She rises for breath and descends again. A world withheld until now. Told not to swim at night in the sea and never taken on a boat at night. Bathing only in the day, in the river, cold water without stars. How is it she never wandered from the forest to the sea in all those hundreds of nights? What else lies close to us that we haven’t yet seen?

She rubs along each part of her skin to remove blood and rot, and what washes off is only light, appearing and winking out again. Impossible to believe blood is real. She may wake to find she’s done nothing, betrayed nothing, and there are no remains.

8

8

She wakes to the sound of axes. All through the forest around her, sharp over the howling of the wind. The sun shunted by sea-blown spray. Hekate unceasing, and the wind still hot, with no cloud, air warped and darkened. Her grandfather struggling to rise higher.

The Minyae building on the shore, wearing very little and slick from oil and sweat. She finds Jason beside fallen trees stripped of branches.

For Hekate? she asks.

For Hekate, he says.

And what will you sacrifice?

Jason looks around, spreads his arms to show there’s nothing here. No goat or lamb.

Hekate needs blood, she says.

Jason looks out to sea.

Waves white and broken in water turned green. Medea wonders if the sea is ever the same. There’s no sign of her father.

Your own blood then, she says, grabs his arm, shows the cuts on her own arms. She points at him and his sailors. All of you.

Jason nods, and she can tell he’s afraid, which is good.

She pulls out her knife with its green bronze blade and handle of deer horn, carved with the face of Helios. I will make the cuts, she says.

Each will kneel before her and say the name of Hekate, and she will release their blood and chant above them, their priestess. There will be no more mention of weak Athena.

She leaves Jason, walks into the forest with a goatskin for gathering. The Argonauts afraid to look at her as she passes. Turning back to their chopping.

She climbs quickly to the ridge and disappears over the other side, and all is too dry. Another small ridge leading up toward the Hieros mountains, denser forest, gullies and canyons in shadow.

She could live here. Never return to Jason, never return to her father, live only in the forest, away from all others. But there would be no one to rule.

Steeper slope, and she has to walk. The trees reddish in this morning light, all standing waiting, bent and blown, obedient.

The ridge thinning, exposed rock, and she cuts lower across the slope, beneath cliffs. Farther inland, toward larger mountains, where there will be water, dense forest damp and rotting.