Peisidike throws the bloody pelt into the cauldron and spits.

Help your sister now, Medea says.

Able butchers chopping the torso. Ropy entrails endless, slick iridescent orbs of organs sliced, thick overpowering smell of bile, of all that rots inside, and how are thirteen pieces to be counted?

So Medea tells them he’s ready. All pieces into the cauldron, she says. They throw flesh and bone and hide into the dark stew that already contains other meat and blood and will contain more.

Medea with a long thin paddle made of wood stirs the great vat, pushes the pieces of the ram under, chants to Hekate in her barbarian tongue, song unintelligible to the sisters. Hekate, she calls. Tonight I kill a king. My sons will not be slaves. I will not be a slave. My husband will not be a slave. Tonight I kill a king and feed his balls to his daughter. Hacked into pieces with no burial, no funeral rites, fed to his family. Son of Poseidon cooked in a stew. The only great waves to form will be from whatever I stir. I will rule Iolcus, and all will be my slaves, and my sons will walk on streets of flesh.

Torches, Medea says to Asteropeia and Peisidike in their ugly tongue. Light torches in the fire and go outside to pray to the moon, to Hekate, for this old ram to be made young. We must pray to Hekate until a young lamb emerges from the cauldron. That body is forming now, but we must help it along, help Hekate and Nute give birth in night.

Asteropeia in a kind of trance, mute and doing whatever Medea says. Peisidike not as strong, at the edge of collapse, but this is only the beginning. She has work to do.

They light their torches in the fire beneath the cauldron and step outside as Medea stirs and stokes and chants. Old prayers to Hekate, from Colchis, from when she would sacrifice a lamb or a goat. Take these pieces, dismember all, separate night from day and let day never be found again. Let all but your priestess wander without light.

She was only a girl then, and she always imagined the form of a wolf, Hekate as wolf somewhere behind her in the trees, watching, ready to devour but waiting. When she’d return the next night, the carcass was always gone, dragged away, bones scattered.

She will wait long enough for Asteropeia and Peisidike to despair, to lose all faith and believe the old ram is gone. They must believe Medea and Hekate have failed. Staring into that moon, they should feel its distance, cold, unreachable, and hear their torches in the wind, a tearing of empty air, shield against nothing. They must feel alone.