He pauses, the other faces rolling away from him and returning and heaving away again. He lowers the handle of his oar to the deck and comes aft to kneel beneath the rudder posts. His hair in curls. Nose fine and straight, lips full, but his beauty in the soft curve of his cheeks, the smooth fall away from that nose, an open plain beneath each eye. She pulls him close with both hands and presses her lips to this soft place, feels the blink of his lashes, his thick hair in her hands.

He doesn’t move, his breath caught, and she smiles, presses her lips to the other cheek. You are mine, she says in a tongue he won’t understand. By the old stars above and the new stars below, I will rule your heart. You are the land I conquer.

This ship riding a thin plain between two heavens, and she would turn it over, make the underworld the air they breathe, wet stars bumping against Jason’s broad back and flung away in the wake. She’ll find shelter here. She curls in closer to his chest and he wraps his arms around. Damp with sweat, on fire from the oars, smell of him and heavy beating of blood. His sides flared out in ridges, thick and rounded. She holds these in her hands, bulwarks to keep her from falling overboard. The night heavy and warm, another sea, and she closes her eyes, longs to sleep, exhausted, but he pries her away, leaves her kneeling, returns to his oar.

As if the rowing were saving them. These pieces of her brother are saving them. Her father would be on their decks now, hacking through flesh in his rage until no part matched any other, until no Minyan hero could be assembled by his kin for funeral rites, until they’d have to be burned together in a great pile. Only Medea is saving them, only her sacrifice.

She turns away, sees the mountains of her home shadow teeth now against a paler blue, the light she would live in always, the sun held on the far slope, offering enough only for outline and texture, all softened and cooled. The sea a color she’s never seen, not the same as a river or pond, not the same as viewed from land. Deeper, darker, a melted hue and shadows everywhere, interrupted light, broken, each hollow something you could reach into and never find bottom. Her first sunrise from the sea, and why did she have to wait this long? It was here, not far away, every morning of her life.