Bright Air Black Page 5

  The boat a heavy weight dragging, water swirling from the oars without effect. Slow lumbering creature filled with rock. The distance to Iolcus unknown and unbearable.

  Jason a stranger, standing just before her on deck but distant, commanding the helmsmen to stay close to shore, crawling along the headland toward the point. The sea divided, darker line for wind and wave, the storm died down but not yet gone.

  The altar on shore, remaining for all to see. Great blackened fire pits. But soon enough, the goatherds will tear everything apart, rebuild their huts. So the next altar will be of stone. When they arrive in Iolcus, Jason will build an altar to Hekate in marble, and a temple larger than any other. No other god will come before Hekate, no other priestess before Medea.

  The headland extending, but finally they reach the edge and feel the wind. The men soaked in sweat and cooling now, a welcome breeze. Waves buried and sucked into dark rock and shredded into white. The boat pitches and rolls.

  The men row hard, waves driving them back, the point remaining beside for too long, but they do finally clear and Medea watches the headland recede, searches the sea for any sign of her father’s ship. His golden mask and spear and shield. She imagines he could appear over the water without any ship at all, standing just above the waves, coming closer, unstoppable. Eyes visible behind that mask, gray and cold.

  Creaking of the hull beneath her, bent and shuddering, and for all its weight it feels fragile, bowed and ready to snap. They will find only waves below their feet, and they will not be like her father. They will sink down, no sign left, and her father will search forever until he becomes a god. Gods made of any action unresolved. Her grandfather in his chariot. Hekate in wind and fire. The sea god in waves. Nute swallowing without end and always giving birth again. Her father searching for the pieces of his son. The fear they have for Medea must also be without end.

  The rudders loose, bound by thick rope now stretched. Resting on forked posts, lashed together but flexing with every wave. The men on the tiller handles braced and struggling. The lower lashing at deck level slick, worn black, pulled outward then upward and yanked in tight, shaft knocking against the hull. Blades in the water below trembling and diving into wave after wave, submerged then almost clear, great dark wooden faces, only a thin lower edge trailing.

  The sea erupting beneath them in great boils and upwellings rimmed by foam and hissing. Every pattern and shape shrinking from every edge into unknown centers. Glimpse of the deep in each clear welling, fibrous with light, muscled. What might live down there none can say. Something large as mountains.

  The Argonauts fight the sea, and it’s clear they left too early. Only as the sun goes down do the waves diminish at all, the headland still visible in the distance, their progress far slower than if they had walked along the shore.

  One of the men comes to the stern near Medea to fish in last light. A rough net weighted with stones. He ties a line to a rudder post, his fingers swollen and scraped, innumerable small scars and cuts. A young man with old man’s hands. He ties a second line to an oar loop and flings the net overboard, beautiful pattern in flight, a practiced throw, the stones swirling out into a perfect circle just as they hit water.

  Dragged behind them, and easy to see how slowly they’re going. Net bowed and sinking, rising again as the stern is pushed up by a wave. The surface become silver, opaque, molten, as if the sea could be reforged every day, great ingot of tin melted down each night, this fisherman casting his net to capture impurities. Pulling at some guide line now, and when the net rises again, it’s taken the form of a shallow basket, wide rounded mouth, black spider work amid silver, then submerged.

  Only metal can look cold as it burns, and no other liquid can be so heavy. This sea could break the world, some platform below snapping and folding and all rushing down, seas draining and the shore slipping. Who can say what’s below or what this world rests on.

  The fisherman the only Argonaut to work in the invisible, the only one to pull at a line and feel the unseen. Long-bearded but young, worn and new, burnt darker than the rest, hidden. He should have led this voyage. Medea would have found him more interesting than Jason. She’s realized by now she left Colchis for more than love. She would make her own kingdom. What she felt as love, a kind of madness, was also the thrill of her freedom.

  Rough fingers with their own life, feeling what pulls at the line, testing the weight and making shape out of darkness, corollary forms. A mind dedicated to darkness, like her own.

  When the net rises again, the basket has narrowed and come alive, molten spray as fish hit the back end, flap of tails and fins trying to leap free. If day were to come now, early, each form would be cast and frozen forever, curl of a spine and fin ribboned and water hanging above solid, immutable.

  The fisherman tilts his head to the side as if listening. A still point. Gauging weight and balance. He hauls in quickly, muscles corded and bare and purplish, the light changing rapidly, no longer silver but bruised and dark, the sea made of flesh. Hauling in with quick strokes, perched on the edge and perfectly balanced, always upright, bearded and mute and rapt and trolling the great pools below. Thief and priest.

  Ancient art. From time before telling, one of the first arts, older than her own. She puts her hand on his shoulder as he pulls, feels the ripple beneath the surface, and he does not pause. He is beyond reach.

  The net rising now, stones clattering at the bulwark, and he grabs as if it were a throat, brings it closer and stands to haul upward, steps back quickly until all is on deck beside Medea, flash of scales blood silver and panicked, twisting, a dozen braids of light each pulsing on its own, mouths gasping and sliding away, loose pouch collapsing.

  The fisherman kneels beside her again, his knife a dark shadow moving quickly. Each fish chopped and torn, entrails flung into the sea, scales scraped and gathering in great constellations among her brother’s remains. Dusted with stars that come from blood and salt and all that is hidden and unknown. This is better than anything she could have imagined, perfect burial for a prince.

  Joined, she says. You are a weaver.

  But he slits and flings and chops and scrapes and pays no attention to her, lost in movement and the echo of that movement.

  11

  Endless night and endless day and night again, and no sign of her father, no other ship on this black water. World without light. No other humans, no gods. Only the unstill boat, sleep an impossibility, and the fickle wind, sliding along every edge of the world.

  Blowing from the side now, enough breeze to sail, yards twisted, hanging over bow and stern, everything tipped, bulwarks dipping dangerously close to the waves. The crew gathered on the uphill side for weight, oars shipped. A time to rest, but fear of drowning prevents that. And fear of land, how close, and whether they might be blown onto it. Invisible in this night. A greater darkness somewhere down low, but with each blink the horizon changes and tilts and shadows reverse and no reference.

  If the wind shifts, they will still keep it to their side and may sail straight into land, won’t know they’ve turned. The truth is they have no idea what direction they’re going. Each waits for land to rise up, for the hull gouged, and can hope only for a shore and not a small rock in the middle of the sea.

  Fear living in close. In the hull and mast that might break, in the rudders, in the air that somewhere holds land, but mostly in the water. Rock and every creature unknown. No limit to the size of what can grow below. All animals on land known but always something new coming up from the depths.

  Medea a priestess of darkness, and even she feels fear. Not the same as a forest. Great void waiting, and all that the mind can shape writhes and slips away and will return. Held suspended above that, exposed, dangling at the roof of the lower world.

  The serpent in water form, side fins wide fans like wings, water dragon, jaws outsized for the body, distorted, long teeth and tiny eyes, devouring whatever comes near, and who can say how large it might grow? A
mouth larger than this ship, and able to sense them, rushing toward them now.

  Sharks, also, just below the surface, always waiting. No sea meant to be crossed, and all travel on it borrowed. Filled with abominations. Row after row of teeth on a shark. No eyes on a jellyfish, no face, mostly transparent, made of what? Eyes on an octopus, but how to make sense of the rest? Impossible forms, all beneath her now in a world without sun and perhaps without end. There may be no floor to this sea. If she dies here, she may sink and keep sinking. Medea can see herself submerged, outlined in those stars below, arms wide, turning slowly as she descends, hair pulsing above, and she falls and falls and is torn apart and devoured. No burial, no rites, only monstrous forms wrapped around her until there’s nothing left.

  The men say nothing. The previous night, there was a small fire in a cauldron on deck, fish roasted on skewers, but there’s no food now, the deck tilted too steeply.

  They wait in hunger and darkness and fear until finally one of them lights a torch. It will blind them. They won’t be able to see any darker shape loom out of the general darkness. But the torch is lit anyway, and they continue to peer into nothing, and keep this light as a comfort, as a shield against fear, as all have done since there was first fire.

  The sail brown linen in constant movement, lashed along the yards and straining, collapsing at one end then filled and straining again, slow breath, a kind of lung nearly as long as the ship. The yards swaying, men hauling on the lower lines at bow and stern. Thick mast with its bronze head and dozen eyes pierced by lines, a god torturing itself, tying its arms to its eyes and twisting in the night, single lunged and exposed, no ribs or skin to protect or conceal, bound and suffering, half-buried in the deck and struggling to stand as every line pulls downward.

  Caught before this god, sailing over the abyss, Medea and the Argonauts awaiting their fates. God made of wood and air and linen, more alive and struggling than flesh. What animates rock and wood and water and air? Where does it come from, and can we find this place? Some fire from which every spark originates, a fire guarded, and what would happen if it were to escape? Every stone rising up, a thousand shapes coalescing in the water, the air itself thickening with forms, felt as we feel breeze but individual and able to enter us and leave again. Would we sense their shape even if we couldn’t see? And what if light and darkness became animate? Pieces of light wandering in darkness, and black night found in the day.

  Medea would take the Argonauts to this fire, make them row in whatever element to find the source. She would step into the fire, inhale and carry it within her. Then she would return to the inanimate world and choose what would have life.

  12

  With day they discover they’ve sailed away from shore, in exactly the opposite direction of what they feared. Helios rising to their right.

  They turn downwind, swivel yards, and the deck flattens, wind no longer frightening. The sail billowing out front. All is calm and easy and their night just passed seems unreal.

  Land far away now to the left, thin dark line as the sky lightens and the water goes white, land born between sea and sky and at this distance capable of submerging in either. The sailors don’t like to be so far from shore. Helmsmen angling to close the gap. A place Medea had never imagined, breath of fear because the waves are so close and immediate and every small piece of water is like this, expanding all the way to the horizon, uncrossable. Panic of open space, something she’s never felt before, and the ship is tiny. She could fall off at any moment.

  Opaque sea, unbroken surface, a solid below with only its face shifting. This is her mind demanding safety, refusing depth and void. Weak, she says. Do not be weak like these sheep-men. But the fear remains.

  Sun rising and hiding all beneath it. Her father could be gaining and they wouldn’t see. Blind and running, they’ve lost time by sailing off course. The Argonauts have probably never sailed at night before. She’s never heard of any ship sailing in darkness.

  The wind a gift, blowing from behind, but a gift to her father also, and the Argonauts who are awake search the void toward Colchis as they wait. Most of them sleep. No rowing. The waves not large but the breeze steady, perfect conditions and a time to rest. Sound of the rudders, constant streams. Medea lies on deck near her brother, closes her eyes and follows sound into sleep.

  Jason has stayed away. He does not return until that night, when they sail without torches. Perfect darkness. She cannot see his face even as she kisses him. He is known by weight and heat without shape. How demigods are formed. Women tricked. Gods coming down and hiding in darkness, pretending familiar shape, wanting their own image on earth.

  How her grandmother lay with Helios was never told. Some dream continuing into day, holding light in her arms, eyes closed lest they burn. Her bedroom become the sun. All in Colchis must have seen this light, the heavens brought close. One morning together, then held at a distance forever after, waiting for him to rise behind mountains and extinguish into the sea and never come closer but ride the farthest arc, untouchable. A bride able to gaze directly at her groom only for the last moments each day, waiting again each night.

  The stories of her conflicting and erasing. Daughter of Oceanus, an ocean nymph named Perseis, or she was someone else entirely, named Ipsia, or Eidyia, or Asterodeia, or Neaera, or Eurylyte. Giving birth to a king who would erase her, never tell her story, and claim only his father. Reduced to a rumor. She may even have been killed. Aeetes born only of the sun, great king without weakness, fearing only his son, Apsyrtus, Medea’s brother.

  Medea wants to know her grandmother’s art. Priestess, weaver, singer. What was she? Did she dance in fire also?

  No history before Medea’s grandmother other than Titans. No king this woman’s father but instead the Titan Oceanus, no prince her brother, no rule before her son. Aeetes would be the first king. A strange land, Colchis, without history. A people born suddenly out of the furrows or the sea and hung in trees after death, a people without origin or destination, existing only for a single king.

  Jason would erase Medea. Use her to claim a victory, to claim dominion over barbarian lands, use her to bear children, his heirs, of royal lineage on both sides, then cast her away to be forgotten. She knows he would do this, and this is what she must make impossible.

  She clings to him now, held suspended over the deck, lost in pleasure, but she won’t forget.

  What it would feel like to be ravished by a god, to hold a deity. All weight gone, held now as Jason holds her, but limitless strength. To surrender absolutely and know afterward that in your womb you carry something half divine that will live a greater fate, a shaper of entire peoples.

  They lie panting afterward, her arms and legs still wrapped around him. Medea listens to the rudders, the sail, lines and hull creaking and rolling, listens for Jason’s breath and heartbeat, a heartbeat she may need to end, years from now but no less relentless in its coming.

  The deck hard. She’s being crushed. So she pushes him off and he rolls to the side. Maggots and rot, invisible, occasional flash of fish scales catching some light otherwise unseen. Blind voyage again in darkness.

  Jason leaves her and she sleeps again, too tired to be afraid of what waits below or follows close behind. When she wakes it is already day and they’ve come closer to land. On the same course still, wind behind, still no other ship. They might as well be the only humans, the rest of the world vacant.

  The land growing slowly, rounded hills and forest milky in this overcast light, a dark white sky hung low. Medea’s grandmother, if her name was Eidyia, may also have been Medea’s mother. Oceanus the father of Medea’s mother and also the father of Medea’s grandmother, and the wife of Oceanus his own sister. Erasure. Medea comes from water and sun, and apparently that’s all she is to know. The men are the sun and the women are water. Her mother and grandmother the same woman, appearing only to give birth then vanishing again, both Oceanids and born of another sea goddess, the Titaness Tethys, who is the
same with simply another name. All of them the same, all melting into nothing and never known. Not one memory of any older generation of woman, and so it seems Medea and her sister could have sprung from water itself, or that only men exist.

  The world emptied on this gray watery day, and it does feel as if Medea could be the only woman, or the same woman. She will have to make herself individual.

  The shore is without sign. Too far to be known.

  Medea eats fish roasted the previous day. The fisherman the one who is keeping them alive. He sits on deck and looks out at the waves, always watching the water. The surface somehow indicating what might lie below, but only to him. Opaque to Medea.

  The men have learned how to wait through day after day at sea. They go into a kind of waking sleep, unmoving, not talking, their eyes open but not seeing her. Even Jason has no recognition. She could be made of air.

  Not a single word spoken the rest of that long day, Helios hidden behind cloud and slowed in his passing, a day that could be a hundred days, then night which seems only an extension of the same day. Medea can no longer bear it, so she crawls below over rocks and tools blind until she reaches the coil of rope, feels the flex and creaking of the rudder posts on either side, a comfort, return to a kind of womb, a darkness held by a greater darkness, substitute for a mother never known, and is able to sleep.

  13

  Not far from shore now, searching for the entrance to another sea, slim passage difficult to believe, something from myth. How such a great sea could have only one small stream leading to another sea and then to an even greater sea beyond, as if the world could open itself larger again and again, unfolding without end. Jason and his Argonauts claiming to be the first ever to have passed through safely. The Symplegades rocks grinding every other ship to dust for centuries, but the Argo’s passing fixed them in place forever, safe now. The stories these men tell about themselves absurd.