Medusa lay on her bed and stared up at the sky. She felt invisible—Hyperborealis—the golden city, gleamed above her like a dream. The sunlight broke through the thunderheads and sent brilliant rays down onto the dark island where the Gorgons lived. There is no one left for me except my family. There is no place to go except our island. He stared at us, made fun of us. All we did was look at him. How can a look turn someone to stone? I wish I could take it back, or I wish I could do it again, but only to guys who make me feel invisible, less than invisible—like an ugly, disgusting thing.

“Medusa!” Her father, Phorcys, called. He was heavy and hunched over with thick, scaly skin. He looked like a slug. He was standing just outside the door to her room. He had named her Medusa, or Wisdom, because even as a baby she was compassionate.

How can my Dad be so ugly – so sweet? She hated the squish of his
soft, wet skin, she hated how the others had called him ‘Slugger.’
She hated that she laughed, too.

“Dinner. C’mon girls….” Phorcys shuffled away, back down the hall to
the kitchen. Mom split. She was the wise one. Who would want to look at us, all of us are monsters. Ceto– she knew what we all are — freaks—I wish I could go away – she fled into the sea. Mom. Medusa took one last look at herself in the mirror – her skin was forest green, her eyes were silver, her nose was too wide, her lips too full. Her silver hair was curly and thick; she was tall with broad shoulders. If only I had gold skin like the Hyperboreans and I was shorter, thinner. With big breasts and shiny, straight hair. I’m so ugly. I don’t even have breasts.

Phorcys set the table. The girls, Stheino and Euryale, Medusa’s two younger sisters, came in– they looked windblown and giddy. “Pass the sardines, please,” Stheino said, smiling too politely. “Of course and here’s the kelp.” Euryale giggled. Stheino kicked her under the table. Phorcys waited. They had a secret. They would eventually tell him about it. He imagined them climbing through the caves and finding the bioluminescent lagoon or maybe playing hide and seek and wandering into a new patch of wild huckleberries. Summer was late this year, he’d have to try to remember to look for huckleberries tomorrow – make a pie. Medusa loved those pies.

She still hadn’t come to the table. He called her again. She
staggered in, looking blank. Phorcys felt as if he was looking at his
eldest through a dense fog. She was only visible as a hazy outline.
Her bones seemed to be jutting through her skin.

“I made your favorite– sweet potato stew and fried sardines, Meddy,” Phorcys said, standing up, then sitting down. He didn’t want to hover but he would give anything to see her eat.

“Mm-hmm…” Medusa sat down and waited for her father to pass her the dishes.

Medusa took the dishes and put small portions on her place. Phorcys
tried not to watch her eat. He could gain weight just by thinking about food, but she was disappearing.

Meddy was the loveliest— she was tall and lanky but her hair shone so that she looked like she had a silver halo. And her dark green skin was like an agate stone. Her sisters were stocky and looked more like him. But all three girls had those silver curls and that green skin of Ceto. And they were lovely, at least to their father. He doted on them—he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Girls need lots of attention.

The expulsion had been a relief for Phorcys, Stheino and Euryale. None of them felt at ease in the world of the Hyperboreans. They were too clean, too shiny and the perpetual sun made them irritable. Medusa went back to her room after choking down some dinner. Phorcys cleaned up and wondered if raising teenagers was always this hard. Meddy was lonely, he had to find something for her to work on or the boredom would eat her from the inside. He wished for Ceto but knew he was on his own. He wanted these kids.

After he finished cleaning up, he went into Stheino and Euryale’s room and found them in bed with the lights out. He kissed their foreheads and smoothed their silver curls away from their high foreheads. He knocked on Meddy’s door but she didn’t answer. He padded down the hall to his room and soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Medusa lay awake staring at the full moon. She heard her sisters giggling and whispering to each other in their room and felt hot tears welling up.

I hate my life. I hate how small and stupid everything I touch is.
There’s no point in any of it.

Medusa listened as her sisters climbed out of their window and snuck out into the moonlit night. Her last thought before she fell asleep was of a huge dark wave that swallowed the light.

Stheino and Euryale ran along the moonlit path to the cave where they’d hidden the animals. In the storm, the schooner was blown off course and foundered on the rocky coast of their island. The animals, the girls had never seen any like them before, were small but resembled the Gorgons. Their skin was pale and pink. Their bodies were weaker and they had not wings. The girls rescued the humans and carried them to the cave but didn’t know what to do with them. The animals made noises like speech. Occasionally, it sounded as if the animals cried out, “Zeus, Our Father” but then the sounds got louder and incoherent.

Stheino, whose name meant Strength, carried the animals to the cave in groups of five that she bundled with rope and tied to her back, nestling them between her wings, on her shoulder blades. Euryale whose name meant Universal, scavenged and hunted for the animals—she convinced Stheino to leave the animals tied in bundles in the cave. She brought them fish that she caught and some of the wild edible herbs and grasses.

The men, Greek sailors, couldn’t decide whether they’d survived the shipwreck. Some believed they were dead and had crossed into the Underworld. Others believed that witches had saved them and carried them to this land of perpetual darkness. Others thought that they were being held as hostages, and would be ransomed. Still others thought they were to be sacrificed or eaten by the strange, green she-devils that held them captive.

That evening, Stheino felt sorry for the smelly animals and tried to bathe them. But the bundle she took to the lagoon screamed and fought
her when she untied the rope and pulled off their clothes. The animals bit and scratched her. She screamed in pain, and she grabbed them up in her arms and threw them. She was much stronger than the creatures and as the humans hit the walls of the cave, they shattered.

She looked at the blood-splattered cave and felt disgusted and thrilled. She rinsed the walls of the cave with water from the lagoon and watched the blood turn the lagoon pinkish brown. Killing these creatures was different from killing normal fish, she felt regret, but they attacked her first. They looked like Gorgons.

Euryale watched Stheino and felt sorry for her sister. She helped her wash the walls with lagoon water. The animals were hard to take care of and they were smelly. She picked up one of the crumpled men and sniffed him. He smelt like a dirty fish. She gutted him with a sharp rock, rinsed him in the lagoon water and offered her sister half. It was like eating raw fish, but it was different. As they ate the man, they experienced his life, his memories, his home, his family, the shipwreck—all of his life flooded into the girls as they ate him. When they finished, they felt stronger, smarter, and hungry for more
life. They decided to build a fire and roast the animals.

Medusa woke up suddenly and listened. The sky was a dull, gray pink and the cabin was silent. She was covered in sweat and her heart was racing. She felt queasy. She went to the bathroom and rinsed her face and her mouth. The door to her sisters’ room was open but their beds were still empty.

Dawn is coming. Dad’ll freak out if they’re gone. I better find them. Meddy pulled on her clothes and went in search of her sisters. She checked the fort on the rocky beach, she went to their favorite picnic spot, she climbed the highest tree, but she couldn’t find the girls.
Finally, she remembered the lagoon in the cave.

When Meddy got to the cave, she caught the smell of fear in the air. The sweat, the excrement and the sickness of the humans combined into a stench that made her stomach heave. Meddy felt her teeth clamp shut and she squared her shoulders before entering. It was too dark to see at first, but the water from the lagoon was full of bioluminescence, and the walls that the girls had washed still glowed.

Medusa’s eyes adjusted and she saw stacks of humans – bundles of five men, each bundle tied with rope and suspended from the ceiling by a series of ropes like nets. The men looked like fish that had been
caught and hung to dry.

Many of the men were very ill, swollen and starved. The sounds they made were a cross between pleas and choking. Medusa was shocked to see them. She walked through the cave, untying the bundles of men. She walked deeper into the cave, afraid for her sisters. What evil spirit had
tortured those harmless humans?

On the way to the lagoon, she smelt smoke. She ran to the lagoon, afraid for her sisters, but as she entered the deeper cave, she saw them. They were feasting on men they had washed and roasted. Medusa felt sick. She opened her mouth to scream but something rushed forward and knocked her flat. Her head spun and the ground rushed up to claim her.

She woke and found herself back in her bed with Phorycs standing over her, holding her hand and stroking her hair.

“There, there, Meddy, you’re going to be shipshape soon enough. Hephaestus will come and tell a tale to breathe courage back into you, my girl.” Phorcys said.

He saw her eyes open and he kissed her hand without realizing he had
moved. She had slept for four days. She was shrunken and weak. Her dreams had been fitful and terrifying.

Stheino and Euryale began to change after eating the humans. Phorcys noticed the physical changes first. Medusa had been the first to hit puberty and she had gotten tall and thin, but other than her refusal to eat, she had stayed the same.

Stheino and Euryale grew in a different way. Their hair became wavier and thicker. Their teeth were growing longer and sharper. Their bodies were more muscular and their wings looked longer and darker. Their moods were also radically different. Now, they snarled when Phorcys tried to find out how they were—they locked the door to their room and refused to let him tuck them in. The hardness in their eyes scared Phorcys. He worried for his babies.

And Meddy wasn’t healing. He wasn’t sure what to believe but he knew for certain that she’d been frightened. But, he knew something about the whole story was wrong. Euryale carried her home and told him they found her unconscious on a beach below a high cliff. Her wings were burned and she had cuts and wounds like small bite marks on her legs. Had she jumped?

Phorcys summoned Hephaestus. Hephaestus was his friend and he always helped Phorcys when life puzzled him. Hephaestus would provide good counsel.

Medusa spent most days in bed, she was too weak to move. One afternoon, she woke up and the memories were flooding her. She wanted to scream at first, to get free of the sense of drowning, of being held down against her will. But no sound came out. Her father saw the trapped fear in her eyes and rubbed her head. He held her hand for hours. She could not stand up and walk on her own. Swallowing food or drink was very slow and difficult. Her sisters rarely visited and usually only checked in when Meddy was asleep.

I am shrinking in on myself. Soon I’ll be gone. No one will know about those humans or the cave. It’s better that way. Tears streamed down her face from behind her closed eyes. Phorcys watched her cry and he wished he could heal her, fix things. But, the world was hard and Meddy wanted too much. She had never learned to accept life with her family, where she was safe.

“I love you Meddy, happiness comes as a choice… with good work, you’ll be better in no time. Then we can pick huckleberries. And make a pie together. Please Meddy. Stay with me.”

Phorcys spoke to her mostly while she slept. The thinness of her body, the crying spells, the despair and fear in her eyes and where her sisters found her terrified him. She was crumpled at the base of the highest cliff. Why did she jump? She didn’t want to live. How could he make her want to live?

Phorcys kept asking himself the same questions. He felt powerless. He rubbed her feet and went into the kitchen to make dinner for Stheino, Euryale and himself. He prepared a special broth for Meddy.

Hephaestus got the news from Phorcys by way of a dolphin messenger. He hurried to Gorgon Island. He arrived very late in the evening, Stheino and Euryale were asleep. Phorcys was sitting by Medusa’s bed.
The child looked very ill.

Hephaestus brought mead and new tankards for Phorcys. They sat together till the early morning light spilled across the table. They talked about Phorcys’s troubles. Hephaestus told Phorcys dirty jokes, gossiped about the other gods and the adventures of his wife, Venus, and complained of her many infidelities.

“Meddy wishes she were a Hyperborean. All gold and fair.” Phorcys
said, sighing.

“And, I wish I had different legs, so I would not be a cripple, but there you have it,” Hephaestus said, pouring more mead.

“I’d give anything to have them all happy again. Leaving school has
been exhausting. I know nothing of what girls want. I would tell them the stories I learned from my Dad, but they care naught about the sea and I cannot show them the beauty of the ocean because they cannot dive deep and see in the darkness. I am useless in the face of their unhappiness.”

Hephaestus listened to Phorcys and beneath Phorcys’s words, he heard his love and concern for his children.

“I can make anything with metal but in matters of the heart, I am worse off than you. I love Venus though she be a traitorous cruel woman. Cupid, my only son, is never home and unlikely to be my child. Let’s drink to better days.”

Hephaestus drained his tankard in one gulp and thought of the rumors about Cupid falling in love with a mortal maid named Psyche. As he opened his mouth to tell it, an idea hit him—he could make Medusa new skin – golden skin – a lace suit of armor – light and supple that would weave glittering patterns on her skin. He sketched the design with mead on the table.

Phorcys loved the idea and he went to sleep feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He dreamt that night of living beneath the water again… floating down until the light grew dim and then feeling the refreshing cold, the thick darkness wrapped around him and the pressure and depth of the water made him feel safe and secure.

The next morning, Hephaestus went to work on the armor – he set up a smithy on the back of the island, pulling down part of the glowing rock cloud of Hyperborealis to make the chain mail diaphanous and
golden with morning light.

In the morning, Stheino and Euryale left to go hunt for more of those animals. Since eating the humans, the girls had become leaner, stronger and hungrier. They ate ravenously, devouring whatever Phorcys served. But, they felt empty, An uneasy itching sensation made them snappish when Phorcys spoke to them. They wanted human flesh. They wanted to hunt those animals – eat until they felt calm and level and clear. But, there were no ships on the horizon. Soon, the girls began to experiment with flying.

Stheino and Euryale had little experience with flying. Phorcys had insisted that their wings were for stabilizing them while leaping, not for actual flight. But ever since the night with Medusa in the cave, they knew they could fly high and fast. They leapt from hills at first, waiting to catch the wind – more of a controlled glide than flight. But today was different – the hunger was growling at them till it felt like their nerves were being pulled up and out of their bodies. In their minds was the echoing screech of violence. They heard their pulses unite into a single melody – hunt, hunt, hunt! The blood called them.

The girls climbed the highest mountain on their island and looked down. Up till now, they had glided from the hills, a few trees, even the rooftop. But they knew flight was possible—they’d flown in the cave – they had carried Medusa. But this was to just leap into the air and attempt to fly. They walked back along the ridgeline and then looked at each other. Stheino believed they could launch themselves with a running start. They decided to run and leap together. As they ran, their muscles loosened and their breathing became even and slow. They hit the edge of the cliff at the same moment and leapt up. At first it felt as though they would crash – they hurtled down faster and faster, towards the rocky ground. But, they kept willing their wings to catch the thermals and carry them up. Just before impact, they banked sharply up. Euryale let out a war
whoop as they flew higher and sailed out, away from the island, out over the open ocean. Their search for humans had begun.

That same day, Phorcys and Hephaestus put the finishing touches on the body armor for Meddy. They cooled the lace armor in the cistern and they left the chain metal out in the first light of day so that the dawn’s radiance would be absorbed into the metal, and give it added strength and resilience.

Medusa lay in bed. She heard her sisters’s hunger – she felt her father’s powerlessness. She couldn’t sleep. The dreams that came to her centered on the cave. The men screaming. The attack. Stheino and Euryale devouring the humans. Then she would feel herself falling till she woke up with a scream trapped in her throat. I can’t stay here. Bad things are happening to my family. I hate my family. They’re freaks, doomed. I have to get away or try to help them. Why can’t we live in the sunshine and laugh and play and have friends? Why do we have to be the ugly weirdos? I’m tired of myself.

She felt stronger that morning. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked to the bathroom in the hall. As soon as she left her room, the nausea hit—her legs buckled and she landed in a heap. Rage was a bitter taste in her mouth. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and grabbed the doorframe to pull herself up, but her arms wouldn’t obey and she collapsed on the floor. Hot tears fell and she cursed herself for her weakness.

Hephaestus came in with the armor and saw Meddy in the hall. He scooped her up in his powerful arms and kissed her forehead. He pushed back the silver ringlets plastered to her temples. He carried her to the bathroom and then to her bed. She turned away from Hephaestus and pretended to sleep. She was exhausted and soon a thick, dreamless sleep engulfed her. She found it easier to sleep during the daytime, she felt safer than at night.

Hephaestus sat by her bed and sang old sea shanties to Medusa about the gods before Zeus. He sang of Chaos and Chronos and the battles of the Titans. He wove the chain mail into a suit of lace that would protect Meddy’s delicate heart. He rubbed her feet while she slept and prayed that she would survive and find love.

Phorcys sat in the kitchen, alone, and wept. He was exhausted by his children. He wished Ceto would return and make the girls behave. Force Medusa to eat, force Stheino and Euryale to be polite, to stop growling, to stop being such savages, to stop scaring him. Something in the way Stheino and Euryale looked at him threatened Phorcys. He felt as if they were imagining how his soft flesh would taste, they were measuring how many meals he would make.

And the girls had been growing…uglier. Hephaestus noticed their tusks, their thick, muscled arms and legs – the long oily wings and their hair. They no longer had silver curls like Meddy. Their ringlets were thick and coiled, matted and wiry, beginning to move with their moods. He swore he’d seen snakes rise up around their heads and hiss at him.

Phorcys shook himself free from these sad thoughts and stepped out into the vegetable patch. He harvested some of the leaves from a climbing nasturtium. He mixed the leaves with other spices and tied them into a soft cheesecloth bundle that he dropped into Meddy’s stew.

She would heal. He knew she would. He couldn’t accept less.

Stheino and Euryale soared out over the horizon and saw water in every direction. They didn’t see any ships for an hour. Their wings began to tire but they pushed on for another hour, in search of land where they could rest and prepare for the hunt. They did not think about Phorcys, or home, or Medusa. The single thought—hunt— filled them with energy and resolve. After the second hour, they came to a small island. They lay on the beach and sunned themselves.

They did not know it then, but Stheino and Euryale were on the Gray Sisters’ Island. No one was permitted on the Gray Sisters’ Island. Anyone who entered without permission was doomed to live the rest of their days on the Gray Sisters’ Island. The Gray Sisters were banished to this Island at the End of Time because their prophecies had displeased Zeus. They lived on the island spinning, measuring, and cutting specialyarn that they spun from the fleece of golden sheep. The sheep were grazing on the source of Time—the Gray Sisters were charged with spinning, measuring and cutting the golden fleece to make human lives. The Gray Sisters were delighted when they sensed the presence of Stheino and Euryale, but decided to let the girls rest and explore the island before making contact.

Medusa woke up with the songs of Hephaestus and her father’s gentle voice woven into her dreams. Phorcys had his arm wrapped around her bruised shoulder and wings. Hephaestus was standing in the doorway, filling the space with his shifting weight and frequent throat clearing. He reminded her of a walking volcano—lots of spluttering and smoke, and always the hint of an explosion lurking behind his impassive exterior.

Phorcys held the rich broth to Meddy’s cracked lips and gently encouraged her. Even when she tried, she had difficulty swallowing. He clucks and bobs like a brooding hen, Hephaestus thought, with affection. Medusa began to drink the broth with gusto, but she soon
choked. Phorcys was beaming and he settled her onto the pillows.

“You’ll be back to your old self, soon enough,” Phorcys said, rubbing her bruised and scarred arms with ointment.

“Yeah sure,” Meddy said, turning her face to the wall.

Hephaestus cleared his throat so forcefully that he began to cough. He blushed as he choked, a loud, booming rumble.

“Your Da and I were shpieling last night,” Hephaestus said, almost hopping from foot to foot in his excitement, “and I thought of something I could do…. for ye.” He stared at her for a long while.

“I am not no nursemaid like Phorcys, Meddy,” he said, “but I want you right as rain. Aught that you wish for should elude you. Your Ma always said you were marked at birth for immortality. But yer testing that, as most youngsters, lassies- as much as lads- now, do.”

His speech ended, Hephaestus fumbled with his apron and from a deep pocket, pulled out the diaphanous metal armor. It was spun so thin and full of light, that it seemed to float like a web on the air. Medusa blushed a deep scarlet-tinged green. Hephaestus thought she was beautiful. Phorcys rejoiced that she was interested in something.

Medusa reached for the armor and it seemed to grow brighter and then settle onto her skin. The effect was startling and immediate. Meddy’s eyes lit up and her silver curls seemed to cascade, her wings spread out and beat rapidly behind her. She smiled and Phorcys’s heart filled with joy. Hephaestus swore silently to himself that he would love her till the end of Time.

Stheino and Euryale marched inland from the beach in search of shelter and a launching site. They agreed to wait till the next morning to leave for home. The late afternoon sun gilded the island’s red cliffs a tawny gold. The hunger still gnawed at them but the adventure of their maiden flight eased some of the irritation. They hiked into a forest of deep green ferns, up through a ¬¬¬springy meadow, to the red cliffs. In the meadow, Stheino spotted a golden-fleeced sheep. At first Euryale explained the golden hue as an optical illusion of the sunset. But Stheino pulled fleece from a nettle and it was gold. The sisters filled their pockets with the tufts of golden fleece. They didn’t want to eat the sheep. No food smelled good to them since they’d eaten human flesh.

The Gray Sisters waited for the girls at their cabin. The Gray Sisters were old, and as their name implied, everything about them was gray—their skin, their eyes, their hair, their clothes. The gray of their skin seemed to glow with the same light one glimpses in sea foam spewed up from choppy waves on a roiled sea during a squall. Their eyes were gray slate, flat and impenetrable; their hair was streaked with gray in hues from near white to black. Their hair hung down in long braids. Their dresses were shifts that sat on their bodies like shrouds—long and shapeless. The Gray Sisters were broad-shouldered and thick-limbed. They looked as though they could carry heavy loads over long distances without strain, at a steady, plodding pace. The Gray Sisters had no wrinkles on their faces but the thickness of their skin, the lined skin on their hands and the singleness of their wide glare made them seem ancient. The Gray Sisters waited patiently as the girls walked closer and closer to the cabin.

Medusa started to heal. Hephaestus walked with her that afternoon, along the shore. He told her stories about the rocks, Ocean, her parents. When they returned, Phorcys had a bowl of soup ready with fresh herbs and dark bread. Slowly, Medusa began to eat.

But Stheino and Euryale were still missing! Phorcys had known them to go off adventuring together late into the night, but never to stay out over night. They had been gone for three days. He heard from a dolphin messenger that the girls had been seen flying. He didn’t know whether to believe it. He tried to stay calm—Meddy was finally getting strong. He didn’t want his worries to disturb her. Plus, it had been nice, much as he hated to admit it, nice not having the scowling, snarling pair eyeing him greedily. Ah, family. He decided that he would look for them himself if they didn’t return the fourth day.

Hephaestus watched Meddy with a mixture of paternal and amorous feelings. He felt proud that their walks were doing her good, he loved her laughter at his jokes, her angular, lean, tall body. He wanted to protect her from anyone who made her feel weak or ugly. He told himself that he loved her like a father—he was her Uncle Heph…but at night, he dreamt of her walking towards him in the moonlight, arms outstretched, naked.

Stheino and Euryale climbed inland, following the sheep’s path. They slept in a bower, shaded by silver cedars, covering themselves in pine needles. The Gray Sisters crept up and watched them sleep. They needed the Gorgons. The Gorgons were woven into their destiny. The Gray Sisters blew sleep dust into their outhes and carried the Gorgons to their cabin.

The Grays Sisters’ cabin sat on a foundation of river stones—broad, blue gray rocks worn smooth, flat and round. The walls were made with long timbers embedded in silver stucco ground from shells and bones. Beneath the cabin a river ran, its cold waters welling up into a fountain in the center of the cabin, carrying away the Sisters’ weavings. The windows were openings without glass panes—the Sisters felt neither heat nor cold. Their skin was always cool and damp.

Stheino and Euryale woke to find themselves laying in a lofted room—under the eaves of a thatched roof. They slept for three days. They heard the sound of the weaving of the Gray Sisters. The wooden wheel and pedal clacked out a heartbeat tattoo. The shearing of the threads was a contrapuntal cymbal, snip slash, occasionally a gnawing clip-clip-clip on a thick skein, the measuring out of lives seemed to be the only silent part, or it would’ve been, but for that Sister’s loud breathing, almost panting when the lives stretched long, yelping at the short, and snorting at the normal lives’ length.

Stheino and Euryale awoke and found themselves hobbled by ropes, like horses. The ropes were tied to the ladder. No matter how hard they gnawed and ground at the ropes with their teeth and long tusks, the knots held.

On Gorgon Island, the sun set on the fourth day of the girls’ absence. Phorcys could wait no longer. He summoned the dolphins. This time, the Dolphin King, himself, answered. The Dolphin King was huge and he was old and wise. He did not carry messages but Phorcys was different. Phorcys was an old friend who had rescued his favorite daughter. The Dolphin King swam to Gorgon Island to tell Phorcys the dread news.

Phorcys heard the Dolphin King’s clicking song and went to meet him, terrified of what would draw the Dolphin King to his island. He knew his friend would only come himself if the news was bad. Phorcys ran down to the water’s edge and leapt in—he could speak with the Dolphin King better under water.

The whistling clicks soon became thought waves in Phorcys’s mind—he saw the images as if all of the land and sky was viewed from beneath the waves. Stheino and Euryale soared high in the sky above him, then crouched on a cliff by the water’s edge on a distant island, collecting golden fleece from small bushes, and then, an image of them looking into a river, their ankles tied to a ladder. The last image caused Phorcys the most pain. He saw them drinking off the spirits of dead humans from the water, lifting out the astral limbs and gnawing them. Phorcys’s eyes fluttered open, his mouth gaped.

How could it be? Stheino and Euryale would never eat humans!

But the Dolphin King sent him more images and he saw the Gray Sisters weaving and snipping and measuring and he realized where his girls were—The Gray Sisters’s Island at the End of Time.

“No!” Phorcys cried. But the waves rushed in and drowned his denial.

I must save them, he thought. The Dolphin King listened and waited.

I’ll leave now and bring them back home. Phorcys began to swim. The Dolphin King checked him.

“Phorcys, you saved my daughter, and so, as I am indebted to you, I am bound to help you,” the Dolphin King said, “but that is folly. No one may leave the Gray Sisters’ Island who has trespassed. Your daughters are trapped. Do not rush to share their Fate.”

“My babies are being fed human corpses—worse—the essence left after
the Underworld had claimed them, after the Gray Sisters have cut the thread of life,” Phorcys wailed. “Stheino and Euryale must be saved!”

“Please, Phorcys, please—we will be bound to the Gray Sisters—it is an evil fate.”

“I see no alternative. They have my children.”

Phorcys swam, he was powerful and fast in the water—his thick skin and round body seemed sluggish on land, but in the water he undulated and almost seemed to fly.

The Dolphin King and his knights swam fast, keeping Phorcys at the center of the pod, a phalanx of Dolphin Warriors guarded him.

Stheino and Euryale didn’t mind working for the Gray Sisters. The human spirit matter they drank was nourishing—it quieted the screaming hunger. But it only deadened their lust for the hunt. It didn’t silence the hunger. The hunger for flesh lived in them. The Gorgon Sisters decided to ask the Gray Sisters for human bodies.

“Where are the animals whose spirits we eat?” Euryale asked.

“Animals?” The Gray Sisters cackled.

“We drink their memories, we see their lives as we drink their spirits. Their memories slake our thirst for their flesh, but we want the animals.” Stheino stood, defiant.

“Your thirst, your thirst. Your burning hunger is more like. Your devouring need is more true.”

The Gorgons felt the threads binding them to the ground, to the Gray Sisters, it grew tighter and coarser in the Gray Sisters’ displeasure.

“Our hunger must be fed with flesh,” Euryale said.

“You belong to us, no one may leave our Island, the Island at the End of Time, without our consent,” the Gray Sisters said.

“We must hunt.” Stheino said, pulling up Euryale next to her. The Gray Sisters and the Gorgon Sisters stared for long minutes. Finally, the Gray Sisters smiled.

“Stheino and Euryale—we have fed you human spirit matter and memories to ease your hunger. We have bound you to us with more than the threads woven around your ankles. You shall never leave us.”

“No!” The Gorgons screamed. Their serpent hair writhed into a halo of hissing vipers, red venom-tipped forked tongues flicked out like flames. Their wings beat and their ankles bled as they fought the tethering ropes.
***
Phorcys swam fast and deep but he heard their scream. He felt their fear and rage in the pounding blood in his ears. He lunged up onto the Gray Sisters’s Island, but before he touched the shore, the Dolphin King pulled him back.

“Phorcys, you will become a subject of the Gray Sisters if you touch their Island. You will be powerless to save your children.” The Dolphin King stationed his knights like sentinels around Phorcys.

“Stheino! Euryale!” Phorcys called his girls, lunging against the knights.

“You are useless to them if you fall into the same trap.” The Dolphin King embraced Phorcys, holding him fast between his ventral flipper and the smooth muscles of his belly.

Phorcys calmed himself and tried to devise a plan. He felt trapped. He could not storm the island and rescue his girls, he could not change what he’d seen, they were human eaters. He was scared of them but he would not let the Gray Sisters enslave them. He had nothing to trade for them and he felt very weak.

“Advise me,” Phorcys pleaded to the Dolphin King.

“Call the Gray Sisters to the shore, negotiate for something you have that they want.” The Dolphin King spoke, but it seemed to Phorcys as if the words were coming from inside his own mind.

“What do I have that they want?”

“Immortal human eaters.”

“No!”

“They cannot go back, Phorcys, it was their Fate.”

In a flash, Phorcys saw the girls rend a man and eat him by the lagoon on Gorgon Island. He saw them attack Medusa. He moaned and sank down into the water. Phorcys felt his life shrink away. Could it be? Had they eaten humans of their own will? How could he save them now?

Phorcys bowed his head, listened to the Dolphin King’s plan, and acquiesced. The Gray Sisters came to the shore. Stheino and Euryale felt their Father’s loving presence in their hearts and the hunger almost left them.

***
Meddy and Hephaestus stayed on Gorgon Island. She knew her father was gone in search of her sisters. Hephaestus wasn’t much of a cook. But he summoned two of his robots and they made feasts for Meddy. She
wore her gold lace armor and the dawn light embedded in the filaments fed her spirit with a bright, sparkling hope. As she began gaining weight and strength, she became wittier and more animated.

“Uncle Heph—it’s time for me to fly,” Meddy said after breakfast one morning.

“Oh lass, hold off to discuss such things with yer father, I can’t have you injured on my watch,” Heph said gently, loathe to deny Meddy.

“I must check on my family—Dad is in danger and I sense that Stheino and Euryale are trapped.”

“Please Meddy, stay with me?” Heph looked into her eyes and she realized she had a hold over him—not the old child’s hold but something new and stronger. She blushed and loked away. His legs were so weak that he seemed tired after only a few paces. Their walks made both of them stronger.

“Help them Heph,” she murmured, leaving off Uncle, not sure why, but it didn’t fit anymore.

“I can’t leave you.”

“Aye, you will, or I’ll fly to them.”

He stared at her profile, the proud jut of her chin, the silver curls and green skin, she glowed almost incandescent in her armor. He did not ever want to leave her.

“I’ll leave in the first light of dawn,” Heph said.

That night he could not sleep. It felt wrong to leave her—she was still so fragile. But a trip on her own would be sure to end in tragedy. As the morning light bled through the night the sky turned light gray, not quite blue, not yet glowing orange. He looked in on Medusa. She was curled up, lying on her side, clutching a pillow to her chest, her head tucked in, protected.

If I could make the world, you would never be afraid, Hephaestus thought, as his water chariot left the shores of Gorgon Island.

***
“What do you have for us, you old Slug,” the Gray Sisters jeered at Phorcys.

“You have something of mine,” Phorcys said, staring at the three—dry, brittle, withered crones.

“They belong to us now,” the Gray Sisters hissed, together.

“They are children and immortal, they cannot belong to you.”

“They broke the law, they ate human flesh.”

“You forced it upon them.”

“Not so, they fled here with the hunger on them, we protect them.”

The Gray Sisters watched the news land, he did not deny it.

“You feed them spirits, you corrupt them further.”

“It was their Fate.”

“Have mercy, they are your sisters.” The Gray Sisters scowled and whispered together.

“It was their hunger that drove them to us, we gave them what they need.”

“They’re mine!” Phorcys screamed.

“Yes, yes. They were. But you cannot ask for them and have nothing to offer in exchange.”

“I am your Father, you must obey by the laws of the Gods. That much you owe me.” They shrieked and laughed.

“Stop this.” The Dolphin King spoke, tired of the Gray Sisters.

“Tell him what he can do. Negotiate.”

The Gray Sisters traded glances and grunts, one turned to the right, then the next, then the third, till they were all three looking up the hill to the cabin where the Gorgon Sisters were tethered.

“Make the girls come to us once a week—the human matter builds up into a scream that deafens us as it accumulates. They siphon it off, they make it possible for us to work in peace.”

“Once a month.” Phorcys bargained.

“Twice a month, they stay for three days.”

“Total.”

“Each visit.”

“Three days total, once a month.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

“How do we know that you will keep your word?”

“I will give you a map to Gorgon Island, and you can summon them and keep them if I break my word.”

“This deal only applies till they grow up.”

“What?!”

“Then they decide.”

“Yes.”

The Gray Sisters untethered the Gorgon girls, and as Phorcys reached to embrace his babies, they sprung up, up, up, and flew away with a screeching call like vultures.

***
Hephaestus arrived at the moment when Stheino and Euryale flew up. He was sitting in his water chariot pulled by dolphins. Phorcys watched the girls disappear. He was permitted on shore to draw the map. Hephaestus came with him and after they drew the map in the sand, he cast it in copper. The copper was drawn from chickweed flowers harvested from the meadow full of golden sheep. Heph sat for a moment thinking that the sheep were performing alchemy– eating copper and growing golden wool. Finally, they left–Phorcys slept in the water chariot, lulled by the waves and the big, warm presence of Hephaestus.
***
Meddy spent the day waiting. She knew that today there would be news. Good or bad, it would be resolved.

When her sisters flew, or rather dove down to the Island, she felt them before she could see them. They were calling to each other and sounded almost bird-like in their shrieking, piercing cries.

The girls landed at the same moment, and spun in a circle, holding each other, laughing. They hugged Meddy to them, spinning her off the ground, higher and higher, then they dove down, dropping her into a soft field and swooped into the house.