Childhood: that country we all come from, but can never pin precisely on the map. Describing my old home to Perseus was bringing back the first fourteen years of my life. How I’d been so innocent, how I’d walk under the moon with my puppy Argentus, loping with his long legs by my side, frightening away the hares that quivered in the reeds. How I’d probably had idle dreams that one day I would marry a man like Perseus.
I’d been a friendly, thoughtful child, who tucked her hair behind her ears to comb the shore for starfish, five-fingered white bellies echoing her own hand in a greeting when she picked them. I would sing songs with my mother, who would rise up and greet me occasionally from the sea. I helped Stheno and Euryale tie their nets, and the three of us would travel deep into the channel between the edge of Night and the rest of Oceanus, to catch marlin and herring, the occasional octopus.
I was a sailor, Perseus was right. I would sit up in our little boat, while Stheno and Euryale plunged down into the water, dancing in the glow. And after the nets were full enough for three, I would row back and my sisters would swim to shore, and we’d grill a tentacle or two, seasoned with the thyme that grew in mad abundance on the cliffs.
It was a sweet life. It was my life. I demanded nothing from anyone, except to occupy my little space far on the edge of Night. A fishing trip, a joke around the fire, a song from my water mother, the body of Argentus to curl up with when time to sleep. A dream.
‘And my dad’s a god too,’ said Perseus, snapping me out of a life long gone. The image of my happy boat speckled to nothingness. ‘Yet another thing we have in common.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Does he know you’re here?’
‘We don’t have a close relationship. I mean, he’s my dad, and everything, but it was my mother who brought me up.’
‘Does she know you’re here?’
Silence. Perseus cleared his throat. Was it distress, or anger, I could hear? It was ridiculous that we had to sit like this, either side of the entrance arch. But I had no choice. He’d take one look at my snakes and run a mile.
‘She doesn’t know where I am,’ said Perseus. ‘I … had to leave her. It’s a long story.’
I thought of the king Perseus had mentioned, the one who’d ruined his life. Some sixth sense – or was it my snakes? – was telling me I shouldn’t push it. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘And … have you come from very far?’
‘Yes.’ Perseus’s voice was quiet. ‘I don’t know if I can ever go back.’
Yet another thing we have in common, I thought. Keep it together, Medusa. Maybe you have some shared experiences, but it’s still better Perseus doesn’t know why you’re here. For how to explain, and where to begin?
He sounded so disconsolate, I had to think quickly how to cheer him up. ‘Tell me about your childhood,’ I said.
He laughed, and the sound weakened my bones. ‘It was definitely weirder than yours,’ he said.
‘Who says?’
‘I do. Listen, you might have a pair of immortal sisters, but—’
‘Go on, then,’ I said, feeling giddy. ‘Prove it.’
‘All right. My dad is … Zeus,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Zeus-Zeus? King of the gods?’
‘The very same.’
‘Wow.’
At least that explained the glowing aura that seemed to emanate from Perseus when he stood on the deck. Never mind being born with a silver spoon in his mouth; try a golden shovel. It was one thing we did not have in common. I grew up in happy obscurity under the moon, but Perseus had been drenched by the strongest beam of sun.
I laughed, the first time in four years. Oh the feel of it, the bubbles in my stomach, the fizzing sense of promise in my blood! I could have wept for joy. I still had it in me to laugh! Not many things since that moment have felt as sweet.
‘You don’t believe me?’ said Perseus.
‘Oh, I believe you,’ I replied.
‘My mother’s called Dana?,’ he went on. ‘She’d like you.’
‘How can you know?’ I asked, grateful that Perseus couldn’t see my blushing. Daphne, my particularly handsome serpent, with her black and gold markings, butted my forehead as if drilling me to take the compliment.
‘Just a hunch,’ said Perseus. ‘Before I was born, her father locked her in a tower.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’d been told a prophecy that any son born of his daughter would end up killing him.’
‘And was it true?’
‘I’m not a murderer, Merina,’ he said harshly.
‘Of course you’re not,’ I said. I cringed: how could I have offended him like that? ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK. As far as I’m concerned, it’s up to you whether or not to believe what other people predict for your future. People will always have their own motives. But my old grandpa soaked up every word. Became obsessed with this prophecy. It was so unfair. My mother’s never forgiven him. She was a woman who’d done nothing wrong except exist.’
‘Except exist,’ I echoed in a whisper.
I closed my eyes, Argentus curled at my feet. I was lulled by the sweetness of Perseus’s voice, by the aftermath of my own laughter, by the gulls mewling to each other, waiting for the last pickings of our fish. I badly wanted to know why Perseus had been on that boat of his – what was this mission he was on? What was it that had carried, or dragged him here?
‘My grandfather was always terrified of losing importance, having his power taken away by someone younger,’ Perseus continued. ‘That prophecy made him dance to the tune of his own fear – that an unborn brat might strip him down like an old tree to use his bones for firewood. His solution was to lock my mother in a tower made of bronze, forbidding her to marry or to have any children, and vowing that he would never set her free.’
‘I guess being old doesn’t kill one’s sense of the dramatic,’ I said.
‘Ha, certainly not. It only seems to make it worse.’
I imagined Dana? in her tower, one tiny window to let in the light. Her nose tipped to breathe the fresh air of the outside world, her ears pricked for daily noises that to her might now sound elegiac. A pair of stray dogs, rummaging through a pile of vegetable cuttings in the hope of a scrap of meat; a toddler’s unbridled wail; the laughter of a group of friends, standing on a corner. I could taste Dana?’s loneliness because it tasted exactly the same as mine.
‘And then,’ said Perseus, sounding pleased with himself, ‘Zeus noticed her.’
Like Poseidon noticed me. I shuddered, pushing my mind away from such thoughts.
‘He shone through her window like one of those sunbeams,’ Perseus said. ‘He surveyed her predicament. He told my mother that her life in that tower would be like living in a paradise, that the child they would have together would be the luckiest boy this side of Night. That child turned out to be me.’
‘And are you?’
‘Am I what?’
‘The luckiest boy this side of Night?’
‘Let’s just say, in the last few hours I’m definitely feeling luckier,’ Perseus said, a smile in his voice.
Echo, my coral-coloured little snake, woke up and shot straight as a dart in Perseus’s direction. I peeled her slowly back in.
‘So your mother … agreed to Zeus’s offer?’ I said. ‘Not everyone does.’
‘She was tired of men and their promises,’ said Perseus. ‘And she thought about it for a long time. But yes, she agreed.’
I imagined Dana?, staring around the narrow space of her tower. ‘At least Zeus asked,’ I said. ‘Which is … unusual.’
‘Well … you know,’ said Perseus, sounding a little uncertain in the face of my weak enthusiasm. ‘Anything was better than living out her days in a tower.’
I was silent.
‘I wasn’t there, Merina,’ Perseus said, sounding prickly. ‘It didn’t happen to me.’
‘It would never happen to you,’ I said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘My mother wanted her life back,’ he went on, his voice rising. ‘She wanted her imagination reignited. All her options had been taken from her.’
‘And so, like so many women before and since, she was forced into a corner and she made the timeless bargain?’
There was silence on the other side of the rock.
‘What timeless bargain?’ said Perseus.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I could never explain to this golden, glowing boy what it was like to have bad luck pile up at your feet again and again until you felt you were drowning in your own sorrow.
‘You think I had it easy, don’t you?’ he said suddenly.