Bright Air Black Read online

  Fools, she says in their language. You stupid fools.

  They’re trapped. She hasn’t been to sea before, but even she knows they’re trapped against this headland. It should be obvious to anyone. And dropping a piece of her brother into the water will do nothing now. Her father’s ship no longer following behind. Fools, she says again. You will all die.

  She walks forward between their ranks, and if she had a whip, she would beat them. They cower from her, look down at the deck, pull at their oars. Boys, not men. Descended from sheep, not from gods. Your fathers fucked ewes and lambs, she yells at them. Smeared out on the earth and even your four-legged mothers walked away and left you.

  At the bow, she raises her arms to the bare blue sky that has birthed wind without cloud and calls on Hekate. Hear me now, she says. Hear me now more than any time before, more than any time to come. Too much to promise to a god, Medea knows. Fuel this wind and make every oar slip. Build these waves and drive my father all the way back to his shores.

  Medea shapes the wind and waves with her arms, pulls water up from the deep, works in the invisible element. Wind unseen. Its raw power, closest we come to feeling the gods. Wrath and a willingness to destroy all, and the source of it endless, coming from the edges of the world.

  Medea clings to the bow post as the fury increases. Waves breaking white, tops flattened in gusts, the water streaked. A haze that is water blown in the air, lowest form of cloud, purest form, salt cloud.

  The Argonauts pull as fast as they can, the headland abreast, pounding of waves against rock. They’re no longer making any progress against wind and wave. Only slipping sideways, closer and closer. Jason stands between the rudders at the stern, grim, understanding too late.

  Knife-edged stone in strips and furrows dark on top and blackened in the surge, waves sucked away and sweeping forward again, spray flung higher than their ship, the headland shaped like an eel, long and thin, swimming closer, needle toothed and greedy.

  If they don’t make it around this point, they’ll be trapped against shore, in a small bay, unable to escape.

  Her father’s ship angling closer to land but still much farther out. Oars ripped into the air as his bow rises, submerged again as it crashes down in a great plume of spray. Rolling, also, heavily to the side, and as his bow comes up again, it rolls out toward sea and is blown down until his ship is sideways and spinning. Medea laughs. Hekate doing exactly what she’s asked, blowing her father back. Dark one, she yells into the wind. Beautiful one. First among gods.

  Medea takes her knife and makes a slit across her forearm, raises her arm into the wind and lets her blood fly back over the Argo and its crew. For you, she calls to Hekate. All of my blood for you, always.

  The surge beside the Argonauts now, a great trough in close, spray reaching their decks, and they are complete fools. They would row until the wood breaks up beneath them, until they are flung into the water and torn and impaled on these teeth like great urchins and starfish come from another world. But then Jason commands they stop rowing, and they all watch dumbly and hang on as the ship falls backward and the bow dives down in the trough and is blown inland, sideways, missing rocks by less than an arm’s length. Water at the bulwark, nearly coming over, the ship leaning, but it comes upright again, and they’ve cleared. Hekate helping fools, beneath her.

  I’m sorry, Medea tells her, and she opens a cut on her other arm and bleeds over both sides of the bow then walks back between the oarsmen with her arms raised, bleeding over each of them and finally over the helmsmen, who try to duck away. Fools, she says. You don’t know who has saved you.

  Her father spinning, too far from land to anchor, being blown all the way back to where he began.

  Let this blow all night, if you favor us, Hekate. Let the wind only grow.

  The Argonauts pull hard for this harbor, already in less wind and much smaller waves, making way again. Impossible to believe the fury of only a few moments before. The waves following, curving around the point, but softened. Wind confused, indirect, blown back from every direction in isolated puffs.

  Calmer water ahead, protected pool, the slope rising steeply above, and Helios hidden behind, falling. The light on the Hieros mountains golden. All lost and then nothing lost. The ship capable again, gliding easily, and Medea can see small goatherds’ huts along the shore, sticks piled against stone, a large fig tree planted close, and pathways leading into forest. A chance to leave the ship, a respite and shelter, though her father may have sent riders down the coast. They’re too close to be safe from him.

  The Argo built supposedly with the help of the goddess Athena, who watches over Jason, but it sags to the left, lopsided, and this is perhaps what saved it, turning the bow toward shore instead of to sea. Hobbled and fortunate. Ship of brute thieves trying their luck.

  Four of them at the bow now, struggling with a great anchor stone, heaving it over the side and hopping out of the way as the line runs. Ripping over the bulwark. And what if the stone does not find bottom? They have no idea how far it must fall. Everything they do a blind faith flung into the void. Coming to Colchis knowing nothing, and if not for Medea, they’d already be strung in the trees.

  Jason has promised to make her his queen when they return to Iolcus, and if he does not, she will destroy every last one of them.

  The stone hits bottom, their luck holding, and the line is made fast. The ship rocks gently in the leftover curve of waves and spins slowly in the breeze.

  Jason raises his arms to Athena, thanks the goddess for safe passage, and his men do the same, and no one thanks Hekate. No one thanks Medea.

  7

  The Minyae carry amphoras of wine from the hold and eye the edge of that forest, soft pine straw and goatherds’ huts and a night away from the oars. Fifty of them, a horde working together like ants, carrying food and water and wine and their weapons, shields of ox hide and ashen spears, all ferried in this one tiny skiff that can hold no more than six men.

  The light pink on the mountains, its previous gold impure and fading. The sea churned in white and darkened by spray, gray band in which her father is lost, oars reaching and finding no hold. A world removed, no more than rumor. Once you leave, you can no longer believe the sea.

  They row her to shore with Jason. His men are gathering wood for a great fire, dismantling the huts of the goatherds, using their homes for fuel. Thieves always.

  Strange light, all things illumined from their own sources, a light that lives in the air itself and seems not to come from the sun. Jason as he walks ahead of her seems not to touch ground, born of air only. No weight or substance. The entire world is tilting, the earth levering up, the rolling of the ship remaining inside even as they walk on land. Strange effect, and how long will it last? Will the world ever come upright?

  Medea reaches to the side for balance, but there’s nothing there. A man laughs at her, points, and other men laugh. Jason takes her arm, pulls her along over short grasses and flowers white and yellow then pine needles and exposed roots, and lays a sheep’s hide on the ground. She sits, still spinning, lies back on the sea-blown earth, closes her eyes and caves away into endless falls.

  When she wakes, there is a great fire on the shore against the night, and men singing. Dark forest come close, gathering, trunks appearing and fading, pulsing in firelight. The farthest trees the most nimble, impossible to track.

  Medea rises, no longer dizzy, and walks uphill into this forest that extends from her own. Same sound of wind high and sourceless. Same weight of shadow. Her own dark form extending before her, longer than the ship, held to the earth, unable to free itself. This the highest mystery of all, what binds. What keeps the trees rooted, keeps shadow from rising. Hekate, unlock this, Medea says. Show me how to unlock all that binds. Let me separate shadow from ground.

  Her forearms burn from sacrifice, pulsing, but no longer bleed. She holds them high as she walks, shows Hekate her offering. Home of the dark one, this forest that extends to ev
ery land and beyond to lands unknown. But in order to hear Hekate, it must be quiet, and all Medea can hear is the stupid boasting of the drunken Argonauts, shouting and quarreling, so she turns downhill and descends upon them.

  Staggering around the fire holding their bowls of wine, slapping and grabbing at each other, most of them naked, singing half a dozen songs at once.

  Golden bodies, thickly muscled from the oars, carved hollows, each broad back cleft by a deep valley, high sided and ridges beyond, piled and piled. Round swell of shoulders and wide chests. Legs rippling, flat-sided muscle. Some lie with each other reversed and swallowing, others mount, and all are swaying. Some are wet from the sea, most have bathed in oil, slick and glistening. A vision Medea would never have imagined, would never have been allowed to see. The most beautiful forms in firelight.

  They should not be used for war, she thinks. They should be used only for this. But they’ve forgotten who saved them. There is no altar for Hekate, no offerings, no sacrifice, and though Hekate may be only rumor and story and shadow and nothing that can become angry, Medea’s power is in Hekate and so all will worship her.

  Hekate! she screams. Hekate!

  They shrink away, all of them, stumbling from this sudden fury. She holds her arms high and chants to the goddess, takes a piece of wood and beats at the fire, pounds flame until at one end of this great pit there are only coals. Then she steps onto the coals, dances barefoot, and the heat brings her closer. She charges at the flames where they still rise, falls back, charges again, invokes all that would fill the air, leaps free and grabs Jason and pushes him to the ground, makes him kneel to this fire and to Hekate. The Argonauts follow, and those too drunk to understand she pushes to their knees, makes them bow and thank Hekate for their deliverance. She takes a firebrand from the coals and beats them with it, breaks it over one of their backs then chooses another. They will not dishonor her god.

  Medea clubs them with flame and hot coals that shatter and are flung into the night like stars burning in a smaller sky. She takes an amphora, smashes it down onto rock, and the dark wine spatters them and hisses in the fire. Let them be painted the color of blood.

  They whimper and cower and wait for Hekate to rain fire, while Medea beats and burns and brands them all, marked forever. Then she runs into the forest and when she’s far enough away she falls panting to the forest floor and laughs. Iolcus will be hers. She will destroy Pelias, king of the sheep-men. Then she will rule beside Jason, and he will decide nothing. The Mycenaeans, too, will learn to obey, and the Athenians, and all others in that land. All will kneel to their barbarian queen.

  Hekate, Medea says. She lies back in pine straw and looks up through the trees into stars. The men and their fire a glow below, a wavering. Show yourself. Live in my body. Take my form. If you have breath, let it be mine.

  The treetops lunging like flame in this wind, a roar not unlike fire. Invisible flame, devouring nothing, sign only of what burns in another world.

  The wind shrieks all through that night, Hekate veering close and vanishing and descending on them again. Whistling through rocks along the ridge and bending the forest low. Fury in its purest form, undeniable. The sea a white froth against black, growing. The Argo spinning in the harbor, leaning in gusts, rocking from surge.

  Medea watches from the ridge, wanting the full fury, looking down on the fire below and bodies and the Argo lit broadside and ripple of waves lit golden.

  Stars above, no cloud. Not a storm that can be understood, not cold, only Hekate’s hot breath and will, and Medea consumed. She screams into the night so the men will know her as fury itself, flying all around them, in the forest, on the ridge, close by along the shore. She screams from each place then moves again. They must fear her enough to bring that fear to Iolcus. Every Iolcan will have spent this night here, cowering by the fire, after Medea raised the seas and wind and drove her father back. Even Pelias will fear.

  Medea faces the blast, looks to the dark side of the headland where waves crash against exposed shore. Spray that reaches even to where she stands, water shattered and made into air, and this is what she would do, break all that is and reshape it.

  Medea, she calls into the wind. I call on you, Medea. Fury. First among gods. I do this for you.

  She walks along the ridge with her arms held high, and she is the wind. She has flung her father back to his shores and whipped the sea, and her feet will crush this spine of rock below if she desires.

  Dark one, she says. Medea destroyer of kings. Medea ruler of all.

  Scrub and bare rock, too much wind here for trees. Salt spray. End of the headland, blown, exposed, and she would whip this sea, master even the elements. This is what a king must believe. Her father the same. What’s happening now can make no sense to him. After this, he will want to punish the air itself.

  Gods hidden in water and land and air. The sea god somewhere in these waves, a great darkness forming beneath and churning, or breaking the surface somewhere at the edge of these waters and blowing. Impossible to say how all is formed. Giants beneath her now, encased in rock, waiting to break free. She would see them revealed. See them rise and walk, earthborn, earliest of gods. Unthinking, the moving of mountains, walkers resting again and the headland now in a new place, mountains reshaped, needing new names.

  All that is human far too small, and it is nothing to rule it.

  Medea screams again for the Argonauts and runs back along the ridge, tearing at brush, stumbling in loose rock but staying upright, descending into trees and slipping in loose needles, flinging herself to the other side of this forest above them, screams and collapses, panting. They will be watching for her in the air now, in flight over the water.

  She has done this to her brother for as long as she remembers, terrifying him. And yet still he came to her whenever she called, even when she held a knife. He trusted her. Disbelief when his throat was cut. No attempt to fight. She held his head in both hands as he died, talking to him, telling him she was sorry. Death not quick, and blood everywhere. So much blood in him, covering her, and his eyes still alive, looking into hers.

  A future king, though she was firstborn, and she will need to learn to feel nothing when she kills kings.

  Medea lies down under the trees and wants to sleep, but she can smell her brother, rotten flesh everywhere, on her arms, in her hair, all along her back. Bathed in his blood. Stink also of Jason and sweat and sex. So she walks down to the shore, away from the fire, and steps carefully in darkness over sharp rocks, eases into the warm black sea. She screams once more for the Argonauts, then she closes her eyes and submerges beneath the waves into stillness. This is where she would sleep. Arms and legs suspended, body weightless, no sound. She opens her eyes and sees stars, waves her arms and they curl around her, flung in currents invisible. Blackness and no light from above, only these constellations. She flings herself back, kicks and sees her body made a constellation, outline of her hips and legs. Tries to grab one of these stars, but they are somehow beyond reach. All around her and impossible to touch.

  She rises for breath and descends again. A world withheld until now. Told not to swim at night in the sea and never taken on a boat at night. Bathing only in the day, in the river, cold water without stars. How is it she never wandered from the forest to the sea in all those hundreds of nights? What else lies close to us that we haven’t yet seen?

  She rubs along each part of her skin to remove blood and rot, and what washes off is only light, appearing and winking out again. Impossible to believe blood is real. She may wake to find she’s done nothing, betrayed nothing, and there are no remains.

  8

  She wakes to the sound of axes. All through the forest around her, sharp over the howling of the wind. The sun shunted by sea-blown spray. Hekate unceasing, and the wind still hot, with no cloud, air warped and darkened. Her grandfather struggling to rise higher.

  The Minyae building on the shore, wearing very little and slick from oil and sweat. She f
inds Jason beside fallen trees stripped of branches.

  For Hekate? she asks.

  For Hekate, he says.

  And what will you sacrifice?

  Jason looks around, spreads his arms to show there’s nothing here. No goat or lamb.

  Hekate needs blood, she says.

  Jason looks out to sea.

  Waves white and broken in water turned green. Medea wonders if the sea is ever the same. There’s no sign of her father.

  Your own blood then, she says, grabs his arm, shows the cuts on her own arms. She points at him and his sailors. All of you.

  Jason nods, and she can tell he’s afraid, which is good.

  She pulls out her knife with its green bronze blade and handle of deer horn, carved with the face of Helios. I will make the cuts, she says.

  Each will kneel before her and say the name of Hekate, and she will release their blood and chant above them, their priestess. There will be no more mention of weak Athena.

  She leaves Jason, walks into the forest with a goatskin for gathering. The Argonauts afraid to look at her as she passes. Turning back to their chopping.

  She climbs quickly to the ridge and disappears over the other side, and all is too dry. Another small ridge leading up toward the Hieros mountains, denser forest, gullies and canyons in shadow.

  She could live here. Never return to Jason, never return to her father, live only in the forest, away from all others. But there would be no one to rule.

  Steeper slope, and she has to walk. The trees reddish in this morning light, all standing waiting, bent and blown, obedient.

  The ridge thinning, exposed rock, and she cuts lower across the slope, beneath cliffs. Farther inland, toward larger mountains, where there will be water, dense forest damp and rotting.

  The forest will remake her, as it always has. Breath and blood and wind and isolation. The simple act of walking and hearing only her own footsteps. But there must be water, also, and the sound of water, a return to what she knows. Displaced now, hollow.