‘No.’
‘Could you tell me while you’re making my new spear?’
‘No, I need to tell you here,’ he said. ‘Your uncle said I should ask you to marry me.’
She stared at the blacksmith god, her head slightly tilted as though she were trying to see what lunacy had crawled in through his ears.
‘He was mistaken,’ she said.
‘He wasn’t.’ Hephaestus grabbed her hand in his, and held it. Athene knew she could easily outrun him, but his arms and hands were like the iron they worked. She wondered if it would be more effective to stamp on his good foot or the bad one.
‘I don’t like to be touched,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Hephaestus replied. ‘It’s one of a thousand things I love about you.’
‘But you’re touching me, when you know I don’t like it.’
‘Because I want to be the one whose touch you like.’
‘You aren’t. No one is.’
‘You don’t mind when your owl flutters down and perches on your shoulder,’ he said. ‘You hold out your arm to him, so he can land more easily.’
‘He’s an owl.’
‘I think you could love me like that.’
‘I couldn’t.’
He pulled her hand towards him. ‘I’ve already asked Zeus. He approves the match.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether he approves it or not, because there isn’t a match.’
‘I want you.’ He leaned towards her, pulling her closer. She could smell hot metal on his skin.
‘I don’t want you,’ she said. ‘Let go of me.’ She wriggled to try and free her hand, and felt his body tense. She pulled harder and suddenly he let go. She jumped up, away from him, watching to ascertain if he would follow her or grab at her. But his whole body had gone limp. She saw a hateful satisfaction on his face and followed his gaze, glancing down at her tunic.
She felt the heat of his semen before she saw it, and she pulled at her cloak, tearing off a piece of the finely woven cloth. She swabbed her thigh clean, then hurled the wool to the ground in disgust. She wanted to scream that she hated him, and would never marry him, would never marry anyone, would go straight to Zeus and tell him what Hephaestus had done to her. But as she opened her mouth to say all this, she knew it was only half-true. She hated him and would never marry, but she was not going to tell Zeus what had happened, because she was too ashamed. She knew she was being ridiculous, because she had done nothing to be ashamed of. And yet, looking down at the slumped body of Hephaestus – his eyes closed, unworried – she could see that he felt no shame at all for what he had done. And yet, it was a shameful act and disgust and contempt were the proper response. If Hephaestus did not feel these things, then she must. They had to go somewhere.
And so she ran away from the forge, away from Olympus, hating Hephaestus and Poseidon and Zeus and herself.
Medusa
They bound Medusa’s eyes with damp cloths, in the hope that the pain would die down, as the pains in her head had done. But it did not. If anything, the burning sensation grew stronger with each day. The dark mass of snakes swirled around her head, each of them somehow taking care not to dislodge the bindings. She relied on touch to find her way around the cave, which she already knew so intimately that it took very little time to learn without sight. Sometimes she felt cold and would move to the cave entrance, tracing her way along the wall with the lightest touch of her fingers. She would sit with the sun on her face, her back resting against warm rock, her hands buried in the piles of dried seaweed that littered the shore. Sometimes she would raise broken pieces to her lips, and taste the sea.
She didn’t mind the darkness as much as the losses. She missed everything she could hear and many more things she could not. The constant cries of birds were a comfort, reminding her of the way they swooped and arced over the waves. She could hear the cormorants arguing with the gulls and she knew exactly which rocks they had perched on before picking their quarrel. She heard the sheep murmuring to one another, and smiled. Euryale herded a pair towards her, so she could lose her hands in the thick wool on their chests. She could feel the seagrass fluttering and the soft curves the wind left on the sand beneath her feet. She still had so much, she reminded herself.
But she missed the sight of fish darting around her feet as she stood in glittering water. She wanted to see the graceful birds in flight, not just hear them as they squabbled. She wanted to squint into the sun and witness the growing and changing of the seasons. She yearned for the bright pink of cyclamen petals instead of the dark, twisting red that was all she could see behind the bindings.
When the pain in her skull surged like a storm, she would press the heels of her hands into the sockets to try and calm them.
‘What’s it like?’ asked Euryale. Neither she nor Sthenno had any real understanding of pain. Gorgons weren’t capable of it, she didn’t think. She had heard that some gods – some of the Olympian ones – could feel injuries, at least briefly. But Gorgons had leathery hides, fearsome faces, long sharp teeth. Who would dare to attack one, and what damage could they do?
‘I don’t know what to compare it to,’ Medusa said. ‘It’s like the feeling of fire under my skin, except there’s no fire.’
‘I see,’ said Euryale, who did not see, because she could put out a fire with her bare hands and feel nothing at all.
‘Would it help if we took off these cloths,’ Sthenno asked, ‘and checked how your eyes look? We might be able to do something to help with the pain.’
Euryale nodded her agreement, and then felt foolish. ‘I agree,’ she said.
Medusa looked at her sisters through the darkness and imagined their faces. Sthenno’s brow drawn in worry, her mouth slightly ajar, her shoulders raised ready to embrace and protect. Euryale looking away because she didn’t want Medusa to feel outnumbered. Her guilty expression because she had forgotten and nodded. Medusa had felt the agreement between her sisters and wished she could explain to Euryale that she could hear their nods and gestures somehow, even if she couldn’t see them. But she didn’t want to make her sister still more self-conscious. And she could feel the tautness in Euryale because she wanted to fight something but could not attack those responsible for her sister’s injuries.
How she would love to see them again, even if it was just once more.
Sthenno reached out her clawed hand and patted her sister’s arm and Medusa knew they were both waiting for her to reply. She thought for a moment, but she could not take the risk.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think that would be the wrong thing to do.’
Gaia
Gaia, on whom the god’s semen had fallen when Athene tossed it aside, was faced with a choice. She thought of her lost children, of all the giants the Olympians had slain, one after another. She thought of how she had gathered their broken bodies to herself when the battle was over, how she had held them, how she had wept rivers and lakes. If mortals were to stumble across the battlefield, they would find the ground scorched by lightning blasts. But no matter how hard they searched, they would not find the bodies of her children. Gaia had opened the earth to swallow their bones and keep them safe in death, as she had failed to do in life. She had examined every inch of them, knowing which god had damaged which child from the marks left on them.