Serpent and Stone

Chapter 17

As we returned from another hard lesson of sword training, I finally found the nerve to ask Perseus the question that had burned in my mind for the past weeks, eager yet afraid to hear the answer. Now I knew it was time to ask. No matter what he said, no matter how painful or terrifying it was, I needed to hear it.

"What do people in the cities say about Medusa?" I asked him. He found his way to the edge of the bed on his own, knowing the space well enough now to not need my guidance. He turned and cocked his head in confusion at my question.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what's known about her?" I focused all of my concentration on making the question sound casual, to make it seem like it mattered nothing to me, nothing but an idle curiosity. I managed to keep my voice steady, but my hands trembled just slightly at my sides. "Where did this monster come from?"

Perseus' curious gaze relaxed into understanding. He sighed heavily.

"I'm surprised you haven't already heard the story." I stiffened, scrambling to come up with some suitable excuse, but he provided one for me. "But I suppose it would be difficult to hear of it living so far from the outside world."

"Yes, it is," I murmured quietly in agreement. I drifted closer, sitting upon the stool next to the bed and waiting anxiously for him to speak.

"Twenty years ago, this temple that you live in was a sacred place dedicated to Athena," he began. My snakes recoiled at the mere sound of that wretched goddess' name. My own muscles clenched in mingled hatred and fear. I calmed the snakes and myself down by breathing in slowly. Perseus continued the tale. "Several priestesses resided here, maintaining the temple and devoting their entire lives to the worship of the great grey-eyed goddess. The job of a priestess is nothing to be taken lightly. In dedicating their lives to the goddess, they vow to remain maidens as she did, to never marry or have children. It's a sacred vow, one the goddess guards jealously."

I crossed my arms over my chest, squeezing myself so tightly that my nails began to bite into the skin of my arm. Perseus went on, oblivious.

"Twenty years ago, one of the priestesses broke her vow. This was not just any woman, but Athena's very favorite priestess. Poseidon, Athena's bitter rival, had concocted a plan to humiliate the goddess by seducing the priestess into abandoning her sacred promise. Poseidon's plan succeeded. Falling for the ocean god's tricks, the priestess betrayed Athena. Blind with rage, Athena sought to punish the priestess. She struck the woman with magic, turning her beautiful hair into horrid, writhing snakes, and she cursed her to turn anyone who laid eyes on her to stone. The priestess had become the monster Medusa, who terrorizes innocent men and women who stumble upon her shores even to this very day."

Faces flashed before my eyes, sharp as a knife. A group of lost sailors, weak and weary from a shipwreck off shore, a fisherman with gray hair and kindly eyes, a woman and her children washed ashore from a passing merchant ship... There had been many of them over the years, so many that I should have begun to lose track. I never did, never could. Their horrified expressions were marked in my mind like a brand, permanent and immovable. It was part of my punishment, my misery to remember them all. I couldn't forget a single one.

I swallowed thickly, pushing away the painful memories that Perseus' retelling had conjured and forcing myself to focus instead on his story and what it meant.

I don't know what I had been expecting, but I was mildly surprised that so many parts of the story rang true. The main difference being, of course, that people thought that I was my mother, that priestess of Athena who had broken her vow. She had been the one taken in by the sea god's seduction, she had been the one punished by Athena; punished, but not cursed.

Soon after Athena revoked my mother's prophetic visions and powers as priestess, my mother became pregnant. Every day, she told me, she'd woken with panic and fear, wondering if that would be the day Athena would strike her down with divine punishment. She hardly slept for those months, and only managed to force herself to eat for my sake.

But the punishment never came- no sudden illness came to bring her misery and pain, no divine fire appeared to burn her beautiful face. The fact that nothing came at all only made it worse, in a way. The wait itself was torture.

It was only when I was finally born, with the snakes writhing in my hair and molten gold swirling in my eyes that it had finally made sense. My curse was her punishment.

For a long time, I didn't understand it. Why did Athena punish me instead of my mother? Why someone who was unequivocally innocent of any wrongdoings?

But over time, I did come to understand. In the times when I mentioned leaving the island and something in my mother's eyes would shatter like glass, in the times when I caught her crying alone to herself at night in thick, shaking sobs. I understood that there was something worse than being cursed: your child being cursed, and having to live with the fact that it was all because of your actions. The books and stories always said that Athena was wise, but they had always spoke of it as a good thing. But I had seen how that wisdom, that knowledge could hurt and torture. It could give her fair and just judgement, yes, but it also made her cunning in her cruelty.

"Andromeda?"

I jolted in my seat, my distant gaze darting back to Perseus. He frowned in my direction, his expression inquisitive.

"You were quiet," he said. "Is something wrong?"

I stilled. "No," I said after a moment. "I was just thinking about the story." I paused. "You don't feel bad for her at all? It was Poseidon who seduced her and tricked her- it was Poseidon who Athena should have punished. Don't you think she feels... anguished?"

Perseus was silent. His blue eyes looked toward me with a strange expression. "Even if it was unjust, she can't feel anything about it now. She's a monster, without a consciousness or human mind- little more than a beast. And if she were anguished, all that can be done is to free her from her misery in death."

I froze in place at his grotesque words. My hands began to tremble again, but this time, instead of the usual fear, a righteous fury rose in me. My blood boiled, and my snakes reared their heads in reflection of my anger. Who was he to call me a mindless beast, a creature who felt no pain or loneliness or sorrow? He had no idea what he was talking about, absolutely no idea, and it enraged me that he spoke so easily of my inhumanity.

"You speak as if you know, yet you could never know," I said, my voice as hard as iron. "Why couldn't monsters have feelings, or thoughts like humans? Why couldn't they think with a human mind? Just because the gods have cursed their forms, it doesn't mean they can change their souls with it."

Perseus blinked at me, an expression of surprise overtaking his features. His brows raised and his eyes widened at my words. "You're talking about monsters, Andromeda," he pushed back. "Vicious creatures that live only to kill men, women, and children, to destroy cities."

"And what do you think that army of yours does?"

His expression froze before it darkened. "That's different-"

"Of course it is," I snapped bitterly, cutting him off. "It's always different when you're the one doing the killing, isn't it?" I paused, letting my words sink in. He stared into the distance with tensed shoulders, his eyes burning. I didn't care- let him be angry. I was the one who had been wronged. "What's the difference between you and a monster, Perseus? At least when the monster kills, it doesn't call it victory or justice. It knows better than you that death is death, no matter what king gives the order or what cause you've dreamed up to justify it. So which of you is the real monster?"

He said nothing, his lips pressed into a thin line, his dark glower aimed right at me. I huffed, my little tirade having took the breath right out of me. It felt good to say it out loud, to confront him and the stories he'd been told of me. I didn't care what he thought, whether he was outraged or whether he thought me ignorant or evil. Stating it outright felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and I could sit a little taller.

"I'm going out," I murmured, my voice so low it was almost a growl. I stood abruptly from my stool and strode toward the temple entrance before Perseus had a chance to try and stop me. "I'll be back soon," I threw over my shoulder. Then I found my way outside into the night air and was gone.