Jason and Zoe

"Can you forgive me?"

"I've long since forgiven you, Zoe."

"Then take me home with you. Let me hold my children again. Let me be your servant, your slave. I don't ask that you cast off Elena. Just let me have a small part of you — I will happily share you. And I will show you that I have repented my evil ways..."

Jason sadly shook his head.

"Zoe, you know that can never be, we cannot reverse time or our fate. I'm sorry, I truly am, but I am no Orpheus."

Zoe began to weep again in earnest, and turned and slowly retreated to the inky darkness at the back of the deep room. Jason heard her steps fade as she walked away, but before she could leave, he called to her,

"Zoe? Stop! I have one more question to ask."

He heard her flat reply, "Ask."

"Have you seen Pallas since that night?" he asked, sneering as he actually said her lover's name aloud.

"No, my husband I have not. What are you saying?" she asked.

Jason heard her steps coming back his direction and could see just a lightening of the shadows.

"Wife, I cannot bring you back — but youareavenged."

There was a brief flash as she comprehended the meaning of his words and her eyes opened wide enough to capture some small reflection of the light from the staircase, and a quick intake of breath.

"Thank you, my husband, thank you. I will be ever grateful for your loyalty and devotion. I should have shown you the same.

"Farewell my love, my one true love; farewell until we next meet!"

And with that, Zoe walked into the darkness until her footstep faded from Jason's hearing.

Once convinced that Zoe was indeed gone, Jason slowly stood up, and leaving the lilies on the bench as an offering to her memory, turned and walked back up the stairs and out into the summer dusk.

He found Virgil patiently waiting on a bench.

"Did you find the answers that you sought, Jason?"

"Yes, and I thank you and your brother priests for bringing her to me.

Virgil just nodded once before he turned away and walked to the priest's quarters beyond the temple.

As Jason walked down the path away from the Temple of Hades, people who saw him emerge would raise their cloaks to cover their faces and would make gestures to ward off evil as if he were one of the dead and not a living man. Perhaps they were uncertain if he was a man or a shadow when they looked upon his grim visage.

He walked down the narrow rocky trail from the top of the island cliffs down to the fisherman's village by the bay, past all of the boats beached for the night, with their nets spread out to dry. Usually Jason rejoiced in the sounds of the waves braking on the shore and of the sea breeze cooling his face and blowing his hair. But this evening he was preoccupied, and impervious to his surroundings.

He passed by most of the fishermen's homes, until at the end of the bay he came to the simple house that had been his families' for generations.

Before he had even arrived at his doorway, a figure burst out from the darkened interior, running into his arms. Elena's hands possessed him and her lips showered kisses on his face and neck.

"Well?" she demanded.

"It was as we thought, dearest Elena. Her foolish greed and high regard for her self-worth let her be seduced away from us. She fell prey to another man's lust and envy, and in the end was left with nothing but ashes and the grave."

Jason and Elena looked at each other, each silently understanding what the other was remembering.

They remembered the day, not so long before, when a cart arrived in the village loaded with a pallet, and upon the pallet covered with a dingy brown cloth was a body. The cart stopped in front of Jason's house. There was a servant and several slaves walking alongside the cart.

The servant, an ancient woman, told them that she had been instructed by Pallas to return Zoe's body to her husband. Then the slaves picked up the pallet and carried it into the house, where at Elena's request, they placed it on the long table in the great room.

The ancient woman's face revealed nothing — she was inured to death, having seen her own husband and three sons all precede her to the Underworld. But as she turned to leave she stepped to Jason and told him,

"She died of poison at her own hand," and then she left.

Tears fell from both Jason and Elena's eyes as they examined Zoe's body. When they pulled back the cover they realized that Pallas was so indifferent to Zoe that he hadn't even bothered to close her eyes with coins that would pay Charon the Ferryman to carry her across the Styx to Hades.

They shared the horror and grief as they examined her body, finding bruises all over her, as well as bites on her breasts, buttocks and womanly organs. There were fluids and blood running out of all of Zoe's openings. Male fluids had dried in clumps in her hair and in many places on her body.

Worst of all, though, was seeing her once beautiful features slack with death, her once bright and shining eyes dull and lifeless, her body nothing but an empty shell. Her psyche had fled.

Whatever Zoe's flaws and failures, she had not deserved the brutal punishment that she had been dealt.

Elena with her mother and Jason's mother together gently washed Zoe, and applied the finest rose scented oil to her skin that poor fisher folk could afford. Elena found one of Zoe's better gowns that she had left behind, and they dressed her in it. They covered her face and body with a new, clean burial cloth in part to show respect, but also to conceal Zoe's shame.

The following day all of the fishermen of the village and their families followed weeping and wailing in the traditional funeral procession for Zoe, to comfort Jason and keep Zoe's spirit from tormenting them in their dreams.

After Zoe's burial, Jason and Elena began to plan. Like the Furies, they would avenge Zoe's suicide — for in their eyes she had been driven to suicide and it was a murder as clearly as if Pallas had stabbed Zoe with his knife.

Jason awoke from his reverie and looked at Elena.

"Could you repeat what you said? I'm sorry, but..."

"It's fine Jason. I just asked if you are sure now that you acted as the Gods would have willed it?"

Jason pondered for just a moment before replying.

"Yes. It was not murder I did; it was justice!"

Elena nodded her agreement, having never doubted the justice of his actions.

Zoe's flaws — greed, vanity, pride and envy — were like gnats compared to those of Pallas. He suffered from all of her flaws and more: lust, arrogance, gluttony and drunkenness among them. With his wealth and position in society, he saw himself as one of the masters of the universe — nearly a god. Oh the hubris!

One night several months after Zoe's body had been interred and her soul fled to Hades, she was avenged.

The moon was full and the fleet was out fishing, when on a secluded beach a solitary boat silently came to shore and a lone figure pulled it up and tied it off to keep the tide from lifting it away.

Pallas and his friends, as was their habit, had spent the night in debauchery. By the time early in the morning when his Nemesis arrived, Pallas was so drunk that he was dead to the world. The lamps had long since burned out and only the moonlight illuminated the villa.

No one stirred that night as Jason grabbed Pallas' unconscious body from their midst and threw him over his shoulder and silently crept out of the villa and back to his boat.

Pallas was a 'warrior' and he and his comrades played with their swords and bows and thought of themselves as 'mighty' and 'invincible', but Jason, the lowly fisherman had strong arms and shoulders from hauling in heavy nets and rowing boats. They were warriors who had never fought a real battle, but every day Jason fought and won a battle with the sea. In a contest of strength and endurance, Jason would always triumph.

When, even before the morning sun broke through the clouds and fog, Pallas awoke with a start, and found himself wrapped in a fishing net unable to move. His head pounded and his throat was parched. He was lying at the bottom of a fishing vessel sailing with a mild wind on a quiet sea.

"Water! Water!" he croaked.

Jason reached over the side of the boat and lifted a gourd of seawater and poured it on Pallas' face. Pallas choked and spat the briny liquid out.

"What the ...? What am I doing here? Who are you? Do I know you?" sputtered the impotent Pallas from the bottom of the boat.

"I am vengeance, you spawn of a pig," replied the figure sitting above him.

"Wait, wait. I do know you! You are that fisherman who was Zoe's husband!" exclaimed Pallas with fear causing his voice to tremble. "What are you going to do to me?" he gasped.

The smile that Jason wore did nothing to calm Pallas' fears.

"Fear not — your time of pain and anguish will be much shorter than Zoe's."

"Wait a minute! Hear me out! I have gold and silver. I can pay you in gems. All that I own I will pay you if you will just spare my life!" Pallas pleaded. Jason looked down and Pallas' pissed himself from fear.

"Nothing you could pay me would bring Zoe back across the river Styx, and that would be the price of your life."

"But, how can you blame me? Your wife was just a whore who ran off at the first sight of a couple of gold coins. You don't owe her anything!"

Jason's face showed his repugnance for Pallas' argument as he replied,

"I don't suppose that you have ever known the meaning of 'honor'. Or the meaning of 'love'.

"Although Zoe was a fool to run after you like a bitch in heat, she was not a whore until you decided to make her one. And in the eyes of the Gods, she has already paid the ultimate price for her sins. You, on the other hand..."

Pallas decided to try and change tack,

"Listen you damn oaf. I'm an important man in the city. You won't get away with harming me. It will be better for you if you let me go right away. I'll just forget this ever happened, and we will call things even!

"The woman was your problem — you just weren't man enough to keep her, and now you are blaming me. Anyway, I heard that you moved her sister in to take her place within a week! So it's not as if you were left without a woman!"

Jason wasn't paying attention to the begging and pleading, or the threats from his unwilling passenger. He was looking over the side at the sea, examining the color of the surface and periodically looking back at the distant island gauging their location.

Finally, he dropped the sail and the boat drifted to a halt. They were in deep water now.

As Pallas watched, Jason tied stone weights to the net that kept him trapped. It took him only seconds to understand the implication of the stones.

"HELP! HELP ME! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME! THIS MAD MAN IS GOING TO KILL ME!" he shouted, now in a complete panic.

"Oh please!" interrupted Jason, "Enough noise. There is no one around us for miles. There is no one to hear you shout. Just you, me and Poseidon, and to tell you the truth, I don't think Poseidon likes you very much. Come to think of it, neither do I."

Jason lifted the stones up and over the sides of the boat where the short tethers connecting them to the net started to lift Pallas up and over the side as well. He struggled, but it was of little use as he was dragged by the weight of the stones as well as Jason lifting his body up the side.

When Pallas was close enough to going overboard, Jason showed him his filleting knife, and with a quick movement through the net, Jason sliced open Pallas' belly. Pallas' eyes grew large with the shock and pain of the cut, while Jason explained:

"Opening your belly will keep your rotting corpse from floating back to the surface. Suffer forever in Hades for your sins!"

And with that, Jason pushed Pallas over the rest of the way, where the weight of the stones pulled him down into the clear waters. And Jason watched as the bubbles of Pallas' last lungful of air escaped and a cloud of blood rose and Pallas disappeared into the void below.

The gods must have looked on Jason with favor that morning, because after he rejoined the other boats of the fishing fleet, every time he threw his net into the sea it would fill up as if the fish were waiting to jump in. By the time the boats returned to the village, Jason's catch was as great as any of the men who had spent the entire night fishing. If anyone had noticed his absence, no one said anything. They were a close-mouthed group these villagers, especially towards outsiders.

Thus it was that several days later when Elders from the City came by the village to inquire after Pallas, who had mysteriously disappeared from his villa one night, all they received was shrugs and denials. No, no one had seen Pallas. Yes, they were all out fishing together that night.

The Elders left no more edified than when they arrived. It was finally declared that one of the Gods must have snatched Pallas from the midst of his friends, and he was never seen again in the living world. In truth, the Elders suspected that one or another of Pallas' enemies had removed him from the realm of the living, but they had no way of proving who it was. At the end of the day the Elders were reluctant to waste more time on a man like Pallas who had so offended the Gods with his acts.

And so it was that Zoe was avenged.

Jason and Elena found happiness in each other's arms, and they prospered. They never became rich, but they always had enough to feed and clothe their family and to be happy. Elena had three of her own children with Jason, in addition to Zoe's three, and the children all honored their parents until Jason and Elena themselves departed this life.

And being pious people, long after Zoe had been forgotten the village, Jason and Elena, their children, and their children's children, continued to leave offerings of Lilies each year at the Temple of Hades to remember Zoe, who had been Jason's wife and Elena's sister.

&&&&&&

This was a somewhat whimsical story — after all, doesn't everyone want to write their own Greek Tragedy?

I must confess that the idea of setting a contemporary sounding story in ancient Greece came from two sources. First, reading a 'young adult' book in the Percy Jackson series. Rick Riorden, the author of those books, uses a novel format set in modern times to teach the ancient mythology. It is a clever idea!

Second, thinking about lovers in hell sent me back to Dante, who tells the story of Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo Malatesta together in hell after being discovered by her husband, Giovanni, who kills them both.

Jason doesn't kill Zoe (who takes her own life), but he does kill her lover Palas. So there is a certain kind of parallel between the stories.

Thanks to a number of readers who gave me feedback on Jason and Zoe — Marty, Maddie, Mostera, Rach and some others (you know who you are!) for their corrections and suggestions. They were all very astute and useful.