"Just a minute," I interrupted.
"I was wondering too," Calyxa said.
"I know," said my sister's surrogate. "But Medusa didn't, back then. There were no mirrors, you see, in their stony cave, and her swinetoothed sisters could only grunt. After a few years of seeing her would-be boyfriends freeze in their tracks when she made eyes at them, she decided that if she was ever to have a lover she'd have to pretend in the cave what had been no pretense in the temple: not to know he was approaching. One day the seagulls on the statues of her bouldered beaux told her that Perseus himself was winging herward, a golden dream; she lulled her sisters to sleep with a snake-charm song she'd learned and then feigned sleep herself. Softly he crept up behind; her whole body glowed; his hand, strong as Poseidon's, grasped her hair above the nape. Her eyes still closed, she turned her neck to take his kiss. ."
"O wow," Calyxa said. "Do you know what I think?"
"I know what I felt," said I. "But how was I to know?"
"I wish I'd known," I said shamefaced to the hooded one, who replied it was no matter: if she'd known herself to be as Gorgon as her sisters, Medusa would have begged to have her head cut off. In any case, when the Perseid tasks were done and the hero's gear returned (except the crescent scabbard, given Perseus as a souvenir, and the Graeae's eye, which unfortunately he'd dropped into Lake Triton on his Libyan overflight), Hermes had kept the adamantine sickle, restored their tooth to the aggrieved Graeae, and forwarded the helmet, sandals, and kibisis to the Stygian Nymphs; Athene retrieved her bright shield and affixed to its boss the Gorgon's scalp.
"Then there's no New Medusa? You said there was."
"There is," she said. "Athene reckoned she'd punished the girl nearly enough, so she rejoined her head to her body, revived her, and restored her original appearance. What's more, as a kind of compensation, she allows her some freedom of motion and took away her sculpting glance for the most part, as long as she abides by certain strict conditions. ."
"Never mind those," I said. "Can she unstone me before I'm too far gone?"
The girl hesitated. "Perhaps. Under certain very strict conditions. ."
But I would none of reservations and conditions; begged only to be outfitted as before and directed how to head off my recapped adversary. I paced about the temple, impatient to be off; already I felt younger, more Perseus than I'd been in a dozen years. No good her telling me things had changed; I was a new man; only regird me with shield and sickle, it was a decade's petrifaction in myself I'd cut off first, then Medusa's head to melt away another, then upstart Danaus's and confront Andromeda with a better Perseus than had first unscarped her.
"That's really what you want?" the hooded lady asked then, and simultaneously later Calyxa: "That's really what you wanted?"
I yessed both; let there be no talk of past past capture, I was growing younger by the moment in both temples, hers with anticipation, mine with recapitulation.
Very well, then, said my coiffed counselor: she'd advise me as before. But the case was truly altered, and so must be both my equipage and my address. From beneath her mantle she produced a golden dagger the length and straightness of my phallus fairly drawn. I was dismayed, for what might never lose in love would never win in war.
"No adamantine sickle?"
"Just this," she said, "and your bare hands."
"I like your bare hands," Calyxa said. "But I see your point."
The point was, I was told, I must proceed this time with neither armor nor disguise. Why did I imagine Hades himself no longer used the helmet of his youth, if not that not it nor any other charm could work invisibility once one passed a certain point of fame? As for the polished shield, it itself was changed, aegissed with the former Gorgon's former power: hence its absence from the temple, lest self-reflection petrify its beholders.
"Magic wallet?" I asked, heartsunk.
"That may be useful," she said. "Not to put the New Medusa's head in, since you're not to cut it off — "
"Not cut it off!" But then I remembered and remarked that her deGorgonization made the kibisis unneeded. "All she has to do is look at me, then, and I'm twenty again? Or is it whoever looks at her? I was asked that question about the old Medusa, in a letter from a girl in Chemmis, Egypt — "
"It's not that simple, Perseus," my advisor warned, and my priestess:
"You didn't answer the question."
Nor did she, I said, except to say that the New Medusa's probationary stipulations allowed for one special circumstance in which petrifaction might occur as of old, and one in which not only its contrary but a kind of immortality might be accomplished. As a possible safeguard against the former, I was advised to borrow once again the kibisis, to use not as a totebag but as a veiclass="underline" Medusa herself would explain it when she came to me, "and I," I said to Calyxa, "when I come to her, in panel Six-A of your second series." What I asked Athene then was how to deal this time with the Gray Ladies, who though eyeless were not blind to my former strategy. Or might I skip them altogether and follow my own nose to the Nymphs' sour seat? In any case, surely I must borrow Hermes's sandals again as well, to fly to Hyperborea, or I'd die of old age before I ever reached Medusa.
The woman shook her head. "Athene said to remind you she has other relatives to look after too; that's why she couldn't speak to you here in person today. She's taken a great shine to a cousin of yours named Bellerophon — "
"Never heard of him," I said, and Calyxa: "I have; they say he's great."
"Never mind him," I told her, and the hooded girl me: "You will, soon enough; your sister has big plans for him. Her exact words were: I'll always have a soft spot for dear old Perseus, but do remind him he's not the only golden hero in Greece.' I'm sorry."
"So am I," said Calyxa. "I see now why it upset you about Ammon and Sabazius. Let me ask you one question. ."
"Hold on, I'm almost done." She did; the cowled messenger then summoned Pegasus from the court, stroked and purred to the pretty beast as to a favorite child, and set forth candidly, at times apologetically, Athene's new orders and instructions. I might borrow the winged horse, but strictly on a standby basis, since Bellerophon had first priority and could call for him at any moment. I should fly directly, not to Mount Atlas, but to the lakeshore of Libyan Triton. There I'd find the Graeae, helpless and cross enough to bite my head off; but I was to introduce myself plainly, endure with patience their threats and insults, and offer to skindive for their long-lost eye if they'd redirect me to the Stygian Nymphs. In general, she concluded, my mode of operation in this second enterprise must be contrary to my first's: on the one hand, direct instead of indirect — no circuities, circumlocutions, reflections, or ruses — on the other, rather passive than active: beyond a certain point I must permit things to come to me instead of adventuring to them.
Stung a bit still at being bumped by Bellerophon, I protested that direct passivity was not my style. It had grown by then as dark in that temple as now is this; I could discern my companion no more clearly than Calyxa. But a resonance in her reply — she observed that before the point aforementioned, initiative was mine to take — aroused me oddly through my new dismay and old-husband habit; I realized not merely that I was alone in the dark with a sympathetic and perhaps attractive young woman not after all Athene — but also that I hadn't put myself in the way of such realization for many years. Abruptly I embraced her; Pegasus skittered; she, too, was startled, and for some reason I when she neither protested nor pushed away. Simply she stiffened; I as well; thanked her for her counsel; prepared to unarm her with some mumble. She disarmed me with a murmur instead, how it had been long since she'd been embraced. Impetuously then I ran hand under habit; she drew off, not offended however, and from her bosom took a light gold bridle. "This is for Pegasus," she said, "to restrain him." Smiling, she led me therewith courtward, where she turned and straightway came to me, reminding me it wasn't Naw Ajrodithz we'd been in, but Naw AOhnhz