Protectress

Protectress

––––––––

Kendra Preston Leonard

PROTECTRESS

Copyright © 2022 Kendra Preston Leonard

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Unsolicited Press.

First Edition.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. People, places, and notions in these stories are from the author’s imagination; any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Attention schools and businesses: for discounted copies on large orders, please contact the publisher directly.

For information contact:

Unsolicited Press

Portland, Oregon

www.unsolicitedpress.com

[email protected]

619-354-8005

Cover Design: Kathryn Gerhardt

Editor: Bekah Stogner

Print ISBN: 978-1-950730-63-6

Contents

Contents

Prelude

In the Age of Gods

Stheno in Suburbia

Medusa Domina

Gorgons Völkerwanderung

Destruction

Medusa Academe

The Nightmare for Three Sisters

Euryale’s Eyes

Arrival

Strength in Numbers

Fold Up Your Wings

Cavelight and Seamorning

Saving Face

Time

Phantom Speech

Hebe

Avalon

Pallas’s plea

Mutability

Salt

Preparations

Plynteria

Birth Magic

Afterparty

Autumn

About the Author

About the Press

for my sisters

Prelude

Medusa was raped.

Medusa was not raped.

Medusa was given rohypnol.

Medusa lured Poseidon from the sea with a bed of seaweed soaked

in salt water.

She became pregnant.

She did not become pregnant.

She became pregnant and used her knowledge of the medicinal arts to end

her pregnancy.

She became pregnant and gave the resulting child to Poseidon to raise.

She gave the child to her own parents, Phorcys and Ceto.

She and her sisters raised the child, who then became a sculptor,

a psychoanalyst, a designer of prosthetics.

Her body after death produced a winged horse and a golden giant.

Her body after death wept from its palms and the tears mixed with earth to

create a golem.

Her body after death was dressed by Versace and laid in a bronze tomb

in Buenos Aires.

Medusa angered Athena.

Athena was jealous.

Athena was not a feminist.

Athena was a prude.

It did not matter to Athena what actually happened to Medusa.

Athena was required to take action by a committee.

Athena was wise but had already had to deal with mansplaining

gods that night.

Athena was a slut-shaming bitch.

Medusa was made an example of through the great wrath of a

goddess warrior.

In the long nights, a mortal woman made immortal because of her story ran

from a temple, from a cave, from Kisthene’s dreadful plain

seeking blindness, baldness, rebirth

with her sisters.

So many stories. Let us begin anew.

In the Age of Gods

Phorcys and Ceto were thrice blessed two times:

their first brood was born of the ocean and the land,

part swan, part legend, even at their births.

These Grey Sisters were a trinity

of fashion, of sharing, of making do.

Deino, Enyo, Pemphredo:

like an ancient warhorse, they had but one eye and one tooth.

They saw selectively, ate softly, and walked with a rocking

wave-like gait.

The second weird sister-batch of Phorcys and Ceto

were unequal, but never needed to share.

Stheno and Euryale were born immortal

beneath the gods’ mountain.

But the third was born in the light,

and the sun, with its daily rise and fall,

decreed she be mortal.

From the plains of Kisthene

the Grey Sisters watched

their new siblings thrive.

Living by the sea, the second trio

drew salt from the water,

poison from the frogs,

strength from the leaves,

and became healers.

In love with wonder and knowledge

and the appearance of wisdom

and strength,

the sisters gorgon

become enamored of goddesses:

Euryale is drawn to Aphrodite;

Stheno, Artemis;

Medusa, Athena.

Medusa takes vows,

swearing always

to protect the goddess

to serve her

and

to worship her.

Trusting Athena,

Medusa leaves

her sisters and their cave

for Athena’s temple.

Mincing no words:

Medusa the beautiful is raped.

As Poseidon pulls away, seal-like,

from between her legs,

or draws back and down,

in his form as a horse,

Stheno, night hunting, finds her sister

in the temple of Athena.

Footprints wet with ocean’s foam

and healer’s blood grip the marble steps

and point to the departing

form of a man.

Stheno pulls on her helmet

strengthened by the shining scales

of giant fish and

made ferocious with the tusks of a boar

taken by the hunter herself

and stupidly attempts

to attack

a god.

She does not even touch him before

she is thrown by a cutting, hammering wave

onto the white temple floor.

And where Stheno seeks violence

against the god,

the dedicatee of the consecrated ground

takes further unjust action.

Athena curses Medusa,

not caring that she is a victim.

The shame, rages Athena. The shame you bring.

As Medusa’s hands claw at her head,

a single priest ventures out

of his nighttime hiding hole

to curse the women

further,

as if

that could be done.

And while Stheno crouches to aid her sister,

the youngest of the triplet Phorcydes turns on the man

and makes him stop.

He stops. He stops.

All of him stops. His lungs,

his heart, his kidneys stop.

His veins stop. His mouth stops.

And when in anger Stheno throws her helmet at him—

you already know this, of course—he shatters. Priest becomes pebbles,

rubble, dust. Long nights begin.

There is darkness

and cool water.

Euryale bathes her sister,

her eyes,

her bruises,

all over her arms and legs,

and abdomen,

and then each

minute, coiled, delicate, transparent

baby snake.

They emerge from Medusa’s scalp

sightless:

they have no eyes themselves.

They seek not to bite or crush

but relish the touch of

the cool skins of one another

and the heat of their—what?

carrier? mother? bearer?—her

head.

Her long locks have fallen away

like the hair Stheno will see

on hospital floors

many centuries from now,

hair lost to other poisons,

poisons that cure.

Late, a different goddess visits,

briefly, as is her wont:

Hecate, who weeps

silently for Medusa and

her serpents.

Her tears add to Medusa’s bath,

her soft lamplight embracing the sisters.

I too am three, she says. Although my power

is faint, I offer you blessings:

for healing yourselves and healing others;

for finding your ways home;

for being three;

for bringing light;

for protection;

for Medusa, an immortal life

to protect others.

She stands, fading against the cave walls.

Her voice is low and strong.

You need not sacrifice to me:

I cannot undo what Olympians

have done, but I can light paths

to redress and peace.

Dazed a little by the

goddess’s rare appearance,

and still looking to the empty space

from where she has

disappeared into a haze of

glowing air,

Euryale sings a soft song

a lullaby. And then a fiercer one

to help her test her own mettle

and matter

and she looks into

Medusa’s eyes

and lives.

And sighs.

Sisters, she says, I think we three

at least are safe. Together. Here.

But Stheno hears the battering sea at their cave door,

riled Poseidon beating with both fists against their hideaway

and Athena, far above, howling at her

former priestess:

shame, shame, shame you should die rather than bear this shame

and she replies no, we are not safe.

Hecate’s gifts may armor us,

we may live forever,

and we may be safe from Medusa’s eyes,

but we are not safe from these gods.

Would we could not believe in them

that they had no power over us

over any

over the natural world.

They should be so cursed

to be forgotten.

But