Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (15 page)

He was a slender youth, just ripening into manhood. Standing there in the bow, spear poised, painted by moonlight, he seemed to be carved of marble. Medusa's heart danced at the sight of him.

The boat stopped suddenly, as if it had hit a rock. She stared in disbelief; she knew there were no rocks around except the one she was sitting on; she thought the boat must have been gripped by an octopus. But it was no octopus. A Nereid surfaced, seized the lad by the hair, and pulled him under. Medusa dived off her rock. She reached the sea nymph in three strokes and took her by the throat. The Nereid writhed and flailed her legs, but Medusa was much larger and stronger. She pulled the nymph to the surface—for you cannot strike hard underwater—and slapped her until she fled, weeping.

Medusa caught the boy, who was feebly struggling in the water. She set him astride her and swam on her back until she reached the rock. There, she lifted him out of the water and climbed onto the rock after him. His teeth were chattering and his lips were blue.

She took him on her lap and hugged him close, feeling the heat of her body enter his, and his shudders subsided. He looked at her and smiled faintly. A big purple bruise was forming on his brow. He closed his eyes. His head lolled against her shoulder. She held him as though he were a child, rocking him in her arms, crooning. Very gently, she kissed the side of his face. His eyes opened. He smiled.

Suddenly, the stars were blotted. A cold wind blew. The sea churned. Medusa, startled out of her trance, lifted her face, tasting the wind with animal alertness. Had Poseidon spied them together on the rock and grown jealous? Sent a squall? Would it grow to the kind of killer storm that the sea god sent against those who offended him?

Quickly, she slid the boy off her lap. “Wait here,” she said, and dived off. She cut through the water toward the drifting boat, caught its line, and towed it back to the rock. She motioned to the boy, who climbed down into the boat.

“Go!” she cried. “You must not stay here—not now!”

He gazed at her sorrowfully. A hot gust of tenderness swept over her. But she knew she must not yield to it; the peril was too great.

“Go now!” she cried. “Go, little love. Sail away.”

“Must I?”

“Come tomorrow at sunset. Sail past the rock. If all is safe, I shall be singing. If I am silent, you must sail away.”

The youth raised his sail; the boat moved into blackness.

5

The Curse

The tidings that had so aroused the sea nymphs reached Athena's mountaintop. Burning with envy, Athena whistled up her chariot, which was drawn by eight white arctic owls, as large as eagles. She flew off her mountain and skimmed the surface of the water, searching. Finally, she saw a patch of light fracturing, exploding into color. Making herself invisible, she hovered over Medusa's rock, watching her wind the necklace in her hair. Athena knew that she was gazing upon the most gorgeous creature in the entire world, and that knowledge clawed her entrails, gouged the soft places behind her eyes, and seared every particle of her body with jealousy.

“Very proud of yourself, aren't you,” snarled Athena. “Well, take a last look. I'm going to make you even uglier than your sisters.”

Medusa raised her comb and felt it snatched from her hand. She looked up, thinking a gull had seized it, but saw nothing. She stared then into the mirror of the sea, and her eyes grew stony with horror. A snake was coiled in her hair; it held her comb in its jaws. Shrieking, she reached up and grasped the snake, trying to pull it out of her hair, but its tail was rooted in her head; to pull it out she would have to rip away her scalp. And now the snake became two snakes, then three! Every lock of her hair was becoming a snake. They stood on their tails, weaving their coils, darting their tongues, hissing.

The sinking sun reddened the water. Medusa, staring at her reflection, saw the snakes writhing out of her head like flames. She could not bear the sight of herself. Red-hot pincers of grief were digging into her heart. But she did not know how to weep, for the tears of creatures that live underwater are lost in the sea. She heard herself howling. She lifted her face to the sky and howled like a wolf.

At that very moment, the fisher-lad she had saved was coming back to her. He yearned to be with her on the rock again and prayed that he would hear her voice, for she had said that if she were singing at sunset it would be safe for him to come. He heard her. He was so enamored of her voice that her wild cries of grief sounded like song.

She didn't see him. Sailing toward her out of the flaming disk of the sun, he was only a silhouette. He dropped sail, wedged his bow in a cleft of rock, and climbed up beside her.

“Medusa!” he cried.

And she, seeing him appear out of nowhere in the midst of her torment, hearing the love in his voice, lost all sense of everything except his return. She sprang up, lifted him to her, and tilted his face to kiss him. He stared at her, sinking into nightmare. Her beautiful, graceful head was crowned with snakes. They were her hair. Each one separately alive, they were the coiled shapes of evil. They were writhing, lunging, hissing. The horror entered him, freezing every response, petrifying every duct and fiber, damming the flow of blood.

Medusa felt him stiffen in her arms. His eyes grew rigid. The thread of vein at the base of his throat stopped pulsing. She was holding a stone boy. He slipped out of her arms, fell stiffly off the rock, and crashed into his moored boat, splintering it. Amid wrecked timbers, he sank out of sight.

Medusa stared into the purple-red water. She stood there watching as if carved of marble herself, motionless except for the snakes swaying on her head.

“I'm the ugliest sister now,” she cried to the wind, “the worst Gorgon there is. So horrible that anyone who looks upon me turns to stone. Yes-s-s … you came sailing back to me, little love. And saw a change so loathsome that your very heart froze. You're a marble boy now, sleeping whitely, heavily, at the bottom of the sea. Your bones will turn to coral, and your eyes into black pearls, more precious than those of this necklace, which is the sea god's accursed gift. As for me, I shall hide my ugliness where no one may ever set eyes upon it again. I shall swim to the end of the Ocean Stream to the region beyond the North Wind, where it is neither land nor water but foul, icy swamp, unvisited by sun or moon, shunned by fish, and avoided by birds. There shall I abide forever and ever, knowing the full torment of immortality—unwilling to live, unable to die.”

Medusa threw her necklace away. But it never reached the water. The invisible Athena caught it in midair, whipped up her owls, and flew off toward her mountain, laughing triumphantly.

Swimming toward the lair of the North Wind, Medusa found bitter entertainment in turning sharks to stone. One day, however, a dolphin that had been her playmate spotted her. Before she could turn away he had become a stone dolphin and dropped to the bottom of the sea.

From then on, Medusa tried to avoid every living thing, but once, passing a headland, she entangled herself in a heavy net strung between two fishing boats and was hauled to the surface before she could break free. Shouting with joy at the weight of their catch, the fishermen pulled up the net and looked down on Medusa and the snakes that were her hair. They became statues, smiles carved upon their faces. They had died rejoicing.

After that, Medusa swam very fast and without rest. The exercise heated her blood, and, because she was still very young, she sometimes forgot the dreadful thing that had happened to her, and found herself filling with joy. Then she would feel the snakes tugging at her scalp, and remember what she had become. And grief revived was more agonizing than if it had never ceased.

6

Guests of the Tyrant

Polydectes, king of Seriphus, was famous for ferocity even among the cruel rulers of the Middle Sea basin. When enraged, he would kill anyone within reach. By the time he was thirty-seven he had run through three wives and had sent several children to join their mothers in Hades.

Now, he was considering a fourth wife. The target of his dangerous attentions was a beautiful young woman named Danae, who had come to Seriphus from a far place. Since her arrival she had wrapped herself in mystery, refusing to disclose her rank, her parentage, or the father of her son. Anyone looking at her, however, knew immediately that she had sprung from a line of conquerors, both male and female. In those days, women fought alongside their men when they didn't have more important things to do.

Danae had to be polite to the king, for she lived on Seriphus as his guest. But she secretly loathed him and was resolved that she would kill herself rather than become his wife. “But I shall not leave this life without a royal escort,” she said to herself. “If I decide to travel to the Land Beyond Death, I shall play the role of loving bride and insist that my husband accompany me wherever I go.”

Nevertheless, Danae was clever enough to conceal her feelings, and she managed to fend off the king without arousing his fury. But he was growing more ardent, and she knew she wouldn't be able to go on refusing him much longer.

Polydectes was not a stupid man, and although his mind was larded with the kind of vanity that often dulls the wit of tyrants, he realized that Danae was prepared to repulse him. He refused, however, to ascribe her lack of interest to his own lack of charm. He had to find someone else to blame and decided that it was her young son, Perseus, who was poisoning her mind against him. The king thereupon resolved to get rid of Perseus, but to do it in such a way that he would not be blamed for the boy's death.

Seriphus was an island whose chief industry was piracy. The most successful pirates became its first nobility; its first king had been a glorified pirate chief. Now, five generations later, king and nobility were still pirates, slightly polished. In such a society, the children tended to play roughly, and Perseus and his friends were the roughest of all; any game was likely to end in a brawl.

But Perseus in sport, as in everything, went further than anyone else. For him fighting was a natural extension of other games—the most exciting form of activity. And he fought with great playfulness and a mounting joy. At the height of a conflict he felt a kind of love for the antagonist who provided such sport. This lightheartedness translated itself into light-footedness. Where others grew grave with determination and heavy with rage, he shed gravity. Perseus moved more quickly, leaped higher, and struck so swiftly that his fists seemed to blur in the air. He kicked like a wild stallion, butted like a mountain goat. He used dagger and sword and spear as a tiger uses its claws, or a wild boar its tusks.

Upon a certain day, the king stood half hidden behind a rock watching the children play at the base of the hill. His heart grew bitter within him as he watched his young enemy move among the other boys like a hawk upon barnyard fowl. His hair burned yellow; his bronze body flashed; his eyes shot rays of light. And the king knew suddenly that the woman he loved and the boy he hated lived somewhere beyond ordinary circumstance; they were a different breed—more vibrant than life. To win the mother and vanquish the son, he would have to do things he had never done before.

He went to consult an oracle. It took two days and a night for the old prophet to search for clues to the king's future. On the first day he examined the entrails of a pigeon. On the second, he studied the flight of wild geese. And, on the night between, he stayed awake to read the stars.

By this time, Polydectes was boiling with impatience, and the oracle was afraid to take any more time. “Oh Majesty, forgive me,” he said. “But the signs are difficult to read. The pigeon's liver was where its lungs should be, and its heart was riddled with worms. The stars were pulsing in a way I've never seen, spinning like fire wheels, branding the black sky with strange images—a nest of snakes, and statues, bleeding. As for the flying geese, they scrawled the sky in a language more ancient than our own, but I sensed their message—which is ‘peril … peril … peril!'”

“What kind of peril?” asked the king.

“Obscure, sire. Ugly but obscure. What it reduces to is this: Your enemy is the son of a god and cannot be defeated by direct assault.”

“Can he be defeated at all?”

“Only by deceit—by lies artfully told and plots skillfully spun.”

Polydectes looked hard at the old man, who shuddered. He turned and departed; the prophet almost swooned with relief.

“The old dotard only advised me to do what I had already decided to do,” thought the king. “But that's an oracle's stock in trade, it seems … especially when his client is a king. As for Perseus being the son of a god, that means that his mother was once loved by a god. And that means …” Polydectes smiled to himself, for it tickled his vanity to think of wooing the woman a god had loved; it seemed to make him something of a god himself. “As for weaving a plot to lead the lad to his own death, that suits me very well. I'll start with his mother.”

Polydectes invited Danae to his palace. They sat drinking wine on a balcony overlooking a great scoop of sea, painted by the sunset. He had subdued his ferocious manner for the occasion, smiling at her benevolently.

“Hear me, my dear,” he said. “Though I am all-powerful here, I am ready to accept the fact that you do not return my love. Nevertheless, that love abides. What I must do is change its nature. I shall love you not like a husband, but like a brother … or like a father, perhaps.”

“Please!” cried Danae. “Don't say ‘like a father.' Don't say ‘father' to me.”

“Mystery within mystery!” cried Polydectes. “What do you mean?”

“I welcome your change of heart,” said Danae. “And I shall gladly accept you as my brother.”

“Then I claim a brother's due and would know the secret that you harbor.”