It’s important to keep these things clear. If you’re wondering how come I am able to see and hear and tell you what happened after Medusa died, the answer is simple. I was a Gorgon, a child of Phorcys and Ceto. We cannot speak of Ceto yet, so let us focus on my father for now. I was, I am the daughter of a sea god, and even though I was fated to die, I was hardly an ordinary mortal, was I? I had wings, for a start. Do you have wings? No, I didn’t think so. Here’s something else I have: the ability to retain my memories, my faculties, even after death. I really wasn’t like other girls.
All this is a long way of telling you that I could see Perseus, no matter how much he believed that Hades kept him invisible. And I wanted to stare unblinking into his vacuous eyes and turn him to cold, pale stone. Are you feeling scared yet, of the monstrous head with no heart? Perhaps you should. Because what have I to lose, at this point?
Two things: my sisters.
Are they still my sisters, now I am just a head?
Euryale has found my decapitated body and her mouth is open in a silent scream. Not my body any more, her body. On the sand, resting on her hands. The legs are folded beneath her. I could still be asleep if it weren’t for the thick black blood that flows from her neck.
Perseus is terrified when he catches sight of them both. I don’t know which gods prepared him for his violation but they have not warned him of the size of Gorgons, or the strength, the speed. He is shaking as he stands there, terrified to move in case they hear him. He wants to run but he doesn’t dare.
And then Euryale finds her voice. She will never lose it again. She opens her wondrous mouth wide and she howls. Perseus almost drops me where he stands. He had not thought he would be in danger after he had killed me, he had focused all his energy on getting to the Gorgon cave and killing a snake-haired monster with a death-bringing gaze. It hadn’t occurred to him that escaping might be harder than arriving.
A fat drop of blood falls from my neck – and I mean my neck, not Medusa’s – onto the sand beneath me. Sthenno’s sharp eyes see something fall, but a snake wriggles across the sand and she believes that is the movement she noticed. Perseus feels the next drop land on his foot and I hear him retch beside me. He is pathetic. Suddenly, he seems to remember that someone had prepared him for this moment and he reaches round and opens a gold bag that he’s carrying on his shoulders. He puts me inside it and everything goes dark.
I can still hear, though, so don’t think this is an end to my part of the story: it isn’t. And I have been waiting a long time to have my say so I’m not giving it up now. The bag is a thick and heavy blackness so I open my eyes wide to see and the material still moves around me, so I haven’t turned it to stone. This is another thing I’ve learned, then: objects are safe from me. It’s only the living that need fear me. Perhaps you think I should have known that already, but remember Medusa had spent almost all her time with her eyes bound or inside a cave. The cave is made of stone already, obviously. So this is when I found out.
Perseus is numb with fear as he stands unseen before Euryale. I can hear her mighty jaws working as she bellows her rage and grief. Medusa would have comforted her, but now she cannot and nor can I. I wonder if he feels any remorse at all as he hears my sister crying no, no, no, no, no.
Of course he doesn’t. He saw Medusa as a monster and he sees Sthenno and Euryale as the same. If he had the power to kill them too, he would. All he hears is danger from this creature that wishes him harm. He doesn’t hear sorrow or loss. He claims to care about family （it will be later that I discover this） and I wonder how his mother would feel if she saw his decapitated body lying on the sand before her, where moments earlier she had left him asleep.
Just to be clear, even that act of imagination makes me more human than him.
*
I can feel her, even though I can’t see her or hear her. Athene, I mean. I know she’s nearby somewhere. Don’t ask how I know: how do you think I know? If someone had ripped out every hair in your head and replaced it with living snakes, do you think you might be alert to their presence in future? Just maybe? I can sense her and the oddest thing is, I’m not surprised or even especially angry. This goddess – to whom I have done nothing and who has gone out of her way to torture me and conspire in my murder – is right here and all I can think is: of course she is. Why stop now?
And the next thing I think is: who else is helping you to destroy me? Because the cap belongs to Hades, that I knew straightaway. Death knows death when she sees it. And Athene is standing by, encouraging him. The bag I’m now inside, this is a divine object for sure, but someone else has lent it to Perseus unless we’re all imagining that Athene has a helmet, a spear, a shield, a breastplate, and a backpack. Which we aren’t – or I’m not. So he’s also been given this by a god. What else? The sword, of course. Well, I just listed Athene’s weaponry collection, and I didn’t mention a sword. And such a nasty sword, too, with its cruel curving blade. Designed to embrace the neck of the sleeping woman he decided to kill. I don’t know who it belongs to and I’m not sure I want to. I’d like to know why they wanted me dead, of course.
I can feel his body shaking as he hoicks the bag back onto his shoulder. Euryale still issues her mighty cry; no wonder he’s afraid. He stands stupefied at the noise and it’s clear he has no plan for what to do now. And then I hear her, hear the voice of the goddess who assists him, and she tells him to run. I think, interesting. She must want him dead, because there is no chance that he could outrun either of Medusa’s sisters and certainly not both of them.
But, of course, I haven’t seen the sandals he’s wearing and I won’t until later, so I don’t know that he has the assistance of yet another god in his quest to murder me and escape unpunished. The sandals belong to Hermes, I’ll recognize them when I see them. Ornate twisting leather, with a neat pair of wings on either side of the ankle. So when Athene tells him to run and this jolts him from his horrified trance, he has another advantage. He tenses his shoulders and begins sprinting towards where the sun will rise. I conclude this from the way my head bangs against his ribs as he moves. The snakes cushion it, of course, so it doesn’t hurt. And anyway, it wouldn’t hurt because I have already been severed from my own body so what difference will the bruising make now? Gods, I despise him.
Euryale sees not the man, not Perseus. But she sees the indentations in the sand as he runs across it. And although she has no idea how he is there and also not there, she knows that the man who killed her sister is running across the shore right in front of her and she lets out a curdling roar and suddenly I hear the beating of wings and I feel the night displaced as Euryale rises into the air and flies straight at Perseus. Even through this golden prison I can feel the movement and I hear a strangled scream from the murderer as he pumps his legs, trying to speed up. He twists his back and I wonder if he is about to jettison the weight of me, but he is just looking to see how close she is behind him, and he would have been better off not knowing, because she is gaining on him as fast as thunder, faster. And I know Euryale will not miss her prey, not now, not ever. She could catch a bird in the air in full flight, Medusa saw her do it more than once.