Medea - Kerry Greenwood The Delphic Women

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once our women tasted the joys of making love as your Aphrodite would instruct, Nauplios - ah yes, I have travelled, and I know of such things, and they are sweet, sweet and foul - they would be forever corrupted, and so would our young men. We are a pure people, and have no taste for sensuality. We need to breed, so let us mate as horses mate, who leap the mares. Our maidens conceive readily enough, for once they have conceived they may not go to the sire again for three years - four, if they produce a boy.'

      'But I am an Achaean and a prince and will need to marry, Master,' said Jason. "Or am I to mate as the centaurs do?'

      'It would be better for you if you did,' snarled Cheiron.

      He would say nothing further on the matter. It was cold, down by his little fire. He told us stories of heroes and battles, and strange centaur stories about the striga, the seductive phantom, a woman with white skin and hair like fire, who came in the night and lay with young men, sucking their seed from them, weakening them, so that they grew pale and trembled, useless for hunting or herding, longing for the night. And when they died of exhaustion, she would steal their souls, so that they in turn became spirits who overlay and penetrated young women, sapping their energy from their household tasks, depriving their master of their labour, finally to conceive and bear monsters.

      I lay and dreamed, and Jason dreamed the same dream. It was the last night on the mountain with the centaurs. The next day my lord and I would venture into Iolkos and claim his kingdom.

      A woman of fascination, a woman with dark hair, not red, a striga with dusky skin and warm breath, dressed in black, came and kissed us and stroked us, her clever hands caressing and sliding, her breasts in our face, her mouth on ours, until we woke clasped together, wet with seed, still shuddering.

      We said nothing about it. It was dawn, and we washed and dressed in our finest tunics. We were, at last, returning to the sea. We were going down from the mountain to claim Jason's kingdom.

      --- V ---

      MEDEA

      The grove was as black as pitch and I stood still, as I had been taught, with my eyes closed. Beside me, Trioda began to sing. I listened carefully.

      It was a high, simple, strongly accented tune, punctuated with palm-strokes on the small drum, and I caught the melody quickly and joined in. We sang, on a rising pitch:

      Ophis Megale, Ophis Megale, Ophis Megale kale

      Then the same triple invocation on a dipping pitch, then the three words on a level. We repeated it.

      The treasure of Colchis, the Golden Fleece, hung from the biggest tree. It is the skin of a curly fleeced ram, of considerable size, and it gleams, because it is filled with gold dust. Each tress has been soaked in water-borne gold, and it shines even in the darkness of the grove. In sunlight - though it must never leave the grove - it would be blinding. Achaeans believe that it is the skin of a magical beast on which Phrixos rode to Colchis.

      It is actually the skin of the king of the Massagaetae's ram, laid in the stream to soak up gold; and Colchians still lived who had seen Phrixos the Foreigner arrive in a perfectly ordinary ship.

      The ilex is not a friendly tree and few things like growing under it. The floor of the grove was, therefore, smooth, and deep in last year's prickly leaves. I could not hear my own footfall, but I could hear something else.

      Something very heavy was coming through the leaf mould. I was not sure that I could cope with sight, so I listened and kept my eyes closed, singing along automatically to the tune and the drum. The grove was resounding with the shrill alarm calls of birds when Trioda nudged me and I looked to see a serpent of amazing size. She was as long as a boat and wide as a doorway; wide as a pithos, the big-bellied grain amphora, and taller than me. Her head was the size of a cow's, her eyes the size of my doubled fists, and she must have been very old - only a huge length of years allows the serpent kind to grow so gigantic.

      I could not move. She slid closer, her belly rippling over the prickly ilex leaves, and then rose to more than Trioda's height, towering over us. Her mouth opened pink and she flicked a forked tongue as long as my forearm at Trioda and me.

      She was patterned like a tortoise-shell, mottled and magnificent. I would have fallen to my knees except Trioda had cautioned me to make no sudden move, lest the guardian be startled. I was awed and terrified at the power of the great goddess, who kept such a creature in subjection to guard her grove.

      Trioda opened her basket and produced a bowl, into which she poured milk as prosaically as any housewife. The great head dipped, the tongue flicked, and the guardian drank.

      'You may touch her,' said Trioda. Trembling, I laid one hand on the smooth scales, and felt them not wet as I had expected from their sheen, but dry as a pine-cone, slippery as enamel, and warm.

      The custom of serpents is to sleep through the winter. They are creatures of two gods, belonging to both Ammon and the Mother. During the summer when Ammon is exalted, they worship him. During the winter they seek the warmth of the Mother's breast, in darkness under the ground. To see this creature awake and alive in the cold winds of autumn, when the leaves fall ragged into the river, the sky lowers and herdsmen bring in their flock, was as astonishing as her size.

      'She is unique,' said Trioda softly, as the guardian drank delicately, flicking her grey tongue into the milk. 'There is no other serpent in the land of Colchis. She has grown, daughter, since last I saw her - yes, see? She has lately cast her skin.'

      Hanging in rags between two close-grown holly trees was the serpent's cast cloak; complete, even to the scales over the eyes.

      'Walk slowly, daughter, gather that skin, and bring it to me,' said my mistress, and I did as I was bid. The skin was dry, thicker than papyrus, and very light.

      'Strip and don the skin, daughter,' ordered Trioda, and I did so. Against my own human skin the scales of Ophis dragged and scratched, like the glass paper which craftsmen use to burnish bronze. Yet it was smooth over my breasts and so cold that all my nerves flared, and I flushed and then shivered. I was desperately afraid.

      But I was a priestess of Hekate, and she would protect me.

      If I was worthy.

      It was darkening in the grove. Outside the moon would be rising, Selene, who is also a maiden. Trioda ordered me to lie down. Then my mistress knelt, very slowly, and thrust something against my mouth. It was alive, no more than a handful, and it was clammy and squirming. I knew what it was. A toad, companion of Hekate, a sacred creature. I forced myself to kiss its slimy back. My lips numbed instantly. I felt something very strange beginning to happen to me.

      Ophis' discarded covering, which had been cold, warmed into life, wrapping me as securely as my own skin. The chill receded, and the fear grew. I felt the snakeskin curl and enfold me, so that my limbs were confined and then forgotten. For a moment, I rolled helplessly on the leaves. Then I found the muscles and nerves of Ophis. I moved as Ophis moved, by shifting my scales. I saw as she saw, through the strange lidless eyes which know no night.

      The ilex grove reddened to blood, against which a bright figure glowed; Trioda the priestess of Hekate, burning brighter than a hearth-fire. Little lights moved on the ground, and I leaned forward, counterbalancing my weight with my tail, flicking my tongue to taste the air, which was full, not of scents but of vibrations. The world sang.

      In Ophis' ears we all had our own tone, our blood hummed through our veins, and our life felt warm or cold in the air. The toad which Trioda held burned cool, dependent on the temperature of the air; a greenish glow. In the branches of the trees were the points of light which were roosting birds. They were golden.

      Then there was the bulk of the great serpent herself, turning to regard me. Ophis was a column of white fire, so hot I could hardly bear to look at her, and I could not close my serpent's eyes. I heard her shift over the crackling leaves, and her tongue flicked out at me, tasting my breath. I could not speak while in serpent form, but in my mind I chanted the invocation to the Goddess for protection, as a weight passed over my body, a monstrous weight. There was an instant

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