‘You should not anger her further,’ Medusa had begged. Waves were smashing against the hull as the ship was battered from side to side. She held a soaked cloth to Stheno’s skin in an attempt to abate the burning.
‘Why? What more can she do to us?’ Euryale lifted her head and hands to the sky. ‘Do you wish to kill us? Where are you now, oh Mighty One? Finish what you have started, or I will cast on you a worse fate than your beloved titan, Prometheus.’
‘Stop your taunting, Euryale.’ The waves grew stronger, smashing harder and harder, and beads of water seeped through the planks, dripping onto the floor. ‘Stop it. They will hear you.’
‘I want them to hear me. I want them to see what their precious goddess has done.’
‘Stop it!’ Medusa struck her sister with an open palm. The sting spread up through her arm. Euryale’s mouth fell open, only to snap back together in a twisted sneer.
‘Even now, you would side with her? Even after everything?’
‘I am siding with you, Euryale. I am trying to protect you.’
Euryale snorted in response, but her tirade, for the moment at least, had stopped. It would be better when they were away from people, Medusa told herself. It would be better when they no longer had to skulk in the shadows, listening to sounds of laughter and merriment up on the deck – something none of them would ever know. It would be better when they were away from the type of life they could never again be part of. And for a while, it was.
The captain of their last boat had refused to go farther than Cithene and, instead, offered – for a price – the use of a small rowing boat. They launched at night, Medusa using a new-found strength to row them towards the setting sun. For three full nights and days, she rowed, never tiring, never growing weak, until, in the darkness, Medusa picked out the silhouette of an island, upon which she could see not a single light flickering.
‘Here. We will make our home here,’ she said.
‘There is nothing here,’ Euryale replied.
‘No, this is plenty.’ Medusa plunged her feet into the water and began to drag the boat ashore, the hull scraping against the stones in the shallows. ‘There is shelter. There are some trees and, listen, is that the sound of goats?’
Even Stheno stopped her whimpering and tilted her head towards the island, catching the sound on the breeze.
‘There are goats,’ she said, and for the first time, the tiniest glimmer of hope edged its way into her thoughts.
‘Surely goats mean people?’ Euryale’s mind formed the same conclusion as Medusa, but she had already seen past it.
‘No. I don’t think so. I do not think there have been men here for a while.’
Bending over, she picked up a handful of shingles and shells from the shore. Like her sight and hearing, her sense of smell had grown more acute with each passing day. The scent on the shells was only of earth, of salt and seaweed, fish and fresh rainwater. And of something comforting. Safety from the world.
‘I think we will be safe here,’ she said.
During the first month on the island, a rhythm formed. Euryale continued with her nightly tirade to the Goddess, while Stheno began to offer the odd word, sometimes in happiness, other times in grief. She would spend most of her time on one of the far outcrops, watching the goats, beckoning them over with her childlike noises. It was a caricature; this serpent-haired beast, barely able to straighten her back anymore, huddled over like an old hag calling to the goats with the words of a child. She whiled away hour after hour in that manner, although the serpents ensured she never got close enough to tame the animals. And Medusa, on that sparse rocky sanctuary, took up her mantle, the guiding ways of the priestesses still ingrained deep within her.
Under the moonlight, she would tell her sisters stories from the temple; of the people and the gods and the mischief they made. Her sisters listened, eyes wide, snakes silent. Only then, as the light of the fire danced in their eyes, was it possible to see them as a family of poor orphans like so many others. A family who relished each other’s company and time. Stheno would lay her head down, often on Euryale’s lap, but sometimes against Medusa’s shoulders. These were the times when Medusa would feel a glimmer of hope. A flicker of what could be. The goats would grow used to them, she told herself and maybe, when spring came, they would take a kid from her mother and raise it so that it knew the kindness of Stheno’s hand. Then they would have milk and make cheese and spend their days as any other women might do on an island such as theirs.
Occasionally, during her tales, her sisters asked her questions about the time before the temple, when they were little. They asked Medusa what she remembered of them as new-borns, as toddlers; favourite foods they ate, amusing anecdotes she could remember. These were the moments Medusa longed for the most; a chance to rebuild the connection that had been absent for so long.
‘You must have tales that you can tell me too?’ she would say after finishing a story on how Euryale had gorged herself on pomegranates until she was sick. ‘How about over harvest? Or at the feasts of the gods? Do you not have stories from then that you could tell me?’ As always, she waited, heart in mouth, wishing for a glimpse into those years she had lost with her parents. But her sisters remained silent. The silence would swell and grow until the comfortable ease between them was lost. In the tension, the serpents would start to stir and twitch, lurching for
