with me. It might have been . . .’ Her voice died.
‘We know who it was,’ Euryale said. ‘Vengeful and cruel, always blaming women for what men do to them. She has always been like this. You know she has.’
‘Yes,’ Sthenno agreed. She did know. So did Medusa, she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. ‘You’ll grow used to the snakes, dearest,’ she said, squeezing Medusa’s shoulders once again. ‘You’ve never minded ours. I know you’ll miss your hair for a while, but it will be alright, I promise.’
‘I know.’ Medusa still buried her head in the crook of her arm, but her shoulders had relaxed a little.
‘Do they hurt?’ asked Euryale. Medusa’s snakes shivered, as though they understood the possible threat.
‘No,’ Medusa replied. ‘They did at first, a lot. Or it might have been my hair getting torn out that hurt so much. I couldn’t tell: it all happened at once. But no, they don’t hurt now.’
‘There,’ said Sthenno. ‘So it’s getting better, even though it isn’t good.’
‘It’s my eyes that hurt,’ said her sister. ‘I can’t open them.’
The Graiai
Perseus had left his mother and Dictys behind with a great show of confidence. Dictys had offered to lend the boy his boat, but Perseus had to refuse him. He could not deprive the old man of his livelihood: what if he never returned? There were no spare vessels among the fishermen, who tended to use all the materials they had to repair the boats they loved. And even if Perseus had a supply of wood available to him, he didn’t have time to make a boat. He had less than two months to do the impossible.
Since no one knew where to find the head of a Gorgon, his mother suggested he ask his father for advice. Perseus did not know exactly how to do this and his mother could not really advise him. Dana? had attracted Zeus’s attention while locked in a cellar, but Perseus had never managed to do so at all. In the end, he decided he should head inland, and try to find a sacred grove, or a temple. Perhaps then he could make his offerings to Zeus and receive help.
He set off across the island, avoiding the well-worn paths that would take him to the palace of the king, and asking everyone he met if they knew of a place sacred to the king of the gods. Some had no answer, one or two told him to keep walking and he would come to the place he sought. But after several days of slow and dusty travel, he felt no closer to his father or any answer to his problems. If anything, he felt further away. Wherever the Gorgons lived, he was sure it wasn’t on Seriphos: why would Polydectes ask for something that was close to home? So travelling away from the sea had been a fool’s choice. He berated himself for having wasted time discovering nothing.
*
He had been climbing steadily for days, but now the ground was falling away beneath him. He wondered if this meant he was heading back towards the sea. Had he crossed the whole island? He was filled with despair. The trees had thinned as the land grew higher, but now they seemed to be increasing again, and the undergrowth beneath them was thickening too. His way grew more difficult and he had seen no other travellers all day. Even the birds had stopped singing, as though they knew he was going the wrong way and couldn’t bear to watch. He found himself in a small clearing. Large trees surrounded him, but one had lost a huge branch, which lay across the open space, tempting him to sit and rest.
He sat and unstopped his wineskin. The wine had long since run out, but he had filled it at a spring earlier and the water was cool and sweet. He looked down, idly kicking pine cones away from his feet. The branch had lain here for a long time, he saw. There was no smell of burning, but it had been sheared away from its tree by lightning: the end of the branch was still black. Curious, he moved closer to look at the damage, and saw smaller branches covered with burned pine cones: blackened on the outside, but still bright terracotta within. He reached down to pick one up and see if the soot came off on his hands.