Released, she stands in that night the only soul awake. They’ve posted no sentry. All sleeping and hoping to be killed. Small cove, a light breeze, the Argo hung at anchor. Protected cove in a protected channel. Darkness of the land, a deeper shadow surrounding.

The Argo too small. She strips and goes over the side, into cool water, swims toward the front of the ship and past its anchor line and keeps going into the channel. Away from land. She doesn’t know how deep it might be here, or what might be waiting below, and this is what she wants, to hang at the top of the world as larger creatures pass beneath, great behemoths that live always in darkness, because she has this same feeling on land, that something always is working below us, movement unseen and waiting, enormity that cannot be known or controlled. Some relief in challenging this directly, waiting here to see whether she’ll be devoured. Eyes covered in white, opaque, teeth curled, breathing water and cold and knowing, somehow, exactly where she is. She does believe that everything below knows she is here.

Medea lies back in the water, floating suspended, looking up into stars. No moon, and this thick, heavy braid across the sky, a kind of cloud more distant, made of pinpoints of light too numerous to be counted. Impossible to reach, impossible to explain, how they hang there, why they give off no heat, how they move or don’t move, how large they might be.

Her arms in the water giving off no correspondent light, no longer any stars below, an occasional hint and nothing more, and this too is impossible to explain, why the liquid stars can be found one time and not another.

What she knows is only that the sea at night is the truest of temples, where all is offered. The Argo no longer close. No safety. She swims farther away, midchannel, hangs suspended over all that can be imagined and cannot be imagined. She offers herself, to be devoured or saved, and all is borrowed. The heat in her body fading, the effort to stay afloat, the precious air. Temple where none can remain.

Her temple to Hekate on land was nothing, she sees now. She might have fallen asleep there one night, slept for years and awakened to find nothing changed. Simple stone, cold and unreachable. She could have shat on the floor and scattered every fire and thrown wine and all would still have been mute. The blood of animals wasted. Only here in the sea is something wagered. Here she offers everything and everything can be taken and nothing remains the same. Every wave and ripple new, every movement below, and blood offered now would bring every tooth near. Blood offered now could not be survived.