Medea shapes the wind and waves with her arms, pulls water up from the deep, works in the invisible element. Wind unseen. Its raw power, closest we come to feeling the gods. Wrath and a willingness to destroy all, and the source of it endless, coming from the edges of the world.

Medea clings to the bow post as the fury increases. Waves breaking white, tops flattened in gusts, the water streaked. A haze that is water blown in the air, lowest form of cloud, purest form, salt cloud.

The Argonauts pull as fast as they can, the headland abreast, pounding of waves against rock. They’re no longer making any progress against wind and wave. Only slipping sideways, closer and closer. Jason stands between the rudders at the stern, grim, understanding too late.

Knife-edged stone in strips and furrows dark on top and blackened in the surge, waves sucked away and sweeping forward again, spray flung higher than their ship, the headland shaped like an eel, long and thin, swimming closer, needle toothed and greedy.

If they don’t make it around this point, they’ll be trapped against shore, in a small bay, unable to escape.

Her father’s ship angling closer to land but still much farther out. Oars ripped into the air as his bow rises, submerged again as it crashes down in a great plume of spray. Rolling, also, heavily to the side, and as his bow comes up again, it rolls out toward sea and is blown down until his ship is sideways and spinning. Medea laughs. Hekate doing exactly what she’s asked, blowing her father back. Dark one, she yells into the wind. Beautiful one. First among gods.

Medea takes her knife and makes a slit across her forearm, raises her arm into the wind and lets her blood fly back over the Argo and its crew. For you, she calls to Hekate. All of my blood for you, always.

The surge beside the Argonauts now, a great trough in close, spray reaching their decks, and they are complete fools. They would row until the wood breaks up beneath them, until they are flung into the water and torn and impaled on these teeth like great urchins and starfish come from another world. But then Jason commands they stop rowing, and they all watch dumbly and hang on as the ship falls backward and the bow dives down in the trough and is blown inland, sideways, missing rocks by less than an arm’s length. Water at the bulwark, nearly coming over, the ship leaning, but it comes upright again, and they’ve cleared. Hekate helping fools, beneath her.