T HE G RAEAE By the time Perseus landed neatly, toes down, on the Mysian shore, outside a cave whose outer formation resembled, to his eyes at least, a squashed rat, the day was all but spent. Looking westwards he could see that HELIOS’s sun-chariot was turning from copper to red as it neared the land of the HESPERIDES and the end of its daily round. As Perseus approached the mouth of the cave he slipped on the cap that Hermes had given him, the Hood of Hades. The moment it was on his head, the long shadow that had been striding along the sand beside him disappeared. Everything was darker and a little misty with the hood over his eyes, but he could see well enough. ‘I won’t be needing these,’ he said to himself, leaving the scythe, satchel and shield on the sand outside the cave. He followed the murmur of voices and a glimmer of light through a long, winding passageway. The light grew brighter and the voices louder. ‘It’s my turn to have the tooth!’ ‘I’ve only just put it in.’ ‘Then PEMPHREDO should let me have the eye at least.’ ‘Oh, stop moaning, ENYO …’ As Perseus entered the chamber he saw, held in the flickering light of a lamp that hung over them, three fantastically old women. Their ragged clothes, straggling hair and sagging flesh were as grey as the stones of the cave. In the bare lower gum of one of the sisters jutted up a single yellow tooth. In the eye socket of another sister a solitary eyeball darted back and forth and up and down in the most alarming manner. It was just as Hermes had said, one eye and one tooth between them. A pile of bones lay heaped on the floor. The sister with the tooth was gnawing the side of one, stripping it of its rotten flesh. The sister with the eye had picked up another bone and was inspecting it closely and lovingly. The third sister, with no eye and no tooth, raised her head with a jerk and sniffed the air sharply. ‘I smell a mortal,’ she shrieked, stabbing a finger in the direction of Perseus. ‘Look, Pemphredo. Use the eye!’ Pemphredo, the sister with the eye, cast wild glances in all directions. ‘There’s nothing there, Enyo.’ ‘I tell you there is. A mortal. I smell it!’ cried Enyo. ‘Bite it, DINO.fn11 Use your tooth. Bite! Bite it to death!’ Perseus stole silently closer, taking great care not to step on any cast-off bones. ‘Give me the eye, Pemphredo! I swear to you I smell mortal flesh.’ ‘Here, take it.’ Pemphredo took the eye from her socket and the one called Enyo stretched out her hand greedily to receive it. Stepping forward Perseus snatched up the eye himself. ‘What was that? Who? What?’ Perseus had brushed Dino, the sister with the tooth. Taking advantage of her open-mouthed astonishment he plucked the tooth from her mouth and stepped back with a loud laugh. ‘Good evening, ladies.’ ‘The tooth! The tooth, someone has taken the tooth!’ ‘Where is the eye? Who has the eye?’ ‘I have your tooth, sisters, and I have your eye too.’ ‘Give them back!’ ‘You have no right.’ ‘All in good time,’ said Perseus. ‘I could return this cloudy old eye and this rotten old tooth. I’ve no use for them. Of course, I could just as easily throw them into the sea …’ ‘No! No! We beg of you!’ ‘Beg …’ ‘It all depends on you,’ said Perseus, walking round and round them. As he passed they shot out their bony arms to try and grab him, but he was always too quick. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Information. You are old. You know things.’ ‘What would you have us tell you?’ ‘How to find your sisters, the Gorgons.’ ‘What do you want with them?’ ‘I’d like to take Medusa home with me. Part of her at least.’ ‘Ha! You’re a fool. She will petrify you.’ ‘That’s turn you to stone.’ ‘I’m not ignorant. I know what “petrify” means,’ said Perseus. ‘You let me worry about all that, just tell me where to find the island where they live.’ ‘You mean our lovely sisters harm.’ ‘Tell me or I throw first the eye and then the tooth into the sea.’ ‘Libya!’ cried the one called Enyo. ‘The island is off the coast of Libya.’ ‘Are you satisfied?’ ‘They’ll kill you and feast on your flesh and we shall hear of it and cheer,’ screeched Dino. ‘Now, give us our eye and our tooth.’ ‘Certainly,’ said Perseus. These hags might be old, he told himself, but they have sharp claws and they are fierce and vengeful. I had better buy myself some time. ‘Tell you what, let’s make a game of it,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes and count to a hundred … Oh. Of course. No need to close your eyes. Just count to a hundred while I hide the tooth and eye. They’ll be somewhere in this cave, I promise. No cheating. One, two, three, four …’ ‘Damn you, child of Prometheus!’ ‘May your flesh rot from your bones!’ Perseus moved swiftly round their chamber, counting with them. ‘You should be thanking me … nineteen, twenty … not cursing me,’ he said as they hurled fouler and filthier obscenities at him. ‘Forty-five, forty-six … surely this is the most exciting thing to have happened to you for centuries … sixty-eight, sixty-nine … you will be talking about this day for ages and ages to come. Don’t start looking till you reach a hundred, no cheating, now!’ As Perseus returned along the passageway towards the mouth of the cave and the open beach he heard the voices of the Graeae behind him squabbling, screaming and spitting. ‘Out of the way, out of the way!’ ‘I have it, I have it!’ ‘That’s just a chip of bone, you old fool.’ ‘The eye! I have the eye!’ ‘Let go of my tongue!’