Once, they had tried to drown themselves; they walked out at low tide and waited to be swept away by the surge of the current. And swept away they had been. Submerged into the icy grey depths. Water had filled their lungs again and again. Spluttering and choking, their eyes burned from the salt as they coughed and cried and prayed for the end. But no respite ever came. All their struggles were to no avail. When morning arrived, their bodies, weak from the hours of floundering and sinking beneath the waves, were left basking on the shingled shoreline. Twice more, Medusa’s stores of hemlock went missing. She didn’t ask about it. She knew from the increased bitterness which emanated from Euryale during the days that followed that another plan had failed. The plans were all of Euryale’s making, of that Medusa was certain.
‘Why do you look at me like that?’ Euryale asked after Medusa had once again found them washed up on the shore. Strands of seagrass clung to their scalps, tangling within the tangle of the snakes like a forest floor after a storm. ‘If you had any love left, you would have done this for us yourself. Slit our throats while we slept.’
Medusa opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. There was little she could say; it was the truth. But she would not be held responsible for any more deaths. Not in all eternity, no matter how much they begged her.
While Euryale grew more vocal in her bitterness and disdain, Stheno withdrew deeper into herself. She had lost her love of nature, and of the birds and the insects that scuttled over the rocks. For hours, she would sit in the cave, scratching her nails against the stone walls, carving out divots in the rocks if not her own skin. Rather than letting the beetles and spiders crawl over her hands, she would squash them between her thumb and fingertips, and smear what remained against the walls. Her body had grown worse with its ailments. Her joints were brittle and stiff, her knees weak and bowing.
‘Talk to me,’ Medusa would beg, resting her hand on her knees, and feeling the heat seep away from her skin.
‘What is there to talk about?’ Stheno replied.
‘Anything. Please. Just tell me how you are feeling.’
Her chin tilted, and her eyes moved towards Medusa. Where once they had glimmered with light and life, there were now nothing more than black vacuums.
‘Can I still feel?’ she asked.
The night the first heroes came, Stheno’s pain was at its height. Her snakes stood on end, squealing out into the darkness, their cries echoing off the cliffs, filling the air with their agony. Euryale had disappeared outside, screaming at the winds as they blew in from the west. All day long, the wind had been howling fierce calls that whipped up the foam on the sea, although it had refused to break into a storm. Applying conjecture to her rudimentary knowledge, Medusa fashioned some primitive tonics and ointments which she forced down her sister’s throat and applied to the sores on her back, which had now grown so large that they split the skin open. Slick with sweat, Stheno’s forehead burned to touch. Her words came out as choking coughs as her eyes rolled back and forth in their sockets. Medusa had seen a hundred fevers from her time as a priestess; fevers where the men’s skin turned white, and their eyes shone yellow, and where foam frothed in the victims’ mouths. Fevers where blisters broke out on their tongues and caused their bodies to convulse in pain. Fevers that she knew would break and find the patient well enough in a month or so, and fevers where she stayed by their side and prayed to the Goddess for a gentle passing. This was beyond even that. Water steamed on Stheno’s pallid forehead. Her lips and cheeks drained white; her bloodshot eyes tinged with green.
‘We just need to cool the fever,’ Medusa spoke to herself, for she doubted Stheno still had the ability to decipher words. ‘I’ll take you to the water. The sea will help. Here, place your arms around me.’
Kneeling to the ground, Medusa lifted her sister off the floor. With Stheno’s body limp in her arms, Medusa picked her way down to the shoreline, placing her down in the shallows, where the waves lapped over her twisted body. The wind continued to battle as the first drops of rain began to fall.
‘I... I…’ A spluttering sound rose from Stheno’s lips.
‘Rest. Rest. Do not try to speak,’ Medusa urged. But the coughing continued until she finally choked out the words so desperate on her tongue.
‘Kill me. Kill me,’ Stheno said.
The pain of a thousand daggers struck Medusa where her heart had once been.
‘Shhh, shhh.’ Scooping water over the snakes, Medusa scoured the hill for signs of Euryale. The fact that she had chosen not to be with her sister at a time like this only served to show how far she had fallen. The last few days, she had grown even more distant. Like Stheno, her afflictions had worsened, although she at least fought to hide it from Medusa.
The shallow wheeze of Stheno’s breaths were barely audible above her groaning and the wind. Medusa leaned in to wipe some of the crusted foam from her skin when another scream shot up into the night. Medusa jolted, jerking her sister’s head as the cry came again.
‘Euryale?’
The screams grew in volume. At the same instant, Stheno’s wails became a cacophony. From across the sea came the growling crashes of thunder. Rain pelted down, springing up from the shingle beach. Dizziness blurred Medusa’s vision.
