Hekate, Medea says. Hekate no less than this sea and all that connects to this sea, and the night above. I’m sorry I thought you smaller. I never will again, and there will be no temple, only coming to you in the night like this.

Heat fading, legs kicking below, arms become tired. Medea remains as long as she can, looking up into that thick braid, but finally swims back toward the Argo. A shadow lost against shadows beyond, but she knows where it will be, and as she comes close, its bow rises against the stars.

Sleeping crew, all unaware, resting on this thin curve of wood. Exhausted and spent and surrendered, and where her father has gone, none can say. Difficult to believe he exists. Some phantom fear, fabricated.

Medea pulls herself up the ropes over the side and stands naked on deck, her skin tight and cold. Drapes linen warm but dirty, smelling of too long on this boat and also of fires on shore. Living like an animal here. How long until they reach Iolcus? She wraps herself and lies in the burial place on the stern, looks up at stars until her eyes close and she’s gone again.

22

22

A following sea and the sail raised, perfect breeze, some sign of favor. They clear the islands with no sign of her father, enter open water again but the shores narrow ahead, funneling toward the second strait, last place he could be waiting.

Brown linen sail curved and straining, rippling then taut again, capable of infinite shapes. Hunching to one side and then another, revealing the air. Medea feeling some similar tug, lying on deck and staring until there is only the sail and the sky and no longer any feeling of a ship or the sea. Pulled upward and she can’t say which is closer: the sail might be recessed far away, the sky nearer. It flows off the edges and falls closer but never reaches her, endless movement which is no movement at all.

The sail no inanimate thing. Terrible in high wind, rigid and merciless and powerful beyond imagining, a thing of fear and will. But even now, in lighter winds, filled with desire, a restlessness, capable even of regret and sorrow, falling along an edge, hunching down, refilling but not entirely, some cost to the past. Only in no air, when it hangs fully slack, does it seem like linen. At all other times, this is impossible to believe.

The sail not a god itself but only the tracing of a god, a more responsive form of temple. Like fire to reveal Hekate. How can we know when we’re worshipping a god and when we’re worshipping only the sign of a god? Wind itself a sign of something else, and even fire, and what hides behind them? The world built in too many layers, a suffocation, all gone mute, sources lost. All we can worship are shadows.