The Mortal Coil Medousa Perseus 1st

Edition Eris Adderly

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-mortal-coil-medousa-perseus-1st-edition-eris-add
erly-2/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Mortal Coil Medousa Perseus 1st Edition Eris

Adderly

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-mortal-coil-medousa-
perseus-1st-edition-eris-adderly/

Mortal Follies A Novel The Mortal Follies series 1st

Edition Hall Alexis

https://ebookmeta.com/product/mortal-follies-a-novel-the-mortal-
follies-series-1st-edition-hall-alexis/

A Mortal Crowned 1st Edition Abigail Grant

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-mortal-crowned-1st-edition-
abigail-grant/

The Mortal Instruments The Graphic Novel Vol 3

Cassandra Clare

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-mortal-instruments-the-graphic-
novel-vol-3-cassandra-clare/
May All Your Wounds Be Mortal 1st Edition Salma Deera

https://ebookmeta.com/product/may-all-your-wounds-be-mortal-1st-
edition-salma-deera/

Liberalism and Socialism: Mortal Enemies or Embittered

Kin? 1st Edition Matthew Mcmanus

https://ebookmeta.com/product/liberalism-and-socialism-mortal-
enemies-or-embittered-kin-1st-edition-matthew-mcmanus/

Guarding Eris: Brotherhood Protectors World (Team Wolf

Book 3) 1st Edition Reina Torres & Brotherhood
Protectors World

https://ebookmeta.com/product/guarding-eris-brotherhood-
protectors-world-team-wolf-book-3-1st-edition-reina-torres-
brotherhood-protectors-world/

Ace Voices What It Means to Be Asexual Aromantic Demi

or Grey Ace 1st Edition Eris Young.

https://ebookmeta.com/product/ace-voices-what-it-means-to-be-
asexual-aromantic-demi-or-grey-ace-1st-edition-eris-young/

Halloway s Charge Tears of Perseus 6 A FiveFold

Universe Military Space Opera D J Bodden Kevin
Mclaughlin

https://ebookmeta.com/product/halloway-s-charge-tears-of-
perseus-6-a-fivefold-universe-military-space-opera-d-j-bodden-
kevin-mclaughlin/
 Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
From the Author
I Sacrifice
II Savior
III Gorgon
IV Reflection
V Crash
VI Trespass
VII Crawl
VIII Serve
IX Labyrinth
X Forge
XI Surrender
XII Assassin
XIII Destroyer
XIV Offering
XV Adamant
XVI Rift
XVII Reckoning
XVIII Unbreakable
XIX Together
XX Legend
Epilogue
Back Matter
 Copyright
THE MORTAL COIL
Copyright © 2021 Eris Adderly
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means including information storage and
retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The
only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a
review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Eris Adderly
 Acknowledgments
Two and a half years passed from the time I started writing this
book to the day I stayed up a final twenty-four hours straight to
push myself over the last few words. And before that, I’d been
planning and percolating the whole concept since somewhere in
2014.
Many wonderful humans helped me along the way, from midnight
conversations to pep-talks and advice. I am extremely grateful for
their presence and, in many cases, their friendship.

I would first like to give effusive and eternal thanks to my patient

author friends who hung in there with me, chapter by chapter, all
this time. They read the earliest drafts⁠—they essentially saw this
thing naked and were kind enough not to laugh.
Myra, thank you for making me feel like Yes! Yes! I can do this!
with your comments that make me snort at 2 am when I read them.
I’m sorry you had to see all those semi-colons.
Nora, thank you for sticking with me, despite my erratic
communication patterns and overall weirdness. I feel seen. I feel
valued. Thank you.
Etaski, thank you for your relentless enthusiasm and insightful
commentary. It’s always a great motivator to hear from someone
who is picking up what I’m putting down, especially between the
lines.
Finley, thank you for jumping in late in the game to be a fresh set
of eyes on this monstrosity I’d been building for so long. You were
already so busy with your own worlds to build, and I appreciate you
taking the time to dive into mine.
Rachel, it’s a little surreal to be both fangirling and bothering you
with ancient world questions, and you actually taking time to discuss
them with me while you had your own amazing book to work on.
Wow. May all our gods and monsters live forever.

To all my Troublemakers: y’all are keeping me going, day after day.

You brighten my mood, and your enthusiasm lights a fire under me
to push forward, to get these stories out. You remind me that I am
not alone in my weirdness, and that there are folks out there who
might even like to read about it.

And Nerine. Let’s be honest: you intimidate the crap out of me.
This is what happens when I respect and admire a person—I have
no idea how to act and overcompensate by being extra. Thank you
for weathering my wordy emails, and for taking a chance on
someone new. The Mortal Coil in particular has consumed more of
my effort and soul than anything I’ve written before, and I am so
grateful to have found someone with the skill and experience to help
me bring it to a fine polish. Thank you.

My Muses: boy do you put up with some nonsense. I hope I’m

learning. Thanks again for the Minotaur and so many other pieces of
this whole puzzle. I’ll be back to bother you soon.

And always, always, thank you to my husband. Twenty years ago,

the only thing we knew was we would be together, and now, here
we are. One new path at a time, one big adventure. Thank you for
never giving up.
 From the Author
This dark, sensual retelling of the Medousa and Perseus myth retains
many common elements from the stories of antiquity. There are
gods and monsters, heroes and villains. The Flames of Olympos
books, however, are united by a common thread: a challenge to
myself to give some notorious figures a chance to be seen in a new
light.
With this in mind, you will discover my version involves a number
of significant departures from the original myths, as I lead Medousa
down the path toward the justice and a happy ending she deserves.
I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did.
~Eris

⚠Content:
The Mortal Coil explores themes of patriarchy, misogyny, and bodily
autonomy in graphic, and sometimes violent, context. While the
story exists in something of a fantasy setting (immortals and
monsters and magic, oh my!), characters’ experiences of these very
real-world issues are often described in vivid detail, which some
readers may find upsetting. Those with hard content limits regarding
violence or matters of consent may wish to put this book back on
the shelf in favor of a lighter read.

Characters in this work of fiction engage in behavior that is

unacceptable in real life. While they may find their Happily Ever After
in the story, they are in no way intended to be held up as examples
of healthy, real-world relationship behavior, nor does their depiction
imply the author’s approval of such actions in reality.
 I SACRIFICE

Medousa lay altered on the steps of Athena’s temple in Tegea. Under

a cruel glitter of stars in the black sky overhead, she pushed herself
up on scraped palms, bruised knees. Raw horror leaked in from all
sides, drowning out even her ability to shift. To flee.
The Lord of the Sea leaned over her from behind. Smeared a sticky
hand down her thigh and took a final squeeze of the flesh there
before he rose to his sandaled feet. Straightened his chiton.
Her shoulders shook, and her eyes burned. “I told you to stop.” She
still did not move her legs for fear of what she would feel between
them.
Poseidon’s chuckle was poison. “Is that what you told me? By
leading me a merry chase all day and night? Pretending a struggle
once I’ve caught my prize?” The flames from the braziers on the
temple steps painted the sides of his face in a sinister light, and he
drew his trident out from the æther with the sweep of fingertips.
Blood rushed between Medousa’s ears. The first wriggling heads of
anger sizzled at the back of her neck.
“I never led you anywhere, Pelagaios.” She snarled up at him. “You
followed where no one asked you to go. My father is a child of Gaia,
the same as yours. I was never your ‘prize.’ ”
The god outright laughed at this and struck the butt of the trident
twice on the stone step. Medousa flinched each time, and hated
herself for it, but it didn’t stop the familiar cool trickle in her veins.
“Ah, but your father is long gone from this plane,” he said, “and so
is your mother. The sea belongs to me, now, along with every
creature born of it. Even you.” Teeth glinted in his arrogant grin,
even as his hippokampoi came thundering up the temple steps with
his chariot, their hooves clattering on the limestone, scaled fish tails
lashing alongside the wheels.
Scales of her own began to ripple as she came to her feet. Down
over her hips in a climax of wrath. Over her thighs, which became
blessedly one in their massive coil, and Medousa would be content
after this night if they were never parted again.
The tingle at her scalp writhed to a boil as she rose on her tail, the
serpents of her fury peeling forth and wreathing her face, even as
her fangs descended and wings burst from between her shoulders in
shards of golden feathers.
“Oh, darling,” Poseidon said as he stepped into his chariot, “don’t
be angry. You’re so much lovelier when your mouth is smiling.” He
flashed arrogant teeth. “Or making all those sounds.”
Medousa lunged at him, a surge of scaled muscle, but the
hippokampoi reared and struck out with their hooves then launched
the chariot into the sky. The god’s laughter tumbled down in its
wake as he took his leave, the same as he’d taken everything else.
“The Fates damn your eyes, Son of Kronos!” Her curse echoed
along columns, and her fídia struck out at the empty air in
succession, fanged jaws on each of the twelve heads snapping,
impotent.
“Mind your tongue in my temple, Sea Guardian.”
Medousa whirled on the new voice to find the Goddess of War
descending the steps, spear in hand, her face ruddy and shoulders
broad. The æther still wavered behind her, and the ozone tang of
Olympos furled away from her on waves into the night.
“My tongue?” said Medousa. “My tongue? Do you know what he
has done here? On your very steps?”
“I am aware,” Athena said through a tight jaw as she strode close.
“Selene raced to tell me, herself. He deserves your anger, but not
here. Not where mortals may see such things and be frightened
where they come to pray for protection.”
Medousa and the goddess were all but nose-to-nose now, and
Medousa’s fury had burned away all reasonable fear.
“To the depths of Tartarus with fucking mortals,” she hissed. “I am
not charged with their care.
Athena’s grey eyes glinted a warning, but Medousa was heedless.
“I came to this shrine with an offering. Where was protection for
me? What defense do I have against one of the three Lords, when
he decides he wants something?”
“Medousa.” The goddess laid her free hand on the gorgon’s
shoulder, calm, deliberate. “I have no more control of Poseidon than
I do of Zeus or Hades. The Lords are beyond me.” She dipped a nod,
conceding. “But you are not.”
Medousa inhaled. Exhaled. Her fídia hovered, the many scaled
snouts cocked, tongues flickering out, anticipating.
“What will take your pain?” said Athena. “What boon can I give?”
“Boon?” Medousa blinked at her. Silence surrounded them on the
steps of the temple. Even the summer’s insects had ceased their
hymns.
“Your wounds are already closing, Immortal.” Athena nodded to
Medousa’s palms, which were indeed only tender now. “Shall I take
the memory from you? And it will feel as if it never happened?”
“But it did happen.” Medousa reared back slowly on her coiled
lower half, grateful to the dark scales where they emerged below her
navel. Where they lay instead of that fork between her thighs; that
place he’d entered, uninvited. “It did happen, and there was not one
thing I could do.”
She lifted her wings. Smoothed her palms down her belly. Ice filled
her veins, and her skin pebbled.
“No.” She met Athena’s eyes. “I don’t want to forget. I want no one
to forget.” Her fídia writhed as her certainty built. “I want no one to
do this to me, or anyone, ever again.”
“I cannot control the actions of every being, Medousa.” Athena’s
mouth compressed into a line.
“But the consequences,” Medousa said, a new edge to her voice.
“You can give me those.”
The goddess narrowed her eyes. “What is it you ask of me?”
“Let them perish,” said Medousa. “If they lay a hand on me⁠⁠—no! If
they dare to meet my eyes, let the boldness be their last!”
“You ask to murder men?”
Medousa curled her lip. “They will be examples,” she said. “Who is
next, when they run rampant this way? You? Artemis?”
The virgin goddess flinched, but Medousa went on, leaning closer
by the moment. “If they will not yield respect, they can come to
know fear. This is the boon I ask. Let me teach them to be afraid.”
“This is not a boon,” said Athena, “but a curse.”
“Call it what you will.”
The goddess was calm again, her pale chiton wafting in the breeze.
“There will be a cost.”
“Have I not paid?” Medousa said.
“For the mortal lives you will take.”
Medousa looked Athena up and down, defiant. “Name it,
Alalkomenêis.”
“Your wings,” the goddess said. “And your immortality.”
 The golden feathers folded back against her body at the mention,
but the inside of Medousa’s mouth was bitter. The alternative? To
tolerate more of this? Forever?
Poseidon’s grunts and sick endearments shuddered an echo down
her spine. The bite of stone at her hips. Her body tearing around
him, helpless. What was an eternity reliving that?
Medousa lowered herself on the step before Athena. Stretched her
wings overhead and bent her neck.
“I will pay it.”
The hard edge of a spearpoint touched between her shoulders
from above. “It cannot be undone,” said Athena.
Medousa’s heart squeezed out painful beats.
“I will pay it.”
“Very well.”
Metal sank between vertebrae, and a cry ripped from Medousa’s
throat. She furled back, eyes wild and rolling, as liquid fire roared
from under her shoulder blades then down her arms to curl her
fingers into claws.
It felt like her wings connected to every tendon, every sinew, and
Athena was tearing them out, root by root. Medousa collapsed to the
stone, limbs and tail convulsing, noises coming raw and uncontrolled
from deep in her gut. Her body curled in to protect itself, but the
sear of mortality kept coming, red and metallic until her mouth
stretched open in a circle of anguish, and no more sound would
come out.
And then there was nothing. Of a kind.
Medousa crackled in the void, so many pinpoints of existence. Sight
and scent and sound were all gone. She was apart from her body,
but she was.
This was a death. Of her immortality. Something waited on the
other side, but what? What?
 She blinked. Gasped.
Cold!
Her naked limbs shivered on stone. The hair of her woman’s form
plastered her face where her fídia had coiled and writhed. When
Medousa rolled onto her back, there were no wings to crush.
She groaned and squinted at the silhouette standing over her.
Athena’s spear stood out against the lightening sky; Helios would
begin his daily journey soon. How long had she⁠⁠…
“Pick yourself up, Sea Guardian.” The goddess was quiet, but firm.
“You cannot linger here.”
“What⁠ ⁠…” Medousa twisted around to find her knees, to push
herself up. Something itched between her shoulders, and she flexed
her back. “What have you done?”
“What you asked, Bane of Men. You will want this, for now.” Athena
stretched forward a fistful of dark cloth, and Medousa took it. Shook
it out.
It was a short chiton, and chill dawn breeze pointed her nipples,
made her fine hairs stand on end. She pulled it over her head and
adjusted the bronze fibulæ at the shoulders. Aside from the shift
away from her serpent form, Medousa felt no diff⁠—
klat-tl-tltl!

She started and sucked in a breath. Her head whipped around to

broken pottery on the temple’s lowest step, and a worshiper’s
offering of wine leaking out at his feet. The whites of his eyes
showed all around at the sight of the shrine’s very patron standing
before him, unearthly and luminous from the deathless plane, spear
in hand, awesome and terrible.
And then his eyes turned to Medousa.
He bent a knee to raise a leg⁠—whether to approach or flee, she
couldn’t have said⁠—but his sandal never left the ground.
The toes went pale. The calf. The man looked down and opened
his mouth to scream, but his tongue was no longer an organ for
cries or words. Like gossamer touched to a flame, muscle and tissue
petrified in a hungry flash. His image stood in perfect marble before
temple columns in Tegea. His shade would be on the shores of the
Styx, confused, terrified.
Medousa shuddered out a breath. They had only met eyes.
“He was an innocent,” said Athena. “You will not return to my
places of worship. You will govern yourself in this.”
Some gnarled, barbed thing settled itself around Medousa’s
shoulders. Her fingernails bit her palms.
“None of them are innocent.” She turned to face the goddess.
Athena had a rift in the æther behind herself already. She regarded
the newly cursed Guardian as the doorway between planes shifted
and slid, her ruddy features unreadable.
“You will learn,” the goddess said, at last, and stepped backward
into her own realm, the æther knitting as threads of light in her
wake.
Medousa stood amid silent stone. Columns, steps, and a single
unfortunate man.
Poseidon had been the worst, but he had by no means been the
first in her long lifetime to overstep, to violate. To laugh. The gods
set examples, and the Sons of Man followed.
“They will learn,” she said for the sake of her own new mortal ears.
“I will teach them.”

Perseus would not yield.

The pressure threatened to crush his ribs, to flood his lungs as the
sea thundered past, but he had locked his grip on the rope.
Down into the freezing black the Kêtos dove, bent on drowning the
foe when it couldn’t throw him off. The sea monster reached a depth
and banked hard to one side, thrashing a scaled head as wide as
three chariots abreast. Perseus clung tight with abraded palms, a
burning chest. The sword in his belt was useless down here: there
was only survival.
He felt the change in direction and braced. Light. Lighter. The
water roaring in his ears was grey, not blinding black. Grey and then
dirty white. He doubled his hold.
Gods, carry me.
With a spray and a horrible bellow, the Kêtos burst from the sea
again, so that Perseus scrabbled for footing amid spines and eye
ridges. Poison spittle flew from the beast’s maw as it reared out of
the brine, forelegs rampant.
The rope he’d caught around the monster’s upper jaw lodged in a
forest of teeth, each longer than his leg, was the only thing keeping
the creature from flinging him out over the waves. And now he had
to let go one hand.
The great head hove this way and that, and the water in the pre-
dawn light coated the scaly hide steel-silver beneath where his
sandals slid. His right hand flew from rope to hilt.
Perseus drew his sword and leapt, rappelling backward out over a
horny ridge. His dripping weight pulled the line taut, and he swung
like a pendulum, feet planting below the rim of a red eye as tall as
he was. A translucent eyelid snapped at him. He thrust the blade,
underhanded, into the pupil.
The Kêtos roared.
Its head whipped to the side and bludgeoned him against scales
and snout. His weapon slipped from the eye in a schlick of fluid, and
he managed to keep it in hand, but only just.
Then he was floating. Falling.
Lightning on a serpent’s body, the beast’s head twisted below him
in an eye blink. Jaw opening. Intercepting. Wider, bigger, darker.
Perseus swore. Death slammed shut around him.
 Stench overwhelmed. A tongue the size of a tree battered him
toward teeth, toward a pulsing throat. The slick organ bore him, up
and back, a terrible steed but, as it cleft to the roof of the mouth,
Perseus struck out.
He stabbed, upward into the palate. Once, twice. Again, and again.
Copper-dark blood fountained down on him, head and shoulders,
and still Perseus drove the blade home. Piercing. Ripping.
The thing hissed, and the force blew him back. Salt air rushed in
through open jaws, gave him light. He turned his assault downward
and hacked at the tongue with wild swings. It did little damage, but
it drove the beast where he wanted.
The tongue turned on its side to sweep the stinging mouthful away.
Perseus gripped his weapon and crashed against a wall of teeth, his
flesh on fire from acidic spit. Up and over, the thrashing muscle
swept him. Fangs raked his skin, the points rending lines along his
back, his ribs.
But with a shout of pain, he was out.
Out and tumbling. Past a jaw, a throat. A soft, heaving belly.
Perseus screamed at the burning of his wounds, brought the sword
overhead in both hands, and plunged it downward through skin and
fat and muscle. He rode the blade as the weight of his own limbs
carried him on a grisly path to the sea, the Kêtos shrieking in his
wake.
Blue-green blood gouted overhead, but Perseus was already kicking
backward into the waves when the monster’s long body hit the
water, thunderous. Terrible.
The impact crested the sea all around, rolled him under, and
propelled him ashore where sand abraded broken skin. He coughed
up ocean until black spots glittered into his vision.
On hands and knees, he crawled almost nowhere as receding
waves sucked the shore from under him.
And then the roar.
 The deafening horns of a hundred phalanxes, pouring over a rise.
The wind of it blasted his wet chiton against his legs, even as
Perseus staggered to his feet and turned to face another attack.
Hades, I’m not ready.
The hilt of his blade was slick in his grip, seawater and blood
mingling. The Kêtos rose and rose from the waves, rearing to
scream at him again. To end him.
It lunged forward. He braced in the best stance he could manage.
Lunged and fell.
Foam sprayed up on all sides. The beach shook when the fearsome
head crashed to the sand. The beast was still.
Perseus stood there. Weaving. Staring.
He dropped his sword.
“Thank you. Gods.”
His knees gave out and he was on his back again. Smooth, pale
clouds hung low overhead in a sky that was turning blue with the
dawn. Wavelets covered and uncovered him, indecisive blankets,
washing the acid from his limbs, salting and cleansing the gashes
from the monster’s teeth. He didn’t want to look at them yet.
“It’s time I begin asking for half the payment up front,” he said to
the drifting sky. His throat was raw, but it matched the rest of him.
For a time, he did no more than lie there and let his breathing
settle. There was a small pain at his slack right hand, where it lay on
the shore at his side, but he ignored it for the greater sear painting
his ribs.
Perseus coughed some more. The twinge became sharper, at the
tip of his first finger, but he shifted the hand and the annoyance
disappeared.
You cannot stay here like this. You will need t⁠—
Another acute pinch, this time at his smallest fingertip. He flailed to
sit upright and whipped the hand from the ground.
 A crab the size of his palm dangled, one defiant pincer holding on,
as he’d done atop the Kêtos. The rest of its pointy little legs wriggled
in the air.
“For the love of⁠—!” He shook his wrist, and the crab fell to the
sand. “Did Poseidon send you, too? Fates!”
The thing eyed him from beady stalks then sidled away, reluctant
to lose out on decent scavenging.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Perseus grumbled after it.
The pain in his side flared, and he winced at the sight of so much
of his chiton gone red. But he could not have worn a bronze cuirass
to do battle in the sea: he’d be at the bottom of it now. As he
reached to peel away the sticking fabric, though, a cry drifted over
the shush of the waves. A woman.
Zeus’s beard.
There was still the second half of the task, but in trying not to die,
it had slipped his mind.
Perseus put his wounds aside again and shoved himself to his feet.
He replaced the sword in his belt with a silent reminder to clean it of
salt later, when he was done with and away from this business. Then
he trekked farther south down the beach, toward the rocks. Toward
the voice.
When he approached the sacrifice the king had set out for the
Kêtos, Perseus scowled.
Chains fixed her wrists to the stone above her head. A folded cloth
blinded her eyes, and the sea-wet white cotton of her kemi clung to
her dark, Aithiopian skin. As he stepped near, he could see her lips
were dry and split from salt and screaming.
Vanity had done this. Vanity and pride, of mortals and immortals
alike. And then hyperbolic measures to attempt to mitigate the
consequences. It was always this way. This foolish, foolish way.
She heard his sandals on the rocks, and her head whipped in his
direction. “No,” she said her native tongue, voice a rasp, “please.”
 “Andromeda.”
Her head shook from side to side, and her bare feet slipped on the
stones. She switched to Greek, desperate. “Whatever you are doing,
stop. You can’t!”
“Andromeda.” He reached for the chains, and her limbs trembled.
“Calm yourself.”
“Stop!” she cried. “I’m a s-sacrifice!”
Perseus yanked at the metal spike that tethered the chains. They
fell with a clatter, along with her limp arms. He tugged the blind
from her eyes.
“No, you are not,” he said. “The Kêtos is dead.”
The young woman gaped at him: a stranger, a foreigner, and
covered in blood. He held out his hand.
“Wh⁠⁠… wha⁠⁠…”
He waited for her to arrive.
She rubbed at her wrists and blinked at him. Then leaned to take in
the fallen sea monster on the beach. “Wha⁠⁠… what have you done?”
Her panic escalated with the widening of dark eyes. “Th-the oracle.
Told my father.” She stared at him, pleading. “To appease the
Nereides. And the Lord of the Seas! My father commanded me
chained here! For the⁠⁠… the⁠⁠…”
Andromeda choked on the words.
“And your mother is paying me to see you removed”⁠—he reached
for her hand when it seemed there was no other way to coax her
down from the rocks⁠—“and see you somewhere safe. Where the
king cannot find you.”
This made her spine straighten. “It is my mother’s fault I am here
in the first place!” Her eyes went wide again, and she clapped her
palms over her mouth.
“It is,” he said, trying for patience, “but the queen has regrets. And
when she could not talk your father out of his course, she had word
sent to me, instead. Either way, the beast ravages your kingdom no
more.”
It would have been well enough for Kassiopeia to sing of her
daughter’s beauty far and wide. An acceptable tradition for a queen
seeking suitors for a princess. But the woman just had to tread one
step too far and begin comparing her daughter to immortals.
The deathless plane did not take kindly to anything less than abject
mortal praise and flattery. This was how a body called down
Poseidon’s wrath. And then there were oracles. And sacrifices.
Perseus shook his head, and she took his hand at last for him to
lead her onto the sand. He could see the cuts on her feet and
resolved to find sandals for her as soon as they were in a city again.
“Who⁠⁠… are you?” she said.
“My name is Perseus.”
Andromeda halted to stare at him. “Perseus? As in, Son of⁠—”
“Yes,” he said, frowning. “That one.”
“And⁠ ⁠…” She had a wary look for him now. “And what did my
mother agree to pay you? My hand?”
He chuckled. “That’s a currency valuable only to men looking to be
rulers. Not to offend.” He let go her fingers. “No, your mother
offered me far more universal compensation. Gold.”
It was just as well, too. A man did not involve himself with the
daughters of kings. Nothing good could come of it. And Andromeda,
while beautiful, was very young. Whatever he might seek in a
partner, she wasn’t it.
“You do not offend,” she said, as they began their way back up the
beach. “To be truthful, I am not even certain I like men.” The
princess frowned at her feet as she walked.
“Either way,” said Perseus, “my next task is to find you somewhere
to live.”
 She halted and cocked her head. “You mean⁠ ⁠… you’re not taking
me home?”
He raised his brows. “Would you want to return? “After this?”
Perseus gestured at the Kêtos.
Something resolved in her features. “No. My father is⁠—no.” Her
chin had lifted, a decision had been made. “I do not want to return.”
“Well,” said Perseus, “as I said, then. We need to find you
somewhere to live. We’ll return to my home and start there.”
Helios had driven the chariot of the sun above the horizon by now,
and the surface of the sea glittered as they walked. Under a blue sky
and clearing clouds, the sea monster’s opalescent intestines spilled
out, shimmering, onto the sand. Horrifying and beautiful at once, as
so few things managed to be.
“Where is your home, Son of Zeus?”
“An island,” he said. “Seriphos.”
 II SAVIOR

Come, suitors, from far and wide! Come throw your marriage gifts at
the feet of King Kepheus! My daughter, Andromeda, has skin like silk
and eyes like dark jewels! No beautiful woman in the world can
compare to her! None of the sea and sky! Even the Nereides!
Yes, Andromeda’s mother had been so careless as to risk the wrath
of the deathless plane, comparing her daughter to the sea nymphs,
of all beings. And her father hadn’t hesitated a moment to offer her
as a sacrifice when the oracle had told him it would put an end to
Poseidon’s wrath. What was one princess to a kingdom of terrified
subjects?
One princess was now walking the evening streets of a foreign
land, at the side of a foreign demigod, new sandals tied to her feet,
a bit large, welcome, but confusing.
Andromeda didn’t want to go home. Not where her life hinged on
the whims of her parents, but this place, these people⁠⁠…
A boisterous group of men passed her and Perseus, moving in the
opposite direction, toward the agora. They traded barbs and jokes in
Greek, but it was not the formal and stilted dialect Andromeda’s
tutors in the palace had made her practice. Their speech was quick
and peppered with enough slang that she only caught half the
words⁠—none of them would she dare repeat in front of her mother.
“Is it much further?” she asked the mercenary.
“Not much.”
His chlamys flapped around him as if he led them with some
purpose out of the merchants’ quarter of the city he knew as home.
Andromeda worked for her breath to keep up with his long strides.
Windows in earthen walls glowed warm with lamplight as the
streets narrowed, no longer needing to accommodate so many carts
or beasts of burden.
Perseus approached an arched doorway, where a red curtain hung
to thwart wind and insects from outside. Laughter and raucous
voices came from within, and when he pushed past the curtain to
enter, Andromeda could only follow.
The space beyond stopped her in her tracks. She blinked several
times, but it did nothing to clear her view. The mercenary squinted
around the room, looking for someone specific, but it was all
Andromeda could do to keep her mouth shut. Her father’s men
about the palace had temple prostitutes for this sort of thing. But
this. This was a⁠—
“Ay!” A man, who looked as though he wielded some filthy sort of
authority, emerged from a corridor that led further back into the
structure, wiping his hands on a rag. “Ay, no free women in here.”
He gestured with the rag at Andromeda, who looked with confusion
from him to the female bodies draped about the room. “ ’Less you
lookin’ to sell.” The man eyed Andromeda where she stood in his
doorway.
Sell?
She brought her hands to her hips, and her mouth nearly opened,
tongue ready to lash at the man.
“I need to speak with Eupraxia,” said Perseus.
 “You need to get that girl out of here,” the man said, brows raised.
“And then maybe I go find Praxie for you.”
The mercenary frowned and put a protective hand on Andromeda’s
shoulder. From down the corridor came a series of barked cries that
made her face heat. One of the sparsely clad women in the front
room giggled.
“Andromeda,” Perseus said, leaning down, “this will only take a
short time, but they don’t allow free women in⁠ ⁠… places like this,
here. Will you wait for me just outside?”
She looked him over as though he’d sprouted horns. “I thought you
were finding a place for me to stay. Now I have to wait around while
you play with these women?” Again, she cut her eyes to the
lewdness on display.
His fingers circled her upper arm, and Andromeda held in an
undignified noise. “I am not here”⁠—he hauled her toward the
doorway⁠—“for a whore.”
She flinched at the word, but he continued in a low voice.
“Eupraxia is a friend. She helped my mother many years ago, when
she needed to remain hidden, and I’m hoping she can help you.
Now, will you wait? Before this man decides I’m here to sell you as a
slave?”
“Yes.” Andromeda nodded, and he released his grip on her arm. “I
apologize. I should not have assumed.”
He could have said something to begin with.
“No need for apologies.” He cast a glance back to the man, who
stood watching. “There is a small courtyard. Just outside the
building. On this side.” Perseus gestured with a hand. “There are
benches. Torches lit. I will meet you there. Not long.”
“I will wait,” she said, and gave the other man a final unimpressed
look before she shouldered aside the red curtain and headed out to
the street.
 The courtyard was where and as the mercenary said it would be,
and she chose a bench nearer the entrance to sit and wait with her
thoughts. With a king and queen for parents, Andromeda had grown
to be highly skilled in the art of sitting around quietly while other
people did things.
She wound one of her many braids around the tip of a finger. How
was some woman he knew in a brothel going to help her start a new
life? These Greeks had many strange ideas, including the one who’d
snatched her from her fate with the Kêtos.
Perseus, son of Zeus. Her mouth turned down at one end. No one
told him to go sit and wait. To follow. Andromeda wanted this for
herself, but the daughters of kings never seemed to get their hands
on that sort of autonomy.
Chained up waiting for Poseidon’s monster to eat you like a
sacrificial goat.
The princess frowned but then cocked her head at a new thought.
No one had to know who her parents were, now. She could ask the
mercenary to keep the name of her family a secret. The man was
crude at times, but his actions had painted him as upright enough.
Aside from having friends at a house of⁠—
“Hello, precious.”
Andromeda blinked and turned her head to the archway in the
courtyard’s street-facing wall. From where the voice had come.
A man was leaning there. A Greek man, possibly as old as her
father, who wore an unkempt curly beard and a dingy white chiton.
She offered a tight-lipped glance. The one that was something of an
acknowledgment but couldn’t quite bring itself to be a smile. Gave a
little nod. Her fingers laced together in her lap.
“Trypho keeping exotics around the place now, eh?” He pushed
himself out of the archway and began a stroll in her direction, a too-
wide grin splitting the dark of his beard.
Who this ‘Trypho’ was, she didn’t know, but took the rest of his
meaning, all the same. Andromeda shifted on the bench to put less
of her back to the man, and straightened her spine.
“I am waiting here for a friend,” she said. “I do not belong to this⁠
⁠… house.” She flicked her gaze to the structure where she’d left
Perseus.
This new nuisance kept coming, undeterred. “Now what sort of a
friend makes you wait out here all alone?” He did the very opposite
of what she would have preferred he do, which was to sit on the
bench, beside her. “I’ll keep you company.”
Andromeda tried to keep her distaste away from her face, lest she
provoke the man, but scooted further away on the bench, all the
same. “My friend will be here shortly,” she said in her heavily
accented Greek, “there is no need to trouble yourself.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” He slid a hand atop her knee.
She shifted out from under the unwanted touch and darted eyes to
the archway, the courtyard’s only exit. This ass was between her and
it. And where was Perseus? He’d told her ‘not long.’
“I am sure you have more important places to be,” she said.
Other than being here. Annoying me.
He leaned his weight on one arm and smiled, as though that might
disarm her. “I’m worried you might get cold. I can keep you warm.”
Thick brows waggled at her. Was this what passed for charm on this
island?
“There are torches.” She nodded at the pair burning in their
sconces on the wall behind them. “I will be warm enough.”
Gods, just go away.
He chuckled. “In this? It’s so thin.” The hand moved again for her
knee, for the cotton fabric there.
Andromeda leapt up from the bench, as if a serpent had bitten her,
and loosed a choice profanity in her native tongue. But her kemi was
already in his fist. The toe of one of her too-large new sandals
wedged itself under the sole of its twin. She fell, backward.
 Two large arms were grabbing, catching her.
There was panic that she would hit her head on the stones, but it
changed course when the night sky was overhead and hands were
mauling her hip, her shoulder.
“Get off! Pig!” She couldn’t think straight enough to remember any
of the rude words she knew in Greek. The ugly grin was above her,
the weight beginning to pin, to remove options.
“They don’t have real men where you’re from, precious?”
His laugh was as filthy as his breath, and Andromeda put the heel
of her palm to his jaw and shoved. She clawed at his neck with her
nails. He was doing something between their bodies with his hand,
readying somehow while she worked to scrabble from under him.
No. Not this. Not here.
“You should be proud of yourself,” he said, distracted as he tried to
muscle a knee between her thighs. As he looked up and around
again, to make sure no one would see. “You have me hard as a
roc⁠—”
The word⁠⁠… crackled in his throat.
The man was not moving.
His eyes rolled up, white from lid to lid, and the wrist next to her
shoulder went cold, as though her attacker were made of stone.
She saw her opportunity and grunted, Jammed a knee between his
legs. Cracked the bone on marble. Pale marble.
Chiton. Unruly beard. Mouth frozen in a wide circle above her.
All marble.
Andromeda screamed.

✧
 Eupraxia looked up at Perseus with sincere eyes and squeezed his
hand again. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “If the king wasn’t⁠⁠…” The older
woman glanced at the door, as though someone might overhear.
“Well, if it was still a time where I could worry less. There is no way
I can risk it. You⁠⁠… understand?”
“I understand.” He nodded. He didn’t like it, but he understood.
Asking someone to hide foreign royalty was no small request.
Eupraxia had been his first choice because she knew the most
names in the city. She could suss out the safest arrangements.
Perseus no longer spent enough time in the port city where he had
grown up to know best who was who and what was what.
The woman smiled at him now, eyes wrinkling at the corners. She
slapped him on the arm. “You’ve grown into quite the young man. I
remember when you were sitting on your mother’s hip.”
He shook his head but returned her grin. “I haven’t been away that
long. And I’m not that young, eith⁠—”
A scream had his head whipping around. Most of the conversation
in the crowded front room seized to a halt.
Perseus swore. He gave Eupraxia’s hand the briefest final grip, and
then tore through the front door’s curtain.
Into the street and around to the next archway. The courtyard
where he’d told her to wait was⁠…
⁠ empty?
No.
There was movement behind some statue, a kicking sandal. He ran
to her.
“Andromeda?”
Some wordless sound of grief came from the other side of the
marble hulk, and when he rounded the mass, the princess lay
pinned on the ground. Tears made the apples of her cheeks were
glossy in the torchlight. None of the scene made sense.
“I⁠—I can’t get out.” She hiccoughed at him, and he saw where part
of the statue had trapped some of her kemi at her hip.
 He put a shoulder into it and shifted the stone with a grunt. It was
enough for her to wriggle out from under the thing, to gather her
knees to her body. One of them was bleeding.
“What happened here?” He offered a hand once again, so she
might come up off the ground.
The princess wiped her face and stepped wide of the unusual
sculpture. “There was this man,” she began to say, “and he was
trying to talk to me, and I⁠—I wanted him to leave.”
Her shoulders were shaking, and Perseus gathered her in, scanning
the courtyard all the while for more trouble.
“And he wouldn’t listen,” she went on, curling her arms into her
own chest, “and he tried to touch me, and I fell, and then he⁠⁠…” The
young woman made an ineffectual gesture toward the statue.
He squinted at the thing, free hand on the hilt of his sword. Was
she trying to tell him that the statue⁠⁠…
His brows knotted. “Andromeda, if some man hurt you, you have to
tell m⁠—”
“He did,” she said. “That’s what I’m telling you! He’s r⁠—”
“Right there,” came a third voice. “A monument to the nature of
men.”
Andromeda shrank against him, and Perseus knew the chill of
danger. His eyes went everywhere, but there was no one.
“And if I’d caught you in the same act,” the taunting voice
continued, “you would be right there beside him.” It sounded as
though the speaker moved along the darkened rooftops, feminine
and dangerous, like smoke and sea-worn glass, and Perseus tried to
ignore the way her voice made all his fine hairs stand on end.
“Who are you?” he said, still searching.
“I am the one protecting this woman,” she said, “as you have so
clearly failed to do.”
 He pulled back his shoulders, the wounds from the Kêtos still raw
along his side. This faceless entity had no idea what he’d already
done. “Show yourself,” he said, grip ready to draw his sword.
From another location still, a shadow of a laugh rolled down into
the courtyard. “Oh, I assure you,” the hidden figure said, “you want
no part of that.” Perseus could hear the smile on the face he couldn’t
see. “The day you meet my eyes, warrior, is the day you forfeit me
your life.”
Andromeda squeaked and tried to hide from the world in his
chlamys. He hadn’t seen her this shaken in the aftermath of the sea
monster.
“Do not cower in his arms, young one,” their watcher said to the
princess, as she slithered off to the left. “Where was that weapon of
his when this one was on top of you? Trying to rut you like a beast?”
Perseus looked down at his charge. “Andromeda, I am sorry. It
should have only taken me moments. I did not think⁠—”
“Your kind rarely do.”
He swore he could see a shift in the shadows on the roof, but then
the voice was elsewhere. “I can teach you to defend yourself,
Aithiopian.” The words came enticing, a promise of fortunes
changed. “You need never be troubled by men again. Leave this
one. Come with me.”
The princess had wide eyes for him, her jaw slack. She hadn’t
taken a step away from his one circling arm. He watched her head
turn, scouring the courtyard and its eaves for the voice. Her focus
came to rest on the statue.
That had⁠⁠… been a man?
She shook her head, vehement, dark braids pulling where they
were still tucked under his arm. “No.” Andromeda projected her
voice to be audible along the rooftops. “P-please. Just leave. I⁠ ⁠… I
can’t. Gods, I can’t.” The last, she buried in his chlamys again, and
Perseus ground his teeth, waiting for the threat to materialize.
 There was some low coo from overhead. Disappointment, perhaps?
And then nothing.
After he waited for several breaths, tense and ready, Perseus
exhaled.
“Can we go?” Andromeda’s voice was tiny, as though some new
monster might find her.
“Yes,” he said, “as quickly as possible.”
He was already steering her out of the courtyard and away down
the street by the time she gathered the nerve to speak again.
“Your friend?” she said. “Did she know of anywhere for me?”
Perseus knit his brow down tight as they walked. “Unfortunately,
no. It appears things have changed while I’ve been away from
Seriphos.”
He could feel her eyes on him, looking for answers, even in the
dark. The payment had only been to slay the Kêtos and free the
princess. His responsibilities as a mercenary were long fulfilled, but
he could not leave her to her own devices now, not in some foreign
land where apparently if she was alone for less than an hour there
were attackers and⁠ ⁠… and men turned to stone? What more new
madness was he missing?
And that voice. Sliding, toying with him, just out of sight.
Challenging. A finger of ice swept up the back of his neck, but
Perseus forced his attention to return to the matter at hand.
“We will go to my family’s home,” he told her at last. “They will
help us. At the very least until I can find something more ideal for
you.” He tried to make his expression reassuring when he looked
over at her. “I hope you are not too sick of the sea.”
 III GORGON

It was morning by the time Perseus and Andromeda trekked their

way down through the narrow cart roads of the fishermen’s homes
on the eastern side of the city. The low buildings ran in rows,
stacked up at the base of the island’s cliffs like so many piled
offerings to Poseidon.
He was bringing with him the one offering that had been taken
back, and by the dragging of the princess’s feet, he knew this would
be the last time he could push her this far. It was just as well: once
they reached his home, there would be no need to ask anything like
this of her again. Not for a long while, in any event, and they could
both get some much-needed rest.
When he laid eyes on the familiar painted door, Perseus had only to
follow his line of sight out to the small boat he knew at its dock.
Diktys stood there, holding up a net, section by section, to check for
needed repairs. It was the first time Perseus had smiled in weeks.
He curled his fingers between his teeth and let out a loud, two-
toned whistle. The older man looked up from his work, and Perseus
waved. With sunrise out over the sea, he couldn’t see Diktys’s
expression, but he knew cheer well enough by the way the ropey
arms heaved the net into the boat. The way slightly bowed legs
ambled up the dock and climbed the stairs.
“You’re home!” The man planting fists on his hips when he reached
the pair standing in front of his house. His grin puckered the dark,
tanned skin at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “And who’s this?”
Perseus could only imagine how this all felt to the young woman.
Further from her home than she’d ever been, the daughter of a
queen, and here she was, bone tired no doubt, with a skinny Greek
fisherman addressing her as though she were any other village
maid.
“This is Andromeda,” he said, “And she needs a place to stay, for
now. Andromeda, this is my father. Diktys.” She could disclose her
parentage if she chose, but it could happen later. Inside. No need to
attract more attention out near the docks, where it was getting busy
for the morning.
“Your father?” she said. And then remembering the man right in
front of her, she added, “I’m sorry. I am pleased to meet you,
Diktys.” But then she turned right back to Perseus. “Do I not
understand? I thought your father was⁠—”
“Diktys pulled my mother and me out of the sea when I was an
infant.” Perseus clapped the older man on a shoulder. “He and his
wife, Klymene, may her shade be at peace, took us in. Helped raise
me. He is my father.” The warmth in his chest was real and reflected
back in the fisherman’s dark eyes.
“I see,” said Andromeda, hands fussing at her waist. “I apologize
for my rudeness.”
“No apology needed,” said Diktys, before he hauled Perseus into a
rough embrace. “It’s good to have you home, Son. Been too long.”
“Agreed.” Perseus exhaled as he stepped back near the princess
again. “Now where is Mother? Not helping this morning?”
His father’s mouth went into a line, and his eyes cut to the ground.
“Perseus⁠ ⁠… you’ve been away. I⁠ ⁠… I did what I could, but the king⁠
⁠ ” When he met Perseus’s gaze again, it was with all broken
…
apology.
“Damnable Fates!”
A passing woman with a basket on her shoulder sidestepped and
gave him a look for the profanity. Andromeda looked from him to his
father, and the older man wrung his hands.
“How?” said Perseus. “When?”
“There were too many of them,” Diktys said. “Palace guard. They
came with a summons. Weeks ago. ‘Danaë of Argos must present
herself to the king.’ I’m sorry, my son. There was only me. I could
not stop them.”
How the older man had been hiding the anguish, Perseus didn’t
know, but he could see it now, like something cracking the sea-
weathered ribs apart. His mother had loved Diktys for years, and he
knew the fisherman felt the same, but the stubborn pair would never
admit it out loud, out of respect for Klymene’s memory.
And now there was this. It had been looming for as long as he
could remember. Perseus felt his fingers curl into fists.
“Your brother is a⁠—”
“Don’t.” Diktys flicked a nervy eye around the docks. “For the love
of the gods, don’t.”
“Well, he is,” Perseus said. “King or no. It is well enough you have
nothing to do with him.”
His father stood there, brows knit in a helpless frown, and the
princess looked like she wanted to shrink inside herself until she
disappeared. There was nothing else to do.
“We should go inside and get some sleep.” Perseus gestured to
himself and Andromeda. “We’ve been walking all night. I assume
Mother’s bed is free for her to use?”
Diktys sighed. “It is.”
 “Good,” said Perseus. “And I will use yours. At least for a short
while.”
“And after?” His father leaned in, voice low, knowing full well what
the answer would be.
“Andromeda will stay here,” he said. “I will be going to the palace.
Polydektes seems to think my mother is his property. I will disabuse
him of this notion.”

Danaë’s son did not enjoy palaces. They were ostentatious, full of
people he had little use for⁠—other than to take their coin in
exchange for the fulfillment of near impossible tasks⁠—and every
time he left a palace, his life became more difficult.
The light from many torches set the complicated facade aglow
ahead, as Perseus left behind the last of the road’s switchbacks for
the southern entrance to the palace. From the hilltop, it overlooked
the terraces of buildings heading down to the harbor, and even now,
he could hear a large gathering, the noise rolling down from inside
the palace walls.
Guards stood at the entrance, and the pair did not fail to notice a
lone figure in sword belt and cuirass headed their way.
“The banquet is begun,” said the one on the left, stepping to block
the path. “Petitioners may return in the morning.”
Perseus slowed his gait but didn’t stop. “I am not a petitioner.”
“Either way,” said the other guard, “you’re not a guest of the king.
Palace entry is suspended until morning.”
“Danaë of Argos is my mother, and the king will speak with me,”
said Perseus, voice growing in volume. The guards gave each other
a look, but they were small obstacles. “You will let me pass, or I will
go through you.”
 He flipped his chlamys back over his shoulder, and the hilt of his
sword stood out, obvious, ready for a drawing hand. The two men
tightened grips on their spears, the one on the right tried to take
control.
“Turn around,” he said. “Don’t bring trouble on your head.”
Perseus sighed. “I will not.” He readied himself in a stance. “On
either count.”
Bronze spear points angled down. He crept his hand across his
waist to his sword. Flapping sandals sounded on the steps.
His eyes flicked up to see an older man hurrying down the wide
steps toward the guards, neither of whom would shift their gaze
from Perseus, despite the conspicuous noise.
Smart.
The man with his short, grey-bristled beard scurried up behind the
shoulder of the guard on the left, and began to unload a stream of
quiet, rushed speech into the armed man’s ear. The more the guard
heard, the more his face turned sour.
When the messenger stood to the side, he looked from the guard
to Perseus and back again. No one breathed or flinched for several
heartbeats. Then the spear on the left straightened.
The guard wore a scowl, but he stepped back in the direction of his
post. His fellow cocked his head, but the first guard dipped a curt
nod, and the pair opened the way again.
Perseus stood straight and eyed the two. The older man was all but
leaning toward the palace. There was no possibility this was good
luck.
Rather have fought these two. Combat is honest.
He followed the bearded messenger up the steps, hand never
relaxing away from his weapon until the guards at his back were
well out of sight.
“Is there something I should know?” Perseus said to the other man
as they moved along a massive corridor and turned a corner.
 Sounds of revelry grew louder. The man said nothing.
His options were few: split off from this silent guide to go search
this labyrinth of a building for either his mother or the king, or follow
toward what sounded like a crowd, and if the king wasn’t there,
create enough of a scene to force an audience. Turning back was
out of the question.
It had been years. Years.
“Brother! Is it true you pulled this fetching young woman from the
sea? Tell me your name, pet. And such a handsome boy! Where is
his father?”
Diktys had done his best. It was one thing to dissuade a brother
bent on a goal. It was another thing entirely when that brother was
also king. Polydektes was nothing if not patient. He’d only had to
wait for Perseus to become a man, to go out into the world for long
enough. It was some wonder the king had waited until now⁠—
Perseus had left boyhood at least a decade past.
Torchlight glittered over mosaics set in the walls, and the corridor
opened into a vast, rectangular courtyard. People were everywhere.
Standing, drinking, laughing. Sitting at banquet benches and tables.
Clapping for performers who danced and plucked strings and
thumped drums.
At the opposite end of the court, past a sea of chaotic merriment,
stood an elaborate table. Platters of meat crowned its center, as only
a palace could afford. Tuna and eel and lamb. Dessert cheeses and
honey breads. Olives and figs. And behind it all, sat Polydektes. To
his left, Danaë of Argos.
Perseus, the only still body in the place, caught the eye of the king.
The messenger had disappeared into the crowd.
“Ah hah!” Polydektes clapped his hands twice. “Our wayward hero
returns to Seriphos!”
Tongues stopped wagging, and a hundred pairs of eyes swiveled in
the newcomer’s direction. Music died on the salt air. Someone
coughed.
 Danaë’s eyes were wide as she watched Perseus, bereft of further
time to plan, strolling toward the long, central table. There was only
a scattering of other women in the room⁠—slaves, the only sort
permitted at a feast such as this⁠—and his mother’s clothing was a
match for theirs.
Beneath his ribs, Perseus’s heart drummed a heavy tattoo. Behind
him, footsteps. He spared a glance to either side and noted a new
pair of guards had taken up positions at his back.
The king made a slow sweep with an upturned palm and smiled.
“Kneel and present your gifts, Destroyer.”
Perseus ground his teeth on the unwanted moniker. “I kneel for no
man, Polydektes. You know why I’ve come.”
Gasps rose among the feast-goers. His mother was busy making
herself small, and the king laughed outright. “Hear this Son of
Olympos”⁠—he raised his voice for the benefit of his audience⁠—“who
claims he is far too great to kneel before his king.” He made a twitch
of two fingers.
A sandal rasping on stone was just enough. The spear butt aimed
at the back of his knee glanced when Perseus shifted. He rounded
on the man and seized the ash haft in his grip and yanked. The
guard came forward, off-balance with a grunt, and with a jab of his
arms, Perseus cracked the man along the temple with the wood.
The second guard was rushing in to check him while the first was
slithering to the ground. Perseus swung the polearm from the
fulcrum of his right hand, and as it connected with his opponent’s
neck, he pushed forward with his left. Like an oar carving into the
sea, the spear slid around and carried the man headfirst toward the
floor. Toward Perseus’s knee.
Now two were lying on the stones.
They’ll live.
A bark of laughter erupted from a crowd that had done well to
stand back during the altercation. Perseus turned to see a man the
size of an ox with a wild beard and grin to match clap his hands
together from where he stood, off to the right of the king’s table.
Not to lose control of the moment, Polydektes joined in the
laughter. Too loud, too practiced. He set to clapping, as well, and the
attention in the courtyard returned to the king of Seriphos.
“The Golden Son does tricks!” His bright smile concealed venom.
“Well done!”
Danaë flinched at another name Perseus hated, but Polydektes
seemed content to ignore and continue as if he’d planned the match
between the ‘guest’ and his guards all along. Merely another
spectacle for the crowd’s amusement.
“I don’t suppose one of your tricks was to bring the wedding gift
this feast requires?” The king sipped wine from his kantharos and his
eyes glittered at Perseus over the vessel’s wide-handled rim.
Perseus glanced at his mother and tried to keep his hands from
becoming fists. “I know of no wedding.”
“No wedding?” Polydektes was all feigned confusion. He set down
his kantharos. “But then why have you come? Our dear Pelops is
engaged to Hippodameia of Pisa.” He made a lavish gesture toward
the young man sitting to his right. “It is the entire reason for our
feast! And every guest is to have brought a fine horse. I should
assume a Son of Olympos has brought the finest yet. Have you
handed your gift off to the stablemaster?”
All while the regal posturing went on, some dozen additional
guards had filtered forward through the crowd. And those were only
the number Perseus could see straight ahead, and in his periphery.
You cannot fight them all.
He had his reasons for fighting his battles alone, but there were
times when allies would have made matters so much simpler.
“I know nothing of horses, either,” Perseus said, “or feasts. I am
here because Danaë of Argos does not belong in this place. Allow
her to leave, and you will have no more trouble from me.”
 “Doesn’t belong?” said Polydektes. “But what do you mean?” His
hand slid to the back of Danaë’s neck and rested. “Was your mother
not born in a palace? Of course she belongs. You would deny her
this birthright now? And have her sent back to live with a
fisherman?” He lilted a chuckle, and the crowd returned a nervous
echo of the laugh.
His mother’s eyes were on her plate, hands folded in her lap while
she tolerated the king’s touch. What had they done to her? She was
never silent. Never meek.
“Slave’s garb is not her birthright.” Perseus took a step toward the
table. Several guards adjusted their stances. He wanted to snap
each one of their necks and bludgeon Polydektes with their limp
corpses.
The king clucked his tongue as if Perseus were some unruly youth.
“So disrespectful,” he said. “Here this one comes to our banquet,
uninvited, without even a gift for our honored guest and his
betrothed.” The grip tightened on his mother’s neck, and Danaë
winced. Polydektes tilted his head to her. “Is this how you raise sons,
darling?”
If he murdered a king in front of a hundred witnesses, could he
and his mother make it out of the palace alive?
Perseus scowled. The Kêtos had been one foe. One. However large
and daunting. Polydektes had two dozen spears, ready to bleed his
challenger dry. Perseus was not fast enough, could not defend
himself from that many directions at once. He was not bringing
useful weapons to this fight. Not paying attention to his adversary’s
weakest points.
But Vanity. Cruelty. Avarice. In those places the king was soft.
Perseus relaxed his shoulders. Ensured his hand was nowhere near
the hilt of his sword.
“And what gift could I bring,” he said, “that the King of Seriphos
would grant my request and release my mother to me?”
Danaë’s eyes lifted to her son, to the new tone of his voice.
 A different way, Mother. I am trying.
“Well”⁠—pleasure transformed the king’s face⁠—“that is a far more
interesting question.” He withdrew his hold on Danaë’s neck to take
up his vessel for another sip. “What gift? What gift is worth an
Argive princess?”
Perseus closed his eyes, took a breath. Much like the sea monster,
he’d have to follow Polydektes into his element. Risk drowning for
his chance at his target. He waited, eyes open and on the king
again.
“Ten horses?” Polydektes asked the crowd. To his right, Pelops
smirked. “One hundred?”
Someone guffawed in the crowd. Perseus didn’t look, but it
sounded like the wild-bearded man who’d applauded earlier.
“No,” the king went on with the wave of a hand. “Too simple. He
would only have to ask his father, wouldn’t he?” His grin widened. “A
crack of lightning from the sky and”⁠—he slapped his hand on the
table, and several people jumped at the sound⁠—“wish granted!
Horses everywhere!”
Ripples of laughter spread out around the seated king. Perseus’s
jaw flexed. How many more Kêtea would he have to bring down?
How many more princesses chained to rocks would he have to pull
from harm’s way, before his name could stand on its own? Before he
could simply be ‘Perseus’, and not ‘Son of Zeus?’
As though the Lord of the Skies has done a thrice-damned thing to
help me or my mother in all this time.
“Ah!” said the king. “Here we are!” He leveled an eye and a vicious
smile at Perseus. “Bring me my brother’s heart. In one of his fishing
nets.”
“Fuck you!”
The entire crowd gasped, and it almost covered the crack of an
open palm on skin. Danaë stood, shaking, and a red mark grew on
the king’s cheek. She stared at her splayed hand, her own face
going white.
Polydektes touched fingertips to his cheekbone, and cocked his
head. Then he snapped his fingers, and a pair of guards at his back
closed the distance. They took hold of Danaë’s upper arms.
“Mother!”
The hilt of Perseus’s sword was in his hand without thought, but
more guards were pushing their way between him and the table,
and the king, whom he wanted to injure in unspeakable and
protracted ways. Four guards. Six, crowding him back, weapons
ready.
“Perseus, no!”
Between their shoulders, he could see them hauling his mother
from the courtyard, the hand she’d used to slap a king outstretched,
reaching. Her eyes flickered, wet in the torchlight, before the men
wrested her past a colonnade and she was gone.
Polydektes sat, tapping the knuckle of his first finger against his
lips in contemplation, as though nothing out of the ordinary had just
happened. “Mmm. Not a useful gift, that last.” He turned his
attention again to Perseus “Dear to come by, but what good will it
do my throne, after?” A pause, and then: “I have it.”
Perseus did not like what he saw glittering there in the king’s eyes.
“You will bring me the head of the gorgon, Medousa”⁠—Polydektes
made his voice resound between four walls⁠—“and in exchange, I will
return Danaë of Argos to your care.” He laced his fingers flat on the
tabletop, a smile curling on his face.
Gorgon. The word nagged at him, familiar. Some beast, likely, but⁠
⁠… Speculation narrowed his eyes.
“How will the head of this creature help Seriphos?” Perseus asked.
“What good will it do the throne, as you say?” Beyond the ability to
boast, though he wouldn’t put the idea past this king.
 A surprised laugh burst from Polydektes. “Medousa? The ‘Bane of
Men?’ You have been away from this island a long time.”
Perseus rolled a shoulder in a shrug.
“Not even one rumor?” the king went on. “The she-serpent who’s
been murdering innocent men on the streets?” There were murmurs
among the crowd at this, nods as though it were common
knowledge. “She turns them to stone for sport, Destroyer. If you
want to be a hero, do it here at home. Bring me her head.”
Bane of Men⁠⁠… turns them to stone⁠⁠…
Andromeda’s more patient account of the attack in the courtyard,
given as they’d walked through the night to meet Diktys, rang
against the king’s words in some foreboding harmony. ‘Innocent
men.’ Perseus tugged at the first thread of suspicion. These men
might all have something in common, and he would wager it was
not innocence. The princess had hardly been able to tell him without
tears.
“And you will release my mother?” he replied at last. “If I
accomplish this task?”
“The head of Medousa,” the king said, “for Danaë of Argos. A fair
exchange. You have my word.”
Perseus narrowed his eyes. The word of Polydektes would be like a
fever dream: real enough to smell and taste in the moment, and
then ephemeral once the sickness had passed.
And who was this creature? Where? How did a man, even a Son of
Olympos, face down a foe who could end him in some macabre way
he didn’t even understand? For which he could build no strategy?
But none of it mattered. He could not leave his mother here, to
suffer the dreadful whims of this king. He could not return to Diktys
and explain how he’d done nothing. Tried nothing.
“Then you have my word,” said Perseus. “I will return.”
Polydektes smiled on the other side of the long table, smug behind
the line of armed guards. “Very well,” he said, as though he settled
in for an intriguing performance. “You might want to run along,
then.” He made a small shooing motion with his fingers. “I can’t
vouch for your mother’s treatment when she’s out of my sight.”
Fury coursed in Perseus’s veins. His blade would separate a king’s
head from its body, just as well as it would do some other
abomination. In front of him, the guards’ knuckles tightened on their
spears.
Go. Now before you make it worse.
He turned with a snarl and a swirl of his chlamys, and strode from
the palace courtyard, waves of gossip already beginning to crash
back in from the crowd on all sides.
Where would he start? How would he do this thing?
This time there was no escorting messenger through the massive
corridors, and it was just as well. Polydektes had set him this task
because the man had full confidence it would kill him. No need to
have him guided anywhere safely, now.
The sea breeze cooled sweat on his skin as he left the walls of the
palace proper, and Perseus had to slow his angry pace. Had to start
thinking, and rationally, for creation’s sake.
On the stones behind him, sandaled footsteps came in a hurry. His
hand moved for his sword.
“Perseus!” said a deep voice. “Wait.”

When her small ship came parallel to the dock on the west side of
Sarpedon, Medousa’s amateur crew was already leaping to tie off
lines, to furl the single wide sail. What they lacked in experience
they made up for in enthusiasm, and it assured her again that what
she was offering, what she’d been teaching them, was right.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
share in, and contribute to, a spiritual commonwealth. He strongly
opposes attacks on the permanency of marriage, and for marriage
itself he insists on a loftier standard. The problem of labor seems to
him one of perfecting personal relations in industry, though it be
necessary to reshape industry to achieve it. And though provisional
solutions of the problem of a society of nations seem to Dr. Adler
inadequate and futile, he is at pains to establish the principle on
which such a society can, he thinks, be founded.
Religion and the Mind of Today, by Joseph A. Leighton, asks for
careful definition. The author is a priest of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. He is now professor of philosophy in the Ohio State
University, the author of Man and the Cosmos and of an introductory
book on philosophy used in many colleges. Dr. Leighton, in a sense,
offers himself as living evidence that acceptance of modern science
is not inconsistent with a deep and satisfying religion expressed in a
formal creed. His book consists of three parts. The first studies the
indispensable rôle of religion in a civilization, and aims to show the
relation of religion to culture and its function in human society. The
second part is a study of Christianity; it argues the superior ethics of
Jesus to other systems of ethics; and endeavors to apply Christian
ethics to problems of modern life. The third part of the book is on the
validity of religion. Dr. Leighton finds religious belief entirely
compatible with scientific discovery. He also, in special chapters,
does his best to clear such religious problems as the nature of faith,
the origin of the universe, the incarnation of Christ, the efficacy of
prayer, and the immortality of the soul.
His work, which is general, leads me directly to the new book by
Shailer Mathews and others, which is specific. If there is one thing
which can be said about Contributions of Science to Religion, it is
that the book gets down to bed rock. Dr. Mathews, dean of the
Divinity School of the University of Chicago, one of the best known
educators and editors in America, conceived the idea of getting
representative scientists to tell compactly of those portions of the
world, or life, which were their special provinces: He wanted to see
what the resulting picture would be like. He asked bluntly: “After the
scientists have explained the construction of the universe, the earth
and man, is there any room left for God?” He felt, as he says in the
opening sentence of this book, that “a man’s religion must not give
the lie to the world in which he lives.” And he also felt, as he says in
his introduction, that “if scientific knowledge could really destroy faith
in God it would do so—and it should do so.”
He got thirteen chapters by some very distinguished men, to which
he prefixed a chapter of his own, then writing a final summarizing
chapter; and this is the book. Among the scientist contributors are W.
E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Marine Biological Laboratory of the
University of California, who writes on the scientific method of
reaching truth; Robert A. Millikan, the physicist who was the first to
succeed in isolating an electron; and Edwin S. Frost, director of the
Yerkes Observatory. The arrangement of chapters is ingenious and
even dramatic. For example, one goes from the contemplation of
invisible atoms made up of electrons to that of a universe, made up
of electrons infinitesimally small but containing bodies many million
times the size of our sun.
There is neither religion nor theology in these thirteen scientific
chapters, which may be read, and can most profitably be read, by
anyone who seeks simply a bird’s-eye view of what science has
found out. Dr. Mathews sums up ably; yet his case is practically
stated in Professor Ritter’s remark that “seeing God in the Universe
is no more difficult than seeing electrons there.”
But in praising this striking and admirable volume, I fully recognize
that its very sharpness and definiteness make it extremely
provocative—though therefore all the more interesting. To the mind
purely mystical, Contributions of Science to Religion must remain all
beside the point; and to Dr. Mathews’s assertion that “a man’s
religion must not give the lie to the world in which he lives,” the
mystic will reply that that, precisely, is what his religion is for. And
with many the question does not take the form in which Dr. Mathews
puts it, but rather the form in which Dr. E. Y. Mullins, president of the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, puts it in his Christianity at
the Crossroads: “Will Christianity continue its redemptive work in the
world, or will it cool into a reform movement, without redemptive
power?” So asked, the answer may well be different. Dr. Mullins
argues—and without appeal to authority of any kind—that the
Christian religion is free and autonomous, and that efforts to
transform it have failed. And if it is to be Christianity against a new
religion, he has no doubt as to where the victory will lie.

ii
Sir Oliver Lodge’s Making of Man has something in common with
the books I have discussed and some relation to the books I am
coming to; but first I wish to ward off a misconception. Sir Oliver’s
views of an after life, his experiments and speculations are well-
known; but Making of Man is not in any sense a spiritualist volume. It
is a study in evolution; a short, simple account of physical science
which the author then relates, so far as our knowledge permits, to
the history of the soul. His own special beliefs are kept out of the
way; his point is that what we know from physics and other branches
of science makes immortality of the soul an irresistible conclusion.
As he says: “It is beginning to seem possible that the conservation of
matter and energy may have to be supplemented by the
conservation of life and mind.... I feel sure of this: that the Universe
is a much completer whole than we had imagined. Every kind of real
existence is permanent; and our activities do not cease when we
change our instrument.” The book is brief, very sincere, and of
interest to readers of every class and shade of opinion.
In Evolution: the Way of Life, Vernon Kellogg, the zoölogist, has
written a book designed for the general reader who wants exact but
simply expressed knowledge concerning the theory. The author has
been at pains to tie up his discussion to the evolution we all can see
in ourselves and in the Nature about us. This is decidedly a book to
clear up and make definite the reader’s conception of what evolution
is and is not, and of its significance to mankind.
The two remaining impersonal books I have to present are both
purely scientific, though almost startlingly diverse; and then I shall go
on to speak of books distinctly personal to the reader.
 And first I offer a work of science keenly interesting to the general
reader. George Grant MacCurdy of Yale is known wherever
anthropology is known. For many years he has been gathering the
materials for a history of man before recorded history begins. The
interest of pre-history, as the subject is called, needs no emphasis.
Its appeal has been shown by the success of such books as Henry
Fairfield Osborne’s Men of the Old Stone Age and by the fascination
most readers confess to feeling for the earlier chapters of H. G.
Wells’s An Outline of History. But pre-history, sketched by Wells,
dealt with partially by Osborne, had never been fully written in a
single, up-to-date work. Dr. MacCurdy has done it in the two volumes
of his Human Origins: A Manual of Pre-History.
Human Origins is a great book. It must be remembered that all we
know about prehistoric man is the discovery of the last hundred
years, discovery that has come thick and fast, but which has
remained scattered. I shall say nothing about the work involved in
writing Human Origins; its immensity is apparent. But it is sheer luck
that we have in Dr. MacCurdy a writer whose imagination and sense
of the dramatic turn the whole affair into a superlative story.
Man, emerging as a distinct species, entered upon the Old Stone
age, testified to by flint implements which we can just begin to see
bear evidences of human shaping. The Old Stone Age lasted a long
while. During it, in intervals of thousands of years, ice swept down
over Europe and North America in four successive glaciations. The
three warm intervals between these four ice epochs are the lower,
middle, and upper paleolithic periods. In each, prehistoric man made
some rude advance toward better tools and weapons. He even
progressed in art to the extent of painting on cave walls. Then the ice
came down again, and for thousands of years man lost nearly all the
gain he had made.
He reappears in the New Stone Age using chipped and polished
flints, mining the flints in certain places, working them in certain
places. Pottery-making began, and some idea of weaving was
gained. Religious ideas were first entertained. Fire was conquered
and put to man’s use, the wheel was invented, animals were
domesticated. Then came the Bronze Age, with its discovery of how
to smelt copper, tin, gold, silver. The Iron Age arrived when man had
acquired sufficient skill in smelting this more durable metal and could
use it to replace all others in things of hard use.
Approximately 400 illustrations, of a fascination at least equal to
the text, appear in the two volumes of Human Origins.
If the new book on Haunted Houses did not bear the name of so
distinguished a scientist as M. Camille Flammarion, it would find no
place, I am afraid, in this chapter. M. Flammarion is fully aware of the
skepticism he must encounter, and is at pains to refute it as fully as
possible in his book. But great as the interest of this controversy is, I
think most readers will find the mere subject irresistible, and I am
certain that everyone, even he who pooh-poohs all the evidence, will
be captivated by the strange stories to be read in Haunted Houses.
Dwellings that are variously authenticated for their troublesome
character are discussed in chapter after chapter—a chateau at
Calvados, a habitation in Auvergne, the house of La Constantine, a
parsonage, a teacher’s house, the fantastic villa of Comedada at
Coimbra in Portugal, the maleficent ceiling at Oxford, Pierre Loti’s
mosque at Rochefort. And after so much, a chapter providing “A
General Excursion Among Haunted Houses”! Flammarion then
classes the phenomena as of two kinds—those associated with the
dead and those not so attributable. But he is no mere credulous
believer in haunting. He devotes a chapter to houses spuriously
haunted. His book concludes with a search for causes and an
assertion, or reassertion, of belief in certain evidence; “the unknown
of yesterday is the truth of tomorrow.” It is interesting to note that
there has been legal recognition of haunted houses.

iii
Two of the personal books before me are by Dr. James J. Walsh,
medical director of Fordham University’s School of Sociology,
professor of physiological psychology at Cathedral College, and
author of that remarkable history of fakes and faith-wrought miracles,
Cures. In Health Through Will Power, Dr. Walsh is dealing with a
subject which, more than any other one thing, has been made the
foundation of new and powerful religious sects. But Dr. Walsh’s
interest is in the application and the uses of will power in the
individual.
He therefore shows the preventive and curative power of the will in
such universal ailments as coughs and colds, intestinal disorders,
rheumatism, and the like. But most importantly he shows the rôle of
the will in dealing with mental disturbances and in a therapeutic
application to bad habits as diverse as self-pity, yielding to pain or
succumbing to sentimentalism in sympathy, and irregular and
insufficient exercise.
Health Through Will Power is untechnical. Anyone can read and
understand it.
Success in a New Era, Dr. Walsh’s other book, shows that the
application of the will is the most important factor in achieving
success of any kind. Is education important? Yes, but “it is not for
lack of knowledge but for lack of will power that men fail to
accomplish what they want to. Men have powers or energies far
beyond what they usually think, and the men who use them up to
something like their capacity make a success of life.”
Next to will power comes work; and work must be offset by
recreation, though proper recreation calls for the expenditure of
mental or physical energy as great as work.
I am not sure that Dr. Walsh’s warning about reading is needed in
America. “Reading,” he says, “requires the least mental labor of
almost any pursuit, and hardly a person but sooner or later finds
himself putting off something that ought to be done by pretending
that he is accomplishing more by his reading. Reading in itself is
excellent, but it is vastly overused to excuse the inaction of weak and
lazy people.” No doubt; but of 961 people I personally know well, 857
spend every evening listening to the radio, attending a moving
picture, or playing cards and dancing. Of the remaining 104, only
eighty-one read.
Yet Dr. Walsh is dead right when he says that “the best good habit
in the world is the proper use of time”—though the acquisition of
more hours in a day would be helpful—and his Success in a New
Era is a singularly honest and helpful book, free from even one
patent formula for attaining “success.”
The Foundations of Personality, by Abraham Myerson, M.D.,
though on more general lines, is of no less value. Dr. Myerson
analyzes the elements of character—which is not, of course, the
same thing as mind. Character is intimately related to mind, as the
brain and body are intimately related. Character may be affected by
both the mind and the body; it is not dependent on either. Dr.
Myerson describes the general types of character, the tradition of
each and its social heredity; and he follows the energies of men as
they expend themselves in instinct and emotion and intelligence.
Although a physician and a psychologist, he writes from the
standpoint of one who deeply shares the everyday aspirations and
conflicts of his fellows. His comments on the influences exerted upon
character, and on the expression of character in work, play, humor,
sex and religion are of acute interest. His book’s great practical value
is dual: it helps toward self-understanding and it gives a good deal of
help toward insight into the characters of others—a matter which
usually has an important part in determining our own success or
failure in life.
Simpler than The Foundations of Personality because of a much
narrower scope is Arthur Holmes’s Controlled Power: A Study of
Laziness and Achievement. This popularly-written book by a
professor of psychology is almost a handbook on the subject of
laziness, its causes and cure. For not all laziness comes from the
same cause, and not all apparent laziness is laziness in fact. There
is such a thing as the indolence of genius, well-illustrated by
Professor Holmes in the cases of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver
Goldsmith, and the naturalist, John Muir. There is the languor of
youth, when the rapid growth of the body may produce a kind of
inertia either physical or mental. The aversion of the normal boy to
study is easily explained, Professor Holmes holds. What people
have done much they like much to do; and what they have done little
they like little to do. What the human race has not done very long is
hard for individuals of the race to do. The human race has hunted
and fished for thousands of years; it has studied for a very few
centuries, and studied in the mass for only about one century. Of
course the boy will prefer to hunt or fish!
Controlled Power is so entirely readable that one feels as if it
should be put in the hands of every parent and school teacher. Its
wisdom could do much for them, as well as for the child.
Teachers and many parents could read advantageously also The
Normal Mind, by William H. Burnham, professor of pedagogy and
school hygiene in Clark University. If our knowledge of what we call
mental hygiene shows us anything, it shows us that most people do
not utilize the brains they have. The whole purpose of mental
hygiene is to teach how to make the most of one’s inborn ability. The
power to think with clearness means usually the throwing off of bad
mental habits.
Professor Burnham, teaching at G. Stanley Hall’s institution and
with a background of many years’ experience and observation, has
produced a book which most satisfactorily compends what we know
about mental hygiene to date. His presentation of the school task, of
mental attitudes, of suggestion and mental hygiene, of success and
failure and discipline, offers in practical form the wisdom we have
regarding mental health and how to attain it.
Twelve Tests of Character, by the Reverend Harry Emerson
Fosdick, D.D., has amply proven its popularity; indeed, it has for
months been among the ten best-selling books of non-fiction
throughout America. Dr. Fosdick’s tests are tests of character in
action, not conventional qualities nor abstract traits. Written with
reference to Christian teaching, the book is nevertheless one of
extreme popular appeal. Nothing of the sort has more “rush” of style
and pointedness, more irresistibility in brushing aside objections and
obstacles. Undoubtedly the wealth of illustrative instances and
anecdotes has greatly enhanced its popularity.

iv
 But my chapter runs too long. I have saved for the end, and will
not quit leaving unmentioned, Albert Payson Terhune’s Now That I’m
Fifty. Is Mr. Terhune’s outspokenness a bit brutal? I do not think so.
He is fifty and knows whereof he writes; why should he not tell what
he knows? Is it cruel to say that one should have money, such
money as he can acquire, with which to meet fifty? No, it is common
sense. Is it bitter to point out, with unmistakable instances, that fifty
cannot do the things that twenty does? Most decidedly not; for Mr.
Terhune points out those other things that twenty cannot do, and that
fifty can. Fifty cannot run five miles; twenty can. Very well; when Mr.
Terhune was in his twenties and tried to work a few hours at night
after the work of the day, he went all to pieces. But now, at fifty, he
can work better than ever before in his life; longer hours, harder
work; and come out of it smiling. In fact, in Now That I’m Fifty he
practically says: “Look at the things I used to be able to do and can
do no longer; and thank the Lord I can’t!” This little book of
Terhune’s, not much more than an extended essay, is so honest, so
merry, so frank and so mellow that I think fifty can safely put it in the
hands of those who aspire to be fifty.
 23. J. C. Snaith and George Gibbs
i
Certain novelists there are who, if they chance upon worthy
material, need ask odds of no writer of fiction now living. I think at
once of two Englishmen in this class, and one of them is John Collis
Snaith. In such books as The Coming and The Undefeated he has
had material of the first order and has wrought greatly with it. And at
all times he is a novelist and entertainer of much more than ordinary
competence.
The outstanding matters about J. C. Snaith are several. The first is
his steady productivity through twenty years; for the number of
novelists who sustain their work so long is not large. The second,
and a more important matter, is Snaith’s striking variety. As Henry
Sydnor Harrison, the author of Queed, has said, Snaith “is absolutely
his own man, always doing his own things in his own way and
refusing to be deterred; and this quality gives to his published works
a remarkable range.” I wonder how many realize what courage, and
even what sacrifice, such a course entails? Not many, probably. But
the simple fact is that we all insist on putting a storyteller in a
particular compartment in our minds. Let a man please us with a tale
of a certain kind and we reject a tale from him of any other kind. This
is very discouraging to the novelist, who, after all, is not producing
Ford cars. As readers of fiction we should select a good chassis and
give our novelist complete rope on the custom-built body.
J. C. Snaith was born of Yorkshire folk in Nottinghamshire, 1876.
As a youth he played for his county in cricket, football and hockey.
His health became impaired and he had to give up athletics. He lives
down on the North Shore at Skegness but spends some time in
London (where he may be found in a goodly company of novelists at
the Garrick Club). But whether in the country or in town, as he says:
“Outside of my work, I have no story to tell. I am always submerged
in a novel. My life has been singularly uneventful. It seems to begin
and end in the writing of novels. I study them continually and each
one I write is in the nature of an experiment. In my humble opinion,
the art of novel writing is in a state of continual development. To me
a good novel is a mental tonic, exhilarating, educative, humanizing.”
It will be to the point, then, with this modest man to give, chiefly,
some sketch of his work. His first novel, Broke of Covenden (1904) is
such a portrait of the English squire as no one else, I think, has given
us. Those who were delighted by Sheila Kaye-Smith’s The End of
the House of Alard, and those who count as a great experience
Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga should lose no time in reading Broke
of Covenden. Richard Mansfield longed for a play from Snaith’s
novel so that he might act as Broke. Well, it is not too late to fashion
the play for some one like Lionel Barrymore.
William Jordan, Junior (1907) shares with The Coming (1907) first
place in Snaith’s own estimate of the comparative merit of his
novels. The two have a certain remarkable likeness. Jordan is a poet
of “universal power given to no other person in the modern or the
ancient world”; an utterly unworldly youth and man; a symbol of the
artist or prophet or poet who comes with a message for all mankind
and who finds mankind unready to listen—who is, besides, caught in
the coil of a life he does not understand and to which he has no real
relation. The Coming, exquisite and powerful, suggests in its
principal figure the reappearance of Jesus Christ in England during
the World War. These novels are therefore really expressions of the
human spirit done with extraordinary force and unusual directness.
They are, however, unsentimental, reticent, quiet in tone and they do
accomplish in terms of the novel with many accents of realistic detail
what men have generally been driven to express in fable, allegory,
legend or poem—in other words, with a pretty complete divorce from
everyday actuality. Snaith never quite sacrifices that. It is his
distinction (unique, I think) to have been able in these two books to
take a lofty and sublime subject and bring it to earth without shearing
its wings.
 The same effect is partly realized in The Sailor (1916), supposed
to have been suggested by the career of John Masefield; but here
the whole treatment is more markedly realistic and perhaps more
open to a charge of sentimentality. Yet The Sailor by virtue of its
extreme realism (except the short period on shipboard, which bears
only the most fantastic relation to such an actual experience) is
richer than either William Jordan, Junior or The Coming in the
elements of popular interest and appeal. If it at moments approaches
hysteria, so did A. S. M. Hutchinson’s If Winter Comes; if Henry
Harper’s rise taxes ready belief, the drama of his upward struggle
from dirt and obscurity to freedom and success and power is a
drama on which the reader’s interest hangs breathlessly throughout.
Many, and with justice, consider The Undefeated (1919) the best
novel Snaith has written. Certainly this can be said for it: Appearing
at a time when the public utterly refused to read “war books,” this
simple story of a little English greengrocer and his family in time of
war became a best seller without any perceptible delay. Even today,
perhaps, The Undefeated is most abidingly in demand of all the
Snaith novels. “The kind of person Snaith writes about is the kind of
person that fascinates me and that I try to write about. How I wish I
could do it with his big simplicity!” exclaimed Edna Ferber, when she
had finished the book. “A thing of finest spirit. It is one of the few
works of fiction I have been able to read through since August,
1914,” was Tarkington’s comment, and other authors were not silent.
Among an hundred novels and would-be novels and fact-books
about the war, all loud as so many shrieks, this quiet voice could
make itself heard. For among many merits in The Undefeated the
greatest was the restraint with which Snaith wrote; and he contrived
both by tone and by speech to say what H. G. Wells and others,
alike in pulpits and on soapboxes, could never seem to utter.
There is another Snaith, the man of amusement who entertains
himself and the reader with light fiction. Sometimes it is an engaging
romance on the order of his Araminta; again it is a divertissement of
youth, like The Principal Girl; most recently it is the friendly fun, by
no means unalloyed with admiration, of There Is a Tide. The title is
taken, of course, from the familiar, “There is a tide in the affairs of
men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune.” Mame Durrance,
of Cowbarn, Iowa, aided by an aunt’s legacy, and weaponed with her
own pluck, seeks her fortune first in New York and then in London.
As Miss Amethyst Du Rance, European correspondent of the home-
town newspaper, she seems destined to fail in her object. But when
her affairs are most discouraging she finds friendship with Lady
Violet Trehem, and the gayest pages in Snaith’s novel record
Mame’s adventures in English society. Mr. Snaith obviously likes his
heroine. He avoids burlesque and his comedy is a laugh with, and
not a laugh at. The impossible type of ending is dexterously avoided;
and if there is any fault to find it is with the author’s prodigious and
incredible assimilation of American slang. He really knows it, though
perhaps he doesn’t discriminate with nicety between last year’s and
this; but the result is a little like a cook unfamiliar with garlic and
using it for the first time.
The main delight in Snaith’s work is unchanging—it is the delight
of adventurousness. One may not know in what precise field his new
novel will take one, but one goes with him in the certain and
satisfactory knowledge that the exploration will be a finished job. “To
me a good novel is exhilarating, educative, humanizing.” All three
qualities mark his own work.

ii
Like J. C. Snaith, George Gibbs became a novelist for the love of
writing novels, and like Robert W. Chambers he is both novelist and
painter-illustrator. I say “for love of writing novels” when perhaps I
ought to say for love of telling stories; and then the likeness with Mr.
Chambers could be extended. The love of telling stories may seem
to lie at the base of any novelist’s career; but there are certainly
differences. But what one has in mind in the case of Mr. Gibbs is a
certain natural activity rather than a studied, deliberate and
conscious choice.
He began to write very young, doing newspaper articles of a
popular cast on scientific and naval topics. Then his work as an
illustrator became more important. For a long while he illustrated his
own stories and novels, as well as those of other men. As his skill in
fiction developed and a really large audience grew up for the novels,
Mr. Gibbs let illustration drop into the background. However, in
recent years he has turned again after a ten-year interval to painting
in oils. Now that his footing as a writer is secure, he says that to turn
from a novel to painting rests him. But at first he wrote only in late
afternoon and evenings when the light was too bad for work at the
easel.
George Gibbs was born 8 March 1870 at New Orleans, the son of
Benjamin Franklin Gibbs and Elizabeth Beatrice (Kellogg) Gibbs.
The father was an officer in the United States Navy and died at
Trieste while serving as fleet surgeon of the European squadron.
Part of the son’s schooling was got near Geneva, Switzerland, and
afterward he was entered at the United States Naval Academy
where he generally neglected trigonometry in favor of a sketch book
and the writing of verses. On leaving Annapolis he entered the night
classes of the Corcoran School of Art and the Art Students’ League,
Washington, D. C. “My days,” he says, “were devoted to writing very
poor short stories which steadily went the rounds of all the
magazines of the country, only to be returned. I got in debt and
began to write special articles for New York newspapers with
sufficient luck to finish my art courses.” He came to Philadelphia
before he was 30. Cyrus H. K. Curtis had just bought the Saturday
Evening Post and Gibbs got work as an illustrator. In 1901 he
married Maud Stovell Harrison of Philadelphia and he has been a
Philadelphian ever since, living in Rosemont and having an office on
Chestnut Street and appearing now and then in the agreeable
company gathered at the Franklin Inn Club.
His first book was a collection of boys’ stories on great naval
heroes. Then he wrote a long, leisurely French historical novel, In
Search of Mademoiselle. After another of the same sort he struck his
metier with The Medusa Emerald. With his next novel but one, The
Bolted Door, he became an author whose work goes to press early
and often. The book went through a dozen editions and Mr. Gibbs,
like Robert W. Chambers, decided that illustration was not the better
part of valor.
 He was frankly glad. “Inventing plots, people and situations is a
thousand times more interesting than drawing scenes,” he says. He
had long since discovered that when one does both writing and
painting different personalities are exercised. And he had in his own
case an amusing experience which should greatly console those
authors who have suffered from what seem to them the vagaries of
the illustrators of their work. Mr. Gibbs soon found that he could not
illustrate his own stories perfectly!
“When I approached my stories to illustrate them it always seemed
as though they had been written by another person. I got the trained
illustrator’s idea from a situation. It never worked out exactly like the
picture I had in mind when I wrote the passage. Before I begin a
story, I can see every character’s face and how he will move and
what he will be doing at various climaxes. But when I come to paint
him, I don’t give it.”
A George Gibbs novel is characterized by a certain substance and
power which make a comparison with the most successful work of
Robert W. Chambers rather too natural and too easy to be trusted.
Mr. Chambers, by his own admission, has always written the story
which, at the moment, it amused him to write. Mr. Gibbs, with an
equal equipment, has become steadily more intent on his work, both
in the choice of subjects and in the treatment. He has never been
without an interest in and a respect for character; and even in novels
which are essentially novels of intrigue and suspense, like The
Yellow Dove, the characterization is far from superficial. When he
has a descriptive passage to write he takes his time to find the
words, and his work shows the painstaking. Perhaps Mr. Chambers
of some years ago and Mr. Gibbs of today are most alike in their
distinct flair for the absorbing, even the fashionable, subject. Mr.
Gibbs, perhaps owing to his painter’s side, is unrestricted by place or
social stratification. The Yellow Dove opens with excellent Cockney
talk; The Secret Witness moves with assurance in central Europe;
The Golden Bough details an American soldier’s adventures in
Germany; The Black Stone has scenes in Arabia; The Splendid
Outcast is vivid with bits of the Paris underworld; The House of
Mohun chronicles the rise and fall of an American family stranded
between its town house and its Long Island estate; and the heroine
of Fires of Ambition is a red-haired Irish girl, an obscure employee of
an obscure cloak and suit concern.
A change in Mr. Gibbs’s work, the result of a definite intention
which he avowed at the time, can be seen beginning with Youth
Triumphant (1921). It resulted from a wish to do novels more truly
representative of American life than any he had done. He had come
to feel, as Swinnerton expresses it, that romance should spring from
a personal vision of life and not merely from that kind of romantic
material which has been so much used and which has only the
makeshift value of stage properties. The deepening treatment is
noticeable in The House of Mohun. It is continued in Fires of
Ambition, where Mary Ryan, having conquered life, asks herself:
“What are these things I have fought for? What are they in
comparison with the love I might have had?” Most observable is the
maturer study of character and destinies in George Gibbs’s latest
and most competent novel, Sackcloth and Scarlet.
This is the history of two sisters of whom the older, Joan, is a
responsible person and the younger, Polly, begins in weakness and
progresses toward destruction. The development is smooth and
unhurried and the characterization has a certain skill and a gradual
intensity which is scarcely to be found in Mr. Gibbs’s earlier books.
The scene moves to Brittany, to Washington and to Atlantic City as
the story proceeds; and in each case the novelist establishes his
people firmly in the new setting. There is very little artifice and what
there is works quite simply and directly to show the interrelation of
just the three most important people. And yet, in an ordered fashion,
the book does bring up very momentous questions—such a question
as the difference between motherliness and motherhood, and the
graver question of accident and destiny in the existence of a child.
In his fiction George Gibbs has now come to have more points of
resemblance and contact, perhaps, with Arthur Train and Rupert
Hughes than with other contemporary American novelists. He can, at
any rate, be depended upon for sincere and ambitious work,
executed by a practiced hand.
 BOOKS BY J. C. SNAITH

1904 Broke of Covenden

1906 Henry Northcote
1907 William Jordan, Junior
1909 Araminta [republished 1923]
1910 Fortune
1910 Mrs. Fitz
Lady Barbarity
Anne Feversham
1912 The Principal Girl
1914 An Affair of State
1915 The Great Age
1916 The Sailor
1917 The Coming
1918 Mary Plantagenet
The Time Spirit
1919 The Undefeated
In England: Love Lane
1920 The Adventurous Lady
1922 The Council of Seven
1923 The Van Roon
1924 There Is a Tide

SOURCES ON J. C. SNAITH
Excellent descriptive notes on many of Mr. Snaith’s novels will be
found on page 155 et seq. of R. Brimley Johnson’s Some
Contemporary Novelists (Men), published by Leonard Parsons,
London.
An appreciative review of The Sailor forms a short chapter in S. P.
B. Mais’s Some Modern Authors (Dodd, Mead & Company). See
page 133 et seq.
 “J. C. Snaith,” by W. M. Parker, in The Bookman (London) for
April, 1922.

BOOKS BY GEORGE GIBBS

1900 Pike and Cutlass: Hero Tales of Our Navy

1901 In Search of Mademoiselle
1903 American Sea Fights. Portfolio of colored drawings
1905 The Love of Monsieur
1907 The Medusa Emerald
1909 Tony’s Wife
1911 The Bolted Door
1911 The Forbidden Way
1912 The Maker of Opportunities
1913 The Silent Battle
1913 Madcap
1914 The Flaming Sword
1915 The Yellow Dove
1916 Paradise Garden
1917 The Secret Witness
1918 The Golden Bough
1919 The Black Stone
1920 The Splendid Outcast
1921 The Vagrant Duke
1921 Youth Triumphant
1922 The House of Mohun
1923 Fires of Ambition
1924 Sackcloth and Scarlet

SOURCES ON GEORGE GIBBS

“Illustrates His Own Books” (article and interview), The Sun, New
York, 18 February 1911.
 “George Gibbs on His Work.” Interview by Francis Hill in the
Philadelphia Public Ledger. Date uncertain: 1912 or 1913.
“George Gibbs, a Novelist, and His Ideas.” Interview by Theodocia
F. Walton in the Philadelphia Press, 21 March 1920.
Who’s Who in America.
Note: George Gibbs’s prowess as a painter in oils deserves a
special note. He has painted some splendid nudes which have been
widely exhibited, in particular one called “The Gold Screen” which
has been at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the Chicago
Institute of Fine Arts, the St. Louis Gallery, the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts and other exhibitions. He has done some
striking marines which have been shown at the Pennsylvania
Academy and the Corcoran Gallery and are now (April, 1924) on
view in Baltimore. He has become a portrait painter much in demand
with more commissions offered him than he cares to accept.
In painting as in fiction his effort has been to achieve a steady
progression into more serious and more ambitious work; and the
difference between some early illustration of his and “The Gold
Screen” is scarcely greater than between his first few novels and
such work as The House of Mohun or Sackcloth and Scarlet.
 24. Mary Johnston’s Adventure
i
There lives in the city of New York a large, blond man who knows
many authors and editors and publishers and who goes between
them. That is his business, and yet, in spite of this dreadful
occupation he is a merry man with a childlike countenance and a
cheerful and carefree manner. Insouciant words bubble from his lips
while his head rolls round on his shoulders; his invariable air is one
of entire helplessness even in propitious circumstances; his tone is a
tone of gay despair. His attitude toward all authors is fatherly and
tender, and so is his attitude toward editors and publishers; he as
much as admits that literature is a deplorable affair all around, and
his expressive eye and accent say: “Courage! We shall yet make the
best of this situation. You, who are about to buy, salute us.” At times
a strange gleam comes into his face and on more than one such
occasion I have heard him murmur that some day he will turn
publisher and bring out two books which were published, indeed, but
not read. And one of those books is Michael Forth, by Mary
Johnston.
Miss Johnston was read before the publication of Michael Forth
and she has been read since. Her best work of one kind lies before
it; her best work of another and more significant kind has followed it.
Michael Forth is simply a chrysalis, escaping notice, from which was
to come, in place of the writer of superb historical romances like To
Have and To Hold and historical novels like The Long Roll and
Cease Firing, an author as strange as William Blake, a woman
whose proper company in American literature is Emily Dickinson,
Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Margaret Fuller and Melville.
“She is a mystic bent upon the expressive embodiment of what
eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard until she saw and heard