Medea. Kerry Greenwood
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and beards. They were strange to our eyes, as all our men are clean shaven and our priests entirely hairless, even to the eyebrows.
'Medea, stay here!' She grabbed unavailingly at the back of my tunic, but I evaded her easily. I had never seen such interesting people and I was used to Chalkiope's reflexes. Mine were faster.
I jumped out into the cobbled street almost under the hoofs of a mare and the rider, controlling the beast's start with easy grace, reached down and grabbed me. Her brown skin was glossy with oil. Her three long braids were decorated with little bronze bells and her face split into a grin, showing teeth like seeds in her red mouth.
'Well, little Colchian, didn't anyone tell you not to dive in front of a horse?'
She tilted my chin with her other hand, directing the horse with her knees.
'Yes, Lady, but I wasn't listening.'
She laughed louder, calling to the rider in front, 'Sister, here is a Scythian maid in Colchian clothing!'
'Who's your mother, little Scyth?' asked the other rider. She was broader in the beam than my captor, and her breasts were melons, ripe and heavy. She must have been nine months pregnant and her presence in public was remarkable. No Colchian woman would so expose her swollen belly to view. She would be called ugly, and jeered at. If she was poor and had to go out, she was closely swathed in a mantle which the women of Colchis called a belly-drape.
This Scythian's belly was dropped, a sign of imminent birth, and she had unlaced her leather corselet over her girth. But she did not seem ugly to me, just different, and she sat the horse as easily as if she was sitting on a chair, though she was so close to her time that milk had leaked from her breasts to stain her shirt.
'I am Medea, Aerope's child, but my mother is dead.'
'And who is the woman calling after you from the market?' asked the pregnant woman.
'My sister, Chalkiope,' I said dismissively. 'Where are you going? Take me with you.'
'Nay, we go to the women's mystery, which you cannot see until your first bleeding. My sister is in labour. By noon she will be delivered. Then you can find us, Little Scythian Medea, at our camp, at the side of the market away from the river, where the horse-herds are penned. There you can come and visit and see the new child. For that is the Dark Mother's symbol, Scythling,' she touched the emblem around my neck. 'She cares for the newborn. Give my sister your blessing, Medea,' she urged.
I leaned over and placed my hand on the pregnant belly, copying my teacher, and intoned, 'Hekate guard you and guide you to a safe delivery.'
They smiled at me, and I jumped from the horse.
A moment later, my ears ringing from my Chalkiope's slap, I declared to my frantic sister, 'I will be a Scythian.'
At this pronouncement she marched me straight home and told my father, so that I was locked in the cellar for the night to teach me my place as a princess of Colchis.
I cried and struggled, largely as a matter of form. I quite liked the cellar. I was pleased with the dark now, and the strange visions I could induce by staring hard into it. I talked all night with the spirits, who agreed with me that life was exceptionally unfair. But the voices out of the whirling night-purple flowers before my closed eyelids told me that I would not stay in Colchis forever, and that comforted me, so I slept.
When they came to release a penitent and tear-stained girl from durance, I walked past them with dry eyes and a straight back and went to the temple of Hekate. I saw one guard make a sign against the Dark behind my back, and was pleased.
They would not overbear Medea as easily as that.
NAUPLIOS
Even Tiphys, the helmsman, can't see any land. We're rowing blind through sea-fog. I'm colder than I've been since I was lost in a little boat off Skiathos for three days when that big fish broke my net and a wave carried away my oars. My hands are blistered and re-blistered so that each stroke makes the new sores break and bleed. I'm hungry and there's nothing to eat but thrice-baked, ash-cooked cakes as hard as wood, and I've run out of prayers to Poseidon.
I can't believe that we are going to find the Golden Fleece, though just now I would settle for any end to this journey apart from the salt-water grave which is the final destination of all but the luckiest mariners. And as I swoop forward again to bring my oar back, to the rack of every muscle and the sobbing breath of each man on board
Argo, I do not feel very lucky.
How did I come to this?
I was a child when he was a child - Jason, the great hero. Of course, he was a great hero even then, this son of Aison, King Pelias' brother, and rightful heir to Iolkos; while I was just Nauplios, the son of Dictys the fisherman. He was never afraid to say exactly what he meant, Jason. Punishment didn't deter him from truth.
Cheiron worried about him. 'Men use words to cloak truth in an acceptable dress,' he chided.
'But it is the truth,' insisted Jason. 'King Pelias has no claim to my father's throne.'
'Arguable,' said the centaur. 'As you get older, son of Aison, you will find that there are few truths graven in stone.'
'How, Master? Is not truth truth?'
'What colour is the sky?' asked the old man, settling back on his wooden bench and biting into an olive.
'Blue, Master.'
'And that is true?'
'Yes, Master.'
Master Cheiron spat out the stone and grinned, his old face wrinkling like a winter-stored apple. 'So if I said, "The sky is blue" that would be truth?'
'Certainly, Master,' said Jason.
'True for always?'
Jason thought about it. His brow furrowed as it always did when he thought deeply. He was a slim boy, already giving promise of great strength, with golden hair and bright eyes. I had been grooming one of Master Cheiron's small shaggy ponies, and put down the hoof I was cleaning to listen.
'No, Master, after dark the sky is not blue, and sometimes it is grey, and at sunset and dawn it is red and gold.'
'So it is true that the sky is blue, but it is also true that it is sometimes grey or golden or red or black.'
'Yes, Master.'
'So there you are,' replied the old man, reaching for another olive. 'It is also true,' he added, 'that horses have little patience with those who fail to attend them properly.'
The pony made a sideways plunge and I heard his hoof whistle past my head. I blushed and was recalled to my duty. But Jason sat on the green grass outside the centaur's cave, biting his lip, and pondering on the nature of truth.
They had brought me from the sea and my father's house to be a companion for Jason, son of Aison, brother of Pelias, who had usurped the kingdom of Iolkos.
Cheiron the centaur had demanded me of my father because the son of Aison required a companion. And I had found it all very strange when I had first ascended Pelion.
The centaurs are a small people - I was almost as tall as Master Cheiron when I was eight - and their ways secretive and strange. At first I missed my mother and I missed the sea, but Jason was glad that I had come, and comforted me as I wept for the sound of the tide and the taste of my mother's honey-cakes.
'We will go back when we are grown,' he whispered into the close, horse-scented darkness. 'One day, Nauplios, we will go back to your beloved ocean, and then your mother will be proud of you.'
The best thing about the centaurs was their stories. They were of short stature, clannish and uncleanly, compared to the wide-talking, frequently washed men of my childhood. Cheiron's people oiled their skin rather than washed it, and the smell of a centaur settlement was noticeable at first - wood smoke, flesh, horses - but the nose quickly grew accustomed. The food was basic and not very pleasant - how I longed for my mother's