I wrote this after reading a story about Luciano Garbati’s statue called “Medusa with the Head of Perseus” by Jessica Mason. When I was a boy, I read illustrated versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey and fell in love with Greek myth. I spent a summer reading all the way through the full versions, making sure I selected the biggest translation of the two books I could find. I wanted it all. Then, I read Ovid and anything else I could get my hands on. That was when I first discovered Socrates and Plato as well. And, finally, Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Campbell helped me understand the gods of Olympus were expressions of how the Greeks saw the world around them: cold-hearted, capricious, unjust, and petty. The world doesn’t care that we’re here and might not even know that we’re here. That’s why the Olympians are the way they are.
Nevertheless, the story of Medusa never sat right with me. Poseidon violates both her and the temple and Aphrodite punishes Medusa? Even my nine-year-old brain knew that wasn’t right. And it sat with me… for over three decades.
Finally, after reading the story—and talking with my friends Jessica and Adrianne—I decided I should re-write the story. What’s more, I could tell the Théan version of Medusa’s tale. Something a bit more heroic.
And so, with all that in mind, I hope you enjoy Medeiun, an old Numanari sailor’s re-telling of a well-known story, but with a very distinct Théan twist.
* * *
I heard this story when I was sailing off the Numanari coast. A sailor almost as old as I am now told it to me, and now I’m telling it to you. And by the end, you’ll know why your only mistress is the ship and your only love is the sea.
Once, a long time ago, there was this priestess of the Goddess of Love and her name was Medeiun. And she was beautiful. So beautiful, she could even make the gods themselves desire her. But she was also a warrior, trained to guard the temple of her goddess. She could fight with sword or axe or spear and fire arrows with deadly precision, shooting out a man’s eye at a hundred paces. That’s how good she was.
One day, the Lord of the Sea heard how beautiful this priestess was and he had to go and look himself, because he was sure no mortal woman could stir his desires. He took the form of a fisherman, not unlike yourself, and he went to the temple. And the temple was a great and beautiful wonder, greater and more beautiful than anything he had ever seen before. And when he saw this priestess, his heart nearly burst out of his chest. He wanted her. No, he didn’t just want her. He knew that he could not live without her.
And so, he went to her in the form of a fisherman and swore his love to her, but she rejected him because she was sworn to her goddess and to the temple. The Lord of the Sea became enraged and took his true form and demanded that she love him.
The priestess told him, “How dare you demand I love you? My heart is my own and will love who it will love without demand from another.”
Now, the Lord of the Sea was even more angered, and he began wrecking the temple. The priestess, she drew her sword and her spears and all her weapons and defended the temple the best she could, but she was only a mortal, and he was the Lord of the Sea. With his rage, he destroyed the temple and nearly killed the priestess. Her limbs were broken and her beauty smashed. When the Lord of the Sea had seen what he had done, he laughed.
“Your beauty is wrecked, priestess! As is your temple! Who would want you now?” And he left both Medeiun and her temple behind.
Now, it was years later, many years later, that the Lord of the Sea heard that the goddess had not only rebuilt the temple, but Medeiun herself was priestess there again. “How could the Goddess of Love put that ruined woman in her temple?” But he also heard the Goddess had not only restored Medeiun’s beauty, but had made it even greater than before. And so, the Lord of the Sea again took the shape of a fisherman, and he went on the land to see this new temple and the rejuvenated beauty of its priestess.
When he arrived, he saw the temple was even greater than it was before. He went inside, and there, he saw a veiled woman with a sword at her side. He approached her with a humility that aided his disguise. “Are you truly the priestess Medeiun who once defended this temple against the wrath of the Lord of the Sea?”
The veiled woman nodded, speaking with a voice the god would have recognized if he were not so vain. “Aye,” she said. “That is me.”
And the Lord of the Sea took his true form and laughed. “Behold woman! It is the god who ruined your beauty and your temple! And I shall do it again!”
And the priestess laughed under her veil. “I do not think so, oh vain god. For after you left me for dead, the Goddess of Love came to me and saw what you did.”
And the Goddess of Love so wept when she saw how her temple had been ruined, and she moaned when she saw how her priestess was nigh unto death. And she made a promise to her priestess.
“I gave you the task of protecting my temple,” the Goddess said. “I gave you weapons and training to protect my temple from mortals who would defile it, but clearly, I must give you a weapon to protect it from the gods as well.”
And as her tears fell onto Medeiun’s wounds, they healed, and restored her beauty. But not only restored it, but her divine power made Medeiun’s beauty even greater than it was before. And as the goddess’ tears fell onto her hair, Medeiun’s curly black locks became serpents: the creatures of great wisdom and secrets, messengers of the Goddess of Love and all the gods.
Medeiun drew the veil from her face and the Lord of the Sea looked upon it, and he felt his heart break. Salty tears falling from his eyes.
“Know this now, Lord of the Sea,” she said. “For as beautiful as I am now, my beauty can transform into poisonous wrath. If I wished, I could look askance upon anyone, and they would turn into stone. Anyone!” She let the veil drop and put her hand on her sword.
“Even a god.”
The Lord of the Sea looked about the temple and saw the many statues that were there. And he also saw their faces—all locked in eternal terror.
Medeiun drew her sword and stepped toward the Lord of the Sea. “Begone now, vain god, lest I look upon you with the disgust I truly feel and you join those who have come here before you, looking to despoil the temple of the Goddess of Love!”
With that, the Lord of the Sea fled the temple, never to return. Nor did any of his own priests or devotees ever enter a temple of the Goddess of Love without blindfolds on their eyes.
And that is why, young one, when we sail the sea, we never speak of the ones we love. A sailor only ever speaks for their love of the sea. For we dare not invoke the wrath of the Lord of the Sea, for even unto now, he cannot suffer to remember the day a mortal priestess made him flee from her sight.
* * *