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beside her. Half sleeping already,
    he moved
    his dark hand over her waist—her arm moved slightly
    for him—
    and gently cupped her breast. He slept. Medeia’s eyes were open, staring at the wall. They shone like ice,
    as bright
    as raven’s eyes. The garden, sheeted in fog, was still. A cloudshape formed. It stretched dark wings and
    blanketed the moon.

3
    I was alone, leaning on the tree, shivering. I listened
    to the wind.
    Below the thick, gnarled roots of the oak there was no
    firm ground,
    but a void, a bottomless abyss, and there were voices—
    sounds
    like the voices of leaves, I thought, or the babble of
    children, or gods.
    I made out a shadowy form. The phantom moved toward
    me,
    floating in the dark like a ship. It reached to me,
    touched my hand,
    and the tree became an enormous door whose upper
    reaches
    plunged into space—the ring, the keyhole, the golden
    hinges
    light-years off. Even as I watched the great door grew. I trembled. The surface of the door was wrought from
    end to end
    with dragon shapes, and all around the immense beasts there were smaller dragons, and even the pores of the
    smaller dragons
    were dragons, growing as I watched. Slowly, the door
    swung open.
    I had come to the house of the gods.
    Above the cavern where the dark coiled Father of
    Centuries
    lay bound, groaning, in chains forged by everlasting fire, Zeus sat smiling, serene as the highest of mountaintops, his eyes like an eagle’s, aware of the four directions.
    Beside him—
    stately, magnificent, dreadful to behold—Hera sat,
    draped
    in snakes. Above her lovely head, like a parasol, a cobra flared its hood. It stared with dusty eyes through changing mists. I tightened my grip on my
    guide’s hand.
    â€œGoddess, porter, whatever you are,” I whispered,
    â€œshield me!”
    â€œBe still,” she said. I obeyed, trembling, straightening
    my glasses,
    buttoning up my coat.
    The queen of goddesses
    had beautiful eyes, as benign and warm as the eyes
    of the snake
    were malevolent. Her face was radiant with life,
    seductive,
    as sensuous as the brow of Zeus was intellectual. The thrones were joined by an arm of gold, and on
    that arm
    Zeus rested his own. The queen’s arm lay on the king’s, and their fingers were interlaced. On Zeus’s shoulder,
    a prodigious
    birdlike creature perched, half-lion, half-eagle, watching the snake. “What can all this mean?” I asked. My guide
    touched her lips.
    Suddenly the hall was filled with a teeming sea of gods. Some were like monsters, some had the shapes of trees
    or waterfalls;
    some were like bulls, others like panthers, elephants,
    monkeys,
    and some were like men—like kings, queens, beggars,
    saintly hermits.
    One came in on a litter of finely wrought ebony set with centaurs of ivory and silver—a beautiful goddess
    in a robe
    of scarlet, open at the front to reveal great pendulous
    breasts.
    The mortals, her slaves, wore flowers in their hair—
    the white hair tangled,
    matted like the hair of mad women. They wept and
    moaned
    as they walked, limping, half-naked, ragged. Their
    ankles
    clinked and jangled with tarnished jewelry; the perfume they
    wore
    yellowed the air like woodsmoke. Their chalkgray feet
    were crooked,
    their eyes were dim, and beneath the stiffening paint,
    their faces
    were cities destroyed by fire. But whether the bearers
    were women
    or men, I could not guess. Quick fluttering sparrows flew like swirling leaves in a graveyard, screeching. My
    shadowy guide
    smiled and inclined her head.
    â€œNot all gods here are wise,”
    she said. “They have all their will, all that a creature
    can desire:
    They feel no hunger, no thirst, no weariness, no fear of
    death,
    no pain or sorrow or lonely old age. But the grinding
    force
    of life still burns in them, endlessly restless, driving,
    devouring—
    the force that blazes in the eyes of the half-starved lion
    or swells
    the veins