Bright Air Black Read online

  Medea runs again, realizing how far she must travel today. The larger mountains and thicker forest not close. And she must not be caught alone. Hittites farther inland, an empty place here, she’s always been told, but those goatherds’ huts belong to someone.

  Fear the best way to run, endless fuel. She imagines men with spears running after her, and she no longer touches ground. She’s done this all her life, chased by phantom men. Wearing masks like her father, faceless, soundless, apparitions relentless and always coming closer.

  Her father a threat from the very beginning, an enemy before she was born. The power of every king balanced by a terrible prophecy. Her father told by his father, Helios, that his own children would scheme against him. Pelias warned about Jason. Even the gods do not like the power of kings. Even the gods would have them destroyed.

  Kings always blind. Her father not considering his daughters, believing a threat only in a son. Daughters to him no more than a tool to bind other peoples through marriage. Unwilling emissaries, their will never considered. Soon enough she would have been sent to the Hittites or Egyptians or anyone else and forgotten, never to return home.

  Outcast. This is what she has chosen, and it would have been chosen for her anyway. Her father an enemy later if not now, marriage not powerful enough to prevent war.

  It should have been her father she cut into pieces, hacking at his limbs, all power gone, but she loves him, too, only because he’s her father. Cruel trick of the gods, to bind children.

  Deeper into the forest, and Medea runs without looking back. She knows she will never be lost. She holds the shape of every pathway inside her, the shape of mountains. All felt and known for as long as she can remember. No moss here, no ferns, no cliff faces covered in bright green, no streams with gold, and the trees are not the same, but she would recognize any forest, even if all were changed. And she will find wetter ground here. She will find what she needs for Hekate: moss and root and mushroom and berry and bark and rot and spoor and what lives in these places blind and trackless and mute and forgotten.

  On the next ridge she finds spruce, pushes her way through lower dead branches, coiled, snapping against her, and follows game trails down into a ravine.

  Shadowed and the sound of wind lost somewhere above. Earth dark, rich, breaking beneath her feet. Steep slopes and she’s sliding with every step.

  Cold ravine, outside time, a cleft in the mountain, one of the silent places where Hekate waits, god without breath. A feeling of being watched. Air still and weighted to the ground and the sound of water sourceless, coming from every direction, even from above.

  A place of fear but home to Medea, black earth, black trees, black water, black rock. She descends to where the water tunnels below high banks, roots exposed and close enough for one bank to reach the other. She could leap across.

  She kneels here in damp earth and feels the mountainside tipping vertical. She lies at the edge and reaches down where she can’t see, reaches under an overhang to lightless places hidden in root and web and feels for any moving thing, comes up with spiders on her hand, bulbous black and one of them pregnant, engorged. Medea brushes them into the goatskin bag, presses the sides gently to kill but not ruin. Legs moving still, reddish on their undersides, faces hooked and eyes limitless. She finds one pair, looks closer, and finds another and another, a being living in darkness yet covered in eyes. Strange fur all along the edges, fur for something made of darkness and without any need of warmth.

  She reaches again through root and dirt and web and claws into the roof of this cavern, comes out with a fist of dark rot and a few small white worms, pale and nearly translucent. Seekers waving in the air, reaching blindly toward the heavens. Then a larger pale head emerging, like a human baby, hairless and slick, as big as her thumb. Reddish and veined, fragile just like a baby’s head, ugly for being so bare and moist. Small black eyes. A yellow pincer mouth like an upper lip swollen in deformity. Yellow legs and a segmented body, black banded below. She has seen one of these battle before, killing a wolf spider that would have filled the palm of her hand.

  Most ugly of all that crawls. She must kill it carefully, leave all intact, because she will hold this creature on her tongue as each of the Argonauts comes up to her. They will see her face and then this smaller face and the insect legs.

  She pins it down with one hand and reaches for her knife, delicately pushes the point into the back of the head. White pus forming and frantic clawing of every leg, then all is still.

  Monstrosity always near, and fear easy to wake. The Argonauts will be changed tonight.

  Medea crawls to a rotten tree uprooted and fallen across the forest floor, dismembered, its meat reddish and tracked and inhabited. Termites, their frail wings. She pinches their heads, adds several to her bag. Her fingers unspeakably large, she tears apart a mountainside, exposes caverns and tubes filled with bodies. Finds what she was looking for, slack black skin of a scorpion in a cavern, tail hidden. Thick arms, brutish. Arms of an infant, fatty, segmented, held close.

  How it reached this cavern a mystery. Deep inside the log, pathways too narrow, and what will it do here? Wait in darkness forever?

  Tombs in a wall, arranged in lines as if written here, carved into stone, layer upon layer. Some record of a place unknown, preserved by an unseen hand. Order in the world, even in places buried. Prophecy the art of reading these signs. Scorpion among termites, wrath waiting as all is eaten. Prophecy always about decay.

  She will wear this scorpion as a bracelet, its legs curling around, and use this hand to hold their forearms in place. Pale insect head on her tongue, black infant arms of the scorpion on her wrist, feel of the knife and vision of blood. They will believe this to be the most ancient of rituals, from a darker past before telling, and they will fear her as they fear their own ancestors.

  But Medea knows no ritual is sacred. No ritual ancient. All are made in their own time. No one taught her Hekate’s rites.

  Her knife edged in bronze golden from use, dull green across its face. Thick and imperfect and hovering close to the dark low head so flat it can’t really be seen, only a part of the rumpled shelf of body, cradled by thick pincers obscenely swollen.

  The termites in panic, dragging their wings, climbing the face of their destroyed home, strange waddling walk.

  Blade upside down, carving slowly into the decayed roof above, point nearing the head, and still no movement. Red dust falling on soft black plates.

  Medea stabs, and the scorpion arches, pincers thrown wide, tail curved high, hooked, and the floor fails and he tumbles close to her knees. She yanks back, stabs again and misses. The scorpion fast, gone backward, flat curve gliding away, but she stabs him through his midsection, pins him to the ground. He flexes and his tail stings the blade, last spasms, soundless. Pain unregistered, unrecorded.

  Collapse of a form difficult to believe. Where did the scorpion come from? Unlike anything else in this forest, born of what dream.

  The tail in her fingers still pulsing, wicked point hooked and reddish. She presses it down against the body, wonders if he can feel his own sting. Legs curling in, death slow. Until all is slack, and she slides him off the knife into her bag.

  She follows the stream in its hollow, walking ground that could cave beneath her, and looks for mushrooms for the Argonauts, to make them see. She will change shape and grow by the fire, become impossible to locate, a leering image of fear. She plucks bits of fern and moss, finds droppings she can’t identify, spoor of something larger, gathers a few pellets. A sense of being watched, and her breath shallow. Listening, but all is covered by the water beside her. All that would encase coming closer still.

  Leaves and needles and old branches rotting. Mushrooms in clusters near the bases of trees and on banks that have fallen away but not the right mushrooms, and she doesn’t know whether she’ll recognize what grows here.

  She moves deadfall, an old branch, and a salamander kinks and runs toward the water but she�
��s faster, grabs him and holds him close to peer at that sealed mouth, overwide, and slack throat. Eyes without any depth that can be known, bottomless and vacant, numb even at extinction. Belly and squat legs edged in red, otherwise black, as if all creatures must be this, all burrowing upward from some underworld to wait on the surface or just under. Skin moist and not meant for air, for sun. Half-born.

  She presses her thumb at his throat until he yanks and dies, sets him carefully in the goatskin and continues on. It could be that no human has ever walked here before. No path, no sign, no trees cut. Wanderers, and so perhaps no forest is untouched, but this air feels unbreathed.

  The stream rises in small falls and pools and the banks no longer overhang, no longer so deeply etched. Rotted wood and rock and moss and coming closer to the familiar. Medea finds a colony of mushrooms on a decayed black branch at the stream’s edge. Perfect round caps on short stalks. Domed, bulbous, and so plain looking, a smooth light brown, but these are the right ones. Gatekeepers to the other world.

  The Argonauts will begin a new voyage, she says.

  The sound of her voice too loud and exposed. She looks around, waits and listens, but there is only the water, made of a hundred sounds and enough to erase all else.

  She takes every mushroom, every stalk and bulb until only white circles remain among the bright green moss, a sign unreadable and seen by no one.

  She is running out of time. Far away from the shore, and the sun past its peak. She won’t lose her way in light, but she could easily lose her way in darkness.

  The goatskin filling. She needs root still, and berries, but there will be no berries here.

  She can’t take the same path back. All her life she’s avoided that, always making a circle, afraid to return for what she might find waiting along the way. The sense always of being followed.

  So she climbs toward the sea. Steep and the sky rolling away, the mountain growing. Sound of wind, in the distance at first and then all around her, and she crests, every tree surging, and falls again into another canyon.

  She rises and falls without thought, her mind going flat on every journey, return to the earliest form, before language. Only listening, aware of scent and movement. Same as any beast.

  9

  She returns in darkness along the shore. Two great fires, flames taller than the men. An altar between. High platform for the priestess, poles reaching above, and a lower platform where the men will kneel. The Argo spun and lit, waves undiminished, the sea covered in windblown white, Hekate untiring.

  Smell of cooking. They’ve found some meat, and instead of sacrificing to Hekate they’re keeping it for themselves.

  Medea moves in close, hidden by trees, and screams, sees them twist and yank, searching for the source. She steps forward into firelight, raises her arms, chants.

  Song of Hekate, song of fear. Song of all that waits. Edges of the world approaching, low moan building. The men fall away from their cooking and the fire. Each of them muscled and far larger than she. The one in bearskin holding an enormous ax. But they cower.

  Medea rolls her eyes back, twists her mouth and moans and screams. She shakes, calls for Hekate, and falls to the ground.

  No human sound, the men still. Sound only of the fire and shrieking wind.

  Fear builds with time. Fear is made of waiting, so Medea doesn’t move. Let them wonder whether she’s dead. And when she rises, let them wonder who she is, Medea or Hekate.

  Waves breaking then blown, flashing in darkness, decapitated and scattered. Medea curls her back, a jolt of movement as if she were being ripped inside. Then she rises, hunched, faced away toward the sea. Her fingers are held wide like claws and she turns slowly, keeps her chin pinned against her chest, face hidden by her hair, takes one step and another and knocks their spit of meat into the fire and screams.

  Hissing of fat and the fire darkened, a deep red down low. Smell of flesh charring. They have several bronze cauldrons boiling, one with fish for soup, another with bark for tea. She takes a branch and tips the soup onto the ground at their feet. Flesh opaque white and torn, thrown on this shore as if the sea itself had boiled, scattered and left to rot. There will be no food.

  She takes the salamander from her goatskin, holds it high by its tail, thick curved fin like a fish, a half creature monstrous, unbelonging, and bites off the head, spits it into their tea, then lets the body join.

  She raises her knife for all to see, cuts her arm and bleeds into the cauldron. She presses along the arm to hurry the blood, sucks and spits into the brew, adds her mushrooms and moss and spoor. She cradles the spiders in her bloody palm and walks close to the men.

  Slack cheeks, open mouths, fear and hatred too. Dark eyes. Jason as foreign as the rest, child-king.

  Black globe of a pregnant spider revealed then thrown in. Medea stirs with a stick and the slick brown heads of the mushrooms well at the surface. She chants to Hekate in her own tongue. Destroyer, break the knees of these Minyae, make them worship and beg. Distort them tonight and make them see shapes of fear, let them know me as fear. Take the world they know away from them and leave them alone and whimpering.

  She takes one of their bowls, dips it into the soup, makes sure there are several mushrooms. Then she fills the rest as they step forward. No man looks at her. They stand waiting until they are an army, each facing the fire, holding a bowl and waiting for a command. Every instinct in them the instinct of a slave. Jason is last, and he is no braver than the rest, looking down.

  Medea steps to the altar, her back to the sea, flames before her and the men beyond. Hekate, she says and tips her head for them to drink, and every man does it. They drink and chew until each holds his bowl empty before him in both hands, facing her like fifty small shields. Medea smiles. They are too easy. Then she folds down over her knees, cocooned, silent, faceless, waiting. Let them be lost.

  Fire and sea. Voices endless and opposed. Fire always coming closer, the sea forever receding. Wind awakening both. Hekate in fire, no steady pulse, no surge and fall but panic after panic and more voices beneath and more beneath those, all buried half in the ground and writhing above, muffled and consumed. Smaller gods just as greedy.

  Shrieking overhead, and Medea smiles. There could not be a more perfect night for this. A night in which none may find shelter. All the world distorted.

  She waits until she hears them retch, waits longer still for the visions to begin. They will be crawling now, and they will want to die, and everything will begin spinning from the inside. As they suck for air, every terror will be let in.

  Moaning, sound of the terrified, and she rises to see them on the ground, clutching their bellies, writhing in dirt, an army collapsed. Poisoned and made new.

  She steps down to the fire, takes a thick burning branch and throws it among them, watches them curl away. You will burn, she tells them in their language. You will all burn, for Hekate.

  She holds the scorpion by its tail, dull black shape of fear, and walks among them with its body hanging, pincers and flat plates, headless and ancient, brings it close to each face, sees their mouths twist in horror. The scorpion still alive for them. All night they will be chased by shapes in the air, living shapes, the gates opened.

  She lets those legs touch a shoulder, the back of a knee, a face, and the men scream. She climbs on top of Jason, presses down against him, sets the scorpion on his bare chest. He doesn’t dare move. Trembling. Then she moves on, straddles another man, and another. Let them think of her now and remember her always with this scorpion. She takes each man in her hand so he’ll feel his desire. All ritual is desire. There can be no god without desire.

  Medea stands, the only one standing, and returns to her altar, calls to the men. Give your blood now to Hekate. She curses them in their own language. If you ever betray me, let your sons be slaughtered and no seed fall from you again. Let your land die and your people be forgotten and no sign remain and no gods.

  They crawl forward. She drops to her
knees on the higher platform. The slick smooth head of the infant on her tongue.

  Jason is first, struggling onto the lower platform, falling sideways and righting himself. She can tell when he sees the insect on her tongue, sees him jerk. But she takes his wrist and slashes her knife across his forearm. Skin yellow in firelight, then the blood wells red, deepest of hues in darkness. She rolls her eyes back and sways before him with knife and scorpion. Let him never forget.

  10

  In the morning, the wind has died down, Hekate appeased. The men return to the ship, each lost in memory of visions that are not possible and cannot be reconciled to the day-lit world. Darkness remaining.

  Each man fearing the air itself, and his own flesh and what might be harbored there. No talking among them. None dare look at Medea.

  Sagging Argo, built by weak men and a weak goddess. Heavy and blunt bowed compared to her father’s ship. Darkened wood eaten by sea worms and slathered in pine pitch, gaps in every seam, wood forced together without skill. Laden now with fresh water but no meat. They will have to fish.

  The men tired and looking toward waves no longer white but still strong, blown from the far end of the sea. They don’t raise the anchor yet. All are aboard, all is ready, but they sit and wait and bake in the sun.

  Hours of this, Medea on the stern where her brother’s remains have fused to the wood, dried and shrunken and infested with white maggots. Most of him still here, almost enough to fashion a man. Missing a thigh, a forearm, a head, but the rest intact.

  The deck too hot to touch. They must stay exactly where they are and not move, each on an island of wood cooled by sweat. The breeze uncertain, in puffs from one direction then another, in back eddies, and they feel its heat when it comes from land.

  Helios high overhead when they finally pull up the anchor stone, four of them, wet rope darkening the deck. Others have already begun rowing, turning the bow toward sea.