So much poison, far more than needed. It will act soon. Glauce falling as she spins, clutching at her throat. Heavy golden sun around her neck, fire woven. She will say she’s burning, and Jason will not see flame. The air without sign. Burning, she’ll insist, as if fire could take new form. She’ll reach for that funeral diadem of long golden petals, hammered suns, and her slaves won’t know what to do. She’ll want water, want to throw herself into a well, but the poison will bend her, drop her to the ground, deep cramp and pain, bound by golden rope. She’ll turn to liquid, void her bowels and vomit and bleed and sweat, the dress no longer white or pure, and her father will rush to her, collapse over her body and the burning will engulf him too, rare contagion from air or wrath of gods without reason. Beautiful, innocent Glauce and her good father, mild Kreon, caught in some inferno without cause. But then they’ll remember the drink, honey and cinnamon and something else, rare flower, and Medea hopes they have enough time before death to think of the first wife.

But her children still are not returned, young slave not believing what Medea will do. Her mother knelt on this floor and Medea’s hand on the knife.

Where are my children! she demands. She can’t be in this room any longer, rushes into the street and hears cries from the citadel. So it has begun. No time for escape. She won’t leave without her children. Stone walls, city grown too large.

Aeson! she screams. Promachus! The women of Korinth watching her, hearing the cries from the citadel, guards watching also. All have stopped, a day that will never be forgotten. Shriek of a princess burning, voice of a terrified king too high, shouts of slaves helpless. Voices lost together. Medea the still point, center to which all are about to collapse.

The young slave running, a child herself pulling children. Medea watches her forever. Long hair swinging side to side, feet high over the stones and seeming never to touch, sun and shadow in flashes until it’s unclear which is absence, and she never comes closer. Medea’s sons stumbling behind, yanked by their thin arms, and unmoving. Guards beyond, shafts of spears and dull bronze, shields turning in some breeze like leaves. World bursting, made too full, too much weight for any surface to hold. Medea sinking into stone.

Sound rising behind her. More spears and shields, but she cannot turn to look, can only wait for her sons. So small and unlikely, pulled through air in odd twists as if they might fly if not caught by an arm, insubstantial, bodies not held to the earth. Grotesque faces of giants at their backs, gaining, reaching, faces carved by helmets into slats and mouths bare and animal.