There will be a storm tonight.
I have laid out the black
and crimson robes that I wore for the deaths of my
The tower is silent. The
servants have gone to the wedding. He claimed need
I have a little snicker
at this -- sometimes my own ingenuity surprises me.
I know what they will think
of me someday -- I have seen the words they will
The braziers stand ready,
the coals a warm glow in the slowly darkening evening.
I wait.
I can wait.
I can wait forever...
She waited.
The moon had cleared the distant hills, telling
her that it was almost
In the light of the three braziers arranged
about its center, the room
Their father had wanted them to be present
at his wedding. Instead she had
A faint, sad smile touched the corners of
her lips. Was there in it perhaps
Medea uncoiled the arms she had held crossed
upon her chest since twilight
What was that? The shriek of some preternatural
bat or some hunter's prey?
MEDEAaaaa!
Swiftly she turned away from the roar of
horror building in the distance.
The clouds race across
the skies above the tower, building bastion upon bastion
of black on black, struck
now and again by flashes of indigo light.
father and his son.
of their service and I
graciously allowed their attendance as spectators at
the danse macabre.
write, the erudite discourses
upon my infamy. Beyond their reach, with all the
city spread before me and
all the sky above in chaos, I laugh.
The wind fans them now
and again to a deeper red -- red as the lining of my robe,
red as blood...
Down below the tapers are
being lit -- red and yellow flames flickering in the
deep twilight. Smoke begins
to rise from the rekindled cooking fires and sounds
of joyous greetings drift
upward to my ears. I watch the torches as they light
the way towards the palace,
tracing a wavering path from the temple to the
wide gates of the king's
house.
In the distance her eyes sought the king's
palace, blazing with the light
of hundreds of torches, brightening the
night sky to the east like a false
dawn. Above her, the stars wheeled in their
courses -- the sickle of the
gods swung as Orion strode over the Serpent.
She read the signs.
time for the marriage feast. The new couple
would walk arm in arm into the
King's hall to grace the banquet prepared
in their honour.
She spared a moment to survey the room behind
her.
Theseus had generously gifted her with the
house in exchange for her care
of his aged father. When she had expressed
a wish for a private place for
research, he had the tower constructed,
had himself designed this room -
open to the four directions - according
to her request.
flickered blood-red.
Within the triangular space between the
braziers stood a stained marble
slab. It had taken two porters a long time
to haul it up the treacherous
steps to its place as the room's centerpiece.
Upon it there now rested
a gold-hilted, wavy knife - keen-edged -
reflecting the braziers' flames,
and a large deep bowl of polished bronze.
Against the north-west pillar,
on the couch in which she often slept when
her studies lasted far into the
night, sprawled her two sons -- their slim,
pre-adolescent bodies abandoned
in the deep sleep of youth.
sent them to pay their respects to him and
his bride-to-be earlier in
the day, bearing gifts and her request that
the couple look with kindness
upon her sons and assume the burden of their
welfare. She herself had
declared an intention to go to Delphi and
from thence to Athena's temple
where she would remain with Duke Theseus
and continue her studies among
the great scholars he had gathered about
him.
They had accepted joyously, betraying perhaps
greater relief at her
impending absence than at the prospect of
guardianship. And so the youths
had been excused from the nuptials, to remain
with their mother this
final night before her departure.
a twinge of regret? Then again, perhaps
it was but a trick of the light.
Whatever came to pass, she thought, by my
hand and upon my own head fall
the burden...
...
had fallen. Her body tensed as she strained
to catch the faint sounds
carried upwards on the still night, her
hands resting on the low railing
that encircled the room.
Had there been anyone to see, she would
have been mistaken for a goddess
-- slender, her robes the colour of midnight,
her black hair strung with
beads of silver and bone. The circlet on
her brow, the torque at her throat
and the bangles on her arms -- all fashioned
in the likeness of the serpents
of Hera -- glittered cold in the moon's
light.
So it was.
A cold smile glittered in her eyes.
Rising upon the night air was an agonised
shriek in a voice she knew well
-- her name cried out in the anguished,
tortured tones of a curse called
down upon the gods.
One motion, and her unseen minions secured
the tower from all comers --
fear would overwhelm attackers as they approached,
sapping them of strength
and all thoughts of vengeance -- all but
one...
Two hands, passes swiftly made, powders
quickly scattered -- the braziers
flared.
Brightness flickered.
From a small table beside the couch, she
took a vial from which she poured
a viscous liquid to draw a symbol
on the slab.
