Medea on the stern, forgotten along with the helmsmen. Sluggish drift, the men skillful to slide the prow gently onto sand.

The Argonauts landed, epic voyage complete, hopping over the sides, splashing through water and laughing as they’re tackled by their women and kinsmen. Everyone gathered here, except the king. Medea doesn’t see anyone who could be Pelias. Waiting in the citadel above. Now that Jason has returned with the fleece, Pelias is supposed to give him the throne, but why would any king do that? He’ll be thinking now of some new plan, some new test or delay or complication, he and all who depend upon him.

Wailing, screams of grief. One woman collapsing at the shore, held up by others. Her eyes closed and mouth open, some terrible utterance that won’t be completed. Medea had forgotten the Argonauts who died fighting Cyzicus. Other women wailing now, and men. Shouts of anger and despair. Their loved ones gone and no sign left. No bodies returned, nothing to bury. Funerals taken away. They struggle toward the Argo, as if the bodies might be there, and are held back, thrashing in the water. Grief always this, some movement toward nothing. And others still laughing, still celebrating.

No ceremony here. Nothing to clarify. No king come down to the beach, Jason no leader to say words for the fallen. He’s busy showing off the fleece. He thinks he’ll be installed on the throne today.

Medea the only soul left on the Argo, watching everything. She would intervene, because her own fate is locked to Jason’s, but it’s already too late. Jason political but also too young, too pleased with himself and his fleece, too hungry to be praised and loved.

26

26

Strangely quiet that first night. Lamentation and celebration but dispersed across several hillsides, into separate homes, as if all have returned simply from a few days of fishing. Medea and Jason led to rooms in the lower citadel. Stone floors, not dirt, but small and almost empty, three chambers connected and with almost no light. Low ceilings, filling quickly with smoke from torches.

A table in one of the rooms. Jason lays the fleece there, unwanted, unclaimed. He sits on a bench, his back against the wall, and stares at the ceiling. Quiet in here, bare sound of flame and nothing more. Wearing his red mantle still.

Medea sits on a low bench along the opposite wall, not far away, and watches him. His chest rising, slow exhales. His head slipping back, mouth open.

Thudding of her own heart. All the world shrinking around her, brought too close. The terrible sense of the two of them, only the two of them, in this room.

He doesn’t look at her, only at the ceiling, rough and pitted, shadow and light, movement that never forms.

Say something, she finally says.