Whom the Gods Love

         

There once was a girl named Lucky. That’s what her parents called her. For she was alive in the womb, born dead, came back to life, then died again and resurrected once more. She was twice lucky. Or thrice alive if you prefer. Once was enough for a nickname, they thought.

And so she became Lucky, the Beloved of the Gods. But you know what they say. Those beloved of the gods should get another hobby. Fast!

Lucky lived outside of town on her family farm, attended school until they had nothing more to teach her, worshiped at the temple, just to be on the safe side. Gods and all, you know.

Oh, and she liked pretzels. But not with ground mustard seed and vinegar. Her rebellion went only so far.

The food we eat eats us. Thus, die we of nourishment.

Lucky purred into her bowl of oat gruel and honey, cardamon grains and cinnamon, and a pretzel on the side. She was grateful for the nourishment. It was going to be a good day for her. An acolyte’s day. A day for celebration. For Lucky was going to be admitted, nay, inducted, into the mysteries of the Sect of Athena, Goddess of gods, Woman of all that is holy, Warrior, Defender of the weak, Upholder of the law, Terror to the tyrant, Light unto the world, Daughter of Zeus, the last of which is enough to occupy any woman’s time, goddess or otherwise, and temerity. And terror.

Lucky felt, well. She felt herself.

Lucky was lost in ecstasy, primming and preening herself at her makeup table, curling her raven locks until they sprang about her shoulders and hissed with glee. Glazing her cheeks until they glistened with the blush of the virgin sun. Shellacking her eyelashes until they stood out from her brow like a ship’s figurehead, proud, plentiful and buxom. And altogether feminine. She preened and kissed herself in the mirror, which didn’t look at all impressed.

Mirrors have seen it all, you see.

Lucky was ready to impress a goddess.

“Medusa!” called her mother, Ceto, from the hearthroom. “Silly girl! What are you doing?”

“Alright, Mama,” called Lucky. Medusa as she was called on the rolls in the town hall. “I’ll be right THE_ere!” she sang down the hallway.

Her voice. Ah, Medusa’s voice. How can I describe it? The voice the gods gifted Medusa had the lyrics of the four gods of the winds, the Anemoi, woven throughout it, the enchantment of a cantor of the Sirens, with a musical lilt and a trill to it, hanging somewhat about the edges. A ‘Ker-Plunk!’ at the edge of a stone skip on the Aegean Sea, accompanied by a spray of admiration from all those around her.

Her voice resembled somewhat angels singing plainchant in a sacred cave. Or the sea rebounding upon the shore and drawing away, tingling the effervescence of the sand and flickering the luminescence, washing over the rocks, and drawing back like a liquid cat purring against a bedsheet. The sound of Medusa’s voice grabbed everything and everyone nearby and possessed them with inspiration. It was the second thing people noticed about her and fell in love with for an eternity. After her eyes.

Medusa’s eyes. Now there’s a mystery. Her eyes said it all.

“I’m just cleaning up the Swamp!” she cried out merrily, glaring at a wrinkle that dared reveal itself in the swells of her left tear duct! “Gotcha!” she dabbed with a tufted swab. “Ow!” she dropped the all too zealous face mop, now contemplating a bruise growing in its place. “SHhhhi-!”

‘The Swamp’ is what Medusa called herself, well, her face, when she was putting on her makeup, attempting to impress visitors. Or flirt with the boys.

“Well, don’t take forever,” her mother warned from down the hall. “And better not get too pretty. The gods don’t like to be upstaged, you know.”

“I know, Mother,” she went back to her jars of makeup, her jabs of sponges on sticks, and her overly critical mirror.

Lucky finished her constitutional, looked once more in the bronze mirror, smooched and winked at her reflection, what she called a ‘smink.’ A ‘wink out o’ the corner o’ the eye an’ a smooth broadcast near flush across’n t’ face.’ Lucky giggled. Then stopped, abruptly.

Lucky was still not at all pleased with the results.

She stuck out her tongue. ‘Bleh!’ she thought and turned away. Then came back again.

‘Maybe more pout,’ she thought some more, looking deeply into the mirror, perplexed. ‘What do you think?’ she queried the miscreant mirror. Though ‘pout’ did not pour from any of her makeup jars. Even the ones that came all the way from distant Egypt where women knew how to make themselves look spectacular. And men, too!

She particularly loved the ones with black lamp soot eyeliner smeared in goose fat and speckled lip gloss color coded to her own complexion in lead and mercury and guaranteed to attract all eyes at the midsummer festival. And make all the boys sit up and stare. And look dumbfounded. ‘Though that is no accomplishment,’ she thought and giggled some more.

Lucky loved that, too. Seeing them dumbfounded. Boys are so predictable. So are girls.

‘Well,” she thought, slamming the lid of her makeup box. ‘Good enough will have to do for the gods.’ And that was that.

Lucky flowed, more than came, downstairs and into the kitchen, bringing her gruel bowl with her, now empty. Her mother looked at her critically.

“You’ve got some oats on your chin,” she chided.

“What!?” Lucky scurried to the washboard, intent at finding the offending glob of breakfast with more zeal than any hero in the plays she loved watching at the town theatre.

“Kidding!” added her mother. But Lucky still scoured her chin with a handy washcloth. Lucky scowled, sank her shoulders and head into her chest, and pouted. She got that bit right at last. Her mother took her by the shoulders and propped her up, looking her straight in the eyes.

 “My baby!” she said and sighed. And they hugged. “Now,” her mother continued. “All washed up and painted with pride?” Lucky shook her head enthusiastically. “Yes. I see you are.”

Lucky broke away, curtsied and managed a blush. Just on principal.

“When you enter the service of Athena you will be serving the gods,” her mother lectured, while gathering up something for her to bring with her into the temple. Some fruit in a basket. Medusa sensed a lecture coming. Her cat, Heracles, drew circle eights around her ankles.

“Yes, Mother,” said Medusa, cheerfully, trying to see herself in a window.

“And also, all of us. Your family. Your village. Your city. Your nation,” lecturing some more, as only a proud mother can. Slicing some cheese and onions.

“I understand,” she said, rolling her eyes, then looking contrite and attentive, her hands clenched before her chest like a student about to recite a lesson. She still glanced in a reflective pot, preening herself. ‘Are my teeth clean?’ she grimaced, suddenly considering a whole new avenue of auto-criticism to be insecure about. She clenched her face. Heracles purred. Medusa scratched his neck.

“Your People,” her mother ignored her while putting a jug of weak wine, barely above grape juice, into a sack. “To serve a god is to serve yourself,” she quoted the philosophers, monotonously. “And to serve yourself you must first serve others.”

“Yes,” Lucky was having difficulty keeping up the charade of being impressed. She gave up the effort, fluffed her hair and spread it over her shoulders and down her arms and over her generous chest in a torrent of rivulets. She remembered a silk bow she forgot to tie in her hair. ‘Shhhhh-,’ she thought.

“And before you can serve others, yourself, or your family, you must first serve the common good.” A slice of ham was added to two slices of bread. But no mustard. Heracles sniffed.

“I understand,” she said through clenched teeth, exasperation flowing from her like oatmeal down her chin.

“Of course you do,” her mother said nervously, suddenly realizing how ridiculous she was being. She hugged her little lucky girl again, annoying Heracles mightily. And then felt how keenly the loss would be when Medusa was gone. She added some extra grapes and dried figs to the bag.

It was a big day. Too big to waste on taking it for granted and not making a fuss. Her mother kissed her again. But she still looked critically at her hair. She took Lucky’s chin in her hand and twisted her head back and forth, inspecting every lock and curl. “Maybe a little more curl at the ends of each lock…,” she said, twisting at her side locks with her free hand and deep disrespect.

“Mother!” came the indignant reply. Lucky pulled away from her mother’s critical grip.

“Alright, alright!” Lucky’s proud mother relented. “I let you go.”

Beginnings are fantastic. Poetic, even. They are the times when something new happens, after all. Something grand and wonderful that never happened before and may never happen again. By Hades, it might not even be happening this time if things don’t work out alright.

Beginnings are perilous times, after all. Penniless times. Piteous times. Treacherous times. Tumultuous times. Times that must first turn all else on its head and then reemerge, all lopsided and contrariwise. Backwards and forwards reversed and everything else in between gone haywire. You never know what you will get.

But I’m forgetting something. Beginnings only happen after the endings of the previous oldings. Sometimes that ending is catastrophic. Death is like that, you know. It is the ending of all endings. Followed by the beginning of all beginnings: The next cycle. The future slithers out of the remains of the past and pushes herself up, to her knees, on her feet, wiping her brow and gazing forward in amazement. And so it begins. Again.

“You should never forget your past,” says nature, shaking an angry finger at you. “That way you will recognize her when she comes back around again and salutes you from the future.”

The past winks at us from that future and says, “It is time. Come with me!” And she whisks us along on her skirt tails.

“Very well,” said Lucky’s mother. She mentally resigned herself to the fact that her Lucky child, Medusa, was less of a girl and more of a woman, though not quite. There was still room for playful childhood in the blossoming body that beamed before her.

Just a little bit longer…

Parents never accept the womanhood of their daughters though they exaggerate the manhood of their sons. It is a hard thing to watch your child grow. The only thing harder is doing the growing yourself.

“Get on with you, now!” Ceto said dismissively and kissed her again and hugged her tight in direct defiance to her previous dismissal, then she looked her in the eyes and both sighed and smiled.

Lucky did not protest.

“Yes, Mother,” said Lucky. “I’ll be home tonight.”

‘I am sure of that,’ Lucky’s mother thought. ‘But you will not be the same Lucky.’ “Alright, Darling,” is all she said, and let her go.

Pressing the lunch sack into her hands, Lucky’s mother ushered her out the door. “Make us proud, my girl Medusa,” she kissed her girl. “Like you always do.”

“I will, Mother,” said Medusa and left.

The funny thing about a god is that you never see them face to face. Well, not really. You only ever see them face to, ah. How can I put this? How do I make this clear? Out of the corner of your eye. Or like a cat slinking in the shadows. They only appear how they want to appear to you. Or how you want them to appear.

Gods are supremely unknowable, bordering on outside of our reckoning. As malleable as putty. As stern as stone. As soft as air. As fleeting as a kiss. But never any one of those. So they look like us to us. Not as themselves, whatever that may be.

It is fickle being a god.

Lucky, on the other hand, was all that she was and she was all of it out in the open, everywhere now and forever more, there for everyone to see who had a care to and for anyone to look at who took the time to.

She followed her favorite path into town. The one that went along the seashore and by some caves that she and a few friends used to love playing hide and seek in. “Poseidon’s caves,” they were called. And she used to love taking bits of shale from the seashore and flipping them into the yawning maw of the yawning caves.

And she still did! How they clicked and clinked and clanked, like the clatter of the gods, and made her giggle, as was proper for a young girl, precocious, and on her way to an appointment with a goddess.

And the foam on the seashore! “Poseidon’s Manliness,” the girls had all called it. Then they all ran away, giggling.

‘But I can’t do that now,’ she thought. ‘This is serious.’ And she brought herself up proud and rigid like a-well, actually I don’t know like a what. Like something that Lucky thought was proud and rigid? And serious, maybe? Sure, why not.

Yes. This was a serious occasion, so by all means the last thing she wanted to be was flippant. Or whatever the opposite of serious was. She made up her mind on that. She was serious. And decorated. And lip sticked. Lip stuck? And hair curled. And pretty. And she was late! And her makeup was starting to run. Ugh!

And Zeus was supremely amused.

Lucky played with her friends when she reached the city. The temple, actually. Athena’s temple. That was the city, the polis. Or the center of it, anyway. It was all the same to her, to Lucky, acolyte to a goddess. The temple of Athena was the center of town, on a holy high hill, and it was all that Lucky cared about. Overlooking, well. Everything. From here she could spy on the world.

It was their bank, their government, their social pivot, their center of gravity, their gymnasium and their school, their seat of power, their army, their storehouse, and their reason to be. It was their home. It was… Everything!

Well. To Lucky, it was what made her, ‘She.’ It was what made everyone else, ‘They.’ And it was what made all of them, ‘We.’

And it was the home of their gods, who cemented them all together. It was what made them, ‘A People.’

And Lucky played in it, as always. For to Lucky it was always playtime, even in the house of the gods.

And all was good.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

In a faraway place, where no one goes and where everyone lives. Being invested in the things that happen there and deriving all of our hopes and prayers from it. The fates of the universe were quibbling and squabbling about their own troubles, as usual. Gods are like that.

They are more than happy to bet the fates of others and the fates of each other on a grand poker table while slipping cards up their own sleeves. The sky and the heavens, and the fates of men and gods, revolve around the earth like a giant cosmic roulette wheel.

“Deus,” said Hera, calling him by the old Indo-Asian, Dravidian name they bore long past before piggyback riding with the hordes of migrant bands, centuries ago, from Central Asia and the Valley of Indus through the Turkic plains and the kingdoms of the Khans, spreading out  to the Urals in the north and the river basins of Uruk and Sumer on the mighty Euphrates River to the west, to Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, the Caucuses, rounding the Caspian and the Black Seas, across the Indo-European Steppe, the Carpathian mountains, spreading out like a wineskin that burst open and dumped its contents on a map of the world, and finally settling in the tiny spit of land at the end of the Balkan peninsula: Hellas.

Deus growled but did not answer.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Lucky found her place, as she always did, in the temple of Athena in mighty Athens, the city that proudly bore her name. ‘We are Athena’s children,’ she thought. ‘Befriend us and prosper. Love us and be blessed. Engage us and be enriched. Thwart us and be stricken down. Challenge us and die horribly.’ She came to her place among the other children. Though hers was at a place of honor. Honor, and terror. For she was to perform today before the chief priestess of the goddess, Athena. The Mother Superior. Heradora, as she was called.

Medusa took her queues from the priestess conducting the choir. She tipped her face to the rising sun in respect and to the sunset in humility She raised her Whirlalaika, her beloved Whirlalaika with which she made beautiful music, to her lap, and turned its crank. A moment caught, hushed and fragile.

That moment paused, as it always did when Medusa was about to play. Time, himself, held his breath.

And the squabbling gods were silent.

For that moment there was a breath. And a prayer. And the slow exhale of air in a stream from Lucky’s pursed lips. And the bodily thrill of a maiden gripping her music maker, her glorious Whirlalaika, lost in rapture.

A shrill wheeze came from its strings. One, two, three, and more than a handful. Notes of pearl and sapphire poured from the silken threads, glossed with bees wax and grimaced with tension across the frets ever so tightly, yet ever so delicate.

Everyone in the temple heard her no matter where they were. The walls and floors, the tapestries and statues, hallowed halls and sacred niches, windows and the sanctuary, and the little chapels surrounding the central carcass of the edifice where devotees can come, contemplate, worship and pray. And be amazed.

Every internal organ of the great abode of Athena seemed to vibrate to her playing and her singing. And the people everywhere inside paused. And felt. And sensed the melody in their own skin. The very bones of their bodies trembled to the music flowing from Medusa’s mouth and the strumming of her Whirlalaika. They were all one with the music.

 

And Medusa sang.

 

“Athena, to thee we sing,

From these fields of wheat.

From these houses of thatch, and these halls of stone,

Let thy graces shelter us.”

 

And Athena awoke.

 

“The shores that extend,

The sands that stretch,

From wave to water, the salt-sea air is born,

In your arms embrace us.”

 

And Athena heard.

 

“From the fruit of our wombs,

And the berries of our olive trees.

From the bounty of our seas, and the honey sucked from the comb.

May we worship thee.”

 

And Athena was moved.

 

“On your breasts our boats sail,

In your hair our canvas flutters,

Across your lips and beneath your nostrils our crops grow,

Gently, drawing nourishment from your smile.”

 

And Athena felt worship.

 

In her mouth. In her eyes. In her heart. In the deft fingers caressing and strumming her Whirlalaika and the hand gently spinning its crank. In her breasts. In her belly. In her-Well. In the intimate depths of everywhere that counted as worship by a girl for her goddess. The girl, Medusa, and her goddess, Athena, felt all of it. And were fulfilled. And the breathless congregation felt it as well. Worship filled this place.

There comes a moment in time and a place in space when worship is too intimate to be revealed. Too vulgar to be described. Too spiritual to be concealed. Too naked to be ashamed. Too honest to be denied. It is entirely of-Oneself. And only of and for one’s god and of and for one’s self.

“The worship I give Thee is Thine alone for it is mine alone to give,” is the first prayer ever laid on the altar of one’s life and livelihood. A prayer of giving all to all to be all for all times and all places. God within and without, worship without end.

This may be an outdated concept in our modern age of cynicism. But gods used to count for something. Huh! Everything, actually. And the worship of the gods counted for even more. It wasn’t just a contract-You worship me. I bless you. Tit for tat. Three for a drachma. Guess the pea under the shell. Today only. Step right up. Come one! Come all! See the amazing! The stupendous! The ever worshiped but never contained! The one! The only! The Infinitely Divine! The Divinely Infinite! Gods without end!

 No. This is nothing like that. This is not a circus, nor a parlor trick nor a fraud. A barker’s table or a scam. Not a cheap thrill or a dirty game. Not a sick bawdy joke. And it is not tawdry sex. This is a symbiosis. The Ouroboros. The worship is the blessing. And the blessing is the worship returned. Where one ends. And where one begins. Where one dies. And where one is born again. Janus contemplates himself. And is amazed.

 

Lucky continued singing.

 

“Bless us, Oh Athena!

Be the banquet at our celebration,

Be the wine in our goblet, the grain beneath our plow,

Be the blood in our veins.”

 

Athena gasped for air.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“Deus,” said Hera, again.

“Yes?” he replied.

“What are you looking at?”

“Why, the earth, of course. What else is there to look at?”

“Chaos,” she replied.

“Ah, of course,” he puzzled. Then, “And why would I want to look into that again?”

“Because that is where everything begins,” she said.

“And ends.”

“And so it is.”

Zeus continued ogling the girl playing her magical instrument and singing her enchanting song.

In the temple.

On the mount.

Of the city dedicated to his daughter, Athena, for a little while longer…with desire…

And the deep sea brooded.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

And that girl sang some more.

 

“Woe, woe, woe be to us,

The ever cursed and outcast,

That never knew the goddess Athena, Great Athena, the One,

The sublime, the Mother of us all.”

 

Athena broke down, knelt, and wept.

“I want that girl,” was all she said.

It was enough.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Hera knew that look. He had worn it way back in the Indus valley. When he inspired the war of Bharata. When a whole sub-continent tore itself into pieces. When the gods themselves took on human flesh and fought the demons of their own creation, also fleshly clad.

When Deus, now Zeus, once known as Indra, turned himself into Krishna, the Anointed One, and became the God made Flesh. No more Brahma the creator, no more Vishnu the Sustainer. Now Shiva. The god of Destruction.

When he lusted for the only true food of the gods: Blood and ejaculation. Life and undoing. When he became Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Hera stepped by her husband’s side. Looked. Saw. And was dismayed.

‘No,’ she thought. ‘Not again,’

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“May our holy mother, Athena, be pleased,

And may our heavenly father, Zeus, be pleased!”

 

Lucky ended her song with a smile and a curtsey. And a slight discordant note on her Whirlalaika, ending in a pluck of the strings.

Athena was satisfied.

As was Zeus. Each for different reasons.

Hera wept.

 

Chapter 2

 

Worship is the most intimate experience you can have. There is none other, bar none.

Give me a silver coin for every kiss a boy steals from a girl on a playground. Two for every feel of a girl’s breast, slyly stolen or secretly given. A gold piece for every fling over a weekend on the sensual beach, hidden, secret, and clandestine. Hush, hush. Shhh!

A retirement in the country for every marriage that ended, as it started, as an exchange. A sack of silver or gold as a dowery. A piece of warm flesh for comfort in the cold night. A place to seat or to be seated at the banquet of living. A hole to fill or to be filled in the pits of life. A lover to have or to be had by in a moment of passion. And what have you?

Nothing. Nothing, compared to the worship of a god.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Lucky was silent, which was not her best. She was at her best when she was singing, giggling, gossiping, praying, or prancing about, of which she was doing none at the present. Yes, and talking. She loved to talk. Never mind. Doing nothing was just what was required of her at that moment.

Lucky just stood. Watched. And thought about the oatmeal that she was sure was on her chin. And kind of wondered, ‘Why isn’t anybody, you know, clapping?’ She breathed in, paused, exhaled, and was silent.

There was nothing.

A whole congregation of worshipers and not even one was cheering her on. Odd. But she played her part, anyway.

‘I’ll just stand here and be prim,’ she thought to herself, not that there was anyone else to think to, actually. Now that I think of it. ‘Um…, and now?’ she thought a blistering bit later. ‘Now what?’

Lucky sat. Thought better of it. Stood. Thought worse of that. Bowed. And left the room. What she didn’t see were the mystified gazes that followed her. She entered a side chamber and tossed her Whirlalaika on a table. It clunked and let out an indignant, “Twang!”

“You were wonderful!” said Annaborea grasping Lucky and hugging her as she entered the room. Anna was Lucky’s best friend and playmate from long past. She had helped Lucky prepare for her petition for entry to the priestesses of Athena and had stayed behind in the warmup room and watched from the periphery. In Anna’s mind Lucky was going to replace the Mother Superior in no time, probably ascending to a seat next to Athena herself in a week. Two, max!

“What? Oh, well,” said Lucky. “You obviously weren’t at the same performance as I was.”

“No! Really,” she said.

“That’s…sweet…” with just enough pause to mean exactly the opposite.

“Don’t get all sarcastic on me,” Anna warned.

“Anna,” said Lucky.

“Lucky?” Annaborea said back.

“Oh, god.”

“Gods,”

“Ya. We wouldn’t want to miss one.”

“Luck, look.”

“Luck, look what?”

“Everyone out there was blown away by you!”

“I…No…” Lucky said, insecurely. “Really?” a pause later. Then again, incredulous. “I didn’t see any of that.”

“No, really,” oozed Annaborea with enthusiasm and love for her friend.

Lucky sent her a stare of desperation in reply.

“Look,” Annaborea continued. “I bet that there are people out there right now who are taking bets on how many bets on you will pay off on. Royally.”

“You used ‘bet’ three times in that sentence.”

“Then it must be a sure thing!” Anna exasperated.

“Ann-na…”

“Luck-ky…”

“Sure. What’s the worst that can happen? I insult a goddess with my singing and disgrace. No! Even worse! I curse my village! Oh, my gods I can’t believe I am even thinking this.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Anna, incredulous. “Not on a long shot. Not on a short shot. Not on any kind of a shot at all. Long, short, or halfway in the middle!”

“Thanks, Sweetheart.” Lucky put her face in a hand, then the other, then started to cry.

Annaborea hugged her.

Gods have this odd thing about them. When they want to tell you something, they don’t actually ‘Tell’ you something. They tell someone else…, to tell someone else…, to tell you something. It’s all part of their, ‘Moves in mysterious ways,’ thing. It all happens like a spill and a splatter on the ground, for all I can tell. Wizz, slap, flip, flap. Make sense of it what you will.

A bystander in a street who ‘accidentally’ drops something at your feet, then hurries away before you have a chance to shout, “Hey!” to stop them, bend, stoop, pick up the dropped item, and give it back to them. “Hey?” but they’re gone by now. It’s up to you to pick it up and look at it for yourself. To see what it is. What it means. And what it is trying to tell you. Do you dare? Do you dare not?

Or if you see an omen in the sky that is hard to interpret but which puts a particular thought in your head none-the-less. A message in tea leaves. The rantings of an oracle in a smokey cave, seeing the other world in a drug induced glare of inspiration. Burning all in its path. Until absorbed by a mystic in a dark hole in a mountain and spewed upon an incredulous and worshipful population.

Or an odd coincidence that you just can’t seem to drive from your mind, try as you will. It refuses to go away. And that is all we ever know.

There it is! Spill splatter that may actually mean something! If you are willing to look.

Go figure.

Just then a figure cloaked in black appeared at the door. It was the Mother Superior of the Sect of Athena, the Mistress Heradora, though who knew for sure who she really was?

There were rumors about her among the girls. That she was a spirit. A demon. A nymph. A goddess, even. One who can change suddenly and tear out the hearts of curious little girls who speculate too revealingly about her nature.

Right now, she was just… there. In the doorway. Of the side chamber. Of the temple. On the day when the girl called Lucky, originally Medusa, failed to impress a goddess known to all as Athena.

Lucky looked up, saw the Mother Superior, and cringed.

“Medusa?” she said, softly. “May I speak with you?”

“Yes, Mother Superior,” said the girl called Medusa, eyes down in humility. Or terror.

Annaborea gave her friend a kiss and whispered, “Good luck, Lucky!” and left the room, bowing to the Mother Superior as she went. No terror. Just concern for her friend.

“Medusa,” the Mother Superior said, sitting down close to her. Then, in a gentler voice, “Lucky.”

“Yes, Mother Superior?” said Lucky, looking up.

“I’ve watched you, these past fourteen years. Well, even more before.”

“Yes, Mother Superior.”

“And you have grown.”

“As have my playmates, Mum.”

“True, but there is growth and there is growth.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mother Superior stood, walked to a window, and looked out, over the city, over the hill, over the fields beyond, and to the distance where stands mighty Olympus. She remembers a conversation with her lord and equal on those lofty heights. And the terror in his look.

And then turning, “Lucky, do you know what you are being asked to do here?” she said at last.

“I think so,” she said. Then, “No. I don’t really.” There was no use lying to the Mother Superior.

“Good answer, girl.”

“I am failing at the initiation into the Sect of Athena,” she said at last, straightening her spine and clenching her resolve, as if searching for the right answer to the unanswerable, if not unfathomable, question.

“You are being asked to devote yourself to a goddess,” the Mother Superior said, forcefully. “To Athena herself. Every day. Every night. The first thought you think upon waking up in the morning, the last thought you entertain yourself with before dropping off at night, the mush in your bowl, the meat on your plate, the sun that smiles upon you at noontime and the moon that lights your way in the evening, and the water that washes your breasts in liquid moonlight during your bath at night. They must be always, above all, and supremely: Of Athena!”

Lucky never thought this would be so hard. Worship a goddess? Be a part of her temple? Burn incense? Sacrifice a few doves? Put salt on the doorsteps of the devotees for luck? A loaf of bread on their windowsills for prosperity? That’s what she expected. The ceremony and the celebration. Pomp and circumstance.

But these were not the questions and answers she learned in catechism.

“I-,” she said, breathless.

The Mother Superior continued, now sounding like the prow of a ship breaking through a tempest. “Can you devote yourself to Athena, mortal girl?”

“I!-,” she squeaked out.

“Can you make love to her?” she demanded. “In your heart? In your mind? And in your body?”

This was getting weird. “I-,” she stammered and stumbled to regain control of her mouth.

“Can you devote yourself entirely to Athena, from the tips of your lips to the two teats of your breasts to the rosebud and the lips of your vulva? Can you give all to all to become all… for all? All for the worship of the goddess, Athena!?”

Lucky breathes deep of her sexuality. Exhales. Breathes again. And breathes once more. This is new to her. New and terrifying. And enticing.

“No,” she whispers in a whisp of confusion. “No?!” she says again, louder, clearer. “No!” she stamps once more, with determination.

“No!?” roars the Mother Superior.

“Well, not exactly, ‘No!?’” her determination cracking under the strain.

“Well, what then? Exactly?” Heradora demands.

“Exactly… Something.” Lucky is exasperated. She shakes her fists above her head and grabs her temples.

“Well, that’s specific.”

“I don’t. I don’t know what, exactly,” said Lucky, holding her breath.

Mother Superior looked at Lucky in exasperation, deciding whether to glower or to gloat, whether to grimace or to grin, and then sighed.

“Come now, girl,” she said at last in a gentle voice. “Breath! Before you pass out!”

Lucky exhaled, brought her hands to her sides, breathing, breathed, and breathed again, and looked up into the Mother Superior’s eyes.

“I just don’t know what I want,” she said, broken.

Lucky turned away. And saw the Whirlalaika sitting on the table where she dumped it, now it seemed disrespectfully, only a few minutes before. Now she reached for it and pet it like a favored playmate from her youth. One she used to goad into throwing chips of shale into the mouths of gods by the seashore and one she used to goad into stirring up “Poseidon’s Manliness” in the inky pools by the Aegean.

‘Anna! Anna!’ she remembered the playful and familiar romp between her and her friend. ‘Come here! Look what I found! Hurry! I want to show you this! You gotta see it!’

Lucky giggled. Sniffed. Rubbed oatmeal into her nose. And sighed.

The Mother Superior questioned, turned her head to consider the curious behavior of her favorite pupil, but did not mock.

She only waited in anticipation.

Lucky picked up her Whirlalaika in her mind, seeing it as if for the first time. The curved neck protruded from the boxy body, ending in a prickle of chocks and frets, tuning knobs and a whirl of olive wood. It is all supposed to suggest a woman’s neck and hair, graceful and curvaceous.

She picked it up for real. Turned its crank. And played.

“The joy of the Whirlalaika,” she said to the Mother Superior, to herself, or to the atmosphere in general.

“It takes me away and brings me to another place. A place of wonder. A place of gladness. A place of absolute ecstasy. And there I am content,” said Medusa, complete and unfettered. And at once alone and at peace with herself. And with eternity. And with her gods, unreachable though they may be.

“No god can resist a song sung in determination, my dear Lucky,” said the Mother Superior, softly.

“Or desperation?” said Medusa, not sure how Lucky she was now.

“Or that,” she agreed. And then, soothingly, “Sing me a song, girl.”

“And what song should I sing?”

“And what are you feeling?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Medusa threw away, not really knowing. “Debilitation, maybe?” she said. “Disintegration? How about dilapidation?”

“I was going to go with denunciation.”

“Denun-what?”

“Denunciation.”

“What am I denouncing?”

“Yourself.”

Lucky shrugged. Sighed. Then fell into herself like a house of cards touched by the slightest whisper of wind. And sighed once more.

‘Why isn’t this over?’ she thought, starting to feel like a mouse teased by a cat. ‘Just tell me I failed and get it over with.’ Then, ‘Send me away. On a ship. Over Poseidon’s Sea. Over the Aegean. Through the Mediterranean. Past the Pillars of Hercules. Maybe to be sucked down by the cold waters that grip ancient Atlantis, proud no longer. I’ll hide myself away. I’ll change my name. I shall be Lucky no longer.’

Then out loud Lucky said, “Now you are going to tell me I should give myself up to the gods. ‘There’s a good girl,’ I should say. ‘Nice Lucky! Good Medusa! Just denounce yourself and flush your life down a hole full of snakes under the temple. You know, where the rest of the rabble lives?’”

The Mother Superior looked on. Waiting. Expectant. She knew when to speak. And when to hold her tongue. Medusa knew neither which somehow now gave her the advantage.

Reality is a weird form of fiction. One that is at first believable, then fictitious, then noteworthy in its naivety and imbecilic in its innocence, that, at the end, becomes totally absurd. Nobody would believe that filth. Until it become weird again. And once again real.

Moral law is what happens between people. State law is what happens between nations. Common law is what happens in between. You know. The place where actual people live? The Commons.

Right now, Lucky was in one of those, ‘In-between’ places.

And there were few laws to guide her here. She sighed and remembered, long, long ago. When she was but little. And viewing the world with wonder.

Phorcys, Lucky’s father, had built her a tree house when she was just a little girl. On a hump of ground in their back yard grew an apple tree and she wanted a place to hide in it. A house. In an apple tree. A tree from a seed brought from far away Harappa long ago when the gods were wanderers seeking a new home and wanted a bit of the old to bring along with them.

On a hump of ground. In the back yard. On Lucky’s childhood farm.

So her father made one for her.

“Lucky!” he cried when he was done. “I’ve got something to show to you.”

“What is it, Father?” she said, and Lucky’s father brought her to her new playpen.

In true Dad fashion it was not just a place in a tree. Nor was it four sawhorses up in a rickety tree with a shed nestled in it full of bees’ nests and birds.

But this was a House! In a Tree! Complete with windows, a superstructure, a front door with a clever lock, an all-seeing eye painted on its ceiling for protection, and a ladder that she could pull up, hook, and go to sleep with a cat in her lap knowing that she was safe from all the goblins that roamed at night through the backwoods outside of Athena’s beloved city. Athens. And stalked little girls that slept in houses in trees. And used cats for protection. One can never be too careful.

The tree house was between her house, the one she lived in, and her wild, outdoor house. The wilderness that she always considered her other house. The one she lived in when not sleeping between the sheets and the freezing cold with a cat at her feet. Or looking out the window on a cold night. “How the night air bites!” she would say. “And tingles my nose hairs,” she would broadcast to the night air.

What a house that was! She could see the footsteps of the gods when the frost gathered and nipped at the ground beneath her lovely house in the trees, curling about the late autumn fingers of grass, glistening with ice crystals. Dying with expectation and living for the future.

But then again, she was Lucky.

Lucky wished she was back in that house, the one she used to retreat to, the one she used to hide in, the one she used to invite her friends to share sugared fruit and cinnamon toast and scalded tea brewed with honey and cardamom and fennel seeds steeped until it was a generous, brown color, rich and hot, that her mother would bring them in the morning after a night of talking and sleeping and playing with cats and gossiping about the boys with the girls and her Anna. Beloved Anna. How they laughed!

Today she felt not so Lucky.

“Medusa, child,” said the Mother Superior, snapping her out of it. Then gently, “Lucky.”

“Yes, Mother,” the Medusa-Lucky, woman-child said in reply.

“I believe you owe us something, child.”

“Owe us? What? And to whom?”

“To the world.”

“And that is?”

“Medusa?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“Do you love Athena?”

“I-,” she said. Once more tongue-tied.

“Careful,” she cut her off. “Answer truthfully, girl.”

“I,” she said, now forcefully. “I don’t know,” her words punching the air with forceful uncertainty. Then, “Yes, I love all the gods.”

“That is not an answer, Medusa,” she said tersely. “That is politics.”

“What? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I feel about Athena.”

“Umm,” Mother Superior grimaced.

‘Umm?’ thought Lucky. ‘Why do grownups always act all cryptic when they don’t have anything clever to say?’ Instead, she just said, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mother.”

“Well,” said the Mother Superior. “That’s revealing.”

‘Cryptic again!’ she thought.

“And honest,” she continued. “Tell me something, girl. Do you like any of the boys in gymnasium?”

‘Huh? What?’ Lucky gagged. ‘Is this going to be girl talk? With a grown up? Yuck!’

 “I haven’t really thought about it, Mother,” she then replied matter-of-factly.

“The reason I ask is because quite a lot of them like quite a lot of you.”

Lucky blushed, though through all the makeup it probably looked more like leprosy. Though that might have been the oatmeal.

“I don’t know about that,” said Lucky, wishing she could change the subject. “What has this to do with anything?”

“I think it’s important. We girls have to keep up on our admirers, you know.”

‘We girls?’ she thought. Now she was getting uncomfortable. “I don’t know about that, either,” stammered Lucky, wishing she would stop making this conversation intimate. Then, “I thought this was about my admission to the Sect of Athena, not my top boy picks?”

Lucky was getting prickly. With reason.

“True, but they have much in common.”

“Such as?” Prickly increasing. ‘Careful, girl!’ she warned herself.

“Such as,” dominated the Mother Superior, getting prickly herself. “If you give yourself to Athena, you cannot ever be given to anyone else. Do you understand, girl?” She dominated the conversation and the whole room as only the Mother Superior could.

Lucky cowered.

“There will be no more flirting,” she continued. “No more blushing for the boys,” she glowered. “This isn’t a way to increase your odds with the boys.” She saw the look of horror in Medusa’s eyes. And froze.

Then the Mother Superior paused, looked at her kindly, sympathetically even. “You will need to give things up, Medusa,” she said, as if having heard this talk before on the receiving end. “Yourself, for one.”

And then, with finality, “You will belong to the goddess Athena alone.”

“I…guess I know… that,” said Lucky. Prickly subsiding.

“Guessing is not enough.”

Lucky closed her eyes and grimaced. She blew out her lower lip, sending any oatmeal still on her chin sailing.

“Well,” she said at last, her prickles exhausted, replaced by a few pearls of wisdom, perhaps. “I guess I thought this all would be a pretty game. A beach hunt for crabs at night or a bonfire in the village square. That I would be well fed and slept and groomed and geegawed and made-a-fuss-over’ed and silk dressed for the rest of my life. That I could dance dressed in gowns made of transparent gauze, half naked, on a pedestal at every holy event and be admired and desired in the firelight under a harvest moon. All while acting chaste and pure. All while acting humble and contrite.

“‘Oh, look at me!’ she continued. ‘I’m Athena’s special one! Medusa, herself. Dancing like there’s no tomorrow. La, La-la. Don’t you all admire me? Don’t you all desire me? Don’t you all want to be me?’ All while pretending to be something phenomenal,” she puffed. And drew herself up. And then deflated.

“Is that what you wanted to hear?” Lucky scowled, every pout that ever lived on her face retreating in terror. She looked ferocious.

Lucky collapsed inside. She looked at the Whirlalaika in her lap, remembered its form, its delicacy, its grace. She hugged it like a beloved cat sleeping in her arms. ‘Heracles,’ she thought. ‘Give me strength.’

The strong chest muscles in Medusa’s body flexed her rib cage. They responded. She inhaled. Breathed deep. Clamped her eyes shut so that no sight could interfere with her internal choir. Seeing is great but it takes too much strength to endure. Better close your eyes and listen.

“I just love music,” she said in a typhoon. “And I love playing for the gods. When it all comes down to it, that’s me.” And then looking away from her beloved Whirlalaika, musing. “Do you understand?” she said, absently and unfocused. “I didn’t want any of this. The glamor. The godhood. The responsibility. The-,” she stopped.

Then, “I just wanted to play with my girlfriends. Gather stones on the beach. Kiss the boys in the dark corners of the library.” And she looked up, directly into the Mother Superior’s eyes. “Can you understand? I don’t have what it takes to be the handmaiden of a goddess,” her resolve dissolved, her enthusiasm exhausted in a pool of honesty. Her soul disgraced and her hopes dashed.

Medusa was defeated. She slumped into herself. “I’m not that girl,” she said. And her Whirlalaika gave out a mournful low in her lap.

“You must find someone else.”

 

Mother Superior approved Medusa’s admission to the Sect of Athena. She would be added to the choir immediately and have a junior seat in the orchestra. Her additional duties would be outlined later.

Lucky was dumfounded. Mother Superior grieved. It was all happening the way it always did. With wars and consequences. As it did long, long ago.

“Poor, dear,” was all the Mother Superior Heradora found to say about that day.

“Poor, poor dear Medusa,” she said.

 

Chapter 3

 

Lucky was in the antechamber of the temple. She wore a blue dress. It was in the style of an acolyte’s dress but in silk instead of the usual herringbone flax of the acolytes and it was dyed heaven blue. Her hair was done up over the top of her head, gripped in a silk bow, trellises cascading down the back of her neck and across her shoulders where they curled and darted about her breasts playfully when she turned her face in glee, which is the only way Medusa knows how to do anything: Gleefully. Her makeup was professionally done and gleamed slightly around the eyes, Lucky’s eyes. Those penetrating eyes. They can see right through you.

The past week had been a whirlwind. Since the interview with the Mother Superior, Lucky had her arms full. What with dressmakers measuring every inch of her body to hairdressers combing, cutting, and curling her locks, which were naturally curly and didn’t need much attention, anyway. They had a will of their own and sort of minded their own business, if you were willing to let them to it. And to thwart you, should you try to dominate them.

Medusa’s attendants struggled to reign them in. ‘Hah! Good luck,’ Lucky thought. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried. They do what they want to and that’s just that!’

To myriads of dress maids considering her face and features and comparing her cheeks and forehead and her lips and her ears and the tip of her nose to the natural blush of her cheeks to hundreds of bottles of makeup, eye liner, eyebrow paint, nose paint, blush, and lip glaze that they practically turned her to stone.

“Is this one right?” they asked each other, comparing a bottle to a body part. “Does this one match her forehead? Does this one compliment her chin? Her cheeks need more red… or perhaps peach? Yah, peach looks good,” they said.

“And what about her breasts?” they demanded.

‘And what about my breasts?’ Lucky thought, indignantly. And on and on it went. ‘I might as well be on a pedestal,’ she thought.

“When’s Medusa’s pedestal going to arrive?” shouted the head priestess and ladies’ maid to someone outside.

“Ugh,” thought Lucky. “I can’t deal with this anymore.” She checked herself out in her mind and thought of a time long ago, on the seaside, playing and skipping stones on the water, with her best friend and playmate, Annaborea. And gossiping…

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“Do you like any of the boys?” asked Annaborea with a wicked grin during one of her and Lucky’s Tom-boy romps by the sea. ‘Plunk!’ went the rock that just sailed from Anna’s hand.

“I don’t know. They all seem kind of awkward,” said Lucky, turning back to the shore, selecting, and throwing another stone.

“Ajax, maybe?” said Annaborea. “Or Hermes!” Annaborea pushed her friend for a confession, weighing another piece of shale in her skilled and delicate hand.

“Hermes is sort of cute,” Lucky relented, pausing before another toss. Then coyly, “Do you think he notices me?”

“Aha!” Anna triumphed. “I knew it.”

“No, probably not,” said Lucky, finishing her own speculation and chucking her stone into the Aegean, not even trying to skip it across the glass surface.

“What have you done to get his attention?” Annaborea demanded, then added, incredulous, “If anything,” skipping a flat stone over the sea. A sudden wave gobbled it up before it could even skip twice. “Have you been very girl-like around him?” Annaborea came around and faced her girlfriend, blocking her from the sea. “Ever take your feminine charm out of the cupboard?” she said. “You know, it’s not all for the temple.”

“Pffft!” said Lucky. “I don’t feel very girl-like,” she sputtered. “Or charming.”

“Lucky,” Annaborea cried in mock disbelief, slapping herself on the cheek. “Anyone who looks at you for two seconds and has a pulse knows you’re a girl,” said her friend.

“Oh, puff-puff,” said Medusa. Inside she thrilled. “Please stop!” she said, unconvincingly, and threw a stone into the sea. It splashed with a gulp and the thrill of conquest.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Medusa stood before the alter of Athena in the Parthenon, proudly thrust from the Acropolis hill, never had it looked so splendid. Nor ever had Medusa looked so desirable. This was a place she rarely visited, having always been consigned to lighting candles, filling oil jars, sweeping under the tables, and singing in the school choir while averting her eyes in the presence of her betters for most of her life. Modest Medusa. Chased Lucky. Unnoticed by her betters. But she had not been unnoticed. That was good… And bad.

Life was like that when you were a woman-child in Athens. And your name was Medusa.

Most other times when she was allowed in the sanctuary itself, she was amongst the worshipers with her parents, solemn and serene. And totally worshipful.

Now she was the focal point of worship, charging through her body like a lightning bolt and laying upon her temple like a victor’s wreath. Or a humble sacrifice. A gift to her, she who was a gift to the goddess, Athena. And who stood between the people and that goddess.

Athena.

And they focused all of their devotion and all of their worship and all of their adulation to the glazed and glorious idol-girl before them. It nearly broke her. But not quite. It was not yet time to be broken by a god.

Before her stood the Mother Superior, Heradora of the Order of the Sect of Athena and soon to be Medusa’s mistress and tutor. Heradora wore a red dress and carried a bronze dagger in her right hand, a spear in her left, a jar of oil and a pouch of salt on a cord around her neck.

And Athena came from beyond the veil. And she watched.

Lucky’s mind was still elsewhere.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“Why did you choose me?” asked Lucky of the Mother Superior when she was told that she was not a failure and that she was not a silly girl. No. And that she would soon become an acolyte and eventually a priestess to the great goddess, Athena.

“Athena chose you,” Mother Superior replied matter-of-factly.

“No. That’s not-,” then, “I told you that all I wanted was to be a girl… In the country… Living in a treehouse… with a boyfriend and a cottage and a hill overlooking a pasture full of sheep and trees full of apples and vats full of olives and caves full of stones and a cat to keep my feet warm at night. I thought I destroyed any chance I had of serving any god except the goddess of little girls with no ambition, scant talent, and even less charisma. Why me?”

“You underestimate yourself,” said the Mother Superior.

“Who doesn’t?” Then, after a pause. “What’s so special about me?” Lucky asked. “I’m…Nobody.”

“You play well.”

“What?”

“Music.”

“I’m good at the Whirlalaika, I admit. But-“

“You are not good at the Whirlalaika,” Mother Superior interrupted.

Medusa looked crestfallen. “Oh.” She reached up and curled her temple locks in frustration, letting them fall, snakelike, across her face.

“You are stupendous at the Whirlalaika,” she continued. “You are tremendous. You are transcendental at the Whirlalaika.”

Lucky looked up, startled. “Huh?”

“Look, dear,” she said. “You can’t keep being insecure and immodest at the same time. Pick one, please.”

“Sorry,”

“You once said to me, ‘I just love playing for the gods.’”

“Yes, I did.”

“And the gods love mortals who play for them.”

“I-. What?!”

“Hush.”

Medusa looked at her, perplexity growing on her cheeks.

“The gods love music,” the Mother Superior continued. “The gods love ballads and plays and juxtapositions of good and evil, light and dark. Comedies and tragedies. The gods love Order and Chaos.”

“Order and-?”

“Chaos, yes.”

And why do they need us for that?” asked Medusa. “Can’t they create music and…, chaos, by themselves?”

“The gods need people,”

“What do they need us for?”

“The gods are helpless without worshipers.” Such an admission never came from the lips of man or god or goddess before. Or since. Medusa shook. Then shuddered. Then she cringed as if expecting a lightning bolt to rend the temple roof and strike them both down, the Mother Superior for her blasphemy and Medusa just on general principals.

“They need humans to serve them,” she continued.

“Then why should we serve the gods?” she asked when the chance of calamity had passed. “Why don’t we become gods, ourselves?” Lucky pushed her luck, as usual.

“Ah, now,” said the Mother Superior as if finally getting through to a particularly dim witted acolyte. “That’s the still point between the horns of the dilemma.”

“Still point?” she puzzled. “What still point? What dilemma?”

“When you become a god, you can no longer create.”

“But I thought the gods create everything?”

“No. The gods create nothing.”

“Then what do they do? If the gods don’t create, then why are they here at all?”

“Gods inspire. That is all.”

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

The initiation began.

When God reached into Medusa’s soul, Athena came too and reached into her being, as well.

“Will you, Medusa,” asked the Mother Superior. “Take upon yourself the cloak of a goddess? To be with her to serve her? To be with her to love her? As your brother? As your sister? As your husband? As your wife? As your beloved betrothed? On your honor? On your life? On your body? On your mind? On your soul?

“Do you do this now of your own free will, child?”

“Yes,” said Medusa with the first and the last breath of her body and expression of her will that was still exclusively her own.

“I vow it with my entire being,” she said and finalized the act.

Athena trembled.

“Take the spear,” said the Mother Superior.

Medusa took the spear and held it before her in her two hands, with the tip pointing up and to her left.

“With this spear I defend Athena with my last ounce of strength, in my final thought, to my dying breath,” intoned the Mother Superior.

“With this spear I defend Athena with my last ounce of strength, in my final thought, to my dying breath,” repeated Medusa. She held up the spear, then brought it back down to her breasts.

Mother Superior reached out her hand with the dagger and drew a mark deep into Medusa’s forehead. A trickle of red appeared outlining the sign that would forever mark her as taken by the gods. “I accept the mark of Athena, sealing me forever as her servant.”

“I accept the mark of Athena, sealing me forever as her servant,” she vowed.

Mother Superior took the jar of oil from around her neck, opened it, touched it to her finger, and salved Medusa’s wound in oil. “Here is the blood of Athena, the healing salve. May it flow in my veins, course through my heart, and fill my flesh.”

“Here is the blood of Athena, the healing salve. May it flow in my veins, course through my heart, and fill my flesh,” again, Medusa affirmed her devotion to Athena.

She put the flask away, took the pouch of salt, pinched some between her fingers. Held it to her nose and licked it with her tongue.

“Here is salt, bitter and joyous. Preserving and life bringing. And the niter that embraces us in death. And so pledge I my life to woes and jubilation in the name that is all holy. In the name of Athena.” She rubbed the salt into the wound.

It stung her mightily.

“Here is salt, bitter and joyous. Preserving and life bringing. And the niter that embraces us in death. And so pledge I my life to woes and jubilation in the name that is all holy. In the name of Athena,” Medusa promised with finality.

It was done.

The Mother Superior took back the spear, handed it and the dagger to an acolyte at her side, placed her hands on Medusa’s shoulders, kissed her, then turned her around to face the congregation.

“Behold!” she said. “Athena’s handmaiden.”

Athena cried.

 

Chapter 4

 

Zeus keeps his own counsel and plots the future of mortals. Hades metes his out to mortal men, each according to his own destiny and desire. And Poseidon? The third brother? Well, now. Poseidon broods and ponders in the depths of his realm, neither judge nor punisher. He is his own person, unfettered by fate or deliberation. Treacherous. Imponderable. And dangerous. Like the sea he rules over.

While Hera saw her husband ogle the maiden betrothed to Athena. Fair was she. She could not dispute. And while she saw Athena enraptured by her new acolyte. Wonderous was she. She could not blame. She failed to see the more lecherous looks coming up from beneath the waves…

It is not a good thing to be a fair maiden in the company of the gods. Nor is it a good thing to throw stones into Poseidon’s mouth. One must be wary.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“Annaborea!” Lucky simply threw herself into her friend’s arms, kissing her as if kissing was sure to be outlawed tomorrow. She ran straight to her friend after hearing the Mother Superior’s decision on her induction into the Sect of Athena.

“Lucky!” Annaborea drank up Lucky’s kisses like wine with a thirst that would not abate and didn’t want to, anyway.

“You just won’t believe what just happened,” said Lucky, bubbling with excitement.

“Yes,” Anna said, nodding enthusiastically. “I know.”

“And I don’t know if I can believe it myself,” said Lucky, oblivious to her friend’s assertions.

“I don’t doubt it.”

“The Mother Superior?”

“Right?”

“Told me?”

“Yes?”

“And I can’t believe it!”

“Uh-huh!”

“You’re not going to believe it, either.”

“Umm-“

“I’m. Going. To. Be.”

“Yes?”

“In. Athena’s.”

“Yes!”

“I don’t know what, actually,” she said and gave Anna a puzzled look while fanning herself.

“Huh?” Puzzled look returned!

“Anna, what should I wear?” she blurted out. “I mean, on my first day. You know. When I enter the temple?”

“Well, I-,“ puzzled Anna.

“I mean, I have to arrive at the temple in something proper.”

“Naked would be nice,” Anna teased.

“Of course it would!”

“Ye-esss,” Annaborea couldn’t believe how giddy her friend was.

“Something to impress.”

“Very well,”

“Something subdued, of course.”

“Well. Yes.”

“Something humble.”

“Shh-ya?!”

“But I want to impress, of course.”

“Um… Lucky...”

“A dress! Of course. A pretty one. I need a dress.”

“Very proper. And modest. I’d say it’s a big, ‘Let it be!’”

“And something for my head.”

“Luck-ky,”

“Maybe a tabbouleh?”

“A tabbouleh?”

“A Tiara!”

“That makes more sense.” Then, “Look. Lucky!”

“Or a tarantula!”

“Lucky?”

“A tangerine?”

“LUCK-KY!”

“WHAT!?”

“Um,” Anna practicaled. “Calm down, girl.”

“I know. I’m just excited.” Lucky kept fanning herself.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Lucky fanned herself some more, breathed in, beathed out, then looked puzzled.

“Did you just say naked?” she asked.

“What?” said Annaborea, looking innocent. “Uh, no. Of course not,” fanning herself in reply.

“Oh,” said Lucky, and went back to being puzzled.

It suited her.

 

Chapter 5

 

Zeus came to Athena’s temple on the Acropolis at a time when Medusa would be lighting candles and saying prayers for the souls of the city, for peace, for prosperity, and for deliverance from sin.

There’s nothing Zeus loves more than a worshipful virgin. And he had been feeling more than a little bit worshipful himself lately, if you understand. He could barely conceal it. He could hear the young girl’s prayers filling the place. He could taste them. He could touch them. He could feel them everywhere in his being.

Zeus closed his eyes and breathed deep. There was sure to be incense among those prayers. Myrrh. Frankincense. He breathed again. Sage and hemp. He breathed more deeply than before. Poppy sap to intoxicate. Breathed deeper still… Tobacco and coca leaves. He sucked it all in. And he smelled…

“Seawater?!” he said.

Zeus opened his eyes in shock. Now he could see it as well.

At the gate to the temple of Athena Zeus spied something. A trident leaning against the door, blocking it tight. The magic of Poseidon kept it bolted. Enraged, Zeus realized that his brother had beat him to the pearl of worship he so desired.

He smote the door with all his might, but the might of the gods is nothing compared with the lust of the gods.

Inside, Medusa worshiped, but Athena was absent.

Medusa hummed softly while lighting the first candle. It was a favorite song of hers, one she used to sing with Annaborea in her treehouse. It had silly lyrics about cats playing on the moon and pots of porridge and apple cinnamon toast. Had she been paying attention she would have been appalled at such a silly choice of a song to sing in such a holy place, such a sanctuary. It was nothing but a trite little bit of little girl fluff. All chit-chat and sugar. Hardly befitting the temple of a goddess. No god could resist.

But she didn’t stop.

 

The Cat and the Moon

 

“The cat on the deck of the ship of the mo-on,

Banks her passage through the sky.

He does not know just where she brings him,

Nor does he ask her how or why.”

 

“The moon ship sales across the sta-ars,

And dips her prow down to the earth.

The cat jumps down into a mea-dow,

Bringing with him joy and mirth.”

 

“’May I give you wine with sug-gar,

Gruel with honey, and cinnamon toast?’

The moon said, ‘Yes, Sir. At your pleasure,’

 He served her as a gracious host.”

 

Lucky laughed out loud, extinguishing her candle. She couldn’t help herself.

Lucky relit her candle from her oil lamp, moved on to the next alter. Removed the extinguished nub of candle wax from the candlestick holder and inserted a fresh candlestick. Lighted it. Moved on.

Away by the entrance of the sanctuary, the door closed, a magic talisman holding it down against her will, struggle though she may. “Girl, there is no resisting me,” it said with force.

Poseidon swept through the building, having his way with it, down corridors, through the antechamber where he found a musical instrument sitting, coyly, on a table. He swept by, knocking it off as he passed…

 

“The cat and the moon were duly mar-ried,

And lived a life of joy and peace.

They raised their kittens in the mea-dow,

May their gladness nev-ver cease.”

 

Medusa lit one more candle.

A wave of darkness swept over the sanctuary, every flame extinguished. Pulses of green light throbbed on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Medusa was suddenly in a fishbowl of throbbing, green light. Green luminescence bathed her features and colored her hair like sea candles of the foamy, brilliant shore. Great writhing shadows sprang up on the walls behind her and a presence loomed over her.

She dropped her oil lamp which shattered on the hard floor. Its light extinguished. Its spirit put out. A greasy stain was all that remained.

And Poseidon came upon the lovely maiden, caring not of her vows, her music, or her songs about the moon and her silly cat. Nor of Athena, whom he never liked. This made it all the more delicious.

In a different place, in a different world, Athena felt a dagger pierce her heart.

Medusa remembered little. Only a vague sensation that something was very, very wrong. Like a nightmare refusing to slither away upon waking. And then a sharp, soul shattering plunge and stab into the deepest places of her mind, her soul… and her fragile body, which shocked her into revulsion and reality. And then emptiness.

She felt violated to her core. A light had gone out in her being, a sacred candle, once extinguished, never rekindled. When a god comes upon you, you stay come uponned. There is no returning from that drowning, dark, loathsome pit. Not in this world. Perhaps not in any other.

Her soul was violated.

“Athena!” she cried out from the depths of her tainted soul. She turned to the alter, which was dark, extinguished. Its back turned to her. She ran to the windows upon the city, which were now opaque, allowing her no vision. She ran to the warm-up room, where she had recently tuned her Whirlalaika, her beloved Whirlalaika, to play in the orchestra the next morning. To sing hymns and praises to Athena, her goddess. It was broken. Smashed on the floor.

In desperation ran, ran, and ran she some more. To the edge of the temple. To the great gates, which opened wide for her, vomiting her out in disgust. She tumbled down its steps. Heard the great gates slam shut behind her.

She failed to see the man standing by the roadside.

“Wicked girl,” the gates hissed in a cruel twist. “I curse you! Betrayer! False worship! Dirty soul! Dirty mind! Dirty body! I cast you out!”

Thus cursed Athena. Medusa’s soul. Medusa’s mind. Medusa’s body. All were defiled. All cursed and disgraced.

Medusa stumbled, felt a burning sensation in her belly, rolled to the ground, rebounded, and ran ever faster.

 

Chapter 6

 

The man ran after her.

“Lucky,” he cried. Medusa did not heed.

She was too dead inside to hear any call. Only to run. Run. And run some more. To find a cave, on an island, in the middle of the sea. Far from anyone who could discover her. And to hide away forever. Hiding her face. Hiding her shame. Hiding the wicked body that called out to wicked gods and their candle snuffing lusts.

Athena’s words, ‘Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!’ echoed in her whirling head. A whirl that produced no beautiful music. Nor ever would again. The mark on her forehead, still healing, burned with a righteous goddess’ fire and a warning to all who would dare to look at her.

Medusa is cursed! Medusa is contaminated! Medusa is poison! A viper lives in her soul!

Medusa fled the Acropolis. In disgrace, in shame, and in dishonor. And not for any fault of her own, except for being talented and beautiful and-in a word, exceptional. She ran and she ran and she ran. All the way to the place she always knew. The place she always ran to.

Past the seashore. Past the caves. Past the puddles of Poseidon’s Madness, now disgusting to her. All the way to her home, but not there. Around. To the back.

To the fields and the meadows full of kittens entertaining their lovers, the Moon. And then she stopped, exhausted, unable to run any more. She fell. Collapsed. In a hollow behind her house.

And Lucky cried.

“Lucky!” her father called to her, coming up out of breath. “Lucky girl of mine, come!”

Lucky shunned him, even the father of her very being. “Go away!” she said.

“Lucky!” he called again.

“Don’t look at me!” she shouted. “I am not Lucky… I am, unclean!”

“You are cleaner than the gods themselves,” he called. Then, “Lucky!”

“What?” she wailed.

“Come to me, darling,” he said, tenderly. And she came, tenderly, deflowered, and ashamed. Her peddles mashed into the dust. And knelt at her father’s feet, contrite and crying.

“You do not kneel at my feet, Medusa,” he said. “Not my Lucky girl.” And he picked her up and hugged her. Medusa dissolved into his arms.

“Come, I have a place for you,” he said, hurrying her away from the memory of that temple and its awful presence. “I know some place where even the gods fear to tread.”

“Papa?” she said.

“Lucky,” and he kissed her. And it meant more than all the gods in heaven, in hades, or on earth could ever imagine. She shuddered at what the god of the deep sea could imagine.

“How did you know to come for me?” she asked him. “I mean, it’s not like the gods put up a sign saying, ‘Ravishment here! Come and get ‘er, boys.’”

 “Lucky,” her father said sternly.

“Yes, Papa?” she said, more contrite.

“This was your first day at the temple. Of course I was looking after you,” he brushed aside the locks of her raven hair hiding her face and looked lovingly into her eyes.

“I was there,” he continued. “Tonight. I came by to talk to you. To tell you how proud I am of you. How much I love you.”

“Yes, Papa,” Lucky dug herself deeper into her father’s arms. “Thank you.”

“And I saw. I know. You can forgive a father for being protective.”

“You saw?” she cried and looked up, her shock and shame increasing.

“No!” he said firmly. “Not directly. I only heard from the outside. The doors of the temple shimmered slightly, then closed tightly, as if in the grip of a god’s wrath.”

“Lust, you mean.”

“Yes,” he said, bowing his head. “Then there was an earthquake. Lightning bolts surrounded the temple door and rained upon its roof, but it did not yield. I knew then that I was witnessing the gods doing battle. And I know exactly over whom they fought.

“I saw you flee the temple in dismay,” he continued. “And then I knew. I tried to catch you. You are a swift runner, Lucky.”

“Not swift enough. Or soon enough. And don’t call me Lucky. I am Lucky no more. From now on I will be Medusa, Cursed of the Gods.”

Her father wept, but not for joy. “But not cursed by me,” he said. “Never.”

Medusa wept.

People have been worshipping gods, wrestling with gods, shaking their fists in the faces of gods, blaspheming gods, banishing gods from their temples while ushering in a whole new crop of them, blaming their troubles on gods, forcing their gods on conquered nations, and generally stuck up to their eyeballs in a swamp full of gods for thousands of years. And also, at times, ignoring them, denying them, cutting them off, and pretending that they don’t exist.

Atheism is its own form of religion.

Yet nothing that men have ever done has ever made any of them go away.

And then there’s the worship of the gods. Sometimes in the act of war. Sometimes in the act of creation and the performance of music and the arts. Science and Mathematics. War and diplomacy. Sometimes in quiet contemplation or the meditation of pouring oneself into a difficult task. Sometimes through catechisms, psalters, prayer books, theologies, and rituals. Most often in the sharing of bread and wine among the faithful. People need to love their gods so they can love their fellows.

And then there is passion. The pain and the praise of it. The pure bodily function and joy of it. The-ah. The whole totality of it.

Sex magic. Sex worship. Sex fetishism. Sex is a barometer of a society. It is seen as something obscene, perverted, common, naughty, comic, bawdy, voyeuristic, grotesque, banal even. It is the subject of jokes for the common stage.

In these dark times no one is surprised, outraged, or shocked by any measure of the extremity or the perversity of it anymore. The more obscene it is, the more mundane, the more voyeuristic, the more pornographic, the more droll it becomes. Like a circus or a low brow play.

“Yes, that is good,” we scoff from our seats, while drinking wine and eating fried crisps, incapable of shock. “Show me another!” And the show goes on.

But when sex is truly held up as something sacred and sublime, and when its desecration is considered a blasphemy, then do we blush.

Medusa’s father brought her to her treehouse. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Medusa groaned, but climbed the ladder to her own sanctuary, followed by her pet cat, Heracles. She pulled up the ladder, locked the door, and cried. Heracles sniffed.

Shortly, Medusa’s her mother, arrived, called, “Luck-ky,” and waited. “Luck-ky?” she cried again.

“Huh?” Lucky said. She was starting to doze off. Heracles purred and stretched himself.

“Little girl. Little girl. Let me in. Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff.”

“And you’ll blow my door in,” Lucky said, remembering the child’s rhyme. She unlocked the door, unhooked and lowered the ladder.

Ceto climbed the ladder, entered the treehouse, and presented a basket. It contained hot tea, bread with honey, grapes, and a bowl of oatmeal. Lucky smiled at the last item. Her face cracked. She was wearing too much makeup…again. Heracles sniffed the bundle, curled up on a blanket, and went back to sleep.

Ceto slept with her daughter that night. In the morning Annaborea leapt up the treehouse ladder, which had been left down from the night before by Ceto in her haste and Medusa felt no need to secure it. She burst through the door, and shouted.

“Lucky!” she cried, concern in her breath.

“Go away,” Lucky groaned, digging her face into her blanket.

“No,” demanded Anna. “I heard what happened.”

Lucky groaned louder. She hadn’t realized yet that this whole sorry business would be everywhere in no time. News travels a mile a minute from the trenches to the temple. Bad news is already there, waiting for it and wondering what took it so long. The event was bad enough. The aftermath would be hell on earth.

“Lucky, look at me.”

“I’m not Lucky,” she cried. “That name was robbed from me, along with everything else I love.”

She dug herself deeper into her bedding, if that was possible. Something tickled her temple. She swatted at it, thinking it must be Heracles. It pulled away as if by its own volition.

“I’m Medusa now. Only and evermore Medusa.”

“Lucky,” Annaborea demanded. “Look at me!”

She pulled herself up onto her knees and glared at her friend. “What?” she demanded in return.

Annaborea’s body clenched. Her head flew back, her hands sprang up, palms forward in a gesture of fear, and she gasped. And like liquid bronze freezing into a sword in its mold on the forge, the liquid flesh and bone of Annaborea’s body turned solid, her eyes, flung wide, glazed over and grew dull. Turned chalky grey and solid.

She was a statue of stone, frozen. Annaborea’s face was a mask set in a look of love and pity turning into terror. Her hands rejected what her eyes lately saw.

Medusa gasped, her annoyance turning to shock. “Anna,” she wailed. “What happened to you?”

“What?” said her mother, turning groggily on her pillow. “What is it?”

“Don’t look at me!” shouted Medusa and pressed her face into her pillow as if to squeeze the life out of it.

Ceto rolled over and sat up. Looked groggily and uncomprehendingly at the lump of blanket rolled beside her and the statue of a girl kneeling next to it. A statue that looked like Lucky’s best friend, the girl Annaborea.

‘But that can’t be…,’ she thought.

Just then a shout came from the ground below.

“Medusa, dear.” Came the voice of the Mother Superior Heradora.

‘Not another one,’ Medusa thought. But by now she was already up the ladder. Medusa was curled up in a blanket cocooned ball, her arms clenching a pillow over her face. Her mother looked shocked and confused. The statue of the girl, Annaborea, knelt before her. It looked stunned.

Mother Superior looked at the statue, showed no expression, and said to Ceto, “Please leave us.” 

Ceto looked from her terrified daughter to the Mother Superior. From her to the frightening statue. Then back to her girl. She shook her head sadly. “Very well,” she said. Then left the treehouse.

“Lucky,” Mother Superior said in her most gentle, motherly voice.

“Yes?” said Medusa, feeling like she was a little girl again, in the temple, still Lucky, who had just stubbed her toe in the schoolyard and who was being comforted by the solemn Mother Superior, terrifying no longer.

“Look at me,” she said in a whisper.

“No!” Medusa hissed.

“Look at me!” she ordered, stern mother again.

Medusa’s head snapped up. Several things whipped around it, to her shoulders, and across her face. Mother Superior held the girl’s chin in her fingers and turned Medusa’s head from side to side as if checking her hair style for a loose lock or inspecting her makeup.

Where just yesterday had been a lovely head of hair, arranged in ringlets and rivulets across her forehead, shoulders and down her back and chest were now a nest of vipers, weaving and unfurling around her head. They poked at the Mother Superiors hand gripping Medusa’s chin and hissed.

“My dear,” she sighed, and then said, “You have fallen into a trap not of your designing.”

“I-, trap?” she was still the naïve little girl. Some experiences teach. Some traumatize. Some cause one to dig in, shut down, and refuse to budge, to become a statue of stone. Or in Medusa’s case, to turn those around her into stone.

Medusa was entering a first numbing stages of shock. After her regular order of life was kicked to the floor, knocked over, mauled, and tied in knots, Medusa felt singed. Her short life had its fragile organization scattered.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Medusa said at last. “I have no idea,” she said again. She looked at Heracles curled up beside her.

Slinking, sleeping, sulking. He was always reliable. “That’s why I like cats. Cats are the ultimate realists,” she said, caressing Heracles. Looking into his eyes. Preening. Petting. Stroking. Lounging in the luxury of a cat and its worshiper. Now this is the ultimate of worship. The gods must be jealous.

 “Medusa,” said Heradora. “Snap out of it, girl.”

“What!?” said Medusa, losing her grip. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have been drifting off.”

“Well,” said Heradora, understanding. “That is to be expected.” And she went on. “But now, we have more discourses to discuss.”

Medusa was, understandably, in shock. Heradora was at a loss. Heracles purred. Nothing shocked him.

“Whom the gods love, those they destroy,” Mother Superior said, softly and dryly.

“What?”

“An old saying.”

“Oh,” said Medusa, the shock deepening. She looked at Annaborea’s knees on the floor of her treehouse, kneeling on the edge of Medusa’s blanket, like she did on many a playful time while relaying some particularly juicy bit of gossip about some boy in town. But now her spine was snapped back, her head thrust up and back in shock, rejecting what her eyes momentarily had seen.

“What does it mean?” asked Medusa. “What?” asked Theodora. “The saying, ‘Whom the gods love…,’” said Lucky. “What does it mean?” “Oh, well,” mused Theodora. “That…,

“It means that sometimes it would be much better off for everybody if people, gods included, just minded their own businesses.”

“But they’re not going to do that, are they?”

“Who? People or gods?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, I suppose not. And, no. Neither group is going to start minding its own business.”

“Why did this happen?” said Medusa, still incoherent and in shock. “And, what happened to me? I mean, after the-”

She choked and stopped. Her eyes roved over Anna’s delicate arms, shot up before her, palms front, fingers extended in the gesture of warding off evil. Medusa stared at it, almost unfeeling, and slowly moved her glance up, to Anna’s face, and let the horror of it flow over hers. Her face seemed to melt along with the liquid frost that gazed at her now.

“After the… thing… that happened to me…” Medusa could barely bronze her countenance.

“Lucky,” Mother Superior continued. “You are a beautiful girl. A talented girl. And beauty and talent attract the notice of many things.”

“Many gods, you mean,” she corrected.

“Many gods, yes.”

“Whom the gods love,” she said, incredulous and bewildered.

“Yes,” she said, sensing that Lucky was beginning to understand. “Lucky?”

“Yes, Mother Superior?”

 “You need to know something…, about why these…, things, happened to you.”

“Things? You mean a ravishment and a curse?  Being struck down by not one, but by two gods? I don’t know which is more hideous!”  All the snakes of her head turned forward and hissed at once.

Mother Superior involuntarily drew her head back.

“And I thought you were transparent before,” she said. “Lucky, talk to me.”

Lucky relented, the snakes went back to weaving and curling around her neck and shoulders, and flicking out their tongues, lazily, though one or two kept a poison eye on the dark figure before it.

“You do know about the rivalry between uncles and nieces, right?” Mother Superior continued.

“No,” said Medusa. Her honesty was showing.

“The feud between Athena and Poseia-“ “Don’t say his name!” Medusa hissed. “Very well,” corrected the Mother Superior. “The feud between them?”

“No,” she said, more honesty revealed.

“Well, you know how the gods are, right?”

“I’m learning.”

“Hmm,” she sighed. “I see that you are.”

“All I know is that I was to be the handmaiden of a goddess, Athena. A role I didn’t even want. Or at least that I didn’t think I deserved.”

“You deserved it, girl.”

“Maybe. But what did it get me?” she put her face in her hands, brushing away a cobra that had looked down to investigate. She pointed to it and stared directly into the Mother Superior’s eyes.

“Did I deserve this?” she demanded.

“No, girl,” said the Mother Superior while speaking as soothingly as possible. “You did not deserve this.”

“But I got it anyway. Why, again? Because the gods love me?”

Theodora was as still as stone.

“And I suppose this awesome love of the gods-How did it go again? ‘Whom the gods love they destroy?’” A few more snakes looked around, questing for threats.

“Yes, that’s the saying. But like most sayings…”

“Yes? But like most sayings what?” Medusa looked genuinely curious. She was wishing for someone to throw her a lifeline with an instant tow to shore and safety.

“You were caught in the struggle between two monumental powers.” No lifeline here. The cobra looked up at the Mother Superior, it’s cowl just starting to flex. It tasted the air. Medusa put her face back into her hands.

“I was an innocent bystander,” murmured Medusa from behind her cage of fingers, as if commenting on the lateness of the hour or about to swap contraband with an adjacent prisoner in the dungeon. The cobra looked up again, twice annoyed.

“True. Now what are you going to do about it?” quested the Mother Superior on her own. Inches away the cowl widened, the tongue tasted the air, questing for blood. So was she.

“Me?” said Medusa, becoming angry. “I didn’t do anything about it to begin with!” The cobra leaned forward, wove, hissed. ‘Careful,’ Mother Superior warned herself. ‘Just one more push and…’ “But you can do something about it now.” ‘That’s it.’

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT,” shouted Medusa. The cobra lunged at the Mother Superior’s throat.

“MEDUSA!” she commanded with all the force of a forge hammer. She did not flinch. She did not recoil. Nor did she relent in the face of adversity.

The coiled cobra relented, withdrew, hissed and was silent, weaving once more around Medusa’s head. Medusa took her hands from her face, looked up and at the pleading Mother Superior and showed her a face of complete misery. But her eyes were dry now. No more tears came. There were no more tears in Medusa’s soul.

“What should I do? I can’t stay here,” she pleaded. Medusa’s eyes drew blood from a stone.

“No! That is true.”

“Soon everyone in Athens will know that their new devotee to Athena is a traitor and a slut. And a monster, as well.”

“They will know.”

“Every town and village for a thousand miles will come with armies. They will find me. They will burn down any place that hides me.”

“They will come.”

“No tree house will be safe.”

“No, it won’t.”

“And if I go away, where should I go? And how shall I live?” Medusa crept from the dark place of her soul and into an even darker place, void of meaning and empty of consequences.

“Ah, now,” said the Mother Superior. “There I can help,”

“How?” she pleaded, grasping for hope.

“First things first. You must prepare yourself and then I will take you there.”

“Take me…, where?” said Medusa, her voice leaving the courtyard of pleading and stepping swiftly into the trough of suspicion, doubt, and annoyance.

“To a place to hide. On an island. In the sea. In a cave.”

“In a cave?” Medusa was horrified, her hopes gone. Denied. Dashed. Destroyed.

“It’s quite lovely, you know,” said the Mother Superior trying, and failing, to be kind.

“Not like the caves I explored as a child? Not like the ones on P-” she couldn’t utter the names they used to know them by.

“Not quite.”

“Then what?”

“I will take you there and ensure that you are not wretched. I will watch over you. And visit you.”

Medusa considered the waiving shapes around her field of vision. They danced and wove about her. Questing. Looking. Seeking. Always vigilant. Never resting. She felt her resolve flow into them. She grit her teeth and shuddered, but not in despair.

“I want to be able to leave,” said Medusa. Earthquakes were more remote.

“To what?”

“To leave?” she said as if it was the most reasonable request in the world. A dozen snakes agreed with her. Hissing acquiescence.

“I won’t be trapped in a cave forever, like some mole in the dark. I wish to go where I want. Hidden. Incognito, if I must. To walk among mortals and gods. To go where I wish. To do what I want. To be the person they made me among the people who hate me. I will return. I will not flee. But I want a modicum of freedom.”

“I will do what I can,” said the Mother Superior, not sure if she could.

“DO IT!” she insisted. “PROMISE.” Mother Superior was beaten down. Cowed and defeated. It was a new feeling for her. An eternity of worship and now. This is what it feels like to be a mortal?

“I promise on Zeus and all that is holy-“

“No,” Medusa snapped. “Not holy! These gods do not deserve the title.”

“I promise on-,” said the Mother Superior, flummoxed and dismayed. Then regaining her dignity. “On whom should I promise?”

Medusa paused. “Promise on Hera,” she said.

Mother Superior was stunned. “I promise on the great goddess Hera that I will do as you ask,” she vowed. She never thought that being a god demanded accountability.

Medusa breathed deeply. Her breasts trebled the volume of her tunic. She felt something. Something new.

Then she asked, “Who are you?”

“You know me. I am… Heradora, The Mother Superior, Mistress of the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know your name. I didn’t ask what you are called. I know what you are. I asked, ‘Who are you?’ You are immune to me and my curse. Why?”

“We must leave soon,” she said, avoiding the question and fully regaining her self-control. “Stay here and I will be back. I will instruct your parents about your departure.”

“I want to see them.”

“Of course,”

“Now!”

“Lucky,” she burst with exasperation. “You will need to learn patience to get what you want,” she almost pleaded. Medusa was getting dangerous. Too much pressure and she could crack. Not enough and she will crumble. Either way there is a tragedy in the making.

‘What have they created?’ she shuddered inside.

“I don’t want patience.”

“Nobody does.” She said softly. Then, softer, “Medusa,” and more softly still, “Lucky. Please.”

Medusa sighed in defeat. She threw herself back on her bed and stared at the all-seeing Eye painted on the ceiling. ’Where were you when I needed you?’ she thought.

Heracles curled into her arm and napped.

“How did you escape?” said Medusa. “From me?”

“Athena is not as great as she thinks she it.”

“Well,” Medusa said. “In that case. I want Anna with me,” she said with determination, sitting upright and upsetting her napping cat.

Mother Superior looked at the girl, Anna, now fleshed in stone. “Her parents will want to mourn her.”

“Of course they will,” she said. “I understand.”

“They may want her with them.”

“No,” she insisted. “I want her with me,” and a bit later. “In my exile.”

“You will only be torturing yourself.”

“No!” Medusa almost roared. “I want a reminder. I want to remember. And to know. And to never forget. That the gods are fallible. That they are like men. Petty, small, vindictive, and reckless. And supremely cruel. I want them to see that no action stands alone. And that when they are done with their vendettas and their rapes and their paybacks and their wars and their revenge, when they have exhausted their wrath and their cravings, drunk their blood and shit misery across the land, that it does not stop there. It keeps on going.”

“And in the end?”

“And in the end the gods are evil.”

“Gods are like people,” Mother Superior said. “People are good. People are bad. That’s just another way of saying, ‘People are people.’”

“That’s just an excuse,”

“That’s reality.”

“I suppose we can’t all be cats?” said Medusa curling her fingers along Heracles’ neck, finally softening her mood. The cat purred.

“Precisely,” said Heradora, relieved that the young girl appeared to be exhausting her rage. For now. If Medusa was ever to regain herself…

“I still want Anna with me,” Medusa said, finally.

“You are just torturing yourself,”

“And if I am?”

Mother Superior had no answer. “I will be back within the hour. I must speak with the girl’s parents and get some things. I will have your mother prepare some things for you, as well. For now, pray to your new god.”

“What new god?”

“Determination,” she said, and left the treehouse.

 

Chapter 7

 

Mother Superior came back within the hour, as promised. She had a bundle of things and a few sailors from the docks with her in tow.

They were carrying ropes, blocks and tackles, and various packing materials. She had hired them to move a heavy but fragile item to the docks and load onboard a ship. A ship she had just chartered for a secret destination.

No questions asked. No answers given. But much silver.

“Wait here,” she said as she climbed back up the ladder to Lucky’s safe treehouse. The wooden sanctuary of her youth.

“Lucky,” she said.

“Medusa,” she corrected. “Lucky is dead. The gods killed Lucky. Burnt her on their polluted altar. I am Medusa now.”

“Medusa,” the Mother Superior said, accepting the rebuke. “Here. Take this,” handing Lucky a bundle.

“What is it?” Lucked asked, opening the bundle. She pulled out a veil. It was all black. The netting, though made from course strands of jute, appeared opaque. A black mist lingered between the threads. “Huh,” said Lucky, intrigued.

“Here,” said Theodora. “This veil will allow you to see freely but will prevent anyone from seeing you.”

“Not much of a disguise,”

“It’s not supposed to be a disguise. Not really.”

“But what good is it?”

“It will not stop people from looking at you. It will stop you from looking at them. The rest is up to you. Put it on.”

Medusa took the veil and threw it around her shoulders. The snakes poked at it curiously. She brought it up and over the top of her head. Not an easy task considering that she had to tuck all the snakes in and under the veil like stray locks under a bonnet. Stray locks that had a will of their own and did not want to be tucked up under any bonnet you might thrust at them. But then it was done.

She found it to be surprisingly comfortable, once it was fully in place. She looked around. Her surroundings looked… weird. She could see everything but as if second hand. Or second eye. Or in a mirror. Everything was there but it was wrong. Backwards. It was as if she was there but not there. Seeing but not being seen. Or maybe seeing in a mirror.

No, that was not it. It was as if she was seeing things but not looking at them.

“I spoke with the girl’s family,” said the Mother Superior, indicating Annaborea. “They mourn their child but agree that there is no way she could be kept in Athens. Public display would be obscene. Keeping her in their house would be too much for them to endure. A tomb would be desecrated by vandals thinking they were ‘cleansing the abomination.’ Wherever she was she would be despoiled.”

“Just like me,” said Medusa.

Heradora continued, ignoring her. “They would have to hide it-“ “Her,” interrupted Medusa. “Her,” said the Mother Superior, accepting the correction. “Hide her away. I convinced them that being with you would do the most honor and respect. They agreed, reluctantly.”

“And me? What did they think about me?”

She paused. “They pity you,” she said, finally.

Medusa wished she hadn’t asked.

She was shaky as she climbed down the ladder. The sailors looked away, nervously. Lucky-Medusa’s-mother and father were there. They were both shaken and distraught at seeing their Lucky girl shrouded as if for a funeral, which I suppose she was. Medusa now wished she had refused to see them.

Heradora ordered the men to go up and bring down the ‘statue’ they would find in the treehouse.

“Carefully!” warned Medusa. “She’s priceless.”

 They brought it down with difficulty. Annaborea could no longer flex her arms and legs to get around doorways and down ladders, being no longer a girl of flesh and grace with limbs that danced and a face that smiled, lips that laughed and kissed. But at last, it was done.

“Wrap her in blankets,” ordered Heradora. “Give her some protection.” ‘And dignity,’ she thought. The sailors constructed a box around the statue that had recently been Anna. They filled it was blankets and lentil seeds and nailed the lid on. They loaded it into a wagon and followed Medusa and Heradora down to the busy waterfront of Athens.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

They went down to the docks. The sailors drew quiet and uncomfortable when they got there, casting jaundiced looks their way. ‘Is that her?’ they asked each other. ‘Is that the abomination?’

“Medusa!” spat one of them as a curse. The rest shushed him.

“Do not incite her wrath!” they warned.

‘My name is a curse,’ thought Medusa.

They loaded the statue on a boat and got on board. Behind their backs the sailors made the same gesture of warding off evil that Annaborea held in her two hands, forever frozen in her petrified state of shock, disbelieve, and dismay.

“Every light casts a shadow,” Heradora said to Medusa.

“Only if you put something dark in front of it,” Medusa replied.

They arrived at Medusa’s cave. It was on the island of Sapharose in the Aegean Sea south of Athens, high up and removed from the populated centers and hard to reach.

They had to hire more workers with longer ropes to hoist up what they were told was a statue. They were paid to work and to be quiet, though it’s unlikely they did both.

At last the chore was done.

“Medusa,” said Heradora. “This will allow you to go wherever you wish.”

She brought her to the back of the cave, through a side passage, and down an increasingly pleasant and comfortable set of salons, bedrooms, baths, and kitchens. There were rooms full of dresses and closets and tables with makeup and silver gloss. Libraries with scrolls and maps on the walls. There were baths and banyas and makeup rooms with lipstick and gloss, mirrors and polish aplenty.

“My soul!” said Medusa.

“I told you it would not be a mole hole.

“I see that!”

They came to the last room, a parlor with torches on the walls and silk divans. Medusa’s private chambers. On one side was Annaborea, still kneeling on a blanket. Still warding off the abomination that had possessed her playmate. On the other stood a brass mirror in an olive wood frame.

The words, ‘Let us go!’ were carved across the top of the frame.

“This is the fulfillment of my vow,” said Heradora indicating the mirror.

“It’s stupendous!” she said. Then, “What is it?”

“It is a mirror, but one that does not only mirror light.”

“What else does it mirror?”

“It mirrors you,” Heradora said, who smiled and with flirtatious vim walked over to the mirror.

Lucky came along, inspecting the flawless mirror and it’s deep, honey reflections. “How?”

“I will show you,” Heradora said. “Stand here… just in front of the mirror. Now look!”

Medusa looked into the mirror. What looked back was a much older face than the one she had made kissy faces at on the day of her induction into the service of a cruel and jealous goddess.

‘Those eyes!’ thought Medusa. ‘My gods, what eyes!’ They seemed to look right through her and turn her to stone. The snakes on her head all turned toward it, defensively. Medusa shuddered.

“I didn’t want to see that,” she said out loud.

“You wanted mobility,” said the Mother Superior. “Don’t blame me if it requires honesty.”

Medusa regained her ground. She went from peering timidly to staring boldly into the bronze wonder. Her snakes looked back as well. For a moment they considered, each the other, and wondered. “How does it work?” she said, glancing back at the Mother Superior.

“Think of some place you wish to be.”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

“I mean, is that it? What next?”

“Patience, girl.”

Medusa pensed.

“Next, once you see the place where you wish to be reflecting in the mirror, you just go there.

“Oh.”

“Try the first part first, won’t you? Now, look in the mirror, close your eyes if you wish, then imagine a place you want to be, and see what happens. And dear?”

“Yes?”

“This time, not so pensive.”

Right. Medusa closed her eyes and thought of the one place she wished to be right now. The place she had been all her life and which she wished she had never left. Never strayed away from her home and ventured down to beaches and caves and a god’s scum on the seashore sliming up the sand. Never gone into temples on top of the gods’ Acropolis, Whirlalaika in her hands and worship on her lips.

Whom the gods love, indeed.

She opened her eyes and saw her family farm reflected in the mirror, sheep beyond it. In the distance a hill, a tree, and a house in the tree.

“Now,” said Heradora. “All you have to do is walk through the mirror and you will be there.” Medusa started toward the mirror.

“No, no!” cautioned Heradora. “Not yet! You must be wearing the veil I gave you. Otherwise, you will only walk into your own reflection.”

“Oh,” said Medusa, spreading her fingers over the vapid bronze. “Oh! Talk about stepping into a swamp. And when I am ready to return? How do I get back?”

“To return think of this room and say, ‘Bring me back!’ Wherever you are. For however long you have been there. Whatever you have done. Whoever you are with. You will instantly find yourself back in this room.”

“Thank you!” said Medusa. She gazed at her portal mirror like a craftsman peering over a load of some new exotic and precious metal ore.

“You are welcome,” said Heradora. “But be careful how you use this. You will be visible and vulnerable wherever you go. Like all gifts from the gods, this one comes with shaky shoes.”

“I will,” said Medusa, leaning and gazing into the mirror curiously. She caressed the cheek of her reflection. A gentle slither crossed the back of her hand as one of her snakes touched it with its nose. Medusa smiled ever so slightly.

Heradora smiled, placed her hand on Medusa’s shoulder, who bent up her head in reply. She bent down hers and kissed her gently on a cheek. All of Medusa’s snakes drew back and waited, respectful and distant.

Heradora started for the entrance, the parlors and saunas turning into stone passageways and corridors. And finally, a dank cave.

“Oh,” she said, before leaving the last room behind. “I have something else for you. In here,” she indicated the last pleasant room off the passage just before they reached the ugly, entrance cave.

Medusa hesitated, puzzled. Entered the room, and on a table, in the center of the room, she saw,

“My Whirlalaika!” She snatched it up and embraced it like a long-lost lover who she unexpectedly came upon in a strange market in a faraway land many years later, and whom she kissed and embraced and cared not who saw or what they thought.

Medusa whirled. Checked some chocks, tuned, strummed. And played. It was in tune!

She started to sing.

Seeing real joy on Medusa’s face brought humility to Heradora.

“I still want you to play music for the gods, Lucky,” she said. Medusa did not correct her.

“I will never play for the gods again,” she said, remembering her disdain.

“Don’t be too sure,” said Heradora. “We are not all that bad. But come!”

They went into the first cavern of Medusa’s ‘cave.’

“Will you return?” asked Medusa.

“I will be back. To check on you,” she said. “You will see me when you see me. And may Hestia kindle your hearth into a home.”

“I feel like I’m treading water as it is,” said Medusa. Heradora stopped midway through the front cavern, turned by the statue that once was a Scythian warrior-woman, gritting her teeth as a last show of defiance, raising her sword, a gasp, recognition, comprehension, and the end.

“When you tread water, hope your toes are stronger than your nose,” she said. And she left.

Medusa paused, realizing how dreary her life would be, then came up abruptly.

“’We?’” she said. "What did she mean by, ‘We?’"

 

Chapter 8

 

On the streets of Athens, there is a fountain. Behind the fountain there is an alley leading to a square at another street intersection. In the middle of that alley between the fountain and the square, a girl wearing a pale blue dress and a black as night veil suddenly stepped out of the air.

‘My,’ she thought. ‘This is exciting,’ and walked down the alley as if she owned the place.

She knew this alley, of course. She had walked down it many a time, though not this late at night. This was her first attempt at using the Mother Superior’s magic mirror so she chose someplace familiar, but in the evening when she knew it would not be crowded. She wanted to be careful not to be seen. So she carefully made her way toward the square.

It was not the best of ideas, but she was learning, dear girl.

Once in the square she looked around, seeing its sights and smelling its smells. Feeling the pebbles through her sandals. Breathing and enjoying its air. If there is a sound for such an experience, it was, simply, ‘Quiet.’ The street sounded quiet like a crisp Autumn day, the fields frosted in snow absorbing every whisper. Keeping every secret. Telling no tales. Medusa enjoyed them all.

There was a food stall on the far edge of the square that was famous for its fish sauce. The shop was made of a whitewashed brick wall forming a circle about three feet high and ten feet across at the very edge of the square with a wide counter for customers and a canvas awning overhead for shade and protection from the elements. On front of the wall were colorful pictures of dogs, birds, fish, pigs, and mice. And a particularly comic depiction of an octopus. A frantic cook worked at the pots and grills within. It looked inviting.

‘I’ll take one of those, please,’ Medusa thought and giggled. What they could do with a roast dog and a marinade was a miracle!

Medusa turned and looked the other way. Across the square in the other direction were some statues, that’s normal. Another fountain, Poseidon with his trident. Fish on either side with jets of water streaming from their mouths.

She shuddered. “Ugh!” she groaned, involuntarily.

She looked away. ‘Let’s see… That street goes to the brothel.’ She giggled again. ‘That one goes to the dungeon. Ouch! Oh, and I seem to remember the shoemaker’s shop was down there.’

Her feet always hurt for days whenever her parents brought her there and bought her new sandals, hobbling back up the street to get a snack at the fish sauce place. How she would gladly endure that again to only be brought there one more time by her mother.

Some figures came out of the alley behind her. Medusa didn’t notice.

“Hey, Honey!” one shouted. “Where ya going so fast?”

Medusa stopped, not sure if they were speaking to her. Then she continued on, trying to remember what came next. ‘Down that street there used to be a-’

“Hey!” the shouter shouted louder. “Are you deaf? I’m talking to you!”

Medusa paused, turned cautiously. Saw three men standing a few feet away from her. “I don’t think I know you,” she said, willing them to come to the same conclusion and decide to leave her alone. The snakes under her veil all turned forward. Cautious.

“You don’t have to ‘know us’,” the speaker said while the others guffawed. “But we’re going to ‘know you’ all we want.” They all approached, all smirking.

Medusa stepped back. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned. A soft hissing came from behind the veil. They didn’t notice. They were too busy… enjoying their own play. Little did they know that it was a tragedy and that they were the main antagonists…

“What’s a matter, Honey?” said the main smirker, throwing out his hands in a gesture of infinite welcome and unlikely affection. Then confidentially, “Never been with a man before?” He smirked at his cleverness.

“Not willingly,” she replied. The snakes all gathered around Medusa’s face, coiled, ready.

“That’s alright. We’ll make it worth your time… and ours. Or maybe just ours.” He reached for Medusa’s veil. “But first, let’s have a look at what we’re getting.”

“No,” cried Medusa. “You don’t want to do that,” backing further away. The snakes were all tense now. Every last one.

“It won’t hurt,” he said while stepping closer. “Much.”

Medusa fell back, looking around for help. The cook in the stall was busy with his fires and his pots, cleaning up from the day’s sales and preparing for the morrow. He knelt down to get something from a cupboard behind the counter. Even if Medusa screamed for help, he couldn’t hear her, let alone assist. And he might even join in. The sun had already set and no moon had arisen to take its place.

“That’s right, Honey,” the leader hissed. “There’s nobody here to see or help.” He was just about to take her veil.

“You’re all ours,” he added with a grimace and a grin.

“You wouldn’t like that,” she warned. “Trust me. You don’t want to do that,” she warned again. “Trust me.” Fangs out. Poison tipped. Precision focused. All eyes staring forward. Medusa felt a bubbling in her stomach. A primitive well of poison was seething and gathering, welling and leaping from cavern to crack to fissure to major artery straight to the surface. Where it will be let loose.

“Stop me,” he said, then tore the veil from Medusa’s head. Twenty snakes hissed and lunged at the three men. Medusa looked scared, then shocked, then defiant, suddenly remembering who she was. She was free. And fierce.

A gasp came from the plaza before Medusa. Three gasps doing what gasps do just before turning into stone. Medusa grabbed her veil out of the hand of the foremost gasper while it was momentarily still flesh and blood.

She paused and looked at her handiwork. Medusa smiled. “Bring me back!” she cried and was gone.

The moon came over the rooftops, deftly piloted by her captain, the cat. The cook came up with a fresh jar of his world-famous fish sauce and marveled. Across the square were three new statues. They appeared to be the Muses of Bewilderment.

 

Chapter 9

 

Athena brooded on the insult paid to her by Poseidon and that little wench. She looked for a way to pay him back. She already visited her wrath on Medusa.

‘Ha!’ she thought. ‘I have insured that the name of Medusa will be a monster and a warning throughout the ages!’

Her temple was defiled, her acolyte, soon to be priestess! ravaged before her very alter.

“Do they think they can do this to me?” she fumed. “I, who gave myself to her who then defiled my temple at his hands? On the floor of my very sanctuary? Before my altar?”

She fumed some more. And schemed. And made a plan.

When Thebes, a city sacred to Poseidon, was wanting a king, Athena put it into the minds of their wise council to invite the Peloponnesian Laius to assume the throne. And they did. And Athena also put into the mind of the seer, Tiresias, a devious prophecy.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Medusa panted back in her parlor, clutching and fingering her veil like it was a prayer shawl.

“Whew!” she exhaled. “That was close!” She slumped down on a carpet in front of the statue that once was Annaborea. Hestia’s fire burned on the hearth nearby, warming them both. The patient goddess smiled and twisted some reeds and marsh grass into fire wreathes to use should the fire go out in the night. But that won’t happen. Hestia has insured that Medusa’s fire never goes out.

“You won’t BELIEVE what just happened!” she said to her friend. “Have you ever been assaulted by three idiots with more substance in their loincloths than in their turbans?” she said. “No, I don’t suppose so. You know better than to wander around the back alleys of Athens after dark. No-don’t say it!” she warned. “I already know I am a silly girl. And that was just plain stupid.”

She got up on her knees and sat back on her heels.

“Anna,” she said, holding her friends cold, stone hands, even Hestia couldn’t warm this flesh. “I suppose this time I deserved it. I guess I’m not invincible.” She turned around and looked back into the mirror. It was dark and unreflective at the moment.

“I wonder how it works?” she said. “Can I use it to see things only? I wonder…”

Medusa wished to see the square in Athens. There was the cook from the kiosk. He was looking, mightily puzzled, at the statues of three assailants at the far corner of the square. The one at the front held his arm out, his hand clutched as if he should be holding something. The two in the back had lecherous looks on their faces but with shock in their eyes. One was in the process of raising his right hand, you could just make out the shape of a defensive gesture taking shape in his fingers.

The cook came up to them, looked, was amazed, and shook his head.

“HA!” chortled Medusa. “Serves them right.” She puffed herself up in pride and smirked the smirk of righteousness.

“If I could have, I would have turned you three into a dog, a ram, and a rat,” she shouted at the reflections in the mirror. “Then the cook could have served you up to the respectable citizens of Athens tomorrow!” She grinned and threw herself in a pirouette on the Persian carpet where knelt her friend, Anna.

“Anna!” she said, “Listen to this!” she mimicked the cook crying out to the crowds in the square trying to stir up business. “Today’s special! Roast rapist on a stick! HA!” she burst and fell to the carpet before her friend.

Then she was pensive for a moment. “I wonder what else I can see in this magical mirror…?” she puzzled.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Laius came to Tiresias wishing for guidance and wisdom for his new venture. “Oh, blind guide,” he said. “You, to whom the gods have gifted with sight. Grant me a boon.”

“Speak, oh my king,” Tiresias said. “What do you desire?”

“I wish to know my future, of course,” he said, testing the old prophet. “I would expect you to know this already.”

“I see,” he said, sensing the test. “That is, I see what the gods decide that I see and I say what the gods demand that I say. Thus do I ask, ‘What do you desire?’ For I cannot give you an answer if you yourself do not know the question. You must first ask that I may then answer.”

“Very well,” Laius agreed, ceding the wisdom. “Then I ask of you this: Tell me, Oh Seer, how shall I reign? How shall I govern? Shall I be wise or shall I be cruel? Shall I be strong or shall I be weak? Shall I prosper or shall I fail? Shall I defeat my enemies or shall I be slain beneath their swords?”

“You shall rule wisely, long, and with respect,” said Tiresias. “You enemies shall fear you. Your people shall love you. And the gods will make you prosper.”

“Thank you, Oh Great One,” Laius breathed a sigh of relief, and started to depart.

Athena whispered in Tiresias’ ear. “Hold!” he shouted. “Should you have a son, then he will commit unspeakable crimes. Crimes against you, your queen, your citizens, and your land. He will blaspheme the gods themselves. Calamity shall befall you and the very ground shall be cursed. Blinded shall he be by his own hand in the end, having murdered you and taken your fair lady, his mother, to be his queen and rule in your stead.

“Thus, shall he end in ignominy, cursed by man, cursed by God. His heirs cursed. His kingdom in ruins. His fortune vanished. His wealth squandered,” he finished.

“Thus have the gods spoken.”

Shocked, Laius bowed and left. He kept this counsel to himself, only repeating the former pronouncement. The rest he stored in his heart, sharing it with only one other.

“What is it, my lord?” asked Jocasta, his queen, when he returned, seeing as he was troubled.

“My queen,” he replied. “I have heard things both wondrous and terrifying.”

And he relayed all that the seer had reported to him while they warmed themselves by the hearth.

“Then we must be ever vigilant,” she said, drawing further from the warmth. And she brooded in her own way.

When Oedipus was born, Laius and Jocasta took him, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and bound him in cords. They then left him on the side of a hill, outside of the city, on the far side so that they, and the entire city of Thebes, might turn their backs on him.

Poseidon saw what was happening. He perceived that Athena had engineered this to bring low his city and its king with sin and disrespect for himself. He knew what to do.

“I will remove this assassin, this pawn of the Parthenos, and foil her plots.”

He found a soldier and inspired him. “Take your sword,” he commanded. “Leave. Go to the place where I shall direct you and kill the child you see there.”

The soldier took up his sword and followed Poseidon’s commands as if they were his own counsel. He came to the road that skirted along the hill, found a path, and ascended. He saw, a short distance into the trees, a white bundle on the brown earth. It was wrapped up, tied in a bunch, and cast aside as if it was a parcel fallen from a wagon.

He drew out his sword. Raised it. Approached.

“Soldier,” a voice said behind him. He turned. “Can you spare a moment? I have need of you!” There was a woman all in black. She wore a veil.

“I am in haste,” he said.

“I shall have mercy with your time,” she said, cheerfully. “It will take merely but a moment. You see, I am lost and in need of directions.”

“Certainly,” he said, advancing towards her, sheathing his sword. “Where do you wish to go?”

She led him back to the road but before getting in sight of it, when they were in a dark glede not likely to be visited, she stopped. Gestured.

“Nowhere special. Just…” she said taking off her veil. “Bring me back.” And she was gone. But the statue of the soldier stood there forever, guarding no one but guiding someone to her own destiny.

Athena came to the infant. She found him alive but alone, being unaware of Poseidon’s plots or Medusa’s intervention. The infant was near death and would be dead soon as the cold night sapped strength from his fragile frame.

Athena offered her breast to the near dead infant, and he took it gladly, drank, and knew no other such nourishment ever again. She fed him the milk of the gods which warmed and mightily sustained him. He drank but a little and slept soundly thereafter.

Being content. And richly nourished. The child prospered.

The next morning Athena directed a sheep from a passing flock to jump across the road and ascend the hill. A shepherd came after it. Seeing the sleeping infant wrapped and tied and left for the wolves, he said, “Ah, poor fellow. I see you are not wanted,” and took his sheep. He started to leave, abandoning the child to the whim of Fortuna.

Athena smote his heart with the desire for the infant, seeing that he and his wife were yet without child. “Your wife is barren,” she whispered in his ear. “And this is the only son you shall ever have. The only comfort in your old age. The only staff for your failing limbs. The only arms to cut your firewood. The only hands to fill your bowl. The only shoulder to lean on in your infirmity and old age.”

And she willed that it be so, for the shepherd’s wife was indeed with child, but she would miscarry, and so also for every other child she conceived for the rest of her life.

The shepherd turned and looked at the child again. “Maybe your own parents do not want you,” he said. “But I think I have a place for you,” and took the child with him.

When he came home he showed the infant to his wife. “Look what the gods have given us, to keep and to hold as a vanguard against old age?” he said.

“Husband,” she said. “But I was with child.”

“That cannot be!” he said.

“It was! I was keeping it from you for fear of jinxing it. But the life within me fled this morning.” Then she demanded, “Give me the infant!”

He did. She found that she was able to produce milk, even though she had only recently felt the new life growing within her, now extinguished. She offered her breast to him.

Oedipus took the teat offered but spat it out again. It was nothing compared with the milk of a goddess and he tasted it as poison. As he grew, he found that nothing satisfied him. He grew but felt increasingly angry, often fighting with the other shepherds’ sons among the other shepherds’ flocks and keeping to himself. Alone, lonely, and bitter.

Until one day, while walking on the road, he came upon a carriage drawn by two horses driven by a grand prince, who would not stop to let Oedipus by. Oedipus, in his rage, killed the man and left him.

He continued on his way, finding a kingdom that was under a curse. And which was bereft of its king. And a queen without a husband. This queen and this kingdom he took for his own.

For once in his life Oedipus felt satisfied.

Athena felt vindicated.

“Ha!” she said. “Poseidon be damned!”

 

Chapter 10

 

“You can’t believe what I just did!” Medusa exclaimed to Anna, as if bursting to tell a particularly choice secret about a particularly pretty boy in town. “But I suppose you can believe anything,” she continued. “I was flying around the world. Yes, flying! I found that if I think high enough thoughts while looking in the mirror, I can see the world from the clouds! Alright, so not really flying. Good enough.

“And there! Outside of Thebes,” she babbled on. “I saw a baby. On a hill. And a soldier driven by a divine revenge heading his way. Well! I could see what he was up to. And who was driving him. How? Ah, now. That crafty villain! Poseidon…,”

For the first time since her rape and cursing Medusa was able to say his name, “…drove him! Yes! I could feel it! I could feel him!”

Medusa found that she was tuned into the thoughts of Poseidon. She could sense what he was thinking, which is how she was able to thwart his plans. When you forcibly rip the heart out of someone who is innocent, you leave a piece of your own heart behind, as black as it is.

“Hah!” said Medusa, triumphant. “I’ve got you now, you monster!”

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

King Xerxes, Ruler of Persia, Son of Darius the Great, Divine Satrap of All the Civilized Lands, Ruler of the Earth, sat on his throne and reviewed the reports from his spies and generals.

And he was distraught…

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“Anna! I just saved the world!” cried Medusa, appearing before her magic mirror suddenly in a blast of joy. “Or maybe I just destroyed the world, I don’t know. But the world is still out there so I guess it’s all good.

“How, you ask? King Darius? Ruler of Persia? Son of somebody or other? King by divine right and all that ridiculousness? Well, it seems that Poseidon. Yes, him again! Poseidon put in his mind to invade the Hellenic civilization. How do I know how he did that? He’s a god. He can do anything. Oh, and I can hear his thoughts …” she added, as if it was too obvious to mention.

“Where did you do that?” asked the Annaborea statue in Medusa’s mind.

“Where?” she responded. “Oh. At a little town, a backwater place called Marathon.”

“How?” the dialog continued in Medusa’s mind. Annaborea asked in earnest, “How did you do that?”

“Let’s just say I used my feminine talents to distract and persuade the generals at the right moment.”

“You used your ass,” smirked Anna.

“That, too,” said Medusa and flirted, kicking her hind end toward Anna and smirking.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Leonidas, King of Sparta, debased himself at the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. His spies told him that the pagan king, Xerxes, was planning an invasion of the whole of Hellas and Ionia. Still stinging from the losses of his father, Darius, at the little piss hole town of Marathon. The pathetic Persian king was itching for another chance to overwhelm the Hellenistic world.

Leonidas was not about to let that happen. He and his entourage rode to Delphi. Up the steep road to the caves of the Pythia, the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, begging an audience.

“Why have you come, Oh Great King Leonidas?” asked a priest.

“I wish for knowledge,” he replied.

“Knowledge comes in many forms and from many sources. What exactly do you wish to know?”

“The future,” he said.

“The future in unknowable. There are many paths to it.”

“Then what is the purpose of the Oracle?”

“The Oracle can suggest a path for you.”

“Then the Oracle is a scout?”

“Of sorts.”

“I need to know more than that.”

“The Oracle can only tell you where a path leads, not how to plant your feet one step at a time, each before another, where to go. And where to stop,” he added. “Whether you take it, one path or another, or how you step upon it, one foot before the other, is up to you. Do you still wish the Oracle’s advice?”

Leonidas entered the gates, passing under the first prophesy carved in stone: ‘Know Thyself.’ He sacrificed a sheep on the alter in the courtyard, purified himself in the smoke of laurel and hyssop burning in a censer. The vapors were invigorating. Enlightening. Intoxicating. Mind altering. They were intended to prepare the truth-seeker to hear the Pythia’s cryptic visions.

One mind altering experience demands another.

They ushered him in. Through the temple doors. There was no sanctuary inside. Only a building set right into the hillside. A cave entrance was at its end, at the place where the altar would normally stand. Where it should have stood, as a portal between worlds. But in this place the barriers between the sacred world and the profane were so thin as to be transparent. Open. Terrifyingly real.

Medusa sat cross legged before her mirror and leaned forward, her nose almost touching it.

“This is going to be good,” she said to Annaborea. Snakes swirled around, sniffing and poking at the mirror. “Hush,” she said, batting one aside. “Be still,” as if talking to a pet cat. They looked at her, unimpressed.

The Pythia sat on a bronze divan over a crack in the floor of the cave. Sweet vapors trickled out. Priest interpreters stood nearby, to ensure that the Pythia got her prophecies right.

“Show me the Pythia’s left side,” said Medusa. The mirror reflected the left half of the Oracle, her aquiline features and dazed expression gazing out, unseeing in this world, all-seeing in the next. On one edge, almost out of sight, she could see the groveling heap of king Leonidas. On the other the sycophant priests.

‘Perfect,’ Medusa smiled and drew in a breath. She began whispering in the hapless girl’s ear...

“Have you regarded the first prophesy?” asked the Pythia at Medusa’s prompting.

“Which is?”

            “Know Thyself,” the twice possessed Oracle said.

“I know I am a great king.”

“Then you know nothing.”

The interpreter priests looked at each other. This is not how it usually went.

“Shall I attack Persia?” Leonidas asked, incapable of absorbing what he had just heard, and therefore ignoring it.

“A great empire will fall if you attack.”

“Indeed, Persia is a great empire.”

“The cauldron is full of meat from the slaughter. Zeus stirs it. Hades boils it. Athena seasons it.”

“And Apollo? What does Apollo say?”

“That thou shalt not taste of it.”

“How? Why?”

“It is the season of the festival to Apollo.”

“The Carneia.”

“On which you may not go to war.”

“Then I shall not fight?”

“I did not say it!”

“Is there a way Apollo would allow it?”

“Bronze is weaker than Iron, but iron rusts away into dust.”

The Pythia raised her head, her hands, and her voice, crying to the gods and shrieking. Medusa lost control of her priestess puppet. ‘This is more like it,’ the priests sighed. She threw herself onto the crack in the ground and passed out.

“Oh, no you don’t!” shouted Medusa and seized control of the hapless ecstatic for one more pronouncement.

As Leonidas left the cave of the Oracle the Pythia wailed, “There is a way!” she shouted and fell silent, never to prophesize again. Medusa let the girl go in a heap on the ground, lost in ecstatic bliss. “Pathetic,” she said out load. “Anna, don’t ever let me become like that,” and she pushed it aside.

Anna agreed.

Xerxes’ forces circled the Aegean. He was not going to risk another disastrous sea battle. He would approach from the north. Leonidas, determined to fight but not wishing to offend Apollo, thought. “If I go to war with 10,000 soldiers, Apollo will certainly curse our effort. That is one path.”

 Then, “And if a stay in Sparta the Persians will conquer all of the Hellenic world.” He tapped his forehead. “That is the other path.”

“These are two paths to the future,” he pondered, straining for another way.

“Offend the gods or die at the hands of a foreign tyrant,” he puzzled. “Our women raped, our fields salted, our cities burned, our citizens enslaved, our legacy a warning, a terror, and then a joke. Fodder for moralizing playwrights and self-righteous buffoons who make jokes in the night at the expense of those who die in the daylight.

“Are those to be the only paths from which we may choose?” Then he remembered the Pythia’s last intonation, “There is a way.”

Leonidas chose neither path. He handpicked 300 of his most elite, clever, and skilled warriors. Those most willing to die for a cause. He consulted his maps and his generals. And he chose the right pass to die on.

“Thermopylae,” he said. On that narrow pass he pledged his honor.

Medusa smiled. “I have convinced you to neither go nor stay,” she gloated. “To pledge neither ‘Yeah!’ nor ‘Nay!’ And so shall you both prevail and perish. I shall smite the gods themselves,” she laughed. She looked at Annaborea and said, “I do you proud, my friend.”

“Always,” came the reply.

 

Chapter 11

 

“Are you sure this is the only way?” asked Xerxes, King of Persia. Lord of the Orient.

“It appears so, my Lord.”

“And do we have any intelligence? Is the enemy in possession of this ‘only way’?”

“We have none, my lord.”

Xerxes was not comfortable drawing his forces out into a stream of golden honey through a sieve, trickling gently over pistachios, sugar and butter, flaked phyllo and cinnamon. Layer upon layer, thin and undefended, with no substance, constancy, or adamant yet baked into an unpredictable pastry of uncertainty. ‘I do not want to enter this,’ he thought. Or maybe he was just hungry.

He called for his advisors. “What are our options?” he asked.

“Few, my Lord.”

“How few?”

“One, my Lord.”

“One?” he said.

“There is a path along the sea. It is very narrow and set upon by steep cliffs.”

“Is it defended?”

The advisor looked unsure.

“Well?” demanded Xerxes.

“Our intelligence is uncertain.”

“How so?”

“Well, spies say that it is held by some Peloponnesians.”

“Yes? How many?”

“Well, that’s the issue.”

“Issue?”

“No more than a company,”

“A company?” asked Xerxes, incredulous. “A company is holding a vital pass?”

“Three hundred at best.”

“Well. Let us prepare for this ‘Three Hundred’ a fair welcome,” he said and dismissed his advisors.

“Mighty king,” said a voice beside him when he was alone in his tent. Xerxes looked and saw a person, a woman he guessed, wearing a black dress and a coarse veil.

“I have advice for you, Oh Great One,” she said.

“Not so great, I guess,” Xerxes said. “If a woman such as you can appear in my tent, surrounded by ten thousand soldiers, as if by an act of the gods, then I salute you.”

“Wise king, then,” Medusa continued. “May I advise you?”

“It depends,” he said. Then, “Who are you!”

“A muse,” she said. “Your muse.” The veiled, draped in black apparition walked around the raised divan, upon which stood a throne sat upon by the satrap of the civilized world, and stood before him.

“Speak!” he said.

“Your path is blocked. A stopper holds the wine in the bottle. The steward cannot open it.”

“And?” said Xerxes. “What must I do to relieve it?”

“You must neither pop the stopper nor crack the cork. You must find another way.”

“You speak in riddles? The gods excel at trickery.” He was about to call his guards.

“Hold!” said Medusa, raising her hand in a gesture of halting. And restraint.

“It is straight speech you require? Then know this and be not confused,” and Medusa explained to the king of Persia how to circumvent the army of Leonidas and ‘pop his cork’ from the other side.

The key was the pass around Thermopylae, not the path of Thermopylae.

“Thus have I spoken,” she finished. “And thus shall I go.” Medusa muttered something under her breath and disappeared before the great king of the Medes and Persians.

Clearly, he had received a decree from a god.

 

Chapter 12

 

It’s not very often that you see the gods in disarray. But now they were epileptic.

“What is that girl doing?” raged Zeus. “Who does she think she is?”

“She’s doing herself,” said Hera. “And she is being herself. What else should she be?”

Hermes floated in on a cloud. A vapor supported him.

“My lord,” said the messenger of the gods. “Medusa-”

“What of Medusa?” roared Zeus.

“Medusa. The girl once called Lucky.”

That gave pause. Even the gods know that names have meanings and meanings make reality and reality is beyond even their comprehension.

Reality, like Chaos, rules all.

“Yes?” said Zeus. “What of her? What of this…Lucky?”

“She is…” Hermes started to say but was interrupted.

“Running amok,” said Hades. Stepping on the toes of Hermes’ latest bit of gossip he called ‘messages.’

“I was going to tell you that Medusa is interfering,” injected Hermes, acidly.

“Interfering?” asked Zeus. “Interfering with what?”

“Please,” said Hades. “Medusa is a moral woman of no consequence.” He turned his back on the throne of Zeus and looked toward his brothers and sisters. “Am I right?” They looked… nonplussed.

“Medusa has interfered with destiny,” continued Hermes.

“How?” asked Zeus.

“First,” said Hermes. He looked at a cloud in his right hand. “She interfered with king Laius and his son,”

“That Octopus fellow,” said Hades.

“Oedipus,” said Zeus.

“Right,” said Hades. “And what of him?”

“He was supposed to become king, you know,” said Hermes.

“He did become king, you know,” corrected Hades.

“Yes, but not in the right way. Not in the way he did. Not in the way we wanted,” said Zeus, pensive, distraught and distracted...

“He was supposed to be a good king. A righteous warrior. A defender of the gods,” he fussed.

Then, “He was supposed to unite the Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, the Hellenistic Republic, and make of it a conquering nation. An empire extending all the way to Egypt in the south and the fire worshipers of Bactria and the nomads of Aryana in the east. To the Siber tribes north of the lake of Baikal and his daughter, Ankara. Along the barbarian steppe and on to the Dravidic speakers of Asia. On to our ancestral home in the Indus Valley to the far east, and then to the whole world.

“Oedipus the Great was anointed to spread the Hellenic civilization to the known world and beyond. To conquer and civilize all unto the oceans that surround the encircle it. To the wandering planets and the fixed stars above it. To the heavens themselves.

“He would be a god,” Zeus shook his head and majesty rolled forth from it. His lightning reflected. His light deflected.

“And this Octopus man cannot be reformed? He cannot be reshaped to do this noble thing you have decreed?” said Hades, not impressed by Zeus’s display.

“No,” said Zeus, burnishing to bronze, then steel, then dirty copper coated with mud. “He has been tainted. Instead, we must wait for, who knows how long? Maybe we needs recruit some Macedonian man to shape the world for us, instead.”

“Perish the thought,” said Hermes, not wanting to be excluded from the conversation.

“And what now?” said Hades, ignoring the messenger boy. “What other mischief is this cursed woman devising?”

“And now,” declared Hermes, ignoring the slight and glad to be a part of the conversation. “Medusa is breathing lies into the ears of a Persian Potentate!”

“Xerxes?” roared Zeus. “The Abomination of the Orient?”

“The same,” said Hermes, beaming.

“We have to do something,” said Zeus. He clutched his throne, looked aside, and grew pensive.

“What, my lord?” said Hermes.

“We must act,” said Zeus, banging his fist on his armrest. “We must be bold. Determined.” And then, “We must do something drastic.”

“Such as?” asked Hades.

“We have to stop Medusa!” shouted Zeus. “Stop her before she fractures the foundations of the earth!”

“Oh, of course,” said Hades. “Why didn’t I think of that? And how are we going to do that? How do we stop her before she ‘fractures the foundations of the earth?’” His sarcasm overflowing.

“Wait!” said Hera. “Why do we want to stop her?”

“She brings disorder!” said Hermes.

“She confused the oracles!” said Zeus.

“She offends the gods!” said Hades. Though it may have been said with irony.

“Whose order does she thwart? Which oracle does she circumvent? What gods does she offend?” said Hera. “The gods that matter? The gods with a resentment to salve? A score to settle? And of the rest of us?”

“She offends me,” said Athena, joining the discussion.

“Because she was lain upon by a god?” demanded Hera. “Against her will and while she was serving in a temple? Serving in your temple, the Temple of Athena!”

“She is blasphemy to me,” said Athena.

“She worshiped you,” said Hera.

“I am violated by her worship,” said Athena.

Hera clucked. “Huh,” she said. And continued.

“And where is the old Sea Monster, anyway?” growled Hera, disregarding the gripe of a goddess, cuckolded. And thrown away. “He has refused to join in this debate!”

"Gathering strength,” Athena said. “Like a hurricane over turbid water.”

“Sulking, you mean,” said Hera.

“Rapist!”

“Defiler!”

“Usurper!”

“Reviler!”

Athena shook. To her the crime and the criminal was the same.

“And can you not now see that the maiden and the misadventure are not the same?”

“Pah!” spat out Athena.

“You are both here,” said Zeus, tiring of this spat. “As are the rest of us. In the grand scheme of things. In the stewpot of all that is and of all that will be.”

“And all that might be,” said Hera, turning away from Athena. “And who decides what is and what is not?”

“You can do that, if you wish,” said Zeus, looking thoughtful. “You seem to have enough counsel to give in this matter.”

“Perhaps I do,” said Hera. “And perhaps I do not.”

“And what is your part in all this drama, my dear lady and goddess?”

Zeus was contemplative. Hera looked pensive.

“I am just a pawn,” she mewled, passing aside and avoiding her husband’s gaze. “Such as you and the rest of the gods, the mortals, and the elementals. We are all a part of a great game.”

“Well, then. Lady Goddess Pawn,” Zeus said. “Welcome to the Great Game. It is your move.”

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

“No, no, no, no, no, No, NO!” said Medusa, peering into the mirror. “Anna!” she cried. “This is not good.”

“What?” said Annaborea, ever attentive to her friend’s moods.

“Xerxes!” she said, exasperated. “He’s being a jerk!”

“Well, he is a man, right?”

“I think so.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, Persians wear a lot of perfume and frilly clothing and stuff.”

“Sooo… that makes him a girl?”

“I guess not,”

“Very well, let’s start over,” said the statue, Anna. “Let’s take it from the top.”

“Yes,” agreed Medusa. “The top of what?”

“You just said, ‘No, no, No, NO!’ a whole bunch of times and you are all shocked and whatnot.” Then Anna breathed. Well, she would breathe were she made of something other than stone.

“Right. I did,” said Medusa.

“And that was because…”

“Because things aren’t going according to plan.”

“Your plan,” questioning.

“There is another?”

“So,” the stone Anna continued as if they were discussing a stubbed toe. “What’s the problem? What’s not going according to ‘your’ plan?”

“I gave Xerxes a heads up on the Thermopylae pass, but he hasn’t done ANYTHING with it. Five days and he still thinks Leonidas will surrender!

“Did you tell him about the secret way to get around him?”

“Of course!” Medusa said. “I just said that,” she snapped.

“You’re getting prickly… Again.”

“Sorry!”

“Sorry back at you.”

“Well, what do you take me for. A complete moron?”

Annaborea looked exasperated. “No-one’s complete without some sugar and icing on top,” she said, trying to defuse her friend’s Greek Fire.

“Pffffft!” fumed Medusa and refused to apologize any further.

She turned to her mirror.

“Show me the Thermopylae pass,” she ordered.

It fogged. Then cleared. Then focused. Then showed. It revealed a pass hidden from sight. A narrow place that trickled off from the seashore. Up, up, and around. It kept going up. Not difficult. But not accommodating, either. It led all the way up, over, around, and down again. To the other side of the Peloponnesian forces, where Leonidas led his three hundred. Against the Persians. And his back was unguarded.

“I cannot give Xerxes any more hints,” Medusa told Anna. “Does he hear? Is he deaf?”

Anna was silent. She was letting her friend hack about in her own thoughts. ‘She’ll figure it out,’ Anna thought. ‘She always does.’

“And what is this?!” Medusa said, suddenly dismayed and curious.

‘There it is!’ thought Anna.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Medusa ruminated.

There was a brigade of Leonidas’ soldiers guarding the pass.

“They can’t know about that!” she railed. “This is my secret!

“Fine,” she continued. “Have it your way.”

Anna felt satisfied. Medusa prepared herself. Wore her veil. Then entered.

A naked girl wearing a veil walked past the group of soldiers, who, being soldiers, did what soldiers do when unattended naked girls are about.

They followed the naked girl. But she was clever, she was. She managed to stay one step ahead of them, leading them on, down the path, off the road, across a meadow, and down to a pool.

The soldiers came upon the naked veiled girl bathing. In a pool. Alone. She had her lovely back to them, partially submerged. And she was singing.

 

“Let the moon shine on the water,

Feel it flow and flirt.

Round about in every quarter,

Like a satin skirt.”

 

She swished the water playfully with her hands.

 

“Let my hair flow round my body,

Spreading o’er the pool.

Feel the softness come upon me,

Quiet, calm, cool.”

 

The men were enraptured, incapable of thought, reason, memory of the past or consideration of the future. Only the now existed. Only rapture. Only the naked nymph before them singing in an enchanted pool, her song a necklace, each word a pearl, each melody a silver chain stringing them all together, each stanza a hasp clasping it across her neck, supporting a silver clasped jewel hanging between her bobbing breasts.

Each man felt his body vibrate to the music, felt his heart grow giddy, his head held gently in her loving hands. Each saw soft eyes gazing longingly into his.

This indeed was a rare thing, a muse of song and enchantment.

Each mouth yearned to kiss the lips of the magical singer and feel those blessed lips kiss him back, lovingly and deep. No siren sang on the shores of an enchanted island was ever as sweet and as inviting as this.

She continued singing…

 

                                    “In the sweetness of my breasts-Oh!”

 

The girl turned from her bath and looked surprised.

“Oh!” she said again, bringing her arms up to her chest, revealing more than hiding.

“Are you boys looking for me?” She looked as cute and desirable as a lovely hooded naked woman standing waste deep in a pool of inviting water and singing a song of cool moonlight and inviting desire can look.

The soldiers were dumbstruck.

And she purred, “Are there any more of you? I wouldn’t want anyone to be left out. No? Very well,” and she took her veil off and murmured a few words. Then she was gone.

The meadow by the enchanted pool sported a dozen new statues of Spartan soldiers.

“Problem solved,” she winked at Annaborea, back in her sanctuary.

“You’re really getting good at that,” Anna smirked. “You certainly know how to exploit your titillations and assets!”

“All in a girl’s day’s work,” said Medusa, placing her veil on a nearby table and donning her favorite blue dress. “I just give them what they want,” she said.

“Seriously?” said Annaborea.

“Mostly,” said Medusa. “As it suits me,” and she clucked her tongue in her cheek.

“You are a demon,” said Annaborea.

Medusa smiled. “You flatter me,” she said.

Back at the pool off the Thermopylae pass, a single soldier had turned his head, having been startled by a snake on the path, wrenching him painfully and unwillingly from the haunting spectacle at the pool. He stooped down to kill it.

He eagerly looked back. Longing to see the enchanting vision look back at him.

Instead, what he saw was a calm pool, a group of statues, and no naked nymph looking back at him.

 

Chapter 13

 

“Is one man’s orthodoxy another man’s heresy?” the acolyte asked.

“What good is a god if they are not present when you need them?” the Seer responded.

                                                                        The Blind Seer, Tiresias.

 

“I cannot accept her,” scoffed Athena. She paced along the congress chamber of Olympus. Hera labored to keep up with her.

“What do you mean?” asked Hera, tarrying on.

“She is dirty,” Athena stopped and spat out. “She is filthy. She is despicable in the most deplorable way.” She stormed off in another direction.

“Why?” asked Hera, chasing after her. Athena glared at her. “Medusa has only ever prayed to you,” Hera continued, staring her down in return. “To Athena. From her youngest days. From her modest beginnings. From the first awkward strumming of her Whirlalaika, which she could barely hold in her trembling lap, to the proud procession into the temple on her coronation day, still trembling, but now with worship. For you. In your temple. And unto the first stirrings of her womanhood in the intimate places of her body. She rejected herself in favor of you, Athena.” Hera stopped her. And challenged the goddess, Athena.

“She has loved you,” declared Hera. “Why do you reject her? Why do you turn your back on her?”

“Because,” Athena gasped and thrust her own womanhood into the whole of the conversation. “Because she was had by a lecher. That makes her unholy,” she finished, turned away, and glared at the ceiling as if she would smite it to smithereens.

“I think that makes her one of us,” said Hera.

“Ssssss!” Athena hissed, glowered, and vanished in a fountain of sparks.

“That went well,” said Zeus. “Do you have any more inspirations?”

Hera grimaced.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Hephaestus inhaled his forge. He breathed it. The heat of it. The fire of it. The brimstone of it. The carbon and the iron of it. The bronze and the steel of it. The chromium and magnesium. The nickel and the zinc of it. And the basest of lead of it. All of it coursed through his lungs and exhausted through his nostrils. All of it throbbed with each heave of his bicep and each blow of his hammer. It was his existence.

Hephaestus, at the behest of Hades, forged a block of bronze into the weapon of a god. He drew it from his furnace in the volcano. He laid it on his anvil like a lover. He gently tapped it with his hammer. Tap, tap. Tap, tip. Gently. Carefully. Melding the metal into itself like a divine baklava. Hephaestus brought the glowing ingot of metal up to his eyes. He held it straight across. Close to the bridge of his nose.

He gazed at it critically. Looking. Questing. Searching for flaws. Rooting out evil. Divining imperfections. He was a master tutoring his student. A craftsman instructing his apprentice. A maestro conducting his orchestra. A shepherd guiding his flock. A god inspiring his worshipers.

“Aha! There’s one!” He triumphed, spying a flaw. He welded the metal together by the sheer effort of the forge alone. Each blow gentler than the last. First a blow, then a knock, then a whisper, until. All that remained was a kiss of steel. Hephaestus brought the offending piece of bronze back to his volcano forge and his hammer and his anvil to cycle through the dance again. Tap, tap. Tap, tip. Gently hammering out the offending imperfection.

And then another. Tip, top. Tap, toe. “And more. There must be one more,” he said. Tap, tap. Tap, tip. Tip, top. Tap, toe. And another. Tom, tap. And then perfection.

He took the slug of bronze and thrust it deep into the lava. He folded it over upon itself, like it was butter in a pastry. Fold and hammer. Tom, tap. Hammer and fold. Tap, tap. Tap, tip. More hammering. More folding. More inspecting with a glowing brand of bronze a mere fraction of an inch from his eyes. And again.

“Let me see what imperfections you hide!” he growled, drawing the metal’s very structure into himself. “Reveal yourselves!” Tap, tap. Tap, tip. Gently hammering out its imperfections. Tip, top. Tap, toe. And he went over it again.

He took his masterpiece and quenched it in the river of Lethe. Forgetting. “At the end of it,” he said, pleased. “My labors are done. Your life is just beginning, void of memory.” And he was satisfied.

In the end Hephaestus forged the perfect sword.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Athena returned to Olympus and looked across the pantheon of the gods. They regarded her with suspicion. Not a few were starting to fault her for the calamity and chaos that was visiting them.

She sniffed. “I don’t want to seem indifferent.” She said, “But I can’t accept this role.”

“Roll?” said Zeus. “What role?”

“Protector. Goddess. Warrior. Something,” she said. “I was born from your head, for Olympus’ sake.” She sniffed again. “Like, whoop! Behold. There I am! There was Venus on a half shell and Athena from a brain pan. And pop goes the weasel. Another god born of unlikely circumstances.”

“Leave me out of this,” said Venus. “I’ve got my own troubles.” She was worried about Medusa’s expert talents of seduction. That was her business, after all.

“You are Athena,” said Zeus. “Protector. Goddess. Warrior. ‘Something’ is what you are and what you must be.”

“Yes,” she said. “And you are Zeus and he is Hades and coo-coo-ca-choo. We are all together here in heaven.”

“The gods have lost their minds,” muttered Zeus.

 

Chapter 14

 

Leonidas listened in amazement while the soldier gave his narrative. Of a beautiful nymph and an enchanted pool. Of mesmerizing singing that shot through one and reduced one to soft putty in the hands of a goddess. A goddess of clear water and deadly desire. And an equally deadly curse. And of a single soldier barely escaping on Fortuna’s whim alone.

“For I alone am left to tell the tale,” he said. Finishing his tale he ended with,

“My lord,” he finished. “The gods have turned against us in our trial. They have abandoned us!”

Leonidas puzzled. “A great empire will fall if you attack,” he muttered. “Bronze is weaker than iron, but iron rusts away into dust,” he mused.

“My king?”

Then he said, “Soldier, I thank you for your intelligence. Prepare yourself. Sacrifice to you gods. For a battle of epic proportion is about to begin! A great empire is about to fall!”

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Xerxes’ intelligence indicated that the Peloponnesians were changing their tactics. Some were advancing. Some were scaling the cliffs. Some were in boats near the shore. Xerxes considered this movement.

‘You must neither pop the stopper nor crack the cork,’ he remembered. ‘You must find another way.’

“Send an expeditionary force up the Thermopylae pass,” he ordered. “It is time to find this other way…”

 

Chapter 15

 

In the end Zeus took his son, Perseus, and brought him to their sanctuary, the confederacy of the gods.

“There is a monster among the faithful,” he said. “And you alone can defeat her.”

“Heavenly Father Zeus,” he said. “I hear, I obey.”

And Zeus blessed him. “Take these,” he continued. “You will need them.” And he gave Perseus the sword of Hephaestus that Hades had provided. Zeus knelt before Perseus like a squire and hung the sword of Hephaestus on Perseus’ belt.

“Gods’ speed,” he said.

Next, Hermes came. “These aren’t of much use if I have naught but evil messages to convey,” he said and took off his sandals. He knelt and put them on Perseus’ feet. “Speed well, young master,” he said. “Your task is just and your labor will be rewarded.” The wings fluttered about, unsure what to make of their foreign master. It took all of the rest of the day mastering them.

Athena looked on, smoldering. Her bitterness only outmatched by her vindictiveness.

“Here, boy!” she said. And she gave him a shield of bronze. “Take this. Look in it. And never look directly at the monster.”

Perseus looked puzzled.

“Use it to see around corners,” she explained. “It will deliver you from her worst.”

Hera looked pitiably at the hero, outfitted with magic weapons. She was just about to speak when-

“Hold!” said Athena. “I have another gift.” She took off her helmet. “This will make you dark.”

“Dark?” said Perseus.

“Hidden,” Athena said, searching for the right word. “Unseen by mortals. Take it. Wear it.” Athena looked at her silver helmet, breathed on it, and saw it turn dull. “It will make you hard to see. Only the most persistent eyes shall pierce its defenses,” she gave it to him and turned away, smoldering. Then as an afterthought, “Use it quickly. Don’t dawdle. It’s more of a snare than a trap. Catch and kill quickly!”

Perseus took the gifts, sword, sandals, shield and helm. He bowed. And was about to leave.

“Stay!” said Hera. She came to Perseus. Looked at him. Mourned another hero killing for the gods and their fecklessness.

“Here,” she said. “Take this sack,” giving him a rough canvas bag. “When you cut off the head of-” Hera paused. She almost said, ‘The Innocent.’ “Your prey,” she continued. “Put it in here.”

‘May she have some dignity in death,’ she thought and withdrew.

“That is all,” she said and turned away.

 

Chapter 16

 

Perseus stood at the bottom of Medusa’s Cursed Mountain, as it came to be called, on the island of Sapharose. Nobody would live anywhere near there. Nobody came to scale its heights, except the foolhardy and those wishing to exit the world in ignominy. Waves of the Aegean Sea crashed on the beach at its shore, but nobody walked there nor skipped stones across its wake.

Neither ship nor sponge diver nor fisherman nor children played on the beach or tarried by its shores. It was said to be haunted, for Medusa came at times to the sands, looking mournfully across the waves, back to her beloved Athens. Longing to walk its streets as a free woman, a threat and a terror to no one. But a treacherous sea and its heinous god forbade her.

And yet there stood Perseus.

He breathed, exhaled sharply, and looked up, shading his eyes as if they had the fault of conducting a petrifying curse into his soul, transforming it into stone. A sheer cliff rose straight up and out of sight. A narrow path circled to its left and wound lazily around it and disappeared.

He straightened up. And fingered the sack that was tucked into his belt like a lama’s prayer beads.

In his left hand he held the shield of Athena, polished to a mirror finish. So fine was it that it reflected everything as bright and detailed as if looking right at it. Reflected, but also tinted bronze as if looking at something during a deep sunset or in the light of a fire. Keen but tainted.

On his feet were the winged sandals of Hermes, with which he had done great things in preparation for this day. At his side, the sword of Hephaestus, wrought in Hades of the dull, red bronze of the earth, triple forged in a volcano. Sharp and undefeatable. On his head the helmet of Athena, which gave him invisibility, or very nearly. ‘Enough to evade a loathsome monster in a dreadful, dank cave,’ he thought. ‘Or so I hope. Strike quickly!’

Of course, Mighty Athena would favor the son of Zeus. He was technically her brother. Or half-brother. Three quarter brother? The gods’ family trees are insane.

“For gods and country,” Perseus murmured, as if either one deserved it. And began to nimbly climb, sailing over obstacles with his magic sandals. He quickly reached the top. A narrow ledge overlooked the cliff edge thousands of feet below where the angry sea churned against the rocky shore. A cave mouth opened in the rock face. Inside was mischief, madness, and a monster. A monster named Medusa.

That monster Medusa watched him through her magic mirror which she used to spy on the world and to sometimes visit it. It was a gift from a goddess.

“They really want me dead,” she said to Annaborea. Anna just looked on, frightened.

She sighed, wearily. ‘How much longer must I endure this?’ she thought. ‘Were I but an adulteress against the gods, a crime I abhor and reject, how much longer then should my punishment be?’

She looked away from her friend, Anna.

“Hera, queen of heaven,” she prayed. “When will my torment end?” she cried real tears for the first time since her smiting. Cried and prayed and lamented all at once. Hera was silent.

Her snakes gathered around Medusa’s face, defensively. Questing for an enemy to strike. Yearning to hold their mother in their embrace.

And she thought of her benefactor, the Mother Superior, Heradora, ‘Lover of Hera,’ she was named. She once said to Medusa, “We are not all that bad,” speaking of the gods.

“We?” Medusa had mused. She sighed again. “And what did she mean by that? That the gods are not ‘all that bad?’ Or that the gods are not ALL ‘that bad?’ Which is it?” she mused. “The gods always say two different things.”

The Mother Superior was always cryptic. As are the gods.

“And who is this, ‘We?’” she asked again, remembering the childish musings of the girls on who exactly the stern Mother Superior really was? Goddess or demon? Muse or mystic? They asked in vain.

Medusa sighed. “Where do the gods end and men begin?” she asked the reflection in her mirror. Perplexity reflected back at her.

Perseus preened himself, admiring his trinkets. Anna was silent. It was not her time yet to speak.

Perseus came to the cave mouth. He braced himself, turned his back on the home of Medusa (‘Hasn’t everyone done that already?’ she thought, watching from her sanctuary within,) and entered the cave, using the shield of Athena to see the world reflected. It was dark and dank inside. The fitting abode of a monster. Statues stood here and there. Some tall. Some short. Some in armor. Some in drab cloaks. Some with swords raised. Some with questing demeanors. Mostly men. Some women.

A few Scythian warrior women and heroes from beyond the Black Sea had dared the quest. ‘Amazons,’ they were called. ‘No Breasts,’ chuckled Medusa. She was thinking of the common legend that said of the wild warrior women in the barbarian lands of the north beyond the Carpathian Mountains that they cut off one breast to make them better able to wield a bow and arrow.

‘People will believe anything,’ she thought. ‘That would probably have killed them by gangrene more than kindled in them superior killing skills with the bow,’ she now realized. ‘There are several full breasted women in my parlor!’ she thought some more. ‘Men always deride what they fear.’

Then, to Anna, “Some full breasted women are the cruelest beasts I have ever known,” she said. Anna looked curious.

All of the statues in Medusa’s parlor had two things in common, though. They all looked terrified. And they were all made of stone.

Medusa picked up her Whirlalaika. Turned its crank and twisted its tuning pegs, scanning the frets with her fingertips, knowing them by their touch, and when satisfied, at the right time, Medusa began to play. Music flowed from the Whirlalaika. And breathed throughout her home, playing the walls and chambers like the deep sound box of a massive cave Whirlalaika, a stringed instrument made from the mountain itself. Today she played for a different god.

A god of resignation.

Perseus carefully backed through the cave, hoping to catch Medusa asleep. He counted at least a score of defeated souls dotted throughout the cave. Distracted, disdained, defanged, and debased. Many men and not a few women who tried. And failed. All of them turned to stone. He breathed deep into his own living lungs of flesh and blood. And went on.

He came to the back of the cave and found a passageway branching off, invisible until he was right on top of it. Music seemed to be coming from it, echoing and throbbing through countless passages, vaulted rooms, and mountain halls. A stringed instrument accompanied by a lovely voice, each the compliment of the other. Each equal in majesty, magic, and resolve. A single voice breathed the very air.

‘Who is this?’ he thought. ‘Some poor nymph imprisoned by the monster?’ and waivered. Doubted. ‘A muse of lyric and melody?’ he thought. Then renewed his resolve.

‘I must be strong,’ he drove himself. ‘I must not be enchanted,’ he thought. ‘Zeus guide me.’

He gently backed down the passage, passing many doors, all closed. All locked. The music came from far away at the end. The music stopped. Medusa stood in her special room, her sanctuary. And she was naked, hiding just beside the doorway, out of sight and in the shadows where the oil lamps and candles could not reach her. Could not touch her or reveal her loveliness. Or her deadliness. She was as invisible as if she wore her own helm of Athena. Only the dim glow of the hearth lit her features. Hestia was her only companion. Otherwise, she was unseen.

‘Ha!’ she thought. ‘I lay bare my own deception, naked for all to see and none to consider. Look at me! Breath deep with your eyes. And go mad. Then become a soul of stone.’

She could see Perseus in the mirror, which showed all. Including invisible heroes. ‘He is still backing up!’ she realized. ‘Then when he enters the room,’ she pondered further, ‘he will be looking in my direction. I need only get his attention.’ Hope flickered in her warm breast.

Perseus reached the end of the corridor and came to another room. Inside was dark. He stood at the doorway, uncertain. Then he saw his prey. A naked woman appeared in the darkness as if by magic, reflected in the shield of Athena, his mirror.

Medusa had stepped into the light so her reflection would be seen in her all-seeing mirror across the room, though her real self was still hidden from the doorway. She could only be seen in her magic mirror. There, but not there.

Snakes slithered around her head. Her face was beautiful, her breasts ultimately desirable. Her eyes looked at him, inviting, weary and resigned. And with adamant. He stepped into the room as Medusa beckoned him forward with her left hand and made the warding away of evil gesture with her right.

Medusa stood by the side of the entrance to her sanctuary, out of sight. Ready to step in and invite the hero to look at her, despair, and petrify in a process of instant fossilization; adding one more statue to Medusa’s vast collection. Another hero. Another vane quest. Another droll failure.

She saw a man walking backward, saw him as clear as if he was himself naked, unprotected by any goddess’ deception. A shield was in his left hand which he carefully considered. The shield blocked Medusa. It prevented the hero from looking straight into her eyes and presented the mirror reflected deception of her only for his consideration, harmless and impotent.

“Oh!” Medusa gasped in surprise and stood startled and unsure.

Perseus heard the sound, paused, stiffened, judged its origin, closed his eyes, pivoting on his heal.

He swung around and hacked with the sword of hell.

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 

Medusa stood in her innermost chamber room, her sanctuary, with its magic mirror-door and its stunned girl-statue made of stone, forever warding off her only companion. Only, now the girl stone statue was gone. There was no more Annaborea eternally rejecting her friend. No more shame and accusation to look at her constantly. That didn’t seem to puzzle Medusa. She was beyond that now.

She walked up to the mirror. Familiar and beautiful. She had looked into it, seen the places beyond it, and walked through it, to the world beyond and spied on its secrets, to visit places in that world of trial and treachery, peace and utter devastation that had betrayed and haunted her a hundred times.

“Cursed mirror,” she said. “How I have hated… and loved thee.”

She looked up to the inscription above it, carved in olive wood. But it was different this time. Now, instead of, ‘Let us go!’ it just read, simply, ‘It is time. Come with me!’

Medusa gazed at it, uncomprehending. “What do you offer to me now?” she said. Her reflection gazing back, saying nothing in reply.

She was wearing a white dress now. In the style of a priestess of Athena, neither acolyte nor adulteress anymore. Far too removed by care and suffering to even know how to worship anyone anymore. The gods were drained of meaning. Their inspiration vacant, vapid, and vanished.

She didn’t care. The snakes around her head were quiescent. Calm. They looked at peace but with a bit of trembling. They were as puzzled as their mistress. All were at a loss.

Nothing seemed to matter to them anymore.

She closed her eyes and said, “Athena.” She was not sure what she expected in reply.

Then, “No. Not Athena,” she cursed. “Athena abandoned me. Cursed me when I needed her most. Spat on me because of the heinous sin of another. And thus do the gods treat their hallowed ones!” And then, “Whom the gods love,” she spat out. “Those do they destroy!”

Then she said, “Annaborea! My dear, dear friend. My loyal friend and playmate! How I have missed you. How I have betrayed you,” she sniffed. “And cursed you. How I have wrecked your life. Please forgive me,” and Medusa walked forward, into the mirror, eyes closed, resigned, defeated.

Though she no longer wore her veil, she walked right on through the mirror. Out of her special chamber, bedroom and sanctuary. Out of her cave prison. Off her cursed mountain. Out of her island in the Aegean Sea. Away from the Hellenic world that was her life, her soul, and which defined the whole of her being for so long, for ill and for illumination. Away from her beloved Whirlalaika. Out of her troubles. Out of this world. Away from all heroes and gods and men.

She opened her eyes, startled. “Something is missing,” she said, feeling a cold breeze on her head. “Anna, what do you think-?” and stopped. Anna was not there to talk to, even in statue form. Medusa sighed. Then puzzled.

What was it? She pondered. A part of her was gone. A part of her that had defined her. A part of her that had defiled her. A part of her that had both restrained her and strengthened her. A part of her that had been with her for so long that it was her and she was it. What was it?

“I was nothing. I have nothing,” she mourned. “And now I am nothing. This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.” She walked on.

Medusa stood by an inky sea, as smooth as glass, as black as sin. She walked along its shore. It seemed like forever. Black shale littered the beach. She stopped, stooped, picked up a flat piece, weighed it in her hand, and skipped it across the inky water. 

It skipped. And skipped. And skipped many times more until it was out of sight and sound. It may be skipping even now.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She walked further on. The oily brown foam of the water swirling around her feet, drenching her sandals, clenching her ankles, clinging to her toes, clutching at her heels. Soaking into her feet and flowing through her arteries and veins. It reached into her heart. She heaved and chucked herself into the sand.

It was cold and slimy, yet it stabbed her in intimate places. And it stank. She felt a dagger plunge into her deepest, darkest, most guarded place, now vulnerable. Unprotected. Laid bare. On her arms and knees, almost falling face first into the muck.

She shuddered. And picked herself up, kicking the slime aside.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She came to a city, through a gate, through winding streets, past alleyways and squares, around street vendors and fountains, statues and monuments, sub-street level bakeries and souks, booths that sell roast dog with fish sauce, up endless stone stairs worn into millions of footsteps by millions of feet over countless centuries, then to an Acropolis. All deserted. Dark. Desolate.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She ascended. Came to a temple. The gates were half hanging on their hinges, torn asunder. Broken, disheveled.

‘Dirty, dirty, dirty!’ they all cried. Medusa considered it, puzzled upon it.

She entered. Every room was in disarray. Tables were overturned. Candlesticks were broken and stomped into the floor. Oil lamps were snuffed, broken, littered about. The sanctuary had shattered windows and torn drapes, the chandelier lay crashed before the altar, which was defiled.

A length of bronze chain swung mournfully from the ceiling. Black birds flew in and out of the broken windows and cawed in the cornices of the apse. Moss grew on the walls. There were cracks in them. The ceiling dripped with fetid water.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

In the next room was only a table. Otherwise, it was austere. On the table was a Whirlalaika, broken. No, shattered. Pieces of it lay everywhere, strings twisted and the crank lay on the floor, neglected.  

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She left the temple. The holy hill. The city she knew and loved since she first knew how to know and love anything. Its sprawling streets and squares full of courtyards, food stalls, and hovels. It was all a wasteland, desolate and full of doom.

And it was all empty now.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She walked some more. To a farmhouse. With pens for sheep, now empty, and fields for oats, now fallow. She went around the pig stye, past the outhouse, and into the farmhouse. It was deserted. There were no people there. No Mama. No Papa. No children playing about the floor. No cats drinking cream from a bowl. The cupboards were empty, the pitchers, once full of fresh water from the well, lay broken on the floor and the fireplace was cold, the embers of its hearth exhausted.

An empty bowl sat on a plain table. Beside it, a cup of cold tea. A chair beckoned to her. But Medusa shook her head.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

She came to a field, and a little hill, and an apple tree. There was a ladder coming down from the tree.

‘Curious,’ she thought. She looked up and the ladder extended a long way. Into the tree and out of sight. So she climbed. Up, up, up until she was lost in the limbs and the branches and the leaves of the tree. Past a single white blossom, flecked with red, hinting at apples to come. Someday, but not today. Not now.

How it smiled in her face. Inviting. New. Enticing.

“This is not for me,” said Medusa, and left it behind.

At last she came to a treehouse. She opened the door, climbed in, drew up the ladder. She closed the door and locked it.

Medusa settled back into her first, most sacred place in the world. The sanctuary in which she was the supreme goddess and oracle, protector and maid, priestess, acolyte and worshiper. Musician and matron. Mother Superior. She closed her eyes. Safe. Secure.

Medusa sang.

 

“The cat on the deck of the ship of the mo-on,

Banks her passage through the sky.

He does not know just where she brings him,

Nor does he ask her how… or…

“…why?”

 

The last word directed to the unfeeling air.

‘No one can get me here,’ she thought. ‘I shall sit here until the end of days.’ And Medusa hugged herself in resignation, her only god. The one that stayed with her to the end of all.

“Shall I live on a high, holy mountain?” she asked her sanctuary in a treetop. “Can I even breath there? Is there room left on its needle-sharp pinnacle for even one saint to stand?

“Scores of gods and men stand in line, eager to pitch me from my sacred perch, ascend to my pompous position, bask in their own self-righteousness, and await their fate, swiftly approaching.” She paused.

“You clutch your Asian pearls and grab your silk bags of nothing.”

An age went by.

“And if you do take my place?” she asked no one in particular. “If you do ascend to the holy, high hill? Can you speak loud enough and convincingly enough to sway the sinners in the foggy swamps beneath you? Have you, by your self-apotheosis, changed even one man’s actions? Have you bettered the life of even a single woman by your arrogance? Your superiority? Your judgementalism? Your-”

She looked up at the all-seeing eye above her. “Are you worthy of even a single drachma of worship?

“No. Not one,” she spat out. “Not a single time. Not even one life is changed. Not for better or for ill.

“You who think you are better than the rest of us, leave your sacred height and come down here, down to my level. Try it! Down into the moral mire and philosophical cesspool with the rest of us.” She cast herself about in angry abandon. A prisoner in her own sanctuary.

Medusa sighed and resigned herself to the fate the gods meted out to her.

“Sauce for the goose,” she said. “Don’t think you have a privileged position on your high holy hill. Or that you can look down upon us soiled ones here below. In the manured valleys and the fields rich in shit beneath you. The stink goes both ways.” Medusa said.

“For we are no different, you and I,” she said, sighed, and submitted.

Medusa closed her eyes again. She brought her knees up to her chin and hugged them. Small comfort.

Medusa sat and considered for a long time. Years, maybe. Lifetimes. An age, ages, and half an age went by, unregarded. Time stood in oblivion.

“No one can challenge me here,” she said at last, echoing her earlier thought. “No one! No gods. No goddesses. No rapists. No gawkers. No scoffers. No self-righteous heroes looking to slay one of life’s monsters for glory and vanity while never once looking within himself in his own mirror of destiny.”

She sighed. A tear escaped her shuttered eye. “Not one. Now or forevermore.

“Gods, worship thyselves!” she shouted at infinity. And then sat once more for an eternity.

“I always loved when people told me what I am. ‘You are a monster,’ they say. ‘You’re only behaving that way because you are a…’ and then proceed to tell me, no, enlighten me! to the awesome revelation of What I Am. Such a wonder and a blessing to have such clairvoyants around. Modern day Cassandras who can see with the eyes of the gods, penetrating the very souls of us mortals, the shepherds and supplicants of the fields beneath the High Holy Mountain.

“Stunning and breathless is the view. I can only assume these Promethean gift bringers have thoroughly searched their own souls and found them flawless and I pray they receive a reward commensurate to their acts. Like the original Prometheus.”

“I reach out to the universe,” she said. “Is there anyone out there to reach back?”

“Oh!” she said flinging her eyes open to a new revelation. “I know what it is!” and Medusa smiled. “The thing that was different! The thing that was missing!”

Medusa, the Serpent Princess, the Goddess of Snakes, put her hands on her head. And once, once again, in the god-cursed place of her heart, Lucky smiled. Her own self once more.

“No snakes!” she said and laughed, laughed out loud, once and forevermore. She combed her hair, her luxurious locks of raven hair folding through her fingers, tossing and tumbling across her shoulders, across her back, tickling her breasts. Glorious and glad. Sensual and seductive, as they always had been. She breathed in the luxury of it all.

Then she stopped. And thought, reluctantly, “I miss them,” and wondered, mystified. “I miss those serpent locks of mine.” Lucky-Medusa puzzled on that for a while, still clutching her fulsome hair. “Why would I do a thing like that?” she asked herself. ‘Herself’ looked back, blankly.

And then, comprehending at last, “You serpent snakes,” she said. “You were mine! As I was thine,” she breathed then stretched her arm out, enjoying the majesty that was herself.

Then inside she heard a little hiss, just on the edge of hearing. “Is that you, my old friend?” she thought. “Ha! Welcome,” she said and rejoiced.

And she was glad to be whole again. Once. And forever. Whole. She breathed deeply of her own completeness. Breathed. And breathed again. Just for the joy of it.

And she sang. Lucky sang with the wind of her chest and breathed with the bellows of her body into a new song, her song. A song of ending and of beginning. A song of just right now and all that that entails. A song of being.

 

“With the wonder of it all,

And the love of truth.

I withstand it all in all,

And endure the proof.”

 

She stopped. And breathed. And looked at the four walls of the treehouse around her. And the floor and the ceiling, with its all-seeing eye gazing down at her. With her blanket and the place where her cat, Heracles, used to nap, secure and comforting. She grew bold, bolder, and bolder still. And then the boldest of them all. And Medusa sang some more,

 

“If, for all and evermore,

And the endless trials.

I must persist unto the end…”

 

And Lucky, Medusa, felt her voice fill the void around her. Her sacred shelter became her own Whirlalaika, her breath its voice. Her music filled it. Possessed it. Expressed it in a way that only she could do. It became her body. It became her soul. It became her voice. And she was satisfied.

“Until it is done,” she sang with finality combing her fingers through her long, luxurious hair once more.

And it was. And it was glorious.

“Lucky?” said a familiar voice.

“Anna?” said Lucky, dragging her fingers from her hair and looking around in amazement. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Sweetheart,” said Anna. “My little Sweetheart. My little, Lucky girl,” said Annaborea, in her ever-breezy manner. “Yes, my Lucky, Little Lucky girl.”

And suddenly there was Annaborea at Lucky’s side like she had never left, kneeling on a blanket, arms extended in welcome and a face full of girlish glee and giddy gossip, terrified no longer. Her fear gone. Her arms and legs turned back into flesh and bone. And a body, her own body. Hers once again to flex and savor. One part joy. Two parts glee. Three parts everything else in the universe.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Anna’s voice smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you these long, long ages.”

She beathed now deeply into her living body. Breathed. And sat up. And held Medusa, her Lucky girl, in an embrace of sacred flesh and living blood and two loving forms, united. Each destined, one for the other.

“I’ve been waiting… for you…” Anna said and shook herself in gladness. “For you… to look at me! And to see me… once again… and for real.”

And Annaborea hugged and kissed her Lucky girl. And Lucky kissed and hugged her Anna back, her own Annaborea. Then they looked into each other’s eyes, unfearing. No two pair of eyes ever longed, each for the other, with more devotion than these. Tears flowed from those eyes and merged into a sea of ecstasy. A sea ruled over by no evil, lecherous god. A sea with no murky depths, no scummy pools. Clear as glass. Green as turquoise. Crystal to the very depths. It was theirs alone. Anna and her girl, Lucky. They knelt in their snow globe, momentarily.

And Lucky cried once more, this time for joy. Anna held her Lucky girl and Lucky submitted, gladly.

The two friends knelt on the midden of this world. And the threshold of the next. And the wonder of it took them both.

 “It is time,” said Annaborea. “Come with me!”

 

The End.