![]() Heroes dashed about her decks, clothed for milder climes and unprotected from the sudden biting cold. Jason’s warship, Argo, first listed in the shallows, then floundered and nearly foundered. Slushy water surged beneath the surface of the sea, a leviathan that ebbed and swelled and undulated with the waves. Its hull grated like gnashing wooden teeth, pushed and shoved and squeezed by ice on every side. On the water in the harbor, ice floes arose, colliding with groans and moans and cracks. With the ghost of a smile on her lips, she watched the osprey swoop onto the galley’s tallest mast, convey her invitation and flap home to oblivion. ![]() Medea raised her arms and conjured an osprey, sent it flying to the ship with her message: “Come ye, and parley - if you dare.” With no more needed from the Fates, the ancient sisters swirled and whirled away. ![]() “Your task is all but done, till the next reckoning should come.” “My thanks to Mother Hekate,” said Medea. I mind the weave’s design and bring it hither,” soughed Clotho. “From distaff onto spindle, all is spun and done. “I cut their threads with my abhorred shears, choose the manner and the time of their unraveling.” Atropos scissored her blades open and shut. I apportion suffering to each.” She waved her rod. On a throaty gust Lachesis sniggered: “Their alloted time is nearly up. Medea, the punisher, longed to orchestrate what more enduring tortures Fates could bring. The damned soon learned to cheat perdition: to die and die and die again. “See! Vile pirates infest the shoals below! Sisters, teach these sinners to rue this day and slight no woman evermore.”ĭeath in hell cut torment short, brought undeserved relief to serial sinners, if fleetingly. “What dead? Those!” Medea pointed downslope toward the harbor where a single storm-tossed ship bobbed amid the shallows. “Make cowards of what loathsome dead?” Atropos, eldest, unveiling from the frigid air, worked her shears that scissored death from life. In answer to her call, around Medea’s ridgetop the wind blew cold, bearing balls of ice to shape its blasts.įirst revealed stood Clotho, the spinster: “Loose havoc upon what heads?” Medea, oldest witch in hell, thus convoked the timeless Fates, the Moerae: three ancient sisters who spin and spindle, measure and assign the threads not only of life, but of existence itself, even in infernity. Shakespeare and Marlowe, Henry VI, Part 2 Copyright 2017 by Janet Morris and Chris Morris.Īnd hell too strong for me to buckle with: It appears with the permission of Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. ![]() This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. ![]()
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