Medusa's Sisters

Informationen zum Autor LAUREN J. A. BEAR was born in Boston and raised in Long Beach. After studying English at UCLA and education at LMU, she taught middle-school humanities for over a decadeand survived! She is a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity and lives in Seattle with her husband and three young children. She likes crossword puzzles and being on or near the water without getting wet. Klappentext A vivid and moving reimagining of the myth of Medusa and the oft-forgotten sisters who loved her, following the trio of gorgons as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace. Leseprobe FIRST EPISODE Stheno The way of sisters is more arcane even than the ways of gods. -Erastus of Athens, "The Theater of Sisterhood" First you must accept that monsters have families. My mother and father, two ancient sea deities of notorious danger, gave me eight siblings, but we were not raised together. Couldn't be, for we were separated by more than birth order-by our physical shape, our otherworldliness. Human families, by comparison, are so simple. Maybe one child has brown hair, the other blond. Eye color may range over shades of blue. Oh, how mortal parents dramatize these trite differences! Discussing in laborious detail how one learned to walk a whole month before another! Inconceivable! In my family, some of us had tails. Deino, Enyo, Pemphredo, Echidna, Ladon, and I share parents, but Medusa and Euryale are my sisters. Just as the Graeae were born together, so were we Gorgons. We would not be called the Gorgons, however, for many, many years. My grandparents were primordial beings, the sea and earth themselves, present at the creation of the world. This union between Gaea and her second husband-her own son Pontus-produced my parents. My father, Phorcys, married his sister and female counterpart, Ceto, and all their progeny came to life during the Golden Age of the Titans, well before Zeus was hidden in a mountain cave on Crete and Cronus swallowed the changeling rock. Yes, I watched Zeus release the monsters of Tartarus and conclude the ten-year campaign against his father, victorious. His lightning bolts became the harbinger of a new era, the Silver Age, where he was lord. Though well hidden from the fray, I also witnessed the Titans meeting their punishments. Prometheus and the eagle. Atlas and the world. I should have paid closer attention when these so-called Olympians, denizens of the highest mountain, attacked those who wronged them with dogged maliciousness. Maybe then I would have been more prepared for how they treated the rest of us. On days when I'm especially cynical, I find it almost laughable that I am older than both Poseidon and Athena, who would wreak such havoc upon my life. No respect for elders in the immortal community, I'm afraid. But then again, so much of age is attitude, and it took me far too long to acquire one. I sound just like my mother. That happens to immortals, too, when we become old. And I'm getting ahead of myself. I do that sometimes. Time holds little consequence when you occupy forever. The story of our birth, then. My mother, Ceto, resided in a watery cave beneath Mount Olympus, connected to her precious seas through endless tunnels and labyrinthine streams. Though my father adored his wife, he did not attend her labor-a messy, menial process, which he considered a female's work. And for reasons inexplicable-both then and now-matters of the womb are unpalatable to masculinity. I have viewed battlefields covered in unspeakable gore, but I have seen delivery beds far, far worse. I am extremely old. At my mother's side stood her first set of triplets, the Graeae, or gray women. Another trio forced to ...

Autorentext
LAUREN J. A. BEAR was born in Boston and raised in Long Beach. After studying English at UCLA and education at LMU, she taught middle-school humanities for over a decade—and survived! She is a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity and lives in Seattle with her husband and three young children. She likes crossword puzzles and being on or near the water without getting wet.

Klappentext

A vivid and moving reimagining of the myth of Medusa and the sisters who loved her.

The end of the story is only the beginning…

Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale were unique among their immortal family. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned—too late—that a god's love is a violent one.

Forgotten by history and diminished by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been more than horrifying hags, damned and doomed. But they were sisters first, and their journey from lowly sea-born origins to the outskirts of the pantheon is a journey that rests, hidden, underneath their scales.

Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace.

Leseprobe
FIRST EPISODE

Stheno

The way of sisters is more arcane

even

than the ways of gods.

-Erastus of Athens, "The Theater of Sisterhood"

First you must accept that monsters have families.

My mother and father, two ancient sea deities of notorious danger, gave me eight siblings, but we were not raised together. Couldn't be, for we were separated by more than birth order-by our physical shape, our otherworldliness. Human families, by comparison, are so simple. Maybe one child has brown hair, the other blond. Eye color may range over shades of blue. Oh, how mortal parents dramatize these trite differences! Discussing in laborious detail how one learned to walk a whole month before another! Inconceivable!

In my family, some of us had tails.

Deino, Enyo, Pemphredo, Echidna, Ladon, and I share parents, but Medusa and Euryale are my sisters. Just as the Graeae were born together, so were we Gorgons.

We would not be called the Gorgons, however, for many, many years.

My grandparents were primordial beings, the sea and earth themselves, present at the creation of the world. This union between Gaea and her second husband-her own son Pontus-produced my parents. My father, Phorcys, married his sister and female counterpart, Ceto, and all their progeny came to life during the Golden Age of the Titans, well before Zeus was hidden in a mountain cave on Crete and Cronus swallowed the changeling rock.

Yes, I watched Zeus release the monsters of Tartarus and conclude the ten-year campaign against his father, victorious. His lightning bolts became the harbinger of a new era, the Silver Age, where he was lord.

Though well hidden from the fray, I also witnessed the Titans meeting their punishments. Prometheus and the eagle. Atlas and the world. I should have paid closer attention when these so-called Olympians, denizens of the highest mountain, attacked those who wronged them with dogged maliciousness. Maybe then I would have been more prepared for how they treated the rest of us.

On days when I'm especially cynical, I find it almost laughable that I am older than both Poseidon and Athena, who would wreak such havoc upon my life. No respect for elders in the immortal community, I'm afraid. But then again, so much of age is attitude, and it took me far too long to acquire one.

I sound just like my mother. That happens to immortals, too, when we become old.

And I'm getting ahead of myself. I do that sometimes. Time holds little consequence when you occupy forever.
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