Unholy Trinity: Medea by Lena Kliendienst

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Rowan / Host

They watched her birth from the belly of a tree, she was small and anxious. A constant sting in her mouth, the strength lay dormant inside her. The magpies whistled from the height of the oak, tall, and unkillable; she was safe in its shelter. 

When she’d grown just north of childhood, the humans in the woods drew her in their notebooks. Males pay no attention to the sprout but to the “alluring” forest girl. The sirens killed sailors, mythology more tempting than mortals. The other woman, the terrible, seductive Medusa. Affairs with girls in the trees, explorer men conquer.

Medea / Comfort

The clicking of the creature turned to muffled screaming, and fingertips appeared from the blackness. They’re long and slender, pulling apart an invisible prison, ripping it open, high in the air. A bald head emerges, her eyeliner is smudged, a series of spikes and thorns. The woman looks down at the Dryad from her throne. She wore the invisibility like a costume she was removing, her visible fingers pushed against its body. 

She holds large bronze scissors, the same ones their grandma used in her sewing room. She cuts the matted ends of Rowan’s hair. The clumps fall back into the marshes where she was buried.

Lyssa/ Rage

When she turned twenty, she rose with the magpies. She sang at 6 AM to wake the men from dreams of her. Her spiked fingers command the forest to her will. Branches snapped from grinning trees, flying like spears into human camps. 

She would make a list, the list would make her strong. 

Children felt safe around her, and she wouldn’t know what that meant until she looked in a mirror. Her mouth wouldn’t close, skin scarred where the top lip met the bottom. Her face was lumpy and swollen, but her sickness grew to strength. Her power to comfort.