Quicksilver (4 page)

ELEVEN

Perseus set to practicing, and Athena’s shield became an oval flame, flickering in the noonday sun. I watched him for signs of mental imbalance, but if the sickle was doing anything, it seemed to be boosting his strength and skill. Before long he was handling both weapons with ease.

Meanwhile, Medusa was curled up in a cool, dark corner of her cave, asleep against the afternoon heat. Athena, who took a fitful, vengeful interest in Medusa’s habits, had told me this herself, saying it would be the perfect time to attack. I decided to follow her advice.

“Perseus!” I beckoned. “Let’s go in.” I held out my winged sandals. “Put these on. They’ll help you, too.” Stammering thanks, he laid down the sickle and knelt to tie on the sandals.

A wicked impulse seized me. I grabbed the sickle and swung it over his head, close enough to cut his short hair even shorter. He yelped, clutching at his pate, which now boasted a large, angry pink bald spot.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, not sorry at all. “Didn’t mean to hit you.”

He rubbed his head, looking stricken.
That will teach
you to be rude to an Immortal,
I thought. Then I softened. I am not a grudge-bearing god. “Stand up and try them,” I said, indicating the sandals.

He hastened to obey. After lacing them up quickly, he took a few short steps in my direction. They lifted him a hand’s breadth above the ground and his face went slack with delight.

“Jump,” I said, and he did, whooping like a loon when he shot into the air.

“Quiet!” I waved him down. “She’s asleep! Now keep silent and practice with everything—the shield, the sickle, and the sandals.” As I handed back the sickle, I had a lovely burst of inspiration. “By the way,” I said, “you should know that the sickle was made for the gods. Its touch is slow poison to mortals.” It was one of my better lies, and he blanched.

“You . . . you didn’t tell me that before.”

“Slipped my mind.” I shrugged.

“What about the sandals?” He couldn’t hide the alarm in his voice.

“They won’t hurt you. But the sickle . . .” I shook my head warningly. It worked; he took hold of the thing as warily as if it were an angry viper, all traces of possessiveness gone.

“Now show me what you can do,” I said. “And hurry. We should attack while she’s napping. I hear she’s especially nasty when she wakes.”

As we walked to the cave a few minutes later, I said, “Don’t look at her face even after she’s dead. It will still have the power to kill.”

“Athena told me that,” Perseus replied, averting his eyes from the hapless creatures Medusa had already turned to stone. There were many: men drawing swords, nocking bows, and brandishing spears; a cluster of ragged children; a pack of dogs, caught in mid-snarl; two ancient women carrying market baskets; and a trio of buzzards. All were rain-streaked. Some were mossy, which gave them the look of neglected temple statuary. It was a chilling display.

Inside the cave the air was cool and foul-smelling, the floor littered with bones. As Perseus and I picked our way through them, I wondered about Medusa’s diet. From the size of the bones, she was eating mice, rats, and the occasional rabbit. But what about her hair? Did the snakes eat, too? And if so, did Medusa feed them? What a repugnant task that would be! The gloom of the place seemed to encourage such grisly speculation.

Or perhaps I was nervous. Perseus was in mortal danger, and I was accountable for his safety. That meant I had to stay safe also. Medusa’s glance couldn’t kill me, of course, but it might make me sick, according to Athena. She claimed that looking at Medusa gave her a splitting headache.

A loud, rasping sound, like a big, rusty saw plying an unwilling tree, came from a raised ledge about forty paces away. Medusa was snoring.

I gestured to Perseus to look only at the shield. He gave me a quick, tense nod and we drew closer. I had resolved to keep my eyes down, but when at last I could see Medusa in the darkness, my resolve left me, and I gaped.

TWELVE

She was a mongrel monster—a sorry jumble of human, serpent, and beast. Her body was covered with large, irregular dark scales. Her legs were muscular and furry, the paws ending in talons as big as grappling hooks. Another talon marked the end of her long, scaly serpent’s tail.

And then there was her head.

Here Athena had been especially cruel. The goddess had stripped away Medusa’s gleaming curls, replacing them with a nightmarish snarl of writhing mud-brown snakes. Yet she had left the girl’s face intact. It was youthful and fresh-skinned, a perfect pale oval, and the snakes that surrounded it mocked its beauty.

Gone the admiring glances,
they hissed.
Gone the
beseeching love words, the paeans. Gone the many deep joys
of self-regard. Now you belong to us.

Seeing Medusa, I thought of the time when Zeus had sent me to kill Argos, the hundred-eyed monster. Argos never slept. When he grew drowsy, some of his eyes closed, but there were always others that stayed open and alert. I could not approach him unseen (it was before I had my Cap of Invisibility or Caduceus), so instead I charmed him with my flute, playing tune after tune of such beguiling sweetness that every single one of his hundred eyes finally dropped shut. Then I cut off his head.

Argos knew that when he succumbed to sleep, I would kill him; I had seen it in his pleading eyes. Yet I played on, watching them close slowly, helplessly. I could have put down my flute, sparing him for his love of music, but I did not. And now, suddenly, I felt a tremor of long-buried shame. It surprised me. Immortals never question their actions, I least of all. Yet there it was: I had killed a magnificent creature despite my compassion for it, and I was sorry.

Medusa stirred; her snoring stopped. Jolted, Perseus sprang forward, shield flashing, sickle whining. The sound threw the snakes into a frenzy of alarm, and their terrified flailing disturbed Medusa’s sleep. As the blade came at her, she woke.

Her eyes opened and I met her death stare— recognition and grief mingled with pure, searing hatred. It was like being smothered in stinging nettles—pain so acute, so overwhelming, that it made time stop.

Her eyes widened, filling with blood. “You gods!” she groaned. Her head came away from her body and hit the ground, rolling until it stopped facedown at my feet. I stifled a whimper: the snakes still moved. Meanwhile, dark blood, oily and viscous, spurted from her headless neck.

As I stared at her lifeless body, my revulsion became sorrow—heavy, dark, guilt-laden. I hadn’t killed Medusa, but I had made her death possible.
This is hateful,
I thought.
I’ll never do it again.
With the vow my spirits lifted.

Perseus, meanwhile, had collapsed onto a ledge and lay there breathing heavily. As the pungent, metallic smell of Medusa’s blood tinged the air, I reminded him not to look at her face when he picked up her head. He closed his eyes by way of reply.

But when he roused himself, his handling of the snakes was deft. They coiled and twined around his wrists, hissing in protest as he struggled to pack the head away with his eyes averted, yet he managed to maneuver it into the pouch Athena had given him without hurting them or himself. This done, he took up the shield and hurried outside. I picked up the sickle, which he had prudently left for me, and followed.

We blinked against the sunshine, breathing deeply. After the cave, the air tasted like ambrosia.

“You did well,” I told Perseus. “It was a difficult task.” This was an understatement, and we both knew it, yet he replied humbly, thanking me for my help.

“No need,” I said. “I am here at Zeus’ behest. But whatever you do,” I added, “don’t forget to offer to Athena. You may have noticed that she doesn’t respond well to slights.”

“I will make many rich offerings to her when I return to Seriphos,” he said earnestly.

How long would that take?
I wondered. Medusa’s dying face came back to me, and I was seized with the desire to leave this place. I could take my winged sandals and go, I thought, leaving Perseus to return home on his own. Tempted, I began to weigh the pros and cons.

Leave
Perseus came here alone; he can return alone
Medusa’s head will protect him
If Ares doesn’t get his sickle back soon,
he’ll blame me, not Zeus

Don’t Leave
Nobody breaks a promise to Zeus
If Perseus is harmed, thunderbolts will fly
Singed hair and eyebrows are very unattractive

Before I got any further, a loud, wet, rustling sound came from the cave, as if a shipwrecked object were being hauled up out of the deep. Perseus and I looked at each other, startled.

“What—?” Before he could finish, we heard the unmistakable three-beat clop of a horse’s hooves.

Hoofbeats?
I thought.
Cantering? Impossible.

A magnificent white horse burst out of the cave. It was as muscular as a Titan, with a pumping chest and long, powerful legs, but most dazzling were its wings. They flared wide and bright as the sails on a royal barge. Seeing us, the horse pinned its ears back and reared up on silver hooves. Then it gathered itself on its haunches and leaped into the air, wings beating with a deep luffing sound.

No!
I thought with a stab of yearning.
Don’t go!
I had no idea how the creature had arrived in the cave or where it was going—all I knew was that I couldn’t bear to see it leave.

“Give me my sandals. Hurry!” I urged Perseus. I pulled off the left one while he undid the right and slapped them on without even doing up the laces. “Wait for me here,” I called over my shoulder. Then I flew after the horse.

THIRTEEN

He was swifter than Zeus’ team. Even when I pushed my sandals to their top speed—north-winds-gusting-in-winter—I couldn’t catch him. I knew it long before I had chased him as far south as the skies above Libya. When I finally slowed to a jog and he went from a gallop to a lazy trot, we were still more than a hundred paces apart; in all this time I had not been able to get any closer.

I took a few deep breaths. He looked back at me, ears pricked. For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then, seeing the long curl of a river below, I decided to try a different approach. I left him in the clouds and flew down to earth, to the water’s edge. As cranes strutted near the banks of the great brown river, I quickly fashioned a pipe out of reeds and played a few trills. It wasn’t my best work, but it would do.

I returned to the sky. The horse was on the cloud bank where I had left him, ambling along with his wings at rest, but when he saw me, his plum-colored eyes rolled and he tensed for flight.

I had no intention of making him run. Instead, I stood with my back to him and began to play.

I started with a song about oats and apples and honeycombs and went right into one about rolling in soft, wet grass. After that I played a lullaby about warm flanks touching in the moonlight.

It wasn’t until a second lullaby, about long tails swish, swish, swishing back and forth, that I dared to turn. I was pleased to see that his head drooped, his eyes were shut, and his great wings were folded. I rose, continuing to play, drawing ever closer. It was an excellent lullaby, very long. I played it twice.

Finally—and now I switched to something livelier, about birdsong at dawn—I was on his back. He woke and his head shot up, but I was already soothing him, stroking his pulsing neck and whispering in his ear, calling him Pegasus, Moon-Hoofed, horse of my dreams.

His ears flicked and his tail swished; otherwise he was quiet. When I asked him to carry me back to Perseus, he obeyed as if he’d been mine forever.

I do not crave attention, like some Immortals I could mention, but I must admit that I enjoyed the look on Perseus’ face as we came down before him.

“You . . . you caught him!”

I nodded with just a hint of godlike superiority and tossed him my sandals. “Now we both have wings,” I said. “Are you ready to go home?”

FOURTEEN

It should have been a short trip, but it wasn’t, because of the naked girl. Her name was Andromeda, and she was chained to a rock in the ocean, off the coast of Joppa. The very moment Perseus saw her, he fell for her. I mean that. One moment we were flying along companionably above the Sea of Cyrene. The next, he gasped loudly and went into free fall, plummeting like a winged duck. To my relief he soon recovered and was on his feet by the time he landed.

Then, with his eyes downcast (good manners again), he struck off the girl’s chains with his sword and wrapped her in his cloak.

I watched this from above with a flush of pride.
Intrepid!
I thought.
Daring!
His time with me had clearly been good for him.

As for the girl, she must have been in some dream state far beyond terror, for she showed little emotion when Perseus freed her. Though she was soaked and shaking with cold and had just been saved from certain death, she thanked him with a nod and a smile, as if she were a princess on a receiving line.

As it happened, she
was
a princess, the only daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiope of Joppa. They watched from shore, showing a lot more surprise than their daughter when Perseus dropped from the sky.

I could not hear Perseus and Andromeda, but I could see him take her hand in his and his blond head incline toward her dark one as they spoke, just as I could see the royal party and the sea serpent rearing up out of the choppy water like a cobra rising out of a basket, surprising everyone, including Pegasus, who behaved just like a horse and bolted.

He ran me halfway to Gallia before I could subdue him, so I missed a lot. By the time I got him under control and turned him around, I was very worried, and I stayed worried all the way back to Joppa, telling myself I should have been there to help Perseus with the serpent, no matter what. If he’d failed to kill it, he’d be humiliated. If he’d been hurt (or worse!) in trying, I’d soon be dodging thunderbolts.

But when we got back to the seashore, the serpent was dead, lying headless in the shallows. A few bold children were climbing it and shrieking happily; otherwise the beach was deserted.

I guessed the royal party would be at the palace, so that’s where I headed, keeping my eye out for signs of disaster. Seeing that the land below was dotted with sheep and goats, not mourners or funeral pyres, I neared the palace reasonably sure that Perseus was safe. After I’d wedged the sickle into the topmost branches of a tall oak and left Pegasus with a dumbstruck shepherd boy, I went inside.

I slipped in wearing my cap. Even if I’d remained visible, I might have escaped notice in the great hall—an extremely noisy banquet was in progress, with the king and queen presiding over a crowd of tipsy guests. Wine flowed like a river in spate, and the hall rang with shouts and jests, making it impossible to hear much, least of all the frail blind singer who stood in a corner at the rear of the hall, chanting an ode to Hymenaeus, the Marriage God.

Nevertheless, Andromeda was listening to the man with great interest, and so was Perseus. I stared at my charge in disbelief.
I leave you alone for a few minutes and
you get married?
I thought incredulously.

The answer turned out to be yes.