guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch

[mycursedface]

Guilt is the source of sorrow; 'tis the fiend,
The avenging fiend, that follows us behind
With whips and stings.
- Nicholas Rowe

It takes her hours to stop shaking.

Bloody clothes taken off, blood washed away, clean clothes donned, her sisters’ arms around her and reassuring voices, but it is still hours before Medusa stops shaking. And if she doesn’t cry, her expression is blank enough to remind Stheno and Euryale uncomfortably of the aftermath of one of her bad days.

They don’t trust it when she stops shaking, when she shrugs their hands away and gets to her feet. They don’t trust it when she smiles at them, and insists that she is fine. It’ll be fine. I’m not going to break. Will you just leave me alone!

Which they did.

~

Well, they left her mostly alone; every so often they would swing by and glance into that part of the cave to see how she was.

Mostly, she was embroidering.

~

She never did really explain how the lower legs of her trousers became soaked.

~

There is a mirror in the Gorgons’ main cavern, a beautiful relic from Atlantis. They didn’t make mirrors this large, this fine, anymore, and the girls always had been careful to take care of it. They would paint on their kohl (mostly to protect their eyes from sun and insects, really) in front of it, try on bangles and linens that they found washed up on the shore, laugh and shove and act like a bunch of sillies.

Medusa hasn’t stepped a foot in front of it since she was cursed.

Today, she kneels in front of the mirror, pulls back its cover, and studies her reflection. Her eyes go first to the snakes and her curls, all jumbled together. On one side a snake, so black it shines green, hangs down by her face. On the other a curl, so black it shines blue.

Her hair had always been her most beautiful feature and, even now, she can’t help but feel a dull pleasure at its return.

As for the rest of her face…she had been described as beautiful when she was a girl, beautiful beyond all others, charming and a very lovely thing. Kharis, she had; that gift from Aphrodite herself, a grace and charm which ignited desire with just a glance. Not an ornament to look at, but someone to be won, possessed. Oh, how the men and boys had fought to possess her, and Medusa had loved it. She’d toss her head high and smile and laugh; she’d argue and challenge and looked them straight in the eye. She never said yes, and indeed had barely permitted a favoured few to kiss her.

The power she’d had over them had been intoxicating, but marriage? Tied down and bearing children? No. She’d been too young to enjoy the thought of that, much too young to wish for anything more than to eternally fly with her triplets.

(There had only been one person who had made her feel breathless, the only person who had made her heart skip and the butterflies dance in her stomach…if he had pressed his suit, she might have stammered yes…

But he had been in love with his oh-so-mortal wife.)

Then Poseidon had found her before she could be betrothed to anyone, and he threw her into the wall when she tried to defend herself. Athena’s subsequent curse had driven those suitors away (faithless bastards who had promised her the world only to run at some scales), and she who had been vain and proud cried at the thought of what had happened to her.

Now Medusa studies herself for the first time in years, and bitterly thinks that it would have been too much to hope that her beauty had faded with the first bloom of youth.

Her face has changed.

It is a woman’s face now, not a girl’s, which is to be expected but that doesn’t make it any less disorientating. She runs her fingers over her nose, her cheekbones, her lips, and wonders why Athena hadn’t cursed her to ugliness. Oh, the snakes are disquieting, and humanity has an instinctive fear of them. Men recoil now, mostly. But not all.

Not all.

Her eyes, heavy-lidded, thick-lashed, dark and intense, stare back at her from the mirror; mocking, bitter, accusing eyes, in a face that still possesses all its terrible beauty.

Because you were mortal and you were there, Hermes had shouted at her, and it explains a lot. But not everything. Poseidon had never said because you were there, although Medusa knows she’d be deluding herself if the god hadn’t just been seizing an opportunity.

He had said, because you are beautiful. He had said, who could look at you and not want you, not love you. Because you are beautiful, so beautiful, such a beautiful girl. Beautiful, pretty, lovely, look at you do you think I’m pretty yes beyond compare never did see more moving features in a sweeter face words fail to tell of the glory of your hair once a lovely one such a pretty thing astonishingly fair beautiful beautiful beautiful because you are so beautiful

Medusa clutches her head as she stares at her reflection, her claws digging into her hairline. It all came down to her face, didn’t it? Her beautiful, cursed face. Would he have raped her, if she had been merely pretty? (? Her beautiful, cursed face. Would he have raped her, if she had been merely pretty? (Yes) Plain? Maybe then, Ugly? But no, she had been beautiful and so he did as her cousins the Olympians always did when they saw a beautiful woman. He took her, claimed her, possessed her and threw her away afterwards because she was beautiful enough to ignite his lust and nothing more to keep his interest.

Nothing but a beautiful face.

Without thinking, without breathing, Medusa rakes her claws down her face. She can’t help but gasp at the pain, shut her eyes and tilt her head and bite her bottom lip. Her claws are brass, exquisitely sharp, and if Medusa hadn’t pressed them in, she still has blood running down her skin.

Still biting her bottom lip, she opens her eyes and looks back at the mirror.

Still beautiful now? and her lips twist. Yes. She still is. It is a reality, a fact; something as powerful as beauty cannot but be seen. It is in its nature, its purpose. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…

Are not our sons beautiful, Poseidon?

They had been. Even as a ghost, she had seen that. Beautiful boys, the pair of them. Conceived in violence, born in murder, but they had been beautiful.

They had been hers.

And she had thrown them away.

I couldn’t look at them without remembering, I had to. No milk to feed, they would have died and they didn’t deserve a mother who hated them, who flinched at every cry, they didn’t they didn’t they didn’t!

But you could have found a way, if you had tried. Milliways, a Bar that supplies everything

I couldn’t look at them without remembering what he did to me

Other women do. Raped, yes. Brutally, yes, but don’t they keep the babies? Love them, protect them, raise them. Not abandon them. Not throw them at their rapist and call their children dead.

I called them dead.

They are.

To me, they are nothing but…dead. Announced before the world and a god and.

“What have I done?”

I could have loved them. Would I? I don’t know. I could have, though. Beautiful boys, strong boys, teach them to walk and fly and fight and see the world in honour and life.

Medusa presses her hand to her mouth.

“What have I done?”

I don’t know. I could have hated them.

But I could have loved them.

And I’ll never know.

They are dead to me…

Medusa might claim to be African, might look North African and claim its people for her own, but she is Greek at her core. Her name is Greek, her first tongue outside triplet-speak was Greek and deep within her cultural make-up is Greece.

Her sons are dead, and so she mourns the way Greek women mourn; wail and moan, and tear at her cheeks and hair. Just her nails, not her claws (she possesses enough sense, barely, not to do that), but it is rough and violent and it hurts. It hurts and hurts and hurts, and she’s sobbing at the pain and the blood and all the could have beens that she threw away in anger’s madness. She scars her face (it will fade soon enough, children of gods always heal well) with a mother’s grief, and when Stheno swears and pulls her hands away, she can’t help but snarl.

let me be, let me be, let me be!

“Like hell I will,” Stheno says roughly even as she tries to stay out of range of the snakes. Medusa fights her for a moment, and then she just collapses into heap. Cautiously, Stheno wraps her arms around, and rocks her back and forth.

“Hey, hey, Meda, hey.”

“I’m sorry,” Medusa whispers, clinging back. Stheno kisses her head, and just holds her sister until she cries herself out.

~

Euryale hovers in the doorway, biting her bottom lip and shifting her weight from side to side in worry. Stheno meets her gaze over Medusa’s head.

“I think,” Stheno says quietly over Medusa’s hiccups, “that we need to take her to Mother.”

Euryale looks at Medusa’s bloody face, and just nods.