I prepare my “box of tricks” for a client who insists that I travel to her home to tend to her coiffure. It is not an easy trip by any means but she pays very well and I dare not refuse her money. I carry antique bronze combs with long, widely spaced teeth loosely tucked inside a hide-bound portfolio that is laced together with well-worn leather ties. The combs are accompanied with a large pair of tweezers, a set of tongs and a very sharp knife.
She lives on an island surrounded by steep rocky cliffs, dark gray and geometric in form, as if a gigantic child had stacked blocks neatly against the shore. There is one short, narrow beach approachable by boat, but the sea is choppy even at the lowest access and I always get seasick before arriving at this desolate place. I walk up the steep path that winds along the basalt blocks and meanders between the stunted cedar trees, mostly junipers. The scrubby plants almost seem alive, their green spiny branches reach out to grasp at my coarse linen tunic with their finger-like leaves. I stop at a spring a short distance from the cave’s gaping entrance. The spring gurgles up and over a bed of worn-smooth stones, and I kneel on the soft moss nearby to rinse out my spew-lined mouth with the icy fresh water. I pull out my own comb from a pocket in my skirt and run it through my tangled hair dampened with seaspray. I pull the hair back and bind it tightly with a cord. She grows furious at the sight of the abundant tresses of very dark brown, almost black, hair. I wonder if her hair was once the same color, or if any other hue would provoke such rage.
I venture out to her home once a month, toting the tightly woven basket that my deceased mother gave me. My mother performed this task for most of her life as her mother did before her. I assume there has been a long line of women in my family who were assigned this duty because my client is ancient—-the stories about her have echoed through the streets and against the stone walls of my village for as long as anyone living can remember.
The basket allows nothing to escape. It not only carries the tools of my trade but also entraps the living, squirming snakelets I cull from my client’s coif until I can take them down to the ocean. I release them before climbing back into the boat to return home. The old man who brings me, whose boat it is, has never looked at the writhing creatures as they slither out to the deeper waters. He knows full well that seeing the snakes themselves will not harm him, but he doesn’t want to take any chances.
My client has two sisters who I almost never see. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of a shadow scurrying across the doorways in the cave as I make my way to the inner chambers where my client puts me to work. They are shy, my employer tells me, unused to company. I can tell by their silhouetted forms that they are not as menacing as she is. The snakes lie close to their skulls and do not grow so virulently. Perhaps the sisters groom one another. They do not suffer, as she does, from the ever-increasing reptilian cacophony that must be kept under control at regular intervals. Occasionally the snakes battle one another, twisting around one another and striking out, at times killing each other in the process. Sometimes I draw the knife to defend myself against their fangs, but mostly they are content to just slither randomly about. Cleaning up at molting time truly is an odious chore—luckily it is several months away.
Her sisters were not the ones who offended Athena with a beauty so tempting as to drive a god to distraction. Extreme distraction—it seems—since years ago Athena’s lover Poseidon raped my client because she was so “ravishingly” beautiful. Well, no longer. Athena was so angered at the desecration in her temple (where the assault occurred) that she cursed the nubile young woman with such an insidious ugliness that she would turn anyone to stone who gazed upon her face. I guess the poor sisters happened to suffer the same fate simply by being related, and almost as beautiful. When I am here, I see only the back of my client’s loathsome head. I will never see her face and neither will she. There are no mirrors here.
“I have heard I am to have a visitor,” she tells me, in her deep throaty voice. Sometimes it is hard to hear her over the hissing of the snakes, their reptilian chorus drowns out almost any other sound. Although we have never been outside together, I imagine I would not even be able to hear the crashing of the waves below if she and her snake-laced head were close to me.
“Oh,” I say hesitatingly. I never know when she will be in the mood to converse. “Do you know who this visitor is?” There is a long silence. I am not sure if she heard me, or if she is pondering her reply.
I continue to comb through her hair with a wide-tined bronze fork, trying to find the smallest wriggling reptiles that have just hatched. Every other month or so, I come across a sluggish old snake, grown too long, inactive in its dotage. It just hangs there and dangles weakly, destroying the symmetry of her hairstyle. Those are the ones I hate to prune. They smell like Hades when I kill them, the sulfurous old serpents. It takes a lot of strength to pull them out before I dash their brains against the cave wall. It is a good thing I am still fairly young, not yet forty, and my fingers still can grip the writhing scaly beasts and wrench them from the root. My client never flinches—I don’t know if she has no sensation on her scalp or if she is stoic about the pain, not willing to display any sign of weakness. She is formidable in this respect.
Once in a while she asks me about my daughter. If my daughter, too, has strong, capable hands. I have lied to her for more than fifteen years. I cannot imagine her rage if she were to discover that I have no girl child, no young woman offspring to train in this profession. She is beginning to wonder why I do not bring my daughter to the island, to begin her training. It is because I did not marry. I refused to marry and bear children. I did not want to raise a daughter cursed to follow my career path. Just two more traits—husbandlessness and childlessness—that cause me to be shunned by the townspeople. I am an outcast who would surely be stoned if it weren’t for the protecting patronage of this she-monster. But it is small concern to me, for the gold I have buried near my hut does not lose its luster. Upon occasion I dig up the thickly glazed pottery jar, to add a payment, and its glimmering contents never fail to alleviate my despair. It is almost full, ready to go with me when I choose to leave.
She clears her throat loudly, a disgusting phlegmy sound, and continues, “A young man is coming, on a quest. I have heard he is quite attractive, strong and courageous. His name is Perseus. Have you heard tell of him in the village?”
At the mention of his name, I lose my concentration and drop one of the young snakes—it whips around on the packed earth at her feet. It angers her, to see this thing, this token of her hideousness, and as I crawl on the floor to retrieve the tiny beast she strikes me across the left shoulder with a willow switch she keeps for this very purpose—to keep her servants in line. I bite my lip to prevent crying out as the branch cuts again—this time across my face.
“Get out of my sight,” she seethes, her voice joining the incessant hissing of the snakes. “I want to sleep.”
I grab my basket and fling the equipment into it, among the writing baby snakes, not taking the time to store my tools in an orderly fashion. I stumble down to the beach, my vision smeared by tears; the hot saltiness of them burns into the welt on my cheek.
Instead of the old man who usually ferries me here, a much younger, handsome man leaps from the boat and sweeps by me silently as he makes his way up the path to the cave. A brilliant flash of his gilded reflective shield and silver sword slices through the fog that engulfs us both before he disappears into the mist.
Loved it!