I hear the sheep bleating as Perseus walks into their midst. They remind me of Euryale’s flock. He asks the man again for a bed and food and the shepherd replies that he is in the service of the king, so strangers must petition him if they need shelter. Perseus asks which way he should go to speak to this king and the shepherd tells him the way. The directions are complex and involve many landmarks. I can feel Perseus growing irritated by the details the man is giving him, and I am just wondering why he asks for help when he is so ungrateful about receiving it when he shrugs his shoulder so the strap of the bag slips down and he reaches inside. I see his fingers grasping at my snakes and I know what he is about to do and I think he is being extraordinarily petty.
He lifts me out into the open air and I blink once, twice at the sudden brightness of the sun which I have missed more than I can describe. When did my eyes last look into the light? I have no way to measure time any more, and nor did Medusa once she was cursed. I feel warm and alive, though I know I am neither. I see everything at once: the vast sky, the rock-strewn ground, the fluttering trees. I feel the warmth of the sun and the cooling breezes and the fingers of Perseus gripping my snakes and brandishing me like a torch.
I see the shepherd man.
He sees me too. For just a moment our gazes meet, and his face forms a silent mask of fear and then he is stone, frozen at the point in time when he encountered Perseus. I hear him – Perseus, now a double-murderer – gasp as he sees how swift and lethal I am. He stuffs me back into his kibisis and I feel a huge surge of energy. The shepherd is dead, all thanks to my power. How can I not revel in this strength now I have it?
Perhaps you are wondering what the shepherd did to deserve such an abrupt end? What do any of us do? What did I do? He was in the wrong place and met with the wrong man. Could I have averted my gaze? you’re thinking. Could I? Yes, probably I could. But obviously I didn’t. But couldn’t I have saved him from Perseus and his nasty little temper?
I don’t feel like saving mortals any more. I don’t feel like saving anyone any more. I feel like opening my eyes and taking in everything I can see whenever I get the chance. I feel like using the power the goddess gave me. I feel like spreading fear wherever I go, wherever Perseus goes. I feel like becoming the monster he made. I feel like that.
*
Perseus is terrified of me. I can tell by the way he holds the bag now, much more careful. I’m sure he didn’t doubt whatever Athene had told him about my power but who believes what he has not seen? Even I didn’t know how fast it would be, how entire. I had glanced at a bird, a scorpion, and made them stone. But a man? It was dizzying how quick it was to petrify him. And in that moment between his death and my return to darkness, I saw his face held in the expression he wore when he caught sight of me. It thrills me now, thinking of the way the energy fizzed between us, tiny motes in the air that somehow travelled from my eyes to his and took his life.
If you were waiting for me to feel guilt, you will be waiting a long time.
And now, Perseus has followed the shepherd’s directions, though he gets lost and has to retrace his steps many times. I wonder if this will be a lesson for him: to be careful who he kills, because he may need their assistance later. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of young man who learns lessons, however. And even from inside the bag I can feel the air grow cooler as the sun drops. Perseus eventually accepts that he must spend another night under the open sky. He puts the kibisis down so carefully that I almost laugh. Perhaps I do laugh, in fact. We have yet to ascertain whether Perseus ignores the sounds I make or whether he cannot hear them when the bag is closed. But he has decided he doesn’t want to antagonize me. Or perhaps he has decided my value to him is so great that he must take care not to damage me. I wonder if the irony is lost on him. I imagine so.
*
The next morning, he is full of hope that the king will receive a wandering hero with every kind of celebration. And perhaps he would have done, had Atlas not been a fearful and suspicious king. But he is and he always has been.
Atlas owns many beautiful things in his expansive kingdom. He cherishes each of them, from his lovely flocks to his wonderful orchards. He probably even cherished the shepherd, but he doesn’t yet know the man is dead. He especially loves a grove of trees that produce the most remarkable fruit, golden apples.
Atlas considers these apples to be the most perfect food imaginable. He can eat whatever he chooses whenever he likes （he is the king, after all）， but it is always the apples he waits for each summer, like a child. He employs men to watch the trees and nurture them all year round. If the weather threatens to disrupt them, he makes offerings to Aeolus, lord of the winds, to send the offending cold spell elsewhere. As the summer days lengthen, he goes to visit his trees first thing each morning to examine their burgeoning fruit.
Atlas has never feared invaders would steal his crops or damage his trees. He lives without aggression from neighbouring tribes for one reason: he is a Titan, one of the old gods from before the Olympians, before Zeus. What mortal would be so foolish as to pick a fight with a god? Well, I’m sure you have already guessed the answer.
When Perseus arrives at the enormous dwelling, he is bad-tempered from the night he spent sleeping under a tree. He still doesn’t blame himself for killing the man who could have guided him here more quickly. He is briefly chastened – I feel the hesitation in his step – by the size and grandeur of the palace he now sees. But he raises his chin and tries to convey his heroic stature that way. I am mocking him from inside the kibisis, of course. He continues to be unaware. A steward is standing by the gates and Perseus asks if he may meet the king and discuss matters advantageous to both. A child could see through this ruse, and the steward is not a child. He explains that the king is occupied elsewhere and will return at an unspecified time. Perseus, aware he is being dismissed, tries another tack. Tell him it is the son of Zeus who asks, he says. And at this, the steward disappears: I hear him scurrying away down a long corridor, his footsteps echoing.
As he listens to the man retreat into the deeper recesses of the palace, Perseus assumes he has done something right. He has impressed a stranger with his heroic connection and he has asked for shelter as a hero might, by offering something in return. He has not yet worked out what it is he could offer that Atlas might find advantageous, but it doesn’t matter because there is something else （one of many things, as I’m sure you have noticed） that Perseus doesn’t know.
Atlas did not always live here in this wide-reaching kingdom. Once he travelled across Greece with his Titan siblings. He retreated here after the arrival of the Olympians, once Zeus had waged war on the Titans and gained power for himself.
Atlas was not an ambitious god so he was only too happy to withdraw to his palace and his flocks and, above all, to his orchard. But he did retain one connection with his old life, which was a fondness for the goddess Themis, who was highly gifted in the arts of prophecy. Themis had once told Atlas that he would one day lose the gleaming fruit of his tree to a son of Zeus. Atlas had remembered this ever since. At first, because he assumed its meaning was metaphorical and he would have a son who would die at the hands of a demi-god. Latterly, he had come to realize the prophecy was literal and his beloved trees were at risk.