The Minyae carry amphoras of wine from the hold and eye the edge of that forest, soft pine straw and goatherds’ huts and a night away from the oars. Fifty of them, a horde working together like ants, carrying food and water and wine and their weapons, shields of ox hide and ashen spears, all ferried in this one tiny skiff that can hold no more than six men.

The light pink on the mountains, its previous gold impure and fading. The sea churned in white and darkened by spray, gray band in which her father is lost, oars reaching and finding no hold. A world removed, no more than rumor. Once you leave, you can no longer believe the sea.

They row her to shore with Jason. His men are gathering wood for a great fire, dismantling the huts of the goatherds, using their homes for fuel. Thieves always.

Strange light, all things illumined from their own sources, a light that lives in the air itself and seems not to come from the sun. Jason as he walks ahead of her seems not to touch ground, born of air only. No weight or substance. The entire world is tilting, the earth levering up, the rolling of the ship remaining inside even as they walk on land. Strange effect, and how long will it last? Will the world ever come upright?

Medea reaches to the side for balance, but there’s nothing there. A man laughs at her, points, and other men laugh. Jason takes her arm, pulls her along over short grasses and flowers white and yellow then pine needles and exposed roots, and lays a sheep’s hide on the ground. She sits, still spinning, lies back on the sea-blown earth, closes her eyes and caves away into endless falls.

When she wakes, there is a great fire on the shore against the night, and men singing. Dark forest come close, gathering, trunks appearing and fading, pulsing in firelight. The farthest trees the most nimble, impossible to track.

Medea rises, no longer dizzy, and walks uphill into this forest that extends from her own. Same sound of wind high and sourceless. Same weight of shadow. Her own dark form extending before her, longer than the ship, held to the earth, unable to free itself. This the highest mystery of all, what binds. What keeps the trees rooted, keeps shadow from rising. Hekate, unlock this, Medea says. Show me how to unlock all that binds. Let me separate shadow from ground.

Her forearms burn from sacrifice, pulsing, but no longer bleed. She holds them high as she walks, shows Hekate her offering. Home of the dark one, this forest that extends to every land and beyond to lands unknown. But in order to hear Hekate, it must be quiet, and all Medea can hear is the stupid boasting of the drunken Argonauts, shouting and quarreling, so she turns downhill and descends upon them.