And I feel a surge of something – not joy, because I can’t feel that, not vengeance because I haven’t reached there yet – but I want her to snap her jaws around his pathetic trunk and break him into two halves. I want her to catch the bag as his unfeeling hands drop it and I want her to hold it, to hold me as he expires before her and she drags her clawed feet across his twitching body. I want her to carry me back to Medusa, back to Sthenno, back to the cave. I want to be buried where I fell. No, where I was cut down. I want to stay with her, I don’t want to be carried away by my killer in the darkness, I want it all to be over.
But what I want has no effect on what happens. Athene intervenes of course. Perseus is suddenly shoved to one side: he has climbed the rocks by our, their patch of the coast. Or rather, the sandals climbed the rocks. Perseus is panting from the exertion or more probably from fear. Nothing I have subsequently observed about Perseus has changed my original opinion of him: he is spineless. Euryale can no longer see his footsteps in the sand, she has simply followed the only line of ascent he could have taken. And Athene – who must have been watching this whole time – pushes him hard and he stumbles and loses his footing and crashes down onto his knees and I am gratified to hear a muffled cry of pain and I hope it hurts. Although realistically, it is unlikely to hurt as much as having your neck severed.
Euryale flies over us, I feel her quickening wings – she is so close I believe I could reach out and touch her but I can’t, of course. And then she is gone, and I will never see my sister again, or hear her, or be held by her. Sthenno is still on the sand, I think, because I hear her keening cry and I know that she is holding my broken body and cradling it in her arms. I wish I could comfort her.
Athene directs Perseus to follow her and he gets back on his feet, complaining about his injuries and the way she pushed him, and I hear the anger in her voice when she responds, though he seems not to notice. He continues to speed away from the Gorgon home: I hear the sea but it is far below me. He twists his other arm through the straps of the bag, so I am tightly held, like a precious object.
Which, it will soon be revealed, I am.
Reed
One thing people rarely know about Athene is that she invented the flute. It isn’t the most important thing about her, as far as most people are concerned. Mortals pray to her for wisdom, for advice, for her help in their battles. When they want music they turn elsewhere: to the Muses, to Apollo. Her interests are well-documented, and she has rarely shown any passion for song. But on one occasion she heard a noise so remarkable that she longed to be able to emulate it so she could hear it again.
The flute, then, was inspired by the Gorgons. Specifically, it was inspired by the sound Euryale made when they found the body of Medusa. Piercing, atonal, bellicose. Athene had never heard anything like it. How could she make such a sound on a battlefield? She experimented for days. But even with all her divine power, and all her cleverness, she couldn’t come close.
She sat, disconsolate, by a quiet riverbed, not very far from her beloved Athens. She considered going back to the Gorgon cove and asking the sisters to teach her how they roared. She could sense there was something about this plan that was flawed, although she couldn’t quite place the weak spot.
Her frustration was mounting – if she hadn’t helped Perseus kill the Gorgon, she would never have known what she was missing, and if she had let the Gorgon kill him, she might have had more time to study her battle cry – but she did not know what else she could do. And then she felt the gentle Zephyr breeze gathering strength. It whipped through the reeds beside her and the quiet riverbed was transformed into a wild cacophony.
Athene looked around her in astonishment as she realized here – all around her – was something that could help her achieve her desire. She took a sharp little knife and hacked at the plants, cutting a large hollow reed that she hoped would create the noise she wanted. She bored small holes into the stem so she could adjust the note with her fingers. （Later flutes would be decorated with burned rope held against the body of the reed, but this was the very first and it was quite plain.）
When she blew into the top of it, the reed made exactly the penetrating scream she demanded. Musicians – satyrs, in the first instance – would come along later and bend the instrument to their talent, creating the far sweeter sound we associate with the flute today. But Athene was no musician, and nor was she looking to play a tune. The first flute therefore sounded exactly like what it was.
The desperate cry of a reed that has been severed from its root.
Gorgoneion
He escaped, of course. With the aid of all his gods, Perseus escaped. And, though no one ever thinks of things this way, so did I. I left behind the mortal body that had made me weak and vulnerable and I escaped into what, exactly? A new life? Please, this isn’t life. It’s death. You can’t have forgotten how Medusa was sliced in two by this man, this hero. Now she is dead and mourned and loved by her sisters and I am, well, I am this: the stolen head. The hidden trophy.
The snakes are wrapped tightly around me: they protect me still. But we are all hidden in this golden kibisis, carried by Perseus to keep him from danger. He complains all the time, about how much the bag weighs. There isn’t even anyone else here to listen to him. He just moans into the breezes about how heavy and awkward it is. What I would like to say to him is that if it is so inconvenient carrying someone’s head around in a bag, perhaps you should think about that before you decapitate them. So I do say it. He doesn’t respond and I assume he hasn’t heard. Perhaps the gold muffles sound or perhaps he can’t hear any more after Euryale shouted in his pathetic mortal ears. But he stops complaining, so perhaps he heard me after all.
He is walking from wherever Athene abandoned him and he probably wants to complain about that too, but he is still wearing the sandals of Hermes so these steps must take no effort at all. He wants to return to somewhere, because he keeps muttering about getting back to Seriphos before it’s too late. I don’t know where or what this place is, so I ask, and again he doesn’t reply. But now he is worrying about finding a boat, so it is across the sea. An island? A port? I wish I knew.
No, that isn’t true, is it? That’s a last little trace of Medusa, who really did care about what mortals wanted and where they might want to go. Me? I don’t care if Perseus lives or dies, let alone where he’s trying to get to. What difference would it make? If he opened the bag now, and I turned him to stone, what would happen to me? I’d stay here in exactly the same condition. If I don’t turn him to stone and he reaches his destination, it’s the same, isn’t it? I am still the Gorgoneion, Medusa is still dead.
So I have only a slight interest when he sees a shepherd and shouts at the man to please tell him where he now finds himself. The shepherd explains that he has reached the kingdom of Atlas, where the land bridges the sky. Perseus asks if he may have shelter with the shepherd, but the man refuses him. There is a nervousness in his voice and I believe it is caused by me. The shepherd has not seen me, of course, but he can tell there is something dangerous in front of him. He has honed his instincts, perhaps, protecting his sheep from unseen predators.