Pegasus
By Danai Christopoulou
I was safe inside my mother’s ribs, breathing her every heartbeat.
There was no such thing as time. There was only warmth and love and the mighty muscle in her chest that pumped blood, putting me to sleep with its rhythmic workings.
Sometimes she would tell me stories. About how she and her Gorgon sisters would be called to bless the temples of old, to ensure the stonemasonry held. About how humans would carve my mother’s likeness on those temples, her face both a warning and a benediction. About how the same humans forsook the Gorgons in time, trading their blessings for the new twelve gods, gods that looked more like them.
I didn’t understand these stories, although I liked hearing my mother’s voice. But she’d get sad and silent afterward, so I would stomp my hooves ever so gently, reminding her I was there, that I would never forsake her for anyone. Then my mother would laugh, and she would sing to me, and the cavern of her ribs would vibrate from the sound. I would unfurl my wings and flap them to the rhythm of the song, and then she’d laugh some more and tell me to settle in now, allow her to catch her breath.
Then I would sleep, happy, cradled in the echoes of her laughter.
☼
One evening, my mother’s heart picked up a new rhythm. Faster. Frantic.
I woke to feel her springing into action. Adrenaline flooded her veins along with something else, something I’d never felt before. It was bitter and rancid and later in my life I would learn to call it “fear.” My mother struggled, fighting a moving obstacle I could not see. In that little space I occupied inside her, I stood up. Knees wobbly, but wings at the ready. If I flapped them hard enough, maybe I could lift us both up. Away from danger.
But I was small and weak. I hadn’t felt the wind currents caress my back or learned how to ride the sun’s rays. All I could do was hover a bit higher.
I reached my mother’s throat. The forest of her vocal cords was burning.
My mother screamed.
I heard another voice then, alien and angry and so unlike the singing and the stories I was used to. The voice came from outside my mother, distorted by the barrier of flesh and bone that rose between us. My mother fell silent, although her insides were still screaming, her heart a booming thunderstorm, her breathing a cyclone. There was a sound, like metal scraping the stone walls of our cavern. I felt my mother’s hands covering her heart. Protecting me.
Then I felt nothing as the world exploded.
☼
The monster thought my mother was alone.
That no one would bear witness to his crime.
But I was there. I saw. And as he turned his back to my mother’s lifeless body, polishing his sword so certain of his victory, I erupted from her throat in all my newborn fury. I flapped my wings in the world for the very first time, causing a gust of wind so strong it toppled him over.
He looked misshapen, all pink skin and barren limbs. Hay-colored strands covered his hideous head. His eyes bulged, green murky things filled with dread. His pupils dilated, his mouth opened into a gaping hole. Was he one of the humans my mother warned me about? Did the new gods put him up to this? Rage burst into my veins, searing everything. I rose up on my rear legs and stomped his chest with my hooves.
A crunch, like an eggshell breaking. A crater of white and crimson, of bone and sinew. His bubbling blood coated my sticky hooves. He was nothing, the man who caused my mother’s heart to stop beating. Not even worth my reveling in my revenge. Maybe his gods will come and save him. Maybe not.
If I were them, I’d run.
I cast my first and final look at my mother’s glorious shape. At the delicate body that had nurtured me with its essence, at the heavy head that carried so much wisdom even her hair pulsed with sentience. Perhaps she knew it would always come to this. That she would need to be cut in half, for me to fly free. I blinked away the tears that caused my mother’s murdered form to blur, and turned my face toward the sun. Our cave’s opening smelled of sunlight and carnage.
“The world is made of dirt and stone, of air and water,” my mother used to say. I always knew she could control the first two, and that’s the reason she and her sisters lived in caves. But until that moment, when I spread my russet-colored wings preparing for my first flight, I had no idea how well I could control the other two.
I shot up like an arrow amid a sky I had no words for. The world of humans spread beneath me, a tapestry of greens and browns, of trees and roads. Ahead, at the corner of my eye, something flickered. It called to me, as profound as my mother’s past, as ever-flowing as her love.
Water.
My mother called me Pegasus; the one from whom water bursts forth. The one who can create streams, and springs, and rivers. She hoped I would bring new life to this world.
She wasn’t wrong. But for new life to bloom, the old first has to be extinguished. This became my mission. To find these puny gods, and the wretched humans who served them, and cut their life’s thread just as that monster’s sword cut off my mother’s head. With no mercy. No regrets.
I’ll fly far and wide and I will land like a red rhomphaia, cutting the Earth with my wrath. And everywhere I stomp there will be blood, and water, and it will all flow for her.
For my mother.
Medusa.
Danai Christopoulou (she/they) is a Greek speculative author drawing inspiration from the myths she grew up with, as well as her experiences living abroad. Danai’s nonfiction has appeared in lifestyle magazines such as Glamour and Marie Claire since 2008. She is a submissions editor for Uncanny magazine, a proofreader for khōréō, and an intern at Tobias Literary Agency. Her short fiction is published in Etherea Magazine, Haven Spec, khōréō, and others. Her novels are represented by Lauren Bieker of FinePrint Literary.