‘Do you think the pine cones can tell you where the Gorgons live?’ asked a voice. Perseus jumped. He had heard no footsteps. When he was walking, that was all he heard: the sound of his own weight crushing twigs and seeds beneath him. But now he looked up and saw not one, but two fellow travellers. Except he knew somehow that they were not travellers. Afterwards, he wondered what had made him think that, but he couldn’t be sure. It was something about their posture or lack of possessions, he didn’t know. He had learned to assess travellers by how well or ill prepared they appeared for whatever was to come. These two looked like what was to come would have to prepare for them. Their clothes were pristine and their faces serene, showing no signs of fatigue: they had not lain down on a bed of leaves last night.
‘No,’ he said, staring at them. He assumed they had been sent by Polydectes to follow him and taunt him for this early failure. He did not want to give the king’s servants – were they siblings? They looked similar and yet unalike, he could not quite make sense of it – the satisfaction of seeing his despair. He certainly didn’t want the king to find out that he was doing everything wrong.
‘No, of course not,’ said the woman. A bird flew from one branch to another behind her. Perseus blinked because he would have sworn it was an owl, but he knew perfectly well they wouldn’t be flying around at this hour. ‘Of course we haven’t come from Polydectes.’
Perseus was sure he hadn’t said anything about the king. But then, he hadn’t said anything about Gorgons either, and she had known about them. If these people hadn’t come from the king, how did they know what he was looking for? A thought rushed into his mind and he flushed: did everyone on Seriphos know what he was doing? Had the king and his entourage told everyone they met to keep an eye out for the stupid young adventurer making a fool of himself? A second thought grabbed at the tail of the first: had the travellers he had spoken to on his way here misdirected him on purpose? He felt his eyes prickling with tears of rage.
‘Well, don’t cry,’ said the woman, contempt accruing with every word. Perseus – used to the caring tones of his mother – flushed an even darker shade.
‘We’re here to help, son,’ said the man. He wore a thin cloak which could not possibly keep him warm at night and a brimmed straw hat. His tunic was short and plain, and he rested his hand lightly on a staff. His boots were leather and laced up the front, the tongues curving down and the sides winging out at the top. He looked exactly like a normal traveller, and nothing like one at all. His sister, if that was who she was, wore a longer tunic, her cloak decorated with embroidered snakes. Her hair was bound into a knot at the back of her head: a simple band around her forehead held loose strands out of her eyes. Perseus looked again at the cloak. The snakes were so realistic, he thought he had seen one move. But it must just have been the way the light fell through the trees.
‘What kind of help?’ he asked. ‘Do you know where the Gorgons are?’
The woman snorted. ‘Of course we do,’ she said. ‘Is that your plan? To just go there and ask if you can have one of their heads? Really?’
Perseus felt smaller and weaker with everything she said. He should have thought of all this himself. The man flashed a look at his sister and she shrugged.
‘We can help you to prepare yourself for the encounter,’ the man said. ‘You need guidance, don’t you?’
Perseus wanted to say yes, but feared a further dose of the woman’s scorn.
She muttered something about Zeus, but he didn’t hear the rest. The man took a step towards him. ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘You will die if you go into this unprepared. And that won’t help your mother and it won’t please your father.’
‘My father doesn’t know what I’m doing,’ Perseus replied. ‘I was trying to find him, but . . .’
The man reached out and put a restraining hand on his sister’s arm. ‘He does know,’ he said. ‘Why else would we be here?’
‘Even the Graiai might not be able to help someone this stupid,’ the woman said. ‘I think he’s doing it deliberately.’
Perseus started to ask who the Graiai were and, while he was at it, who he was talking to, but the man shushed him with a look.
‘Your father sent us,’ the woman said slowly and clearly. ‘Though he probably didn’t realize what he was asking of us, because he didn’t know you struggled with such basic things.’
‘I don’t struggle with basic things!’ Perseus could no longer contain the humiliation. ‘I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what a Gorgon is. I don’t know how to find one. I don’t want my mother to marry the king. I need help. I don’t think that makes me stupid.’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ she replied. ‘That’s fine, then, if you don’t mind being nothing beyond an absence of knowledge or capacity. I can see how that might not be disconcerting for you. We just sort of assumed—’ She gestured at her brother, and he nodded awkwardly. ‘Assumed that you had some idea of what you were trying to do. But you were just – what were you doing, actually? Just climbing a hill and then going down the other side of it? Hoping a Gorgon might appear? Does that often work?’
‘I was trying to find a sacred grove!’ Perseus shouted. ‘Where my father might be, so I could ask for help.’
‘I see,’ she said. Perseus was beginning to find her helpful interest more harrowing than her contempt. ‘And you were planning to recognize the grove by . . .?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Maybe a tree blasted by lightning?’ she suggested.
He stared at her.
‘Lightning bolts are something Zeus uses quite often,’ she said.
The man said nothing.
‘Lightning comes down from the sky?’ she added. ‘It’s a very bright light. You might have seen it sometimes.’
‘I know what lightning is.’
‘Good, that’s a start,’ she said. ‘So you know you’re sitting on a branch that Zeus separated from this tree with lightning.’
Perseus felt his face grow red again. Of course he had noticed the tree had been blasted by lightning. He’d noticed it when he first saw the branch. He had looked at the charred pine cones.
‘I didn’t realize this was a sacred grove,’ he said. ‘But now you’ve pointed it out, I can see it must be.’
‘Well,’ she said to her brother. ‘He’ll probably die before we get him anywhere near the Gorgons. But we did say we’d help him.’
‘We did,’ said the man. ‘I’m Hermes, by the way. Since you seem to be struggling. This is Athene.’
Perseus opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘It’s lucky we already know who you are,’ Athene said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to gods just wandering up to me and telling me they can help.’
‘Gods have been helping you since the day you were born,’ Hermes replied.
‘You should pay more attention,’ Athene said.