The sail brown linen in constant movement, lashed along the yards and straining, collapsing at one end then filled and straining again, slow breath, a kind of lung nearly as long as the ship. The yards swaying, men hauling on the lower lines at bow and stern. Thick mast with its bronze head and dozen eyes pierced by lines, a god torturing itself, tying its arms to its eyes and twisting in the night, single lunged and exposed, no ribs or skin to protect or conceal, bound and suffering, half-buried in the deck and struggling to stand as every line pulls downward.

Caught before this god, sailing over the abyss, Medea and the Argonauts awaiting their fates. God made of wood and air and linen, more alive and struggling than flesh. What animates rock and wood and water and air? Where does it come from, and can we find this place? Some fire from which every spark originates, a fire guarded, and what would happen if it were to escape? Every stone rising up, a thousand shapes coalescing in the water, the air itself thickening with forms, felt as we feel breeze but individual and able to enter us and leave again. Would we sense their shape even if we couldn’t see? And what if light and darkness became animate? Pieces of light wandering in darkness, and black night found in the day.

Medea would take the Argonauts to this fire, make them row in whatever element to find the source. She would step into the fire, inhale and carry it within her. Then she would return to the inanimate world and choose what would have life.

12

12

With day they discover they’ve sailed away from shore, in exactly the opposite direction of what they feared. Helios rising to their right.

They turn downwind, swivel yards, and the deck flattens, wind no longer frightening. The sail billowing out front. All is calm and easy and their night just passed seems unreal.

Land far away now to the left, thin dark line as the sky lightens and the water goes white, land born between sea and sky and at this distance capable of submerging in either. The sailors don’t like to be so far from shore. Helmsmen angling to close the gap. A place Medea had never imagined, breath of fear because the waves are so close and immediate and every small piece of water is like this, expanding all the way to the horizon, uncrossable. Panic of open space, something she’s never felt before, and the ship is tiny. She could fall off at any moment.

Opaque sea, unbroken surface, a solid below with only its face shifting. This is her mind demanding safety, refusing depth and void. Weak, she says. Do not be weak like these sheep-men. But the fear remains.