When she wakes, the shadows have stretched back toward Iolcus, air still and hot. Large grasshoppers like sentinels all around, rigid, waiting to be flung. Large dark eyes without centers, voids, bodies woven from grass, here now and then gone.

No soldiers on the path, no traders or travelers, all empty beneath the sky. But Medea waits. They can’t outrun an army. They can only hide and spend the night here, and if tomorrow there is still no sign of Acastus or his men, she’ll know they’re safe.

Acastus as king. She would like to return with her own army and scatter every stone of Iolcus until it looks no different from any other hillside and there is no sign left. She would erase even the memory of Pelias, and all his descendants. If not for Jason, she could have done that. Made slaves for six years, then he hands the throne to the son.

He appears on the path far away as if summoned by her thoughts. Jason carrying twin sacks tied around his shoulders, hanging in front. Still dusted white. Bulked shadow, blight on the land, solitary traveler, and she considers not calling out to him. Her sons asleep. Hidden in this grove far to the side. She could watch him pass and never see him again. Is there anything that binds, anything left beyond history and obligation? Untrue heart that would leave her alone and feel nothing. He would let her pass and not call out. My barbarian wife, covered in blood. His words.

So she would let him pass. But he’s walking heavily under those sacks. He’ll have food and water, and though she can do without, her sons cannot. Jason, she calls, and all other forms her life might have taken vanish. This moment locks her again into a future with him, and who can say what that will be?

Aeson rouses from her yell, and Promachus, too. He should not have been named for Jason’s murdered younger brother. Nothing that has been done can be undone, and the gods should not be reminded.

Jason stops, head alert, tries to gauge direction. Small and far away still, open flats curving upward into hills, shaped by some hand enormous, abandoned since. Very little green, few trees, all visible and exposed, but her voice hidden. He turns to one side then another, searching, and even now, if she doesn’t call again, some other life might still be hers.

Aeson and Promachus too tired to rise for their father. But Medea, slave to these sons, calls Jason, stands and steps clear of the trees.

No answering call, but he sees her. It will be the four of them now. This will be the first day they ever spend together. Life they might have had.

Jason careful with the sacks when he arrives, bending and tilting to lay first one on the ground and then the other. His skin wet.