Stone Blind(6)

And every day after that, as the angry purple welt on Medusa’s skin faded, she would look at the place where the rock had been as she rubbed the itching scar. And then she would smile, because it could not hurt her again. Euryale had seen to that.

When Sthenno summoned her sisters to her – Euryale swooping down from the skies, Medusa running out from her cave – she would greet them the same way: we are one, but we are many. Medusa would always reply as though she had asked a question (which she had not): three isn’t many. And Sthenno would smile and reach down to stroke her sister’s beautiful hair, curling in thick dark ringlets around her face. You are many all on your own.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the little girl said. ‘I’m just me.’

And then one day, she said, ‘Are we always three?’

‘What?’ Sthenno didn’t understand.

‘Will we ever be more than three?’ Medusa asked. She had been watching the sheep which this summer had five lambs between them. Last year there had been only two.

‘No, darling. We’ll always be three,’ Sthenno replied. Medusa saw the shadow cross her sister’s face, but she didn’t understand it.

‘Who gave birth to me?’

Sthenno looked at Euryale, who looked at the sheep.

‘Ceto,’ said Sthenno.

‘Who is that?’

Sthenno shrugged and said, ‘Your mother. Our mother too.’

‘But I’ve never seen her,’ said Medusa. ‘How can she be my mother? I thought you were my mother.’ She looked between the two of them. ‘If she’s my mother, why isn’t she here?’

They had looked forward to her talking. But now Sthenno felt there should be more time between a child beginning to speak and a child asking questions of every single thing she could see or not see, from the birds in the sky to the wind in her hair. Why, why, why. Sthenno had tried to tell Medusa she didn’t know why cormorants flew closer to the shore than other birds, or why their sure-footed sheep liked eating grass when it tasted bad to Medusa, or why the sea was colder than the sand when the sun shone equally on both. Sthenno had never even noticed these things. But a lack of answers didn’t deter Medusa from asking more and more questions. Sthenno looked at her sister expectantly.

‘They’re in the sea,’ said Euryale.

‘Who is they?’

‘Our parents. You have two parents, a mother and a father.’

Medusa frowned. ‘Are they fish?’ she asked.

Euryale considered the question. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not fish.’

The little girl began to cry. The two sisters looked at one another in alarm. They had grown accustomed to her precarious moods, but it still seemed odd to weep over not having fish for parents. The more perplexed they became, the harder Medusa sobbed.

‘You wouldn’t want fish for parents,’ said Sthenno, putting her arm around her child. ‘How would you tell one fish from another? You wouldn’t know if it was your father or not.’

‘But fish are the only things that live in the sea!’ Medusa wailed.

‘No they aren’t,’ Euryale said. ‘Why would you say that? Because fish are all you have seen in the sea, because they come closest to the shore where you live. But the sea extends far beyond what you can see from here. It is wide and deep and full of creatures and places you have never imagined. Phorcys and Ceto live in the deepest realms of the ocean.’

‘But I couldn’t live there?’

‘No,’ said Sthenno quickly. ‘You would drown if you tried. Promise you will never go past the rocks you know.’ She pointed at the huge rocks that formed the sides of their bay.

Medusa nodded. ‘I promise. Could you live in the sea?’

Every answer created more questions. Euryale flexed her wings. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Wet wings would be too heavy to fly, I think.’ Sthenno nodded in agreement, because she had no idea.

‘And that’s why we all live here together?’ Medusa asked. ‘Because we can’t live in the sea and they can’t live on the land?’

‘That’s right,’ Euryale said.

‘Even though they aren’t fish?’

‘They aren’t fish.’

‘What do they look like?’ Medusa asked. ‘Are they like you?’

Euryale thought for a moment. ‘No, not like us,’ she said. ‘They are not Gorgons. Phorcys is a sea god, he doesn’t have wings. He has scales. And huge claws instead of legs. Ceto is—’ Euryale raised her bushy eyebrows at Sthenno, who had no answer for her. ‘I don’t know exactly how to describe Ceto,’ Euryale said. ‘We have never seen her.’

‘Never?’

‘She lives in the depths of the ocean, Medusa. None of her children have ever seen her.’

Medusa sat quietly, her questions finally stilled. And her sisters hoped once again that they had kept her from feeling what they knew to be true: that she was a freak whose birth had horrified both parents. Sthenno was immortal, Euryale was immortal, their parents, grandparents, siblings were immortal. Everyone was immortal except Medusa, and creatures that no Gorgon would ever pay any heed.

But now, here they were. Euryale tending her flocks like a shepherd boy. The two of them anxiously discussing the milk yield. Sthenno hanging the dried skins of cattle across the front of their cave so that Medusa could keep warm at night, driving them into the rock with her hard talon. Everything about their days had become different once they took on the task of raising Medusa.