“Oh, shut up! Come, Perseus, let me show you to a place where you can rest, eat and drink before you go out to fulfill your task.”
The sun was slanting in the west over the Mediterranean when Cepheus and Perseus came out of the palace; Cassiopea said she could not bear to see her daughter tied up on the rock, expecting the monster to rise out of the sea any moment; because that was the beast’s regular time to come out to feed on young maidens. At least, that’s what they said. Not that anyone had ever seen that monster; and, in spite of what they said, there had never been a maiden sacrificed to the sea-monster before it had become Andromeda’s fate. Many stories had been told about the Monster from the Sea, but no one had ever seen it except in dreams, or heard of it except in the tales of storytellers. Some people even said it was not the monster’s idea at all to have the Princess sacrificed to it but that of Queen Cassiopea’s, who could not bear the competition she suffered from her daughter’s beauty...
But these stories, which spread among common people, never reached the Palace and its dwellers. And now, the King led the young Prince to the shore, where the waves broke at the rocks strewn between the gravel beach and the water, half-submerged. “There, can you see her?” he pointed.
Blinking his eyes as he looked toward the sinking sun, Perseus could vaguely see the rock, jutting out from among the waves a short distance out at sea. A figure, which seemed to be nude, was indeed attached to the rock, its bare skin glowing in the red and gold hues emanating from the sun. Perseus thought he could see her moving about, perhaps struggling against the chains that were supposed to be tying her to the rock, but they were not evident at that distance in the blinding light. The woman could have been doing something altogether different, Perseus reflected for a moment, when something started to happen.
The sea, that was calm up till then, began to rise around Andromeda’s rock, waves started rolling at it suddenly, growing higher and higher. The King and the young man could see the figure lifting her arms, waving them in strange motions, and for one moment Perseus thought that perhaps she was not trying to defend herself from something as she was actually beckoning to it...
At that moment the waves broke open and an enormous shape rose out from among them. Like the girl’s skin, its scales glowed in the red and gold light of the sun; then a monstrous head, as large as Andromeda’s rock, loomed over the girl.
“Go!” the King cried out, tugging Perseus sharply by the arm, “go and save her! Petrify that monster with Medusa’s head!”
Perseus leapt in the air, then used the sandals’ wings to fly over to the rock, hovering above it. But what he saw was so astonishing that he almost faltered in midair and fell into the water. The monster was not attacking the princess but fondling her, dancing around her, while the girl was caressing its red and gold scales. He also saw that the chains tying her to the rock were not metal but flowers, decorating her naked body! As he hovered, hesitating what he should do, the girl raised her arms, leapt in the air, and with her head first sunk into the water! The monster, with a great flutter of its enormous tail, jumped in after her. A minute later the sea was calm, as if nothing had ever happened right before Perseus’ eyes.
With the sun sinking into the Mediterranean Sea, Perseus flew back to shore and landed by the side of the dumbfounded king.
“Wh – Wha – What happened?” he stammered as he questioned the young man.
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