Statues Crumble, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Author's Note
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
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33
Acknowledements
AUTHORS NOTE
I know that the story of Medusa is one that so many people have clung to, related to, and had etched on their bodies.
I also know that the way Ovid portrayed Medusa and her punishments is a point of heavy contention in the Greek/Roman mythology circles.
That being said, as a victim of assault, I have felt the shame and embarrassment that Ovid placed upon Medusa, even if it wasn’t until more recent times that translations made we made her the victim.
However, people still pray to and worship Greek gods and goddesses today. Because of that, I have not named any particular god or goddess in this novella.
We know who they were said to be. If you’re reading this, more than likely you know Medusa’s stories.
And if you are not familiar with the Gorgon and her tales, I hope this story can still be a comfort to you, as it was to me.
Also, this story features a blind FMC. I worked closely with a sensitivity reader, and it is my hope that I have handled her blindness with care and respect. But — if there is something that occurs, happens, or is said that feels disrespectful, ableist, or demeaning, PLEASE let me know.
Please know this story contains the following triggers/content warnings
mentions of spousal abuse
mentions of assault
explicit sexual content
grief & loss
non-graphic depictions of violence
To those who have had their softness stolen…
And have fought tooth and nail to get it back.
1
They had called it Gorgoneion once.
The Guardian’s Place.
A name carved on stone tablets now cracked in half, half-buried in ivy. The island had been sacred before it was feared. Before blood salted its earth and screams echoed off its cliffs.
Now, it was nameless.
No ships docked here, not long term — only stopped long enough to drop bodies offshore like refuse. No trade routes passed nearby. Sailors whispered of it only by firelight. Never by daylight.
They said the rocks wept blood when it rained. You could hear weeping too if the wind came in off the sea just right.
But the island did not weep anymore.
Its only sounds were the rasp of lizards over dry stone, the rustle of snakes in long-abandoned courtyards, and the whisper of wind through broken marble — columns half-collapsed, their gods long fled.
A once-mighty temple sat crumbling near the center. Ivy strangled its altar. Its steps were cracked, laced with moss and bones. No prayers had been spoken here in generations, unless curses counted. Unless grief did.
The statues that lined the path weren’t carved by any sculptor’s hand. They had once breathed.
Cried.
Pleaded.
Now they stood mid-scream, faces twisted, arms outstretched in vain. Some bore weapons. Others bore nothing but the final terror in their eyes.
Beyond them, past shattered mosaics and doorways half-eaten by time, lay a pool that had once held sacred water. Now it held only reflection. The kind that didn’t need light to mirror pain.
I didn’t go near the statues anymore.
I hated the sound of my own footsteps on the path. Hated the way the air still remembered prayers it no longer deserved. This was a place where divinity had turned its back — and in doing so, left something else behind.
Someone else behind.
A crime I didn’t commit.
A blame I didn’t deserve.
A vocation I would have never asked for.
The people of Kisthene used me as their own gladiator arena. They sent their criminals, their lowest of lows, to my island with a stipulation: kill the Gorgon, behead the monster, and your transgressions will be pardoned.
Or… join the courtyard of stone men, mouths opened in voiceless screams, begging to be freed.
Maybe I should have let them end me, take my godsforsaken life and throw it into the pits of the underworld.
I could hear it now, even from the depths of the temple. Tucked into the naos. The place where I had last met with her.
I would not dare speak the goddess’ name, bile threatening to rise in my throat just thinking about her.
Punished for a vile deed I’d had no say in.
And yet, I stayed.
But really… What other choice did I have?
I was heinous.
Hideous.
Didn’t bother to look at my reflection anymore. I knew what I would see.
Skin that looked sickly, worse than pale. I looked like stone, myself. Pallid and grey.
Disgusting.
It was more than that, though. My curse was not enough to be disfigured, to kill anyone with a glance.
The serpents that grew from my scalp reminded me even without a reflection…
I would never be anything but a monster.
I never ventured out of the temple — not when I knew men approached. But they always found me. Ready to fight, certain that they would be the hero who beheaded the monster and brought its reign of havoc to an end.
The waves lapped against the shore harder than I expected. The noise that normally eased my angry and wounded spirit always warned me of intruders.
Challengers.
Another statue to add to my temple, another piece of unwanted art I would be forced to look upon for all eternity.
From the small window outside of my attempt at bedchambers, I saw a ship approaching. The small, guarded vessel that brought villains and riffraff to my desolation.
I shifted, looking towards the ship. It docked haphazardly a suitable distance away. My temple was tucked into the treeline, hidden from the view of the jailers.
A body was tossed onto the sand like a bag of grain.
Limp.
Unmoving.
Small.
My brow furrowed. Men, even in their bound state, leapt from the boat. Ready to conquer, to claim, to slaughter.
This was different.
This set a pit of dread in my stomach, heavier than the stone warriors that littered my home.
This was dangerous.
I turned my back to the window, praying if there was a god that continued to listen to my cries, I would not have to be the one to deal with the unknown visitor that was thrown upon my beaches.
2
My only crime was not weeping.
My only transgression was not falling onto the pyre when my husband died.
I considered my husband’s untimely death a small blessing. Struck down by a bolt of lightning while hoisting his own petard. Perhaps Zeus smiled at me on the day Capaneus died.
He was cruel, unkind, and arrogant. Threatening to burn an entire city was the slightest of his crimes.
When they told me he was dead… I did not weep. The notion of being called a widowed crone didn’t bother me, not even a little.
A husbandless witch.
Unmarriable and unfit.
It seemed glorious.
But… by refusing to shed tears and standing firm in my lack of grief, they accused me of attempting to alter the course set upon by the fates.
They didn’t even know me.
And burning wasn’t a permanent enough of a solution for a witch. So they sentenced me to the Gorgon. I had no chance of killing the creature.
Never did.
The strongest of warriors and men had never returned from her isle… It was a drawn-out death sentence.
The best chance I had against the monster was to hide and evade. But even that couldn’t last forever — I had lived in Argos my entire life until they put me on trial in Kisthene.
I wasn’t a warrior.
Wasn’t an archer or a thief.
I was just a woman who had looked freedom in the face, and been sentenced to death instead.
I received no explanation of why the men of Kisthene were selected to be my executioners; the only justification offered was that it was the most logical course of action given my past deeds.
Of not grieving.
I tried to fight it, tried to argue against the allegations that were laid upon me, but it didn’t stick.
Nothing stuck.
No one in Argos wanted the responsibility of handling such divine intervention.
Even if it was a false tale spun by angry kings.
No one wanted to stand for a woman accused of being a Seer.
A seer who allegedly had seen the future of the war against Thebes and refused to speak out about the dangers.
The minute Capaneus was laid to rest, I was no longer just a widow; I was a threat — dangerous.
So to the Gorgon I went.
Time passed so strangely at sea. I knew when the sun rose, and when it crested beyond the horizon, but th
My hands were bound, ankles shackled to a railing. My movement about the vessel was restricted. All I could do was stand — which was struggle enough itself — and watch the water.
The sun’s warmth licked up my arms and across my cheeks during the day, and the ocean’s chill devoured me at night.
I was miserable.
I should have just wept for the bastard.
But I didn’t realize how much I would miss the bright sunshine, the blues of the ocean, and the drift of the clouds.
Not until the storm hit.
The men had avoided the squall for several days, veering just to the west of the storm, or circling it altogether.
All storms catch up eventually. In the middle of the night, the skies above them opened, releasing a downpour so fierce, it threatened to capsize the boat.
The men went to work almost immediately, and if I hadn’t been their prisoner, I might have found a little bit of awe in the way they jumped to their tasks without hesitation.
The sailors didn’t bother to check on me, though. In fact, they might have prayed that Poseidon would drag me overboard so they could return home quicker. No prisoner on board, no reason to keep sailing.
No one had such luck, though. While the waves crashed over the sides of the boat, they couldn’t take me with them. I was trapped, thrown about with each gust of wind. There was no doubt I would be bruised and broken before I even arrived on the Gorgon’s lands.
It was with a crack of thunder, lightning flashing in the sky, when my world changed once more.
The topgallant mast crumbled with the strike, careening down at a breakneck pace.
I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to, tied up and frozen in place. I let my eyes flutter closed as I watched the broken wood fall towards me, praying only that death would be swift.
3
I watched the intruder for the better part of the day, but he never moved. I was beginning to wonder if the Kistheneians had dropped a dead body on my shores. It seemed counterintuitive when they could have just dumped him overboard.
But I’ve never once pretended to understand the thoughts of men.
As the sun was setting, and the man still lay motionless on my beach, I began feeling braver.
Maybe even the slightest bit curious.
The rational part of me scolded myself for even entertaining the idea of going down to the water to see what lay there, but after almost an entire day’s worth of waiting… it could hardly be considered threatening.
He wouldn’t stand a chance against my curse, anyhow. One look in my eyes and he would cease breathing.
Men had tried all manner of killing me.
Blindfolds?
They grew frustrated when their sword never made contact.
Closed eyes?
No one had the restraint to keep them shut after only moments passed.
A bow might have done the trick, but they never arrived with range weapons. A dagger, a sword, an axe. None of these things could hold a candle to my stone’s gaze.
Refusing to fall prey to another man’s whims, I finally turned my back on the figure on my sands. Promising myself I would alleviate my curiosity in the morning, if he were to still sit there.
Quickly before retiring, I checked the chimes that hung around my home. Seashells, husks, and vines, all tied together to create a warning signal, should someone attempt to sneak up on me while my guard was down.
You couldn’t get past the entrance to the decrepit temple without running into one of my traps.
I didn’t sleep, however. Tossing and turning throughout the night, forcing myself not to get up and look out to the shores, to see if my assailant had moved.
The chimes would work; the statues scattered around the pronaos proved that.
Even if the chimes failed, my snakes kept me safe. A hiss from them was enough to startle an attacker long enough for me to react.
But it wasn’t the threat that kept me awake.
It was the lack.
Never had a visitor taken so long to attack; never had a man made me wait to end his life.
Waiting for the sun to rise felt like an insurmountable task. The stars drifting slowly across the sky. Finally, as the moon began to set in the far skies, I allowed myself to step outside of the temple, under the pretense of self-defense.
Still, the figure on the shore did not move.
He lay crumpled on the tide-wet sand, half-shrouded in shadow, like something spat out by the gods and immediately forgotten. The waves licked at his feet.
I watched from the doorway of the ruined temple, the broken columns casting long ribs of shadow across the mosaic floor behind me. The statues did not stir. They never did. I wondered absently whether the body would rise in time or simply rot there — become another monument, albeit a mortal one, left unclaimed by even the stones.
The snakes stirred lazily on my scalp, restless from the heat. I hushed them with a touch.
The sea still gave up no answers.
The wind kept its mysteries close to its chest.
Eventually, I descended.
My feet were bare, and the broken stone of the temple steps was warm against my skin, baked all day by the unrelenting sun. The chimes swayed behind me, catching the wind like breath caught on a prayer.
I crossed the overgrown path, passing between the statues that had once screamed, once fought, once begged. I did not look at them. Not anymore. I no longer remembered most of their faces.
There wasn’t a need.
The figure was smaller than most. Slighter. Curled in on itself, unmoving. Pale arms, bare feet, a tunic soaked through. Hair clung to his face in thick ropes, heavy with seawater and blood.
That held me there, muscles coiled beneath my skin — not with fear, but something stranger.
Something hungrier.
This wasn’t a man cast aside on my shores…
This wasn’t a villain.
It was a woman.
Not once, in all the years they’d used my island as a dump for their doomed and damned, had they sent a woman.
Not a warrior. Not even a challenge.
And yet…
I stepped closer.
The woman did not flinch. Did not rise. Her head remained bowed. There was something deeply unnatural in her stillness — not the alert stillness of a soldier, nor the desperate calm of a man praying to die. It was the stillness of someone who no longer expected anything at all.
I stood over her in silence.
“Look at me,” I said at last.
The voice that answered was quiet, but not afraid.
“I would,” the woman said. “But I’m afraid I’ve lost my sight.”
The words settled over the beach like fog.
Blind.
A tremor ran through my spine, not from fear, but recognition. Something ancient and cold and familiar shifted in my chest. My snakes went still.
I crouched beside her slowly, but she kept her gaze angled down — out of habit? Out of shame?
“What was your crime?”
The woman tilted her head, as if trying to hear something beyond my words. “I didn’t weep,” she said, and the corners of her mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “When they burned my husband, they expected me to follow. I didn’t. I stood still in the smoke and… waited.”
I was silent.
Then, for the first time in years, I laughed.
It was not a sound I had even remembered how to shape. It left my mouth cracked and strange, like a bird startled from a long sleep.
The woman turned toward me at the sound, unseeing eyes open but unfocused, her face seemingly turning to the warmth of my presence like a plant to the sun.
I reached out before she could stop myself. Fingers found a strand of wet hair clinging to the woman’s cheek. I brushed it away, slow and careful.
The woman didn’t flinch.
I pulled my hand back sharply, as if burned, breath caught.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I murmured. “You shouldn’t still be flesh.”
“I didn’t come here on purpose,” the woman replied, her tone dry, nearly amused. “They threw here. Like rubbish. Discarded and forgotten.”
I was still crouched, slow and careful, bare feet sinking slightly into the damp sand. Close enough now to see the curve of the woman’s throat, the unsteady rise of her chest. Her tunic was soaked through, torn at one shoulder, clinging in places it shouldn’t have. Her skin looked kissed by salt and bruises.
