Jason and the Argonauts (9 page)

But it was as if the taste of his own blood refreshed the Spartan. He began to move swiftly again, stepping away from Amycus, dancing around him, leaping away, swaying out of reach—as if the wind of the giant’s fists were bending him away like a reed.

The king was breathing heavily now, almost panting. And Pollux began to strike back, using only his right arm. He was wise enough not to break his fist on the king’s face. He was hitting at the body. The great rib cage sounded like a drum as Pollux beat a lightning tattoo on the king’s torso. Nine blows he struck, and was away before Amycus could answer with one. It was hard to tell the effect of these blows. But from the sound of it, the king’s body must have been one big bruise.

And now you could see his decision forming: to plow forward no matter what the punishment, take all the Spartan’s punches for the sake of using his mallet head. It seemed to be working. Pollux retreated, but straight back, without springing away. Perhaps he was too tired to leap. Amycus came at him, shuffling, crouching like a huge hairy spider moving toward a white moth.

Pollux was back against the wall now. He was slumping against the rock. And Amycus was upon him. He did not punch but grasped the boy’s shoulders, drew back that boulder of a head, and speed itself combined with the thick presence of death to slow everything. We saw that fatal head smashing toward the beautiful face of the Spartan twin.

And then the golden head slid away more swiftly than the wink of an eye … moved just enough so that the king’s head barely grazed him and smashed into the rock wall.

The crowd had fallen silent. Now it emitted one vast unanimous sigh as it saw the rock wall split. A webbing of fracture radiated from the dent. And for a long moment his head was socketed there. He was motionless. But Pollux had slipped away and was behind him, raising his own fist. He pivoted on the soles of his feet and smashed his knuckles into the black pelt just above the waist—a kidney punch that would kill an ordinary man.

Amycus turned slowly. He seemed unhurt. His nose was flatter than before, and his forehead was scratched. But a slowness had fallen upon him, muffling him. He raised his arms again, but slowly. Pollux’s left hand climbed painfully into the air; with two fingers he lifted the king’s chin in a weirdly intimate way. Then he swung his right fist again, planting his feet, turning on his ankles, whipping his body around with all the tensile power of his spine, all the suave strength of his shoulders, all his hot love of battle and his cold loathing of the hairy brute who had been punishing him so.

His fist landed full on the king’s throat. It was as if we were all attached now to that fist, could all feel the king’s windpipe breaking under our knuckles.

Amycus stood there, swaying. Blood welled from every hole in his face, from his nostrils, his ears, his mouth. He tried to say something but only blew a bubble of blood. He fell face down on the trampled grass, and everyone knew he would never rise again.

E
ACH YEAR, UPON THE
night of the first full moon after the spring sowing, the women of Colchis performed their rain dance. The moon would rise slowly, beckoning a mob of wives to follow it up the mountain. Among the leaping, shrieking women walked a young man. Wearing a pair of gilded horns, clad in the Golden Fleece, he strutted up the slope.

He had reason to be proud. Was he not the best athlete of the year, winner of the long race, high jump, spear-throwing? Had he not been chosen Rainmaker, Horned Man, Wearer of the Fleece? Was he not being taken to the mountaintop to be loved by the seven most beautiful wives?

Then, after the last embrace, would not the sacred knives cut the heart cleanly from his body before age could slacken his muscles or blotch his hide? Should he not die in the flame of youth, giving his blood to the furrows? And then, unhoused by the knives, would not his potent ghost spin up into the low sky and freshen the cow-goddess, whose milk is rain? No wonder he walked proudly among the women, who leaped about him waving their knives and trying to kiss his shoulders as he went.

On that night, also, the maidens of Colchis climbed the mountain by another path and scattered about the lake shore, crouching there between two moons. For to look upon the moon in the water that night was to see the face of the man you would marry. If you had prayed ardently and otherwise pleased the goddess, you would see the drowning moon become the face of the young stranger who, from that night on, would inhabit your dreams.

The princess knelt on the shore, gazing up at the trees. She would see no moon mirrored in the lake, she knew, until it had untangled itself from the branches of tallest cedar and floated clear. As she watched the light trembling in the branches, she heard voices singing:

“You Hags of Heaven

Number seven;

Harpies favor hell …

But when the Horned Man

Mounts the Moon,

You all come here to dwell.”

And that was where she wanted to be, among the wives, wild with summer, singing the moon out of the cedar and into the sky as they danced on the mountaintop.

But to do that, she had to be a wife herself.

Just then she saw light staining the water. The moon appeared very bright and solid, as if it had not dived into the lake but had swum up from the bottom. She stared at it. It paled under her gaze and began to wobble. Its edges melted into golden flame. Her breath caught in her throat. The moon shook itself into pieces of golden light; they swam together and made a face.

She looked at it. It looked at her. The light blinded her eyes. Blackness swarmed. She didn’t fall. She knelt there at the edge of the lake, unconscious but erect, hands digging into clay. When she opened her eyes, the moon was gone. She arose and turned from the lake.

“Stand where you are, Medea,” said a voice.

“Who’s that?”

“Aphrodite.”

“Where are you?”

“Don’t try to find me. If you were to look upon me now, you would burn to ashes.”

“Show yourself, please. I don’t turn to ashes so easily. I’m not sure I believe in you.”

“Gently, child. Have I not just shown you your husband-to-be?”

“All I saw was a blob. Do you expect me to fall in love with that?”

“We are not speaking of love now but of marriage. You are a princess, the only daughter of a rich and powerful king. He wants a husband for you who will add to that wealth and power.”

“And you call yourself the goddess of love.”

“Get yourself married, girl. The work will prepare you for pleasure.”

“Who is he?”

“Diomedes III, exiled king of Iolcus, otherwise known as Jason.”

“Is he handsome?”

“Not bad. Rather small.”

“Shorter than me?”

“Medea, my child, it doesn’t matter if he’s an absolute dwarf if he has a big army and a fat treasury. Have you not heard that I myself, Aphrodite, whose domain is love and beauty, took the ugliest and most misshapen of the gods in marriage? Nor did I weep and moan on my wedding night; I made him happy. And he has proved very kind and indulgent—and very, very rich.”

“What you must understand, Goddess, is that I don’t want to be a wife at all. I want to be a witch. I’m just learning magic now, just feeling my powers. I don’t want to start thinking about a husband, rich or poor.”

“Choice has been taken from you. You are destined to marry Jason and bear his child. I advise you to make the best of it, because the worst can be very, very bad.”

“When do I meet him?”

“He’s sailing here with a band of warriors. He’s coming for the Fleece.”

“My father will kill him.”

“Then you won’t have to marry him, will you?”

“I really don’t understand you. You say one thing and seem to mean another. I don’t know what to believe.”

“Believe in me.”

Her voice ceased.

“Aphrodite!”

“Farewell …”

“No! Don’t go! Please.” But the only thing Medea heard was an owl crying its hunger. “Aphrodite, Aphrodite, where are you? Come back!”

Silence. The women on the hilltop had stopped singing. She heard the lilt of water and the wind among the reeds. A rustle, a thump, a tiny scream; and she knew the owl had hit a field mouse. But she kept listening. There was something about the stillness that told her she was not alone.

Indeed she was not. Someone was very near, lying in the shadow of the embankment, half in the water, half out. It was a naiad who had come to the lake by underground streams to watch the rain dance. Climbing out, she had seen Medea kneeling so still there, watching for the drowned moon, so she had watched, too.

She saw the moon’s reflection becoming a face, immediately fell in love with it, and waited there hoping it would appear in the water again. And when Aphrodite slid down a moonbeam to speak to the princess, she was there. And was still there when Aphrodite left.

Who was this creature?

Her name was Lethe. She was a water nymph, one who dwelt in lake and river and fountain. She had yellow hair and huge velvety black eyes. She looked like the kind of golden pansy that resembles a cat and is one of earth’s most charming flowers. She swam like an otter and could run over a meadow without bending a blade of grass. And she had a fault that made her popular: what she was told by day, she forgot when the sun set; what she was told at night, she forgot by dawn. So she was much in demand by gods and mortals for telling secrets to. The secret most dangerous to tell is exactly the one you must tell—and who better for telling it to than one who listens with such wonder, widening her black eyes until you feel you could drown in them, and promptly forgets whatever she hears?

Long-legged laughing Lethe, the mischievous nymph of the forgetful ways, was much pursued because of her beauty, but rarely caught, and never kept. She had not yet found anyone she could really love—until this night when she had seen the face in the water. Now she was boiling with hot golden light, brimming with an enormous joy. She climbed the bank to stand before Medea.

“Aphrodite!” cried the girl.

“No, I am not Aphrodite.”

“But she was just here … and she goes bare, with yellow hair. You must be she.”

“Very flattering,” said Lethe. “But I’m someone else. My name is Lethe, and I came out of that lake.”

“Did you hear what she was telling me?”

“I did.”

“I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do,” said Medea.

“There is one key to everything Aphrodite does these days. She wants that boy for herself.”

“Jason?”

“Yes.”

“But she’s twice his size.”

“She likes them small sometimes.”

“How do you know about this?”

“How should I not? We nymphs gossip ceaselessly. What you think are leaves rustling are dryads whispering. What you think are gulls hunting are nereids shrieking the news. And what we gossip about, dear princess, is who wants whom and what they’re doing about it. And we all know that Aphrodite still mourns the loss of Adonis, gored to death by Ares when he took the shape of a wild boar. Now she has been making plans for this Jason, who looks very much like Adonis. She chose him while he was still a green sprout, hiding him away on Cythera, and chaperoning him with platoons of witches. Now that he has leaped into manhood and is out voyaging, she hovers near his ship and attends his landfalls.”

“Why, then, did she show me his face in the water? Why does she want me to marry him? She kept saying so. Why? Why?”

“I can think of one reason. He’s coming here to claim the Golden Fleece. Your father, naturally, will attempt to kill him and his entire company. Perhaps Aphrodite thinks that, if you marry Jason, you will be able to protect him from your father’s wrath.”

“Did you see his face in the water?”

“Everyone sees someone different—the one she’s destined to marry. But I don’t go in for marriage much. I think it’s selfish.”

Lethe was babbling, lying when she remembered to, but getting mixed up and sometimes telling the truth. She was so happy she hardly knew what she was saying. A chorus of full-voiced shrieking drifted down from the mountaintop.

“They’re hunting now,” whispered Medea.

The chorus changed, narrowed to a single voice, screaming—a man’s.

“They have him now. Time for the knives.”

The shrieking fell to a moan, melted into the night wind, became an owl’s cry. The moon was high and growing pale. It was striped by a red shadow.

“He’s caught her,” said Medea. “His shadow is upon her. We shall have rain.”

“There’s blood on the moon, Medea, and you cast a red shadow. Your eyes are a hawk’s eyes full of cold yellow light. You are apt for sorcery and belong to the night.”

“I know … I know … but Aphrodite says I must be wife, not witch.”

“You can be both,” said Lethe. “Many are. Farewell.”

She dived into the lake and swam away underwater, murmuring, “I’ll save him from that witch. I don’t know how, but I will. Oh, Jason, Jason … I must be in love. I remember his name.”

L
ETHE WAS FOLLOWING THE
Argo.
She mingled with a school of dolphins and frisked about the ship so that she could gaze upon Jason without being seen. “How can I make him love me?” she asked herself. “How do I contend against Aphrodite, Queen of Love and Beauty, and a hundred princesses of the Middle Sea, and shoals of nereids and naiads and dryads? How can I make him choose me, just me, among all these frantic females? I must make my move, or he’ll get to Colchis and be gobbled up by that sullen witch.”

In the meantime, she felt so wonderful and strong and swift swimming in the sparkling sea, watching her gray-eyed boy, that she laughed with joy. Then she ducked under, because she saw Jason look about as if he had heard her laughter.

“Trouble with me,” she thought, “is I don’t know how to worry. I’d better learn. No, I don’t want to. People are always falling in love with me … so maybe this one will.”

Indeed, even as she was thinking these things, this joyous nymph was being fallen in love with by someone she had never met. And a considerable someone. She couldn’t see him now because he wore a cape of clouds and flew too high. But he was a great, brawling, black-bearded fellow with enormous powers. With one whisk of his cape he could sweep whole cities into the sea and capsize their fleets. He could fly to the top edge of the earth, fill his lungs, and come back and blow his breath over a warm place, turning rain into snow, freezing lakes and rivers, locking the earth in ice. He was the eldest son of Aeolus; he was Boreas, the North Wind.