Stone Blind(77)

‘That’s not true,’ Andromeda said. ‘How can you say that, when you have barely met him?’

‘You’re agreeing to marry him and you’ve barely met him,’ her mother retorted.

‘He’s on a quest to save his mother from being forced to marry a man she doesn’t like,’ Andromeda replied. She and Perseus had discussed everything important on the walk back to the palace. The things she didn’t already know about him she was sure she would love as much as everything she did know. How could she resist someone who was trying to save his mother from the very fate she herself had faced?

‘So he explained,’ said Cepheus. ‘He said it’s very urgent. A most perilous quest.’

‘Which the gods have assisted him with, because he is the son of Zeus and enjoys their favour,’ said Andromeda. ‘Which will make a nice change for me. Enjoying divine favour.’

‘And yet,’ said her mother, ‘he delayed his journey home so he could save you.’

‘Yes!’ cried Andromeda. ‘I don’t know how you can think that reflects poorly on him. I can only assume it’s because it reflects so badly on both of you.’

‘You said he wouldn’t put anyone else’s needs before yours,’ her mother replied. ‘But he chose to put the needs of a stranger – you – before the interests of his mother, to whom he is so devoted. Why was he not hurrying to save her? Why was he diverted from his journey home?’

‘Because he loved me the moment he saw me,’ Andromeda said.

‘He’d already abandoned his mother before he’d seen you,’ said Cassiope.

Andromeda stared at her in furious silence. Her father looked at the floor.

‘I hope I’m not late,’ said Perseus, as he stepped into the dining room.





Gorgoneion


I don’t know where it is that he stops after he leaves Ethiopia. It’s a coastline unlike any I have ever known. An island, then? Or the other side of the sea that lapped up against the Gorgons’ shore? I don’t know. I don’t see the land, because he takes me from the kibisis and puts me on the ground, facing the sea. He is still afraid of me, which is something, I suppose.

He doesn’t put me down carefully enough: he can tolerate gripping my snakes but only for a short time before he is repulsed by the sensation of warm reptile bodies writhing in his hands. The sand is as hard as the rocks in Medusa’s cave. The pain shoots up through my neck and I set my teeth. And the man who has not responded to anything I have said notices my discomfort. He walks away.

I wonder if he will leave me here. There are worse places to be, apart from the hardness of the ground, and I could get used to that. I have grown used to everything else, after all. I would stay here for ever, then, looking out over the waves and thinking about all I have lost: my sisters, my mother, my once self.

But then I hear his footsteps returning. He lifts me from the sand, and there is a rustling noise beneath me. When he puts me back down, the spot is softer. He has piled up leaves or seaweed fronds and made a cushion for my raw neck.

No.

You cannot be feeling affection for him at this point. You cannot. Can I remind you that my neck wouldn’t be raw if it weren’t for him? Gratitude is not something I can or will ever feel towards Perseus. But still, I rest on the seaweed mat and I look at the water and he also rests, because travelling with divine help is exhausting work, apparently. And when he decides it is time to travel to Seriphos at last, he opens the bag and lifts me into it. The seaweed cushion has hardened to a delicate sculpture of rock: I catch a glimpse of it before I am in darkness once again.





Dana?


Dana? had counted off the days her son was gone. She tried not to feel anxious because Zeus had always looked after her before. But she was not as young as she had been when she first caught his eye, and (unworthily, she said to herself, trying not to offend him even in her mind) she worried that she was now too old to have his attention and thus his help. He would be eyeing new girls now; how would he remember the mother of Perseus, whom he had saved from a prison and from a box and from the sea? But even if he didn’t remember Dana?, he would remember Perseus, she hoped. Zeus was generally proud of his sons, and defended them staunchly. And yet, why did they always need his defence? Because Hera was set against them and her fury was as uncontrollable as a raging ocean.

But, the hopeful side of her nature reasserted itself: Hera had not punished Dana? before. It had been her own father, Acrisius, who’d locked her up and then left her to drown. So if Hera was not angry with her, perhaps Perseus was safe and she was safe. And her son would come home and she would not have to marry a pompous old king who smelled of stale wine and self-regard.

But another day passed and she watched for the boats to return. Every time she hoped that Dictys would somehow have found Perseus sailing alongside him, heading for home. But each day, she watched his boat bobbing back towards the shore alone. And she knew that wherever Perseus was, he was not about to run up the hill to their house, desperate to tell his mother about whatever huge creatures they had seen in the ocean (Dictys had always been looking the wrong way at the crucial moment so missed the great monsters of the deep). And she smiled and shook her head: she was remembering a far younger Perseus than the one who had set out on his quest almost two months ago.