Ariadne

by Jennifer Saint

I saw her weighed down in the tumultuous water not just by the iron chains in which my father had bound her but also by the terrible truth that she had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray.

“Why not bees?” he asked. “Bees are beloved by all the gods. It was bees who fed the infant Zeus on honey in his hidden cave while he grew strong enough to overthrow the mighty Titans. Bees produce the honey that Dionysus mixes with his wine to sweeten it and make it irresistible. Indeed, it is said that even the monstrous Cerberus who guards the Underworld can be tamed with a honey cake! If you wear this pendant around your neck, you can soften anyone’s will to yours.”

Gods might enjoy mortal skill in hunting or music or weaving, but they were always alert to hubris—and woe betide a human whose skills came close to those of the divine.

She infused the world with her light, before she became a translucent pane of glass through which the light was refracted but never poured forth its precious streams of brightness again … before she paid the price for her husband’s deception.

If you had anything that made you proud, that elevated you above your mortal fellows, it seemed to me that the gods would find delight in smashing it to smithereens.

What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.

No longer was my world one of brave heroes; I was learning all too swiftly the women’s pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats.

I only knew Medusa as a monster. I had not thought she had ever been anything else. The stories of Perseus did not allow for a Medusa with a story of her own.

I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man’s actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes, and the world would shrink from me instead.

“Coronet of snakes”

In my hand lay a ball of red twine. And at its very center, a heavy iron key.

She was beautiful, I will not deny it, but a miasma of horror, buzzing like flies around a corpse, trailed her wherever she went.