The Sixth Life of Medusa

18. Vile Soulless Beings

I have never encountered a more air-brained child in all my life.

Lela tucked her hair behind her ear as she considered what she wrote. She shook her head. It would be foolish to use biased words in her report to Athena. She swiped her thumb over the small stone slab, erasing what she had written with aether.

Lela took another wary glance around the dense mangrove. The morning breeze, rustling leaves, call of birds and chirps of insects—nothing amiss. Using blend had merged her with her surroundings, but she had done well to first fly deep into the bogs before transforming to her human form.

"...avoid Phorcydes as best as you can. She may look and act like a hapless crone, but when she bites, she bites to kill."

Shivering at the memory of Athena's warning, Lela brought the needle to stone and tried again.

The eighteenth day of the month of the Peacock.

Medusa still does nothing out of the ordinary. Most days are spent at the pond where she catches dragonflies and frogs. Every evening, she prays at a makeshift shrine. There are no signs of the child manipulating aether yet.

Pausing again, Lela swung a long leg over the buttonwood branch she sat on and wondered if she should add what she overheard Phorcydes say some days back.

Something is not right, Galene. The thousand-year-old ekhidna in the southern bogs disappeared. Are you certain you did not encounter her?

Lela shook her head. Adding details she couldn't explain may gain nothing but a summon and grilling. Such grilling may, in turn, expose her subtle resistance to the goddess.

"Freedom," Lela muttered as she drew in a lungful of thick loamy air and shut her eyes. What would it feel like to be free from the suffocating presence of deities? It was a strange thought, like thinking of the sky without the sky, yet she longed for it.

Like priestesses, owls do not marry, but they are luckier because the goddess does not demand that they remain eternal virgins. Brow twisting, Lela touched her belly as she recalled the ritual she partook in at only eleven. Such an ignorant fool. There was always a price with benevolent Athena.

The mark at the back of Lela's neck itched like a warning, reminding her to shun such rebellious thoughts. Sighing, she was about to continue her report when a terrifying awareness arrested her senses.

I've been spotted.

Heart sinking to the floor of her belly, Lela dared to glance down.

Phorcydes stared up at her. Like a weathered ghost hunched beneath the folds of her green robe, she stood on the swampy still water, watching and waiting.

Surely, this isn't how I die. Please, no.

Phorcydes' offered a genial wave and beckoned to her.

When Lela hesitated, the goddess' shadow warped into a clawed hand, slithered up the tree and snatched her.

A woozy moment later, Lela slammed against grassy ground. Groaning, she remained locked in position as the grip of the large shadow hand firmly held her in place.

Through the curtain of her white hair, Lela observed she was in the back garden of the deity's home. How did she get here so fast?

"Like a gift falling from the sky," Phorcydes said with a delighted grin before her focus shifted to what lay at Lela's feet.

Her joints popped as she bent and retrieved the stone slab with an agility that didn't match her aged appearance. "You Owls and horrendous writing," she tutted as she squinted at its content.