Makes what easier?But I didn't ask that, because despite what she said, I did want to live. But I needed to piss her off just enough that she'd lose her focus. If I got her off track and bogged down in her anger, I might be able to escape.
I wished I remembered more about my life as Medusa and if I'd ever found a way out of here.
As the idea occurred to me, I eyed the seal. It had shown me events from my life, and the guys’, but each of us had to touch it. It hadn't been something that happened with just my hand on the obsidian.
I had to act fast, before Athena realized what I was doing.
Throwing my body toward her, I reached out with one hand to touch a shard. I connected with both it and her at the same time, and just like I hoped, I was dragged from one world into the next.
* * *
Loneliness was the worst part.
My serpents were company, but I couldn't converse with them. The longer I lived, the more I realized they were extensions of me, and less creatures with thoughts and feelings of their own.
That wasn't to say I didn't love them or wasn't grateful for them. They comforted me, tongues tasting my cheeks and my tears when I was sad. But they served the same function as wrapping my arms around myself when I was cold. Or rocking back and forth when I was bored and thought I'd go mad without anything to do. Their hissing and spitting was an outward reflection of my anger. Or fear.
We weren't separate, them and me. All of us were Medusa. The Medusa created by a goddess.
I slithered past the men I'd turned to stone. There were so many now. I decided today I would count them, as if by their number, I could calculate the time I'd beenthis.
There were dozens now. Most of them closer to the entrance of my lair, because in the beginning, I'd made the mistake of wanting to see the sky.
It was the reason there was an old man, a shepherd, and two of his flock, frozen for all time at the mouth of the cave. It was funny, actually. If I had stayed inside, in this dark and dank prison, I could have lived without hurting anyone. I had no one to blame for the soldiers who came after, and the rumor of, the monster who hid in these mountains but myself.
Today, though...something had changed. My serpents twisted and knotted around each other, agitated.
Like me.
I couldn't stand another second within these walls. If I was seen, then so be it. By now, the mortals knew what creature lurked in here. To approach this cave was to risk their lives. I wouldn't hold myself responsible for them.
Heart pounding, I trailed from the deepest part of the cave to the opening. I hesitated at the first sign of light. It would hurt to go from the darkness into the sun. That's why I waited.
That's what I told myself.
The truth was, I was afraid.
Inside, it was safe, and there was still a part of me that wanted to survive. My snakes hissed.
“Shh. Shh. Shh,” I soothed them, but they kept on. If anyone was outside, they would give me away. “Shh.”
It was only when I made myself take deep breaths that they calmed.
Sun. It was a body’s length away. Then an arm's length. A hand. A fingertip.
Careful. Careful,part of me whispered. But I needed the sky and the air and the sun more than I needed caution. If I got a second of fresh air that wasn't tinged with mold before I was pierced by a hundred arrows, I'd take it.
A beam of sunlight spilled into the cave. It was the first place I stopped. I let the heat sink past my scales into my blood. There had been a time in my life when I took the sun for granted. Closing my eyes, I slid past the mouth of the cave onto the stones outside. It was hot, so hot it burned me, but I absorbed it. I might never feel it again. I tipped my face to the sky. In the distance, I could hear the wind and the ocean. There were no voices, no sounds of a town or city, no animals. There weren't even birds. Just the relentless crashing of waves and the wind.
I let out a breath, moved farther away, and opened my eyes.
The shepherd and his sheep had crumbled. How much time had passed that they’d been worn away to a featureless lump of stone?
My cave was built into a rocky hill. All around the entrance were boulders. As I lifted my chin to study the hillside, I could make out the divots in the stone. Places where they had come away from the rock face and then the long scars where they'd tumbled and come to rest by my home. It struck me, as I examined the place Athena had left me, that one more avalanche could bury me inside.
I wouldn't die, because I didn't need to breathe. And I didn't need to eat or drink, and I rarely slept.
My fate could be an eternity of darkness. Wasn't it horrible enough that I was stuck in this form?