Medea Read Online Free PDF

did not approve of the Achaean fascination with love - but to thirst, as though there was something inside me parching for lack of water. I could not imagine where I would find a human woman to lie with me. Jason, doubtless, would be provided with a bride after he had achieved his destiny. Perhaps she might have a slave or a maiden sent with her who would be given to me.
    I wondered what she would be like as I lay in my cold wrappings, apart from my bedmate. Not beautiful, that would be too much to expect. Old, perhaps, even crippled - Nauplios, the net-man Dictys' son, could command no beauty of face or body - but possessed of those parts which could enfold me, take me into her body, give me joy. Her arms would wrap me close, hold me to her breast - ah, her soft breast! - and I would lie in her arms all night.
    Such musings usually ended with me turning my body into the soft earth. She always accepted my libation graciously.
    That night I slept intermittently around the fire. I was afraid of the dawn. I was even more afraid of my own fear. I must not fail at this hunt.
    As soon as the goddess whom we call Eos trailed a pink garment over the horizon we were awake. I had polished and oiled the stone head of the boar spear, had tended my feet, too, which were as hard as hoofs, and tightened the belt and loincloth which held my shrinking genitals in some kind of safety. For a cornered boar strikes for the fork of the biped which assails it, tusks and tears for the belly and the sex, to bring the insolent attacker to his knees to be savaged. From my belt hung a bronze knife, one of a pair which Jason had brought with him. It was as sharp as I could make it. I tied up my hair and joined my friend, who was leaning against the corner of a hut and looking irritatingly relaxed.
    'Which way are we going?' I asked, not wanting to trust my tongue overmuch.
    He pointed and touched his ear, hunter's talk for 'Listen!'
    I listened. Far up the mountain I heard the baying of the hounds. They had found prey. The boar was moving, from the sound, down the valley between Centaurs' Mountain and the next, which they called Axe Head because of its shape. That was bad. That valley was thickly wooded, with deep undergrowth. Jason and I had penetrated there in search of a lost goat once, and it had taken hours to find our way out again - with the burden of a new kid and a very affronted mother, who had chosen, she thought, the safest place in the world for her delivery.
    The thorned red vines which the centaurs call wolf's fruit, because of a resemblance to the berries of blood dripping from a predator's jaws, were high enough to cut off the sky. I had drawn a deep breath of relief as we had paused on Centaurs' Mountain as the goat suckled her kid and I sucked my scratches, under the benign gaze of heaven again.
    But there was no fighting the dictates of Fate, so I hefted my spear and we joined the soft-footed hunters.
    In twos and threes we drifted down the slope, over the grass and the flowers of Adonis, stepped across the stream at the bottom and began climbing the other side.
    I was lost in the space of time in which a man drinks a cup of wine. Jason at my side was fighting his way through the scrub, and I could not speak to remind him that we were supposed to stand still, unwind the vine, and slide through the bushes, making little sound. This slowed the progress but reduced the damage to human skin. I stopped for the thousandth time to unwrap my thigh from the cruel embrace of thorns as sharp as daggers, and then I saw him.
    The hounds bayed, higher up. The hunters whistled, calling in the dogs, and I heard a crash and a short bitten-off scream on the slope above my head. They were seeking him on their own level.
    But out of the coiled tangle of undergrowth, the head was emerging. A high-shouldered king boar - tall as a colt, wide as a doorway, scarred with many encounters, ten years old and cunning as a serpent. His eyes were red with rage and