Medea could devour. Some deep need to kill and tear and taste more blood, and her prey frozen, unable to move, unable to make a sound. Closer and the pull at her spine twisting her sideways, unbearable, lifting her into the air, a thrill that would make her lunge. Flat stink of fear. She opens her jaws and wants this child, aches and hears a moan from inside her, low and desolate and strange.

31

31

Medea returns to her washing at the shore, watches the half-moon rise, heavy and rounded. She can almost see the dark half of it, some sense of that hidden orb, its felt outline against darker sky. White rock around her mirroring. Second sun, night sun, the form Medea would take, granddaughter of Helios worshipping night. Drawn without chariot, some liquid movement within Nute, within skies contained.

Form inside her just as impossible, just as difficult to reach or believe. Some other moon, night-body, following its own movement. Medea slaps wet clothing against rock, swings and breathes and small waves break around her, but she’s listening, also, for something else, same as trying to hear the slow glide of the moon, some hollow lost within other sound.

When she’s finished with her work, she slips into the water, cool and clean, salty and dark, and swims out far beyond the shore into the deep. Surface opaque from the moon, no stars below and only faint above, held in this barrier between worlds. Medea now and Medea with child. Dangling at the roof of the world unknown, all that will be.

Born into slavery. Pelias able to reach her child at any moment to bash a soft head on stone. Jason gone.

Nute, Medea says to the night. Hekate. If this child is better dead, then take it now. Don’t let Pelias take it.

Medea spreads her legs beneath the waves. Take it now if it will be no more than a slave.

BOOK TWO

1

1

Cauldron of bronze large enough to hold a body. How it was forged, Medea cannot imagine. Tin and copper melted, enough to form a pool, and from that pool rose some hand that could paint liquid onto air, shape walls burning and hold them in place until all cooled. Story of how what was once shapeless hardened and why we’ve taken these forms and not others.

Surface pitted and stained and worn, figures hidden, encased, soundless, revealed by fire and vanished again. Years of standing before this one cauldron, before this fire, punishment from Evadne. Boiling day and night, wellings in liquid never the same twice, watching source and revelation.

Asteropeia visits nearly every night. A young woman now, no longer a child, she imagines Medea knows every dark way, and Medea lets her imagine this. Medea a mother to her and also ready to kill her, for years now.