The Argo, too, shifting throughout the day, at times fat and hot, unthinking wood, at other times responsive, slim, eager through the water, light as a spear, a kind of quivering excitement as if its timbers are alive and can take in breath. The sea slipping beneath them, islands passing quickly.

They anchor two more nights. Late the next day the men begin pointing. A peninsula, and tucked inside the bay, a very small city, Iolcus. At first, Medea thinks she must be looking in the wrong place, seeing only a village somewhere near Iolcus. So much smaller than her father’s city or Ilium or Hattusa, and she wonders whether all these kings rule similar settlements. Kings of nothing. This overwhelming feeling that she’s made a terrible mistake, given up everything to come rule a few shepherds and fishermen. What can possibly rise from a people so small? No other city within sight. Isolated outposts, a gathering of heads of families more than a gathering of kings. She’s amazed now they were able to build the Argo. She sees no navy, no other ships, nothing here for her father to fear. There is this one great ship and one only. The rest are fishing boats.

What she realizes is that they haven’t built the Argo. This is an Egyptian ship, somehow captured or given or bought. The Argo not something these people could have built.

She looks again carefully at the wood worn smooth at the locks, walks back to the mast to see how the deck has chewed into its sides, walks back farther to see the rudder posts worn and infirm, loose. An old ship, not new. The bow and stern platforms gone, the heavy rope that runs the length of the deck, held up by forks, gone. Crude short benches added along the sides for the oarsmen to sit. But otherwise this is the same as Egyptian ships that have come to Colchis. She has given up everything to live with scavengers.

A dry place, hillsides rocky and burned white, reddish clay showing where it’s been tilled, small gardens and groves etched into the hardscrabble. Olives and figs. Stone houses clustered on the steepest slopes, a citadel above, not large. Walls close to the harbor.

Smaller huts continuing in every direction, bits of land eaten bare by goats. Hard to know how many people might live here, but a crowd come down to the shore.

The Argo barely moving at the end, because the sail is down and the men keep turning to look and wave and shout. Jason at the bow holding the golden fleece above his head in both hands, old sheep’s hide shrunken in the sun, dirty brown, with very little gold dust remaining. But the sun has not yet fallen, so it must sparkle, at least, and should be enough to fool those who want to believe.