The Sixth Life of Medusa

30. Petrifying Blood

The room was a mess. On the work surface, shelves, and floor lay dead bees. Medusa massaged the back of her neck and groaned. This would be a chore to clean.

Contrary to Nestor's advice, she had spent hours in the annexe. Under Clotho's iron supervision, she laboured over ten writing needles, carefully etching runic markings before dipping them in venom. Backbreaking work but she would take that a thousand times over the method she used to get the bees' venom. Even now, the bitter taste lingered on her tongue. Ugh.

Did I have to eat the queen? Medusa asked, her stomach churning as the unpleasant memory returned. She had eaten bugs in her second life but never a live one packed with aether. I can still taste it.

Clotho laughed for the first time in hours. You eat honey but can't eat what makes honey.

What sort of wacky logic is that?

It was alive! It... it wiggled in my mouth, Medusa replied hotly. If she hadn't eaten the queen in her dimension she would have died instantly. The venom had paralysed her mouth and throat, and she was already choking on saliva before the symptoms began to fade. A disgusting, terrifying experience she would never ever repeat.

Eating it dead would have lessened the effect, Clotho replied, laughter still in her voice.

Medusa's focus shifted from the needles to a beaker holding thinned blood. Eating the queen led to the death of its colony and a permanent change in her blood. From stone gaze to petrifying blood. At least, I chose this, not some curse forced on me.

Yet your curse remains, replied rationality. You can't escape this fate. You're already a beast.

No, I'm not. Right now she had normal hands and feet, real hair. Completely human. The gorgon was in a past that never happened.

Curses follow the soul, not the body. The voice argued. If it never happened, why are you here? Why pursue revenge? Denial is stupid.

Biting the inside of her lower lip, Medusa opened her eyes and bleakly stared at the needles. This kind of thinking. Arguing with herself. Expecting the worst. Remembering the past. She thought it had lessened when she returned to Cosmolith.

Cracks formed across the walls she set up, and a memory escaped.

"Ruined child. It grieves me to send you away."

The snakes did not react when Athena brushed away a tear that slipped past the soaked blindfold.

"If I could cancel the curse, I would have. But your purity is gone."

Medusa focused on the sound of the lapping waves and the smell of the ocean—anything to keep her mind blank. Around her neck was an iron band with a long chain connected to a sea vessel.

Even if she miraculously gained the ability to speak past the beastly screeches, she would have no words. This bone-deep feeling of self-disgust, like maggots burrowing in her marrows. What he did to her. All the people she had murdered.

Medusa.

She flinched, snatched back to the present at the sound of Clotho's voice.

What is it? Something was wrong just now. Speak.

I... it's nothing. Medusa rubbed her eyes as her heart hammered against her chest. The nightmares may come tonight.

A glance at the water clock showed four hours had passed. It would soon be time for her training with Nestor, but her eyes were bleary from peering through the magnifying lens and etching rune after rune. Is there an antivenom?