Hekate, Medea says. She lies back in pine straw and looks up through the trees into stars. The men and their fire a glow below, a wavering. Show yourself. Live in my body. Take my form. If you have breath, let it be mine.

The treetops lunging like flame in this wind, a roar not unlike fire. Invisible flame, devouring nothing, sign only of what burns in another world.

The wind shrieks all through that night, Hekate veering close and vanishing and descending on them again. Whistling through rocks along the ridge and bending the forest low. Fury in its purest form, undeniable. The sea a white froth against black, growing. The Argo spinning in the harbor, leaning in gusts, rocking from surge.

Medea watches from the ridge, wanting the full fury, looking down on the fire below and bodies and the Argo lit broadside and ripple of waves lit golden.

Stars above, no cloud. Not a storm that can be understood, not cold, only Hekate’s hot breath and will, and Medea consumed. She screams into the night so the men will know her as fury itself, flying all around them, in the forest, on the ridge, close by along the shore. She screams from each place then moves again. They must fear her enough to bring that fear to Iolcus. Every Iolcan will have spent this night here, cowering by the fire, after Medea raised the seas and wind and drove her father back. Even Pelias will fear.

Medea faces the blast, looks to the dark side of the headland where waves crash against exposed shore. Spray that reaches even to where she stands, water shattered and made into air, and this is what she would do, break all that is and reshape it.

Medea, she calls into the wind. I call on you, Medea. Fury. First among gods. I do this for you.

She walks along the ridge with her arms held high, and she is the wind. She has flung her father back to his shores and whipped the sea, and her feet will crush this spine of rock below if she desires.

Dark one, she says. Medea destroyer of kings. Medea ruler of all.

Scrub and bare rock, too much wind here for trees. Salt spray. End of the headland, blown, exposed, and she would whip this sea, master even the elements. This is what a king must believe. Her father the same. What’s happening now can make no sense to him. After this, he will want to punish the air itself.