Her parents were drawing nearer: she could hear her mother gabbling, trying to negotiate with the older priest. Let me offer this, Andromeda heard, and this, and this. There was the clattering of metal landing on metal, and Andromeda took a moment to realize her mother was pulling off necklaces, bracelets, earrings, every piece of gold she could carry or wear. She was piling them up in her hands, offering them to the priest to try and buy back her daughter’s life. Andromeda felt the tears come.
She did not want her parents to see her cry, didn’t want to add to her mother’s guilt and sorrow. But now the tears had arrived they flowed down her face. She tensed her wrists against the ropes without thinking, reflexively trying to raise her hands to wipe her eyes. The tears itched on her cheeks, the ropes bit at her wrists.
And in that moment, Andromeda decided that she might not die quietly after all.
Athene
‘I am sorry,’ said Perseus. ‘I think I must have misunderstood.’
‘I’m not sure you have,’ said Hermes. He had resisted taking a bet from Dionysus on how long this son of Zeus would last, because he had believed the king of the gods would take it amiss. But now he felt a brief surge of an emotion it took him a moment to identify as remorse. If he had only known!
‘I think I must have,’ Perseus repeated. ‘Because I thought you said that the mortal Gorgon, the one I have to behead because the others are immortal so can’t be injured and could crush me like a stack of dry twigs, that one? It sounded to me as though you were saying she now has the power to turn me to stone with a single glance. And that can’t be right, can it? Because if that’s what you meant . . .’
The two gods stared at him.
‘Usually a mortal runs out of breath before saying that many words,’ said Athene.
‘I wonder if they aren’t normally facing certain death?’ said Perseus.
‘Your face has gone all red,’ she replied.
‘Because I’ve failed,’ he shouted. ‘How can I fulfil my promise to my mother now?’ He covered his face with his hands and wept.
‘I don’t even have a mother,’ said Athene. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind.’
‘She will lose everything if I fail in the attempt,’ he said. ‘I either go home now, without the Gorgon head to buy her freedom. Or I die trying.’
‘I think that option is worse for you,’ said Hermes. ‘I mean, relatively.’
‘Yes,’ Perseus agreed. ‘And worse for my mother.’
‘It’s really the same for her,’ Athene replied. ‘She marries the king either way, doesn’t she?’
Perseus dropped his hands and looked at the goddess. ‘I hate to disagree with you,’ he said. ‘But it’s not quite the same, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’ asked Hermes.
‘No,’ said Perseus. ‘Because one way she loses her freedom and happiness. And the other way she loses her freedom and happiness and her only son.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Hermes. ‘And she would mind that more?’
‘Yes,’ Perseus replied. ‘She would.’
‘I think you’re being a bit melodramatic,’ said Athene. ‘You’re behaving as though you’d have had a better chance if you didn’t know about the Gorgon’s power.’
‘No,’ said Perseus. ‘I’m behaving as though I have been clambering over a terrifying rocky island and negotiating with horrible old hags and pleading with nymphs who are laughing at me and trekking along a desolate coastline for days and it’s all been for nothing.’
‘You’re going red again,’ she said. ‘And you hadn’t really faded from the last time you forgot to breathe.’
Perseus took a deep breath but it didn’t improve matters at all.
‘How will I face her?’ he said. ‘How will I arrive back at Dictys’s house and tell her I’ve failed?’
‘I would suggest that it’ll be a lot easier to do that if you aren’t made of stone.’ Hermes was still smarting about the untaken bet. Why did Athene never tell anyone when she’d cursed someone like this? No wonder half the Olympians preferred Poseidon, even though his perpetual sense of grievance was so tedious.
‘Yes, thank you,’ snapped Perseus. ‘You make an unarguable point.’
‘I was going to offer you the advice you need to complete your quest,’ said Athene. ‘But perhaps I shan’t bother now.’
‘What advice?’ asked Perseus. He could not raise his hopes again, only to have one of these icy immortals dash them to pieces.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Athene. ‘Now you want to know.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Perseus.
‘Because before you were all screaming about how you were going to die,’ she said.
There was a pause.
‘Yes, I was doing that,’ Perseus admitted. ‘It was difficult news to hear.’
‘So you’ve changed your mind?’ she asked. ‘And you want help again?’
‘I think I always wanted help,’ he replied. ‘I just thought perhaps you would have mentioned the help, if there was any, at the same time as you mentioned the death-stare.’
‘You’re quite annoying,’ she said.
Hermes looked from the golden and impervious Athene to the red-faced, blotchy Perseus and shook his head. ‘No one would believe you two are related,’ he said.
Athene glared at him. ‘It’s hardly comparable.’
‘I wouldn’t want to presume—’ said Perseus.
‘Good. Don’t,’ she replied.
‘But perhaps you might give me the advice you mentioned?’ he asked.
Athene sighed. ‘Everything about you makes me regret we’re helping you. But since we promised Zeus, this is the advice. The Gorgon can only kill you if you meet her gaze. A reflection wouldn’t be enough. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Perseus said. ‘So I should behead her from behind a mirror?’
‘Perhaps a shield?’ said Hermes.
‘Right,’ Perseus said.
‘And the mortal Gorgon sleeps,’ Athene added.
‘Unlike the immortal ones?’ Perseus asked. ‘The ones that can also kill me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure how this helps me,’ he said.
‘She closes her eyes when she sleeps,’ Athene explained.
‘Oh, I see!’ Perseus finally looked less miserable. ‘So I just have to wait till she’s asleep and then behead her? While her sisters are distracted?’
‘Using only Hades’s cap of invisibility and my winged sandals,’ Hermes replied. ‘And the curved sword you have from Zeus himself. And advice from the goddess of wisdom.’
‘I suppose it’s a start,’ said Perseus.
Medusa
Medusa saw her cave much as she always had. She could feel every part of the smooth rock as she traced her fingertips around the walls. She could hear every corner and crevice as the creatures that inhabited its darkness moved across its sandy, stony floor. The touch and the sounds created pictures in front of the bindings on her eyes and, as she tried to recover from the curse, she moved with almost the same confidence she’d had before. And even though she had made her own eyes blind, she had acquired many more.