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I reach the cave and the gloom drags me in.
Shadows reach upwards from the glistening walls to press against the soft morning daylight, swiftly fading as I plunge deeper into the earth. I am invisible – Hades’ helm took care of that – so I don’t notice, as others did before, how the darkness takes hold of your form and eventually robs you of it. Mine is already lost.
With Hermes’ winged sandals I glide silently, unnoticeably through the void – a mind without a body. I dimly wonder if this is what it would feel like to be deprived of all five senses.
My mind drifts to my mother. If I am a hook cast into the sea, then she is the hand that will reel me back to the surface where she waits, poised to embrace and smiling. I try to picture her smile, though the memory is hazy and tinged with the golden glow of a better time. The image shifts to her face as it was when I last saw her, wishing me farewell, with King Polydectes’ hand firmly pressed on her right shoulder. The look she gave me was filled with terror, but whether it was for my sake or hers, I couldn’t tell.
Gradually I notice the thick darkness give way to a delicate flickering of torchlight. At the end of the tunnel, a circle of bronze light widens into a chamber like a mixing-bowl. The rim is dotted with heaps of gold, gleaming in the light of the sconces, which lick the wet stone every five or so paces.
I know why I’m here, so I don’t need to wonder why this chamber is so well-lit. I spot the reason why anyway: in the belly of the crater, poking out of a pile of pallid gravel and dust like the ash at the bottom of a hearth-fire, is a stone hand. As I gaze into the pit, I spot another hand, as well as a sandaled foot, and what looks like the left side of a nobleman’s head. The bowl is marred by grooves and skid marks where the stone broke apart as it fell, when these men were pushed to their final end – not to their deaths, since that happened the moment they became stone.
I can glide straight over the pit, but I choose to curve around to one side anyway, not wanting to go near that scene I see below me. On the opposite side of the chamber is another narrow tunnel, this one chiselled and smooth rather than natural. It’s time, I think to myself, and I heft my polished bronze shield from its position slung across my back. Slowed by the weight of the shield in my outstretched arm, I rotate around so I am facing the pit once again, and then proceed backwards.
The task is simple. At the end of this passage, I know I will find the monster sleeping. Using the shield as a mirror, I will manoeuvre in such a way as to cut off her head, and I will flee, bearing the prize that will save my mother. It will be painless, quick, and merciful, and as long as I do everything right, I will not be in any danger. I have the gods on my side – this quest was fated to succeed.
In the reflection, a modest room emerges: a simple rectangle, with a mess of bedding in the middle of the floor. The only fixture is a plain stone altar in one corner near the entrance, where a fire silently blazes – it’s hard to tell down here, but it seems to be burning plain white, devoid of colour as well as sound. It sheds a ghostly light on the room’s centre. I adjust my grip on the shield and breathe deeply, preparing to tilt it upwards so I can see the sleeping figure. While I won’t be harmed, the stories say that fear will strike my heart all the same, and I will be frozen like stone. Trembling and determined, I make the shift.
The shield nearly slips between my numb fingers. I sit down sharply, straining to control my heartbeat which seems to thud in my very skull. It’s not fear that overcomes me, but something similar – shock. Whatever I expected to see, whatever I thought I was going to feel-
I force myself to look at the shield again, and I can see them – them. One lies on her right side, white owl’s wings folded behind her back. Her hair is a mass of brown snakes, spilling upwards onto the pillow she rests on. Her face – I have to swallow hard – is something twisted, inhuman. I can feel the power it radiates burning into my eyes, into my very soul. As I master my breathing, the pain lessens, and I am dimly aware of a kind of ghastly beauty in her visage. Still, I long to look away, and my eyes slide onto the other figure.
She lies on her left, facing the Gorgon. At first, I see nothing unusual about the plainly-clad, barefoot girl, but then I notice something off about the shadows on her face. As I squint and blink, straining to see closer in the mirror, I realise they are scars – a messily healed, pudgy disarray of lines and pits below her brow, where her eyes should have been. The second woman is blind.
Her left hand is curled just before Medusa’s face, as if she fell asleep while reaching to brush her lips. Her other hand is wound up with Medusa’s, gentle but tight, resting in between their sleeping forms. Their ankles are crossed over each other’s, as if, finding that their closeness was not enough, they reached out in their sleep and secured themselves to one another.
My mind races faster than I can perceive it. Is this a test, or am I the first to know? What does this mean for my task? For my mother?
I haven’t moved a muscle, but it feels like I have run the length of a stadium. I stand up and move closer, stumbling in the strange light. This seems like the right spot – I draw my sword –
And in the reflection I see their faces, perfectly framed by the arc of my shield. Their smiles are so unlike my mother’s, which was broad and warm, I remember it now. Theirs are soft, telling of a kind of sweet and peaceful sadness. I trace my eyes over the scene – the monster, the blind girl, the bed, the twisted hands – and I have to acknowledge that I am looking at something I don’t understand.
Perhaps I am too young? But I have never been too young for anything – not danger, not violence, not the will of the gods. Perhaps – and this new thought scares me, shakes me in a way that feels like I am an hourglass overturned – perhaps I have found something that even the gods cannot understand.
This time I do drop my shield. The sound reverberates across the stones and I tense painfully, waiting to hear the figures stir, but nothing comes. I suppose it takes more than that to break divine favour. My breathing is sharp and ragged now, because my soul is being twisted in a way it never should. I promised I would do anything to save my mother. I never thought… I never thought.
What happens next isn’t planned. All I can hear is the screaming of blood in my ears and the echo of my footsteps as I walk, not float, to the altar. My knees crash to the floor before it. If noise won’t wake them, then I won’t stay quiet.
“Athena!” I shout, and I hardly recognise my broken voice. “I cannot see this task through.”
I steel myself, knowing that what I am about to say could end me in an instant.
“I don’t yet know why, but this- this is wrong. I love my mother…” the sob overtakes my throat before I notice it coming, and I have to weep before I can regain composure.
“… but I should know better. You… should know better.”
Someone is listening. My heart erupts in pain like a fist has closed around it, and I know I’m seconds from death.
“I will pay the price for my mother,” I gasp, staring into the white flame, “but you will not hurt these people. I offer instead… a sacrifice…”
The sword is still in my right hand. I watch it rise, peak, and fall as I swing it downwards, past where my left hand is tightly pressed to surface of the altar. The blade passes straight through my wrist and sparks against the stone floor, and I see the clean ends of bone become visible, smell the spray of blood, long before I feel the pain. Then the altar fire explodes, and I slip to the floor, feeling as if my very soul is draining out of my wrist, seeing the part of myself that is no longer attached disappear in flame.
Gradually, I start to notice things. The cool stone under my back, the smell of damp. My own breath sinking in and out of my body. I roll my head to look at my arm, and since the helm of darkness has clattered away across the floor I see that my wrist is no longer bleeding – the stump is clean and healed over, as if I was born without a hand.
I sit up. The pain is gone. On the altar, sitting in the fire which has once again settled to a quiet white flicker, is a large sphere matted with thin brown snakes. I realise I am staring at the back of Medusa’s head.
I quickly look over my shoulder – foolish – but luckily she is facing away, her head and body perfectly intact. I turn back, and the pieces fit into place. Athena has accepted my sacrifice, and transformed it into the prize I need.
“Thank you,” I say to the ceiling, which doesn’t answer.
Carefully, one-handedly, I wrap the object up in my cloak and tie it shut. I can only carry one object now, so I decide to leave the bloodied sword, but I sling the shield back over my shoulder once again. Before I do, I use it to take one last look at the sleeping pair.
I can still see it, that current between them that I don’t yet understand. I wonder if I will ever find it again, in my life outside this cave.
“I’m sorry,” I tell their reflections. “I hope…”
A thought occurs to me, and I take the helm from where it fell and place it reverently at the foot of their bed. Maybe they can find a better use for it than I can.
Then I am once again floating, rising out of that darkened throat, my mother’s rescue in my right hand.