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MEDUSA WAS A GODDESS. (A monster, you might have read. But that only proves that history is grabbed and re-written by men. In their accounts they tend to say she's hideously ugly, too. But then a rejected suitor will often devalue what he was never offered in the first place.) And it was far beneath her – far, far beneath her – to meddle in the petty mortal affairs of humans. At least, if it was done at their impertinent beckoning, rather than at her own whim and magnificent desultory impulse.
But she was weakened by millennia of dozing, only occasionally interspersed by periods of feasting, orgies and petulant toying with the odd human toy or two. Or sometimes a young god boyfriend, until they got tiresome and ran off with a serving hussy, or a young tree.
Her defences were down, now. And somehow, they were breached.
Breached, and the first she knew of it was when she came to awareness, blinking and disoriented, in the middle of a chanting circle. The air was cold, a long way from the balmy breezes of Paradise that she was used to. There was darkness, as if they'd descended down the Styx to challenge her pet hound Cerberus himself. There was a fire. And she was flung out on cold hard (pebbly) ground. Naked, and gasping. Outraged.
Not that she'd never been tumbled in the bushes, even in mortal lands, now and then. Since her first rude deflowering by a wandering Poseidon, but she'd had her reckoning with him once her power had grown. Over the millennia, one acquires experiences. With the odd handsome mortal shepherd, occasionally, even. But still. That was at her own bidding, and with toys of her own choosing. This... this was being summoned. Summoned, and by mortals, too. Medusa was not accustomed to such breaches of etiquette.
Because Medusa was very far from being a fool, or inexperienced in the petty manipulative tools that mortals resorted to, in an attempt to influence their fate, and the gods. As she pushed and staggered to her feet, she cast quick angry gazes about her, and her anger heated up. There was the stink of traditional narcotic herbs burning on the fire. Her instincts were precise, and she could tell she was in mortal lands, a few centuries on from her last visit. And yes, she was surrounded.
She was surrounded by mortals – by chanting mortals. The stink and hum of witchcraft was all around her, and it made her furious. Where had they got the old runes and songs from? She'd thought them all stamped out long ago. The gods had scant tolerance for anything that actually worked to reduce and manage their powers, after all. Evidently they hadn't been as thorough as they ought to have been. And as a result, she was here – trapped, and bound, and enchanted. In the mortal realm. And stuck in a human body.
A human body, and that was sufficient offence in itself. Her hand went up automatically to her hair – her hair, lousy fluffy soft human hair, where her snakes ought to have been hissing and maintaining a lethal sentry duty, against all comers.
It enraged her more than her unasked nudity, to have her snakes, her pets and darlings taken away from her. And she lunged about, glaring at the cowled and hooded figures still chanting away with their pathetic means at a petty control of divinity – and she opened her mouth. Opened it to rail at them, to strike them down with curses and lightning bolts and the natural magic she possessed herself, a thousand times more powerful than any silly little human charm. She'd have struck them all down with a casual force that would have smeared the ground with blood and entrails, and there the end of the matter would have lain.
Of course, they were crafty with their cowls, pulled well down to mask their eyes. Any eye contact, and she could have frozen them into marble where they stood, fixed their hash but good. But no, it was all heads down and eyes lowered, as for the pre-warned.
But she staggered, a little. And whatever poxy hex they'd worked on her, was still enough to slow her down a mite, to hold her within their smudged chalk circle, if not for much longer. It was enough, for their purposes, though.
The last thing that she knew, then, was a glimpse of the mortal who stood close to her, commanding the rest. He was the one with the book of charms open before him, leading them in magicks, with the air of one who might actually know what he was doing. With his poor natural sciences and alchemies, his substitutes for inborn and enduring power. He was just that much quicker than a drugged god, and he flung a hand up as she threw herself at him, intending mayhem.
Really, for a mortal, he was quite able. Whatever words and wishes he tossed her way worked fairly well. That was the last thought she had, before she hit the ground, and knew no more. That, and a good look at his face as his cowl fell open, with him chanting, his eyes on her. His eyes were fierce – almost as fierce as her snakes, and she could respect ferocity. Even if she would be obliged to crush it, later. They were hazel, and rather pretty, too, behind the mechanical contraption these poor limited creatures called spectacles. She struggled to summon her power, to show him the limits of his schemes. But there was nothing there, when she called on it.
Not that it mattered. And then she was out cold, and she knew nothing more.
___
She woke up without remembering. And then she remembered. It helped, that she was bound with laughable bonds, that couldn't have held a domestic cat. (Felines, the gift of the gods, that they'd been magnanimous enough to bestow on mortals, however many thousand years since.)
But it brought to mind where she was, and the vengeance that she had to make a mental note to rain down upon her captors quite shortly. At least, once she'd blazed through the enchantments that still held her more securely than any chains could, it seemed.
“Greetings, fair Medusa. We are honoured by your presence, and seek your indulgence and your favour,” the same bastard who'd felled her, opened. He was sitting across from her, on a rickety little chair in what appeared to be a dingy human habitation. It was purely instinct to blast him with her eyes. She was a captive, after all. Medusa had some courtesy – her reputation for turning every man and beast in her path to stone was undeserved. But kidnapping, also, was discourteous.
But her powers were still extinct. It was unnerving, and a little frightening. It made her feel like the mortal girl she had not been in eons, since that dirty old goat Poseidon had ravaged her and paid off her family to keep quiet.
But as to this youth, and his blandishments. It was a fair and diplomatic opening, she allowed. He had some skill as a courtier, at least. “You're not going to get out of that any time soon,” he added now. “I added extra eye of toad and newt's intestine, and we brought back a few rocks from the Parthenon for extra oomph. It should hold you for a good twenty minutes, I calculate. And really, all we want to do is talk and ask you a favour. Can't you hold off slaughtering us where we stand for twenty minutes, while I explain?”
It took her off guard. And in any case, she found that it was true. Whatever else this mortal little devil might be, he was a top-notch little sorcerer. She couldn't have moved to save her life, nor to end his. Or not yet, anyhow. So she sagged back against the cheap soft furnishings she was laid on – a sagging velveteen settee, a long way from the silken couches she'd normally have lounged on, to eat grapes by the bunch.
And she looked him up and down – him, and the rest of his pesky magic-meddling little gang. He was a pretty creature, she conceded reluctantly – as mortals went. Put him in a toga and give him a few sheep to herd, and she could have been quite taken with him. The rest of his associates were less her style. (An elf, fair of hair and of face, but a little effete and spindly – a dwarf with matted locks and clad all in the blue fabric de Nimes that she remembered from a sojourn to Paris a century or three back – and a pretty plump young witch.) And she sighed, a god's sigh. A man could pay a high price, for making a god sigh.
“Very well, then, petty little mortal creature,” she snapped at him. “Since I can do no other – and you have left me no choice – you may tell me your story. But crack along with it – since if it fails to entertain me, I shall exert a high price, and one that may involve flaying your hide from your bones!” She looked down at herself, where they'd loaded her onto a heap of cushions like so many pounds of potatoes. “And need I be nude while you do it?” Not that she was ashamed of her nakedness. Like any goddess, she was lovely and immortal and her curves were generous and a pleasure to the eye. (Except that these ample curves were unfamiliar, and not the ones she was used to. What devilry had this wizard got up to with her form and spirit?) The dwarf, indeed, seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in those curves, and she grudged him the joy of it.
To do him justice, this pretty mortal youth flushed, and seemed conscious of the justice of her complaint immediately. He leaped to grab at a blanket and cover her with it, despite the disappointed whimper of the dwarf. And the buxom little witch rolled her eyes, smacked him about the head, and observed, “Well, we're probably settling in for the long haul, then. I'll put the kettle on.”
This did not mean what Medusa would have expected it to mean, from her last visit amongst the creatures of the lower realms. There was no assembly of firewood, no blazing fire in the hearth, no great black iron pot bubbling with herbs and streamwater. But instead, five minutes later, she found herself allowed to sit upright upon the sofa, blanket about her. (And the condescension of permission might cost them dear, later.) With a crude china mug in her hand, steaming with a thick brown brew only distantly related to the intoxicating tea-herb brought from the far Indies and restricted to the aristocracy, when last she sampled it.
And she heard their tale. Not that she hadn't heard far better. Over eons and eons, during many of which a tale well told was the only amusement available, at least to these mayflies who bloomed and died in the span of half a century. It would have helped if all four of them hadn't jumped in and interrupted continually, stealing their turn to add their mite. And it would have helped, too, if it hadn't been such a hackneyed story of tragedy, loss and young love – starring the young warlock who seemed to be in charge. Medusa remembered the visit before last, to old Elizabethan England, and the young playwright she'd kept disreputable roustabout company with. He'd had a good tale along those lines, as she remembered it, he and his friend Marlowe.
Not that you'd have known the warlock's involvement, from how they told the tale. He took less and less part in the telling of it. By the time it came to the last lines, the sad little fizzle of a miserable ending, he was hunched over on a wooden stool, his head hanging down and his hands clasped between his knees. He left the tale, finally, to the onlookers, who had plenty to say.
And despite herself, despite the amateur skills of the tale-tellers, eventually Medusa was captured and intrigued. “...and so, it's very unfair. Poor William!” the young witch exclaimed, patting the warlock's back consolingly. “Caroline was only trying to help us hold back the invasion of demons from an alternate realm, and promote peace and self-determination for humans on this plane.” She nodded importantly, and Medusa was old enough to recognise the glint in her eye. That was a girl on a crusade, all right. “How was she to know that the man she got into an argument with about it was an angel in disguise?”
The elf sighed, leaning against the sofa back, up much too close to Medusa's godly person, and too casually. “I don't know, Mags. Well, if he'd just told her that they were too strong in numbers and too powerful, and to leave them to him, that would have been true. And tactful. But to tell Caroline that supernatural warfare was a matter of angel dominion, and not for little girls to dangerously mess about in...” He sighed again, and clicked his tongue. “
And Medusa drew her own conclusions. The god of the Jews and the Romans after them was involved, she surmised. Not the Greeks, who had been so much more malleable and willing to bow down to an ever-breeding and rapacious pantheon. And his winged acolytes, too, one of whom these meddlers' friend had come up against. The girl was dead, and Medusa had never met her.
But just from the tale as told by her friends, she could perfectly well deduce a thing or two, with no need for clear pools of rainwater and scrying into the recent past. An egotist, then. Who'd plunged alone, into a danger she was unequipped to meet, provoked by the suggestion that she ought to leave the job to the professionals and get the heck out of the way.
Well, it seemed scant loss to Medusa, even if you approved of supernatural vigilantism and human attempts to reclaim power and dominion from the gods. (Whichever Gods you might be talking about. It wasn't as if she approved these parvenus of recent millennia, and automatically blackballed them from any club she belonged to.)
But perhaps it was different, if you'd known the silly creature personally. Dwarf, elf and witch all looked a little downcast, thinking about their former colleague in mayhem and magic. And the boy – William – was closer to crushed. He was silent, almost curled up in a ball, and all the spirit and life seemed to have ebbed right out of him. Not that Medusa was the maternal type of goddess. She did not at all feel a little twinge between the ribs.
In any case. As stories went, it did scant service to explain her presence, except as an audience to their sad sad sob-story of recklessness and bereavement. “My condolences,” she said, with a stiff hauteur that was possibly unconvincing. “But, my mortal children, what do you think that I can do about it? Even Zeus himself could not restore life to the dead and gone, and I have not quite his powers.” (Well, in fact, Zeus had been known to travel down to the lower regions, to argue the toss with Pluto and Persephone, over a favoured slave-girl here and there, even in the face of Hera's wrath. But it wasn't as if she wished to encourage them in their delusional hopes.) “Dead and gone is just that, irretrievable,” she added, sniffily. “I recommend that you mourn your dead, and let your rage and sorrow arm you for your future battles. In which endeavours I wish you great success, and if we have now established that I cannot help you further, then I think I shall be on my way and–”
And there she was, fighting her way out of enchantment, fighting her way to her feet and feeling her godly power surging back to her fingertips. Before the limp sad prettyboy hunched up before her lifted a hand – not his head, but just his hand – and whisked it quickly in her direction.
Medusa found herself slapped down on her arse on the couch, once more, without a finger being laid on her. It wasn't often that she found herself lacking the words to express herself, but on this occasion – well, it was a first. At least, for a moment or two. Then, she managed to utter coldly, “Well. I see you have quite impressive powers, for a mortal, William. But what good do you imagine it will do you? As I say, I can do nothing to breathe life into a body once dead. Without the vital pneuma, all hope is gone. Now, if there were even a trace of life, perhaps it would be a different story, but–”
And now William straightened up. And had a bit of alertness to him, come to life again. Not to mention the stern, determined look on his face. But it was the dwarf who reached across to pat her on the arm – the familiarity of it! - through the blanket she was still hunched up in. “But there is, you see! It's you. You're her. There's life.”
And now, across from her, young William the warlock smiled. A slightly cool, meaningful smile, too. “Where did you imagine your snakes had gone?” he asked, now.
Medusa's hands went to her head – where normally her little pets writhed, hissing and spitting, flicking forked tongues over her fingers. For the first time in forever, she felt vulnerable. As well as furious. “What have you done?” she asked, in a voice softer than normal for her.
William smiled wider. And he didn't look quite so young, so innocent any more. Perhaps it was because she'd had a taste of the power coiled up in that wiry frame.
“I could keep the pneuma in her, you see,” he explained – chatty, just as if he wasn't talking about the difference between life and death. “The doctors couldn't have done it, Intensive Care couldn't have, but I could. I loved her, and I wasn't about to let her take a trip to Hades without me.” His face was a little bit eerie, uncanny, as he said it. For a mortal. “But I couldn't do more than that. She'd have been dead already, if it hadn't been for me chanting incantations day and night.” His friends hunched and crowded about him, now, abandoning her. And there was a trace of respectful apprehension in their faces, as they looked at him. They knew his power, all right. She hadn't seen it herself, to begin with. But he looked such an innocent, pretty young thing. How could she have known?
And now he smiled directly at her, sweet and charming, a bit boffiny behind the spectacles. And not quite all there, a little bit mad perhaps. It was more power than a mortal was designed to contain, and there had to be consequences. “But you said yourself,” he said, pointing it out respectfully.
“As long as there's pneuma, as long as there's breath of life, you can do something about it. You can bring her back. And there is breath. It's her body you're inhabiting – that's why we didn't summon you in your own.” Oh, his eyes gleamed. It was a long time since Medusa had felt terror of anything, still less unease in the presence of a mortal. “When nothing else would work, and I was losing hold of her, she was slipping away. Mags here,” and he nodded at the witch, who smiled and nodded as if he had her spellbound. No doubt he did, in this little cult of four. “Mags researched it. A god can bring life back, the spirit, by inhabiting the body and summoning the original soul. You can.” He reached out, and took her limp hand in both of his. “Won't you?” he wheedled now. “I love her. We all love her, and we let her down. She shouldn't have died, on a mission to do good, to save the world. You can't imagine how much we care. Will you bring her back?”
His strength couldn't possibly hold out against her. Even his magicks were not so powerful as all that, not against a god. She could have held out, and fought free, and refused him. She knew she could. But perhaps she was a little bit hypnotised, too. A little bit charmed.
___
At least they gave her clothes, once she'd agreed. Very unsuitable and inadequate clothing, for a goddess, to be sure. No shimmering immaculate toga, no jewels, no head-dress. No, instead rough blue canvas covering for the lower limbs, and a bright stretchy sausage-casing for her upper part. She looked much like Mags, the young witch, when she was done, though she had racked up a few millennia of years more than such a child. And her arse and bosom were ampler, the proportions of a goddess, making it a struggle even to enter and fasten the rough garments.
That was not her primary concern, however. As if she would give a fig over raiment, when her simple nudity counted as ornament enough. What troubled her was her hair. Or rather, Caroline's hair. It was a fluffy, shiny, repellent hank of candyfloss that adorned her temporary skull, the current prison for her soul. And, dressed, she stood before the looking-glass in the bedroom of the little house she'd been summoned to, in mortal lands. And she complained.
She'd refrained, up until this moment. Being summoned, and controlled (by puny mortals!) had taken priority. But now negotiations were done, she had other concerns. Petty ones, but still significant to her.
And with William standing behind her as she primped and fussed, jawing away about spells and power and sucking life out of the underworld, she gave her plaints voice.
“Give me back my snakes,” she muttered, low and sulky and furious, and she spun around to face him. Oh, he hadn't been listening, the handsome little bastard, and she had to repeat herself. Going up to stand right in front of him, this time, up close, chin to chin, nose to nose. A god should be taller than this. Her temporary mortal abode humiliated her. “Give me back my snakes,” she hissed, quite snake-like herself, angry enough to bite.
“Oh.” He blinked at her, startled out of his obsessive monologue. “Oh. Well, can't you do that yourself? I haven't completely damped down your powers. And they should be reviving on their own, in any case. You are quite strong, you know.” Oh, the patronage. He was lucky that she was temporarily a weak feeble mortal, and wasn't going to waste her time trying to beat him up.
And she had tried. Of course she had, what a superlatively stupid question. She stamped her foot – just like a furious, sulking little mortal woman – and glared at him. “Would I ask you, if I could do it myself?” she asked. Hissing it, since his brain was evidently too clouded with grief, and plotting to regain his lost idiot love, to see the obvious.
“Oh, I see,” he said. And he did: he looked at her, attentively, and Medusa could tell for a moment that he really did see her. It was curiously intense, and her silly girl's body flushed, all over. Then he waved a hand at her, offensively casual. She felt a stirring and a hissing, prickling all over her scalp.
“Oh, my snakes,” she exclaimed, and it was almost a whimper. Her hands went to her head – and it wasn't her own snakes. It wasn't even true live solid real snakes, part of the mortal body she was inhabiting. But just the illusion of it was like a brief return home, and she felt almost grateful to the arsehole. Grateful! Her! A god!
That was unacceptable, and so was the little smile on his face – a smile as if he was glad to have pleased her. That was a pretty face he had, for certain. And to distract herself from such idiocy, she rushed on, garbling.
“Why do we wait so? What is the reason for such delay? If you want your girl back, there is no time to be lost. You have the scrolls, the books, the lists of ingredients and the chants – make ready, and I shall bring her forth for you! Your minions must assist – the witch, the dwarf and the elf. They will be scant enough, compared to the monasteries full of chanting supplicants who would lend true power, but they must suffice! Bring them, and we shall assemble and begin!”
“The dwa–?” William stared at her for a moment, dumbstruck. And then he shook himself, and seemed to comprehend. And giggled. “Oh. Right, yes. You mean – Alan, Alan is my pal with restricted height. You might want to remember appropriate terminology, before trying that one on him. And Joe, Joe has pituitary issues too, and he's half-Swedish, and very pretty, and – Yeah. Anyway.”
But Medusa had already turned her back on him. She was busy caressing her snakes as they curvetted around her head, ready to strike or to kiss, their tongues playing over her brow.
“Go,” she said, distantly. “Don't you want your girl back? I have acceded to your schemes. Go and make your preparations.”
Still she could feel him pause. She felt him come to stand behind her, and how he hesitated, almost putting a hand on her shoulder. (Such impertinence.) And then he didn't even do that. Instead he reached further forward over her shoulder. And he caressed the head, and neck, of one of the spectral snakes that he'd gifted her with.
“If I had my powers yet, then I might kill you for that,” she murmured. And yet she couldn't infuse the words with anything like the venom that ought to have come so easily. He didn't even take her seriously, as a result. He just laughed, and petted the snake again, before pulling away.
“I'm very grateful,” he said, softly. He turned, and took a few steps away from her, out of the room.
He'd accepted his dismissal, and that was very good. There were more urgent things to be done, than to stand here flirting and fondling with her – snakes – all day, after all.
And yet she couldn't let him go, and not add one thing more. One thing, just to say – in a dieaway little-girl voice that would have been more fitting to a shepherdess, to a cherub pealing out praises to all gods and powers that might be, rather than to a god herself – “You must love her very much.”
Oh, what a damn fool thing to say, after all. She might almost fancy herself a stout matron in love with a comely youth, making a fool of herself sighing and pining for him. She'd known a goddess or two fall a victim to that divinest malady, after all. At least it arrested his feet. He didn't reply for a second or two. But then he said, very soft in the softest whisper, “Um. Yes. I suppose I must.”
Well, that was all there was to it. The contract was made, and only the ceremony was yet undone. Why should she feel regrets, or uncertainty? She wasn't only a god. She was a grown woman, thousands of years old, and knew better than to fall in love via a coup de foudre, with a silly boy in love with a dead girl. She was not such a fool.
No, no, she couldn't be such a fool.
___
In any case, if she was a fool, she wasn't as much of one as William. He was the one pining after a shade, enough to try to bring her back as a ghoul from the grave. And by the evening of that same day, he had assembled everything she had required of him, everything listed in his antique grimoires, and something he called The Net. (Medusa could only suppose that this referred to a great mystical fisherman's net, set out at sea to reel in pearls of immense value, and mermaids dressed in conch shells, singing and cursing at their sudden servitude.)
And out in the darkness, under a starry sky, in what William referred to as his Back Garden, they set up the chanting circle, and the fires, and the chalked circles. (Really – the little hovels that humans lived in. Medusa longed for marble halls, and grapes, and slaves to do her bidding. But these four fools would have to do for now, since she had given her word.)
And in the middle of the circle, she stood entranced a moment, fondling at her spirit-snakes in a plump body that belonged to an almost-dead girl. (William looked at that face with such affection, continuously, again and again. He hadn't known Medusa herself for a day, yet. That affection couldn't be for her. Once she'd brought the girl back to life, perhaps she ought to kill her again, for monopolising his affections that way. How dare she, really? It wasn't as if Medusa hadn't snapped the neck of the odd serving-wench or dancing girl who drew the eyes of her current swain too often, in centuries gone by.
But she had promised William his silly girl back, of course, hale and whole. It would probably be breaking the terms of their agreement, in spirit if not in technicalities, to snuff her out the minute she'd been restored to him. And besides, she wasn't quite sure that she could bear to witness the lost little-boy look on his face, should she take his toy away again. Damn him, for drawing such softness out of her, in hardly more than the blink of an eye. He was a wizard indeed. Oh, and a very pretty one, of course. If she had any sense, and the ruthlessness she'd always relied on – that seemed to have failed her, in the course of enchantment – she'd steal him away and make him her captive slave-boy. If the girl was left well and breathing and silly as ever, in the mortal worlds, wouldn't that leave the terms of their agreement unbroken?
It certainly would. And she was still teetering on the verge of a resolution, when the circle of faux-monks around her – well, about half of a circle, and they should have been monks, if there'd been any respect for tradition at all left in this world – came to the end of their chants, and started on a low, ominous hum.
Medusa hadn't been paying the proper attention. She'd been too busy, plotting abduction and estrangement of affections, seduction and possible breach of contract. None of them were lawyers, though. She was probably safe from a case in tort. She hadn't been expecting to get to this point so quick. But here it was, her cue, her big moment.
And she glared around her – because it brought back twenty-four hours' worth of memories. It wasn't as if she'd forgiven the bastards, for kidnapping her through space and time and other dimensions. That was a matter she'd be evening out the score on, at a later date. But now, she had a part to play. She'd always been a bit of a prima donna.
The dwarf – Alan – whipped out a fiddle from his cloak. He began to give it all the sad pathos of a gypsy from her last Paris sojourn, making a zither sing and plead. It was appropriate, and gave the ceremony atmosphere. She nodded at him in regal approval, and thought that perhaps she'd make an exception for him, when the time came to rain down punishments and hailing toads upon the sorry shower of them.
And – since William was holding it out to her – she grabbed at the scroll of incantations. Because they'd got to her lines, and she didn't have them down from memory. “Key of C, preferably,” Mags called out, as if that was in any way helpful. And the elf-boy – well, the abnormally tall, thin, ethereal human boy, apparently, but Medusa retained a certain scepticism on the issue – beamed at her. And raised both of his thumbs, sticking up from his fisted hands, in her direction. Such vulgar human gestures were beyond her – she wasn't up with the latest lingua franca of the kids, in this degenerate age. But she thought that he was wishing her luck, and possibly suggesting she get out there, knock 'em dead and break a leg.
The patronising little narrow streak of piss. But she would definitely have to deal with him later. She could feel the thrum of power from the chants begin to dissipate, as she failed to hit her marks and come in on the right bar of music. It might fade away altogether, if she didn't pick up and plunge into the ceremony. They'd have to start the whole thing all over again, from scratch.
Of course, she'd never performed the ceremony before. Why would she? At full strength, not bound about by a mortal wizard's tricks, she had no need of format and procedure. Her power alone was sufficient to give life or extinguish it, to damn or to bless. But he should have warned her.
William should have warned her, that it would hurt. Perhaps he hadn't known. Certainly his face fell, his mouth dropped open just like the rest of them, when she doubled over with the first line incanted. She screamed.
But he didn't stop her, mind you. Stayed right on his spot, and only called out for if she was all right, if she was well, just the same as the rest of them. Of course he did. Medusa was only a tool to him, god or mortal, dead or alive. Just as long as she got the ceremony finished, and restored his daffy self-important little love to him, then she was as dispensable as a paper tissue or a recyclable can, a single sheep out of the flock.
But pain was nothing to her. She was Medusa. Was she going to give in and abandon her intent, all because of a few lacerating unbelievable twinges? She straightened up, by the force of her will, under the dark moon and the clouds that threatened rain. (And she glared at him, and muttered beneath her breath to the snake phantoms hissing at her temples. “Don't worry, my darlings,” she hissed along with them, with eyes that could have bored holes through this idiot at full strength. That did, in the tales that painted her a monster, every time. A terrible exaggeration, considering that it was a power she used only rarely, and when richly deserved.) “He may pay, when we're done. But only when we're done.”
Because it was an outrage, to think that any mortal ailment – in this stupid soft mortal body – might prevent her from accomplishing the task she'd set herself. And she gritted her teeth, and stood straight, and threw off the elf – the mortal, with his soft fair hair and soft voice – who was the only one who'd sprung towards her. She was no more than a tool to all the rest of them, then. Very good – the tool would do the job. And then they might look out for their own hides, never mind their pal's.
“Get off me, fool,” she snarled, with a shove that sent him stumbling all the way back to his original place in the circle. “Get humming, stop your mouth up and let me get this done.” And she was good as her word, and there were half a dozen more pages to go, too. Not one line was any better than the ones before. It didn't ease up one bit, as she shuffled and gasped and hissed her way through every word.
They let her, that was the thing. Even though she was seizing right through it, even though she was inhabiting the throes of agony – they kept up the low hum of the backdrop to her declamations, they kept on with the ceremony. With pious 'oh-dear' faces, of course, with sanctimonious looks of concern. But, beyond that initial instinctive leap of Joe's? Nothing.
William – she couldn't help but look to him, it seemed, to see his face, his reaction. Although she should of course have had more pride. What was it to a goddess, what a mortal wizard felt and thought, when he saw her suffer? And his eyes were wide and appalled, steady on her but wincing as if he were suffering through it with her. (Except that he wasn't, of course. All very well for him, the sympathetic act. It didn't transfer a moment of her agony to his bill, instead, for him to live through.)
The third page in, and it took that long for him to even waver, for his determination to falter, to blink at her stoical grit. “Let the shadows gather as they might,” she hissed out, shuffling the fourth page to the top with trembling hands. The wind was cold, and in darkness and firelight she shivered under her rough coarse mortal clothing. “Let the ravens take to flight, so long as souls may now be loosed, freed from manacle and from noose, and this maid who–”
That was the moment when the most horrible spasm of all gripped her, so that she let a couple of pages drop as she cried out. She couldn't help it, not with a mortal's strength alone to support her. And finally, he stopped making with the big cow-eyes of sympathy and regret, and actually did something to help her, the bastard. Rushed forward, that little bit quicker than the rest of them – in the togas she was denied – and grabbed up the papers. Oh, to stuff them back in her hands, of course, she assumed – because nothing must be allowed to get in the way of the ceremony! This idiot's monomania had no bounds, and there was nothing in his head beyond the silly girl in the photographs littered about his house.
Medusa had examined them, carefully. The girl was nothing to write home about, by Medusa's judgement. She had a silly, simpering expression, and a look of calculating desire to seek the main chance and her own advantage, in her eyes. A narcissist, no doubt of it, plain and simple. Which was all very well, but unsuitable for mortals. It was a god's mindset, and only properly indulged in with the privileges of a god.
She was already pushing herself back up off the ground, as he helped her up. And she snatched bitterly at the papers – but William held them away from her. “No,” he said. “Look.” And he hesitated, and said, “Maybe we should forget it. Forget this. I hadn't realised – I had no idea how bad it would be for you. Maybe–”
But Medusa couldn't stand it. They'd committed themselves, and she'd promised to retrieve the girl from Hades, hadn't she? It would be cruel, to taunt her. To hint that he'd changed his mind, that he might be satisfied with someone other than the blue-eyed mortal ninny he was clearly obsessed with. She couldn't stand to be teased that way. It was better to get things done with, to get on with the job.
She pulled the papers off him, determined, and gave him a rough shove in the chest, away from her, away. The snakes about her head billowed as if she were standing in a gale, and then gathered together in unison as if they sensed her resolve. William came at her one more time, and she glared at him. Not quite the glare that could drop a man and turn him to stone at a thousand paces. But closely enough related to it that he staggered a little, and fell back stunned. Good. Let him understand his proper place, and that her powers were almost back to normal now, juiced up. His artificial magicks could do only so much, against the likes of Medusa.
And the magicks – his, and her godly ones – were powering into the world about them, now, as she gripped the papers more tightly, more close, and continued her readings. She was still wracked with agony, at every word. She wasn't going to allow it to prevent her will becoming flesh, that was all. What had been a few drops of spitting rain here and there, started drenching them, becoming a downpour. Lightning flashed about them, pushing and hounding at their circle, as if it was about to close in and strike the circle of chanters themselves. Thunder shook the air, shook the ground, shook the trees. Nature was furious, and why would she not be, when she was being transgressed, her rules all flouted?
The force of it had her four companions falling to their knees, their cloaks soaked and heavy with rainfall, the terror of the storm cowing them. They were puny, and she trembled with contempt. But Medusa was only invigorated, and felt her godly power coursing through her, even against the pain flooding her in waves. She almost gabbled her way through the fourth page, the fifth, onto the final summons and command of the sixth. And the sky was riven and lit up by electricity, white with light, as she spat out the magical words. “Hence out of my own flesh do I bring her forth and give up this body unto the undead, who shall live and breathe again AS THOU SHALT WITNESS–”
These were the final words, the last line on the last page of the sheaf.
The pain built up to a crescendo with every word, intensifying unbearably, and only the increasing access to her own power enabled her to actually bear it. Without screaming. And through them, she felt the girl creeping up on her. Caroline, the girl, the girl whose borrowed body she was inhabiting, had been hocus-pocused into wearing like a suit of clothing.
Creeping up inside her, taking shape in the very body that had been made her own. So that her hands went limp, and she dropped the papers out of those limp hands, and fell to the ground. She couldn't breathe suddenly, everything was so tight from the inside. And she mumbled, “No, get out, get out of me!” in a last panicked protest. The transparent ghostly snakes floated about her head, as the four of the circle ran to her and kneeled at her side.
William was the closest, of course. And she just managed to roll her head around, to get one last look at him. Before she felt the triumphant internal grab. It was Caroline – dead Caroline, pure virtuous smug Caroline, Caroline whom she could feel for a lying little power-hungry grabber – taking back what was hers. Hers before, and hers now again.
And Medusa – poor, foolish Medusa – had been the one to sing, and to chant, and make magicks, no matter what it cost her to do it. It was too late for second thoughts, too late to whine that after all she might like this human body, and that human boyfriend, and being frail and mortal and living in the warm strange eccentric mortal world. Liked being a girl again, what she'd been before she'd been plundered, and rewarded for silence and cooperation with Zeus' corrupt powers.
She hung on, despite that, for one second more, grasping on to the railings like a suffragette, like refusal in human form.
But she'd made the fool girl too strong, and herself temporarily too weak in the process. She felt the boot in her back, from one who'd been almost dead, not quite alive. And now was only too alive, with all the life force Medusa had conjured for her.
One minute she'd been securely housed, in a body that was more pleasureful and comfortable than she'd realised, soft and plump and warm. And then her spirit was out, and loose, in a cold mortal world. And the body she'd left behind...
Medusa was invisible, now, no more than spirit alone. And she had to watch, as the girl took possession of the body, and feigned a shy, sweet, docile awakening – all doe-eyes and uncertain, trembling smiles. “Oh, where am I?” she simpered, as if she didn't know right well. “Will, it was so dark, so strange, where have I been? But you brought me back!”
And as William fell on her, gripping her too hard, and weeping. Crying, “Is it you? Caro, Caroline – is it you? It worked – it worked!” Of course he was weeping – weeping with joy, and the rest of their merry band too. Medusa was gone, as far as they were concerned – the sitting tenant, ejected from her body by the newly arrived rightful owner.
Medusa turned away, furious. Furious with herself, for being furious, too. What kind of a foolish dream had she been spinning? How had she developed such a softness for a pretty powerful fool, in so short a time? Well, it served her right, and she would know better than to let herself be so vulnerable, the next time.
But at least she had her power, every last drop of it, could feel the flash and zing of it through her veins. She was a goddess, and she had all of Paradise at her disposal. It seemed a hollow fantasy, now, but it was all that she had to return to. And she was all ready to make her exit in the next breath, too. She had her snakes at least – not the semblances and dream-ghosts that William had given her, but the spirits of her true snakes, curling about her spirit-head and hissing at her. Not the dumb wordless hisses of the pretend-snakes, but actual language and conversation. Medusa had been talking to her snakes for millennia of existence, and they talked to her back. These were malignant little hisses that they caressed into her ears. Amongst them were included, “You should kill him before we go,” and, “Your royal dignity has been affronted. It should not be forgiven!”
It was a great comfort. But she found she hadn't the heart to act upon it, sound counsel though it undoubtedly was. It was easier to fade away, invisible and unthought of. And in the next second, she'd have been gone.
Except that a hand upon her arm stopped her, and almost stopped her immortal heart too. (For a moment.) She was without substance, a spirit on the air, undetectable to mortal senses now, without a mortal body to occupy as a resentful prisoner. How could anyone see her, still less lay hands upon her ethereal incorporeal form?
But he was a powerful wizard, a precocious youth with strength beyond his years, belied by his pretty baby face and his casual manners. William. It was William, of course.
William's hand on her arm. Except that it wasn't quite on her – she didn't have that much substance, and he (perhaps) didn't have quite that much power. But it caught and held a moment against the prickling, light-filled surface of her insubstantial self. There was a friction there, a heat and sensation, that was more than human flesh and bone moving through air. He felt her, and almost no mortal, even no wizard, could have.
And he saw her, too. She spun around, and his eyes were on her, and they stared at each other, wild and surprised both. Maybe he was as surprised to be able to see her, as the fact that he could see her surprised Medusa. He seemed it.
Maybe she was special. Maybe this was special. It made her feel special – and not in the way of being a goddess, either, but a special girl, just a regular mortal girl – the way he reached out a hand, and hesitated. Hesitated, and didn't quite touch her cheek. Her companions probably had something to do with that, her snakes. The way that they hissed and snapped at him, eager to defend the godlike pride and honour of their mistress, had to help. He was probably scared to touch her. (He needn't have been.)
So at least he'd bothered to say goodbye to her, to think of her at all. What about the girl? Medusa glanced her way, where she was still crumpled on the ground. The rest of the little gang of supernatural do-gooders were hunched around her, still petting and cooing, enough to make an immortal goddess sick. It was clear that it was only William who could still see and sense her, the only one with powers sufficiently strong and refined. Or, at least, the only one out of all of his original troupe of acolytes and disciples. Barring the girl Caroline herself, where she was lying in a pitiful little heap on the grass, and milking the situation for every last little drop of attention and sympathy she could extract out of it. Or she clearly had been, up until that moment. But right at this minute, instead, she gazed at Medusa – or at the blank empty spot that ought to have been all she could detect in the space where Medusa invisibly lingered. And she glared. Glared with focus, attention and specific direction, much as if she could see Medusa, every bit as well as William could. Could see her, and see William lingering at her side, talking to her, devoting his attention to Medusa. When every last iota rightly belonged to her, as she evidently considered the matter.
Well, well. So the little bitch was a magically gifted little bitch, then. Medusa shrugged, at the revelation, shrugged right at her, glaring back. It was nothing to her, and only meant that the little whore had best not cross her, now she'd popped up and surfaced from under the radar, now Medusa knew she was gifted and therefore a threat. Probably she wouldn't be that stupid. And in any case, the mortal little heifer had won. William was hers, and sufficiently devoted to drag her back from the grave, wasn't he?
And now he drew Medusa's attention back, to himself, a much more attractive prospect in any case. He teased at her snakes, drawing a finger through the air just out of their reach – dicing with danger, or he would have been if she – and they – had been in corporeal form. Even as spirit, they did their utmost to take his finger off, to be sentries at the gate of her person. It got her attention on him, and he smiled, holding her eyes boldly. Gods, but he was a pretty thing, and forward, and she had not lost her heart in millennia, not so quick and easy as this. Perhaps abduction was still an option? It was traditional amongst her kind, after all.
“Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?” he asked now, leaning his head a little sideways, his smile ebbing away. There was something accusatory about it, as if he couldn't believe that she'd do something so duplicitous and hurtful to him. Oh, he was gifted with natural powers, all right, as much in flirtation as in magic.
“It seemed not as if I'd be missed,” Medusa replied. She was a little stiff, and could not unbend to save her life. The lightness of his tone was out of reach for her. How could a mortal flirt better than a goddess?
“You look so different,” he said abstractedly, veering off in a direction that barely qualified even as a tangent. “I never thought about what you really looked like. I was used to how you looked before.”
Of course you were used to it, she thought, stricken. He hadn't given a thought, then, to her true face, her real snakes, her actual person. She really was nothing more than a tool to him. “I looked like your girlfriend,” she noted, stiffer than ever. “Of course you were used to it.”
“Oh, I suppose that's it,” he said vaguely. And he cast a considering look, Caroline's way. She was glaring at the pair of them, now. And rudely ignoring Joe's solicitous tenderness, Alan's attempts to bandage the grazes she'd sustained. And Mags' casting of runes and a shimmering haze around her, trying to deduce if she'd come back to them whole, unharmed by her sojourn in the darker realms. (In which cosy spots she well belonged, if you wanted to ask Medusa. She'd be right at home, there.) It was fortunate they were all making themselves so busy. At least they had no attention to spare for William, standing there ignoring his girlfriend, whispering like a lunatic into thin air. “But she's not my girlfriend, you know,” he said now.
Which now, would have been enough to knock Medusa over, as if with a feather. Even if she hadn't already been so insubstantial as to be wafted away by any passing breeze. But she still didn't let such a tactic make a fool of her. She'd been dealing with amorous gods and lusty shepherds, two-timing military generals and misbehaving seraphim for eons now, after all. “Really,” she said, suspiciously. And ebbed away from him a little, floating on the breeze. Let him follow her, let him give chase: she wasn't an eager fish to be caught on the first hook bobbing by.
And follow he did – a step, two, following after her as if unconscious of it. “Will?” Joe called after him, from the little gathering in the cold dark behind them, sounding bewildered. But Medusa was fishing herself, now, and did not care.
“Well, not so much as all that,” Will said now. And he was looking into her eyes, and then his eyes followed the gyrations of her snakes, as if hypnotised. “I mean... sort of. But a good friend, anyway. And I felt guilty – she was caught by those demons, on my watch...”
Because she was a stubborn self-aggrandizing idiot, Medusa thought privately. But she was too canny to say it out loud. Trashing the opposition might work in certain select circumstances, but only with the right audience, and this wasn't that. “I must go,” she said, looking away, affecting disinterest. Because he was going to be collected and dragged back, by one of his companions, any minute. And that poxy little madam was glaring at them again – while still doing her helpless fetching damsel routine – and probably on the point of sending a hound off to hunt him down and bring her prey back to her talons.
“Oh, not yet, don't go,” he said, compulsively. Medusa liked that. He stepped that little bit closer, into the dark, into the darkness that was her. And this time, when he put out his hand, her snakes didn't hiss, didn't try to bite with phantom fangs. One wound itself about his wrist – as if they'd come around to him. As if they meant to keep him.
And they drew his hand in closer, to caress her spectral cheek. “Why don't you stay?” he asked, and his voice was quieter, more seductive. He hadn't looked into her eyes, so deep, this way before. His hand was warm, against skin that was barely there. “I never thought you would be so beautiful. In the books they say you're a monster – a powerful monster, but a monster just the same. But you're...” His eyes skimmed over her ample curves, the stone fire of her eyes, the pout and dimples of her pretty face. Over the snakes that were humming and singing a song of seduction his way, now. “And your snakes are so beautiful,” he added, his voice warm. Ah, a man who could appreciate her darlings. He was a rare one, indeed.
But there were voices behind him now: Joe, and Mags, abandoning their sulking wounded charge, to come and retrieve him. It wasn't the moment. “Will? Will, what the hell are you playing at? We've got Caroline back – thank God. But she's not well. She needs you, Will. We need to get her into the warm. Come on, stop staring into the dark like you've lost your wits, you loon. Come on.”
“Come with me?” she whispered to him, and he was still for a moment. Like he was definitely considering it.
But the others were almost on him – and he looked around to them, and sighed. “I can't,” he murmured. “I have things to do, here. Can't you–” And he gazed at her, suddenly hopeful. Suddenly worshipful, as befitted him. It was what Medusa liked to see, in an approaching lover. It was appropriate. “Will you come back? Will you come visit?”
There it was, her invitation. And she'd be back, all right. “I'll come back for you,” she promised, as she faded, atom by atom and spark of light by spark of light, into the airy cold darkness of the night, on her way bit by bit back to paradise. “Keep watch. You owe me, my love. A god does you a favour, you'd better be careful what she claims back.”
But her last glimpse of him, he did not look frightened. Only excited. And her snakes hissed, “Ours. We'll come back and claim him, in time.” As she disappeared into the higher realm, into the dark.
The End