Torches everywhere. They may burn the ship down themselves, flames dangerously close to the lower yard and sail. Cursing as they haul meat and water and wine, all in an ugly mood. Demigod complaints.

Endless trips rowing back and forth, the small boat never going straight, slow arcs and corrections, and by the time they’ve finished and are pulling this boat onto the deck, the sky has paled and the sea become opaque light blue.

Flat calm, all waters extending as one, reaching all the way to Colchis and Iolcus and beyond, filling every hollow in the land and seeming to rise, a slow swelling. Their own ripples soft and fading. Medea could live on the sea. More alive than any forest.

Some thrill to setting out as they raise the anchor stone and take to the oars. A half crew only, the rest lying on deck, but some deep pleasure in gliding across that calm. Medea at the stern looking back toward the light. The smallest of wakes, no more than a seam, and small whirlpools evenly spaced to either side where each oar has dipped, silent vortices spinning themselves out and vanishing.

Hills behind outlined and gaining weight, hills that will never be seen again, every voyage a constant receding of anything familiar, and this is at least half the pleasure. Not only what will be but also the leaving behind of all that was.

If she had been allowed, if women had been allowed, she would have been a sailor. By now she would have visited Egypt and every other land. Purest form of freedom.

Low song from the men as they row, because they’re still drunk. Moving easily at the oars, second nature. Some with their eyes closed. Wearing odd bits of animal hides given to them, bracelets of bronze. Like priests at a temple, bending and moaning and bending again, hunching in unison to a quieter god, transported over the surface as if all waters were made for this.

There must be at least one god not filled with rage. Medea closes her eyes and tries to remember, but every image, every name that comes is feared. She hasn’t understood this until now, that rage is god, every weather god, every elemental, all that rise from the earth, all that come from death, all with a will to destroy. Worship a form of fear and perhaps nothing more, but how can that be?

She tries to imagine the quiet god, the god unfeared, without rage, who will not destroy. The god who does not demand to be obeyed, who threatens nothing, some god who would have all sleep and eat and glide across calm water and be content, but this erases all human form. This god would have to take the form of a tree, or grass, or some flower, something without voice or thought or will. Rage that inescapable and human.

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