:: Medusa and the Serpentine Gallery ::

I consider traditional fantasy an apt love letter to the fertile legends and folklore of our ancestors, but with the unfortunate side effect that they rarely explain the origins of the strange inherent forms and magical origins found in the source material. Is every minotaur in a role-playing game the love child of a lusty queen and a bull as the traditional myths recount? Why do werewolves transform into wolves at the full moon? Why do sirens sing so beautifully that ships wreck themselves upon the rocks?

In the spirit of explaining where medusas come from in my world, I present to you Medusa and the Serpentine Gallery.

Medusa and the Serpentine Gallery
by Wm Jay Carter III

Once there was a family of artisans who came to the city of Wellstan. They were all exceptional painters, potters, and carvers, but one daughter, Medusa, was a sculptor of surpassing skill. It was said that her work was so life-like that—once it was painted—it could hardly be distinguished from the subject.

Medusa was as beautiful as she was talented, and when the family came to the city, she was sought after by many suitors, who continuously crowded her with their pleas of devotion. “Come to the gallery,” she would tell them. “If you truly wish to know me, come and see my work, for there is my true soul for all to see.”


For the family—known as the Serpentines—had built an art gallery near the city’s eponymous well, and curated exhibition after exhibition of wondrous art for the citizens to view. Medusa’s sculptures were the most coveted part of the tour, and her suitors visited the gallery waiting only for the end when they could see her among her work.

The suitors fell over themselves to purchase her statues in garish displays of pride. “I’ll buy the most expensive!” said one. “I’ll buy two—it doesn’t matter which, so long as you’ll choose me!” said another. But Medusa was unimpressed. “If it does not matter what part of me you take, then you shall have none of me.” And all of the suitors left empty-handed, for Medusa refused to sell her work to one with such a blind heart.

So it was that the suitors eventually dwindled, claiming that Medusa was cold as the stone she carved. But it was not so—it is the simple truth of all folk that we are more than one can see with the eyes.

As the Serpentine Gallery gained notoriety, it attracted attention from many notable families, who curated entire collections of the Serpentine’s work. One such family came to Wellstan along with their heir, Spector, who had a keen interest in the sculptures of the illustrious gallery.

So it was that Medusa found him in the gallery one morning, alone, studying the sculptures with attentive wonder. He had barely noticed Medusa at his side when he began speaking about the work, never looking away. He praised it, speaking of the devotion the artist must have for her craft, never realizing that he was speaking in the presence of the artist herself. He was so fascinated with the piece that he did not realize she had gone.

Medusa, meanwhile, had never felt so understood—so seen—as when Spector spoke of her sculpture. She returned to the gallery the next morning to find him there, and listened as he described another of her statues, never looking at her, and not realizing when she had gone.

In this way the two went on for weeks, Spector always telling his family that he needed more time to select their purchase from the gallery, for the work was so engaging that he must have more time to decide. But secretly he only wished to speak of the work with his mysterious visitor, of whom he had become very fond these many mornings.

“Do you not know who visits you in the gallery every morning, son?” said his mother. “Word spreads through the city of the nobleman and the snake woman who meet in the gallery in the secret hours of morning.”

Now, as you might have already guessed, the Serpentines were all snake-folk, with long scaly tails from the waist down. Such a thing was not uncommon in Wellstan, with the bat-like Seraphim and mole-like Bóreans living among the other races, but for Spector’s notable family it was a matter of blind prejudice never to be connected with any but full humans.

“It’s one thing to patronize the impure—to pay an artist for their work is honorable, no matter their other qualities. But the people are saying you have feelings for the wretched thing.” And without further discussion, Spector’s mother forbade him from ever laying eyes on her again.

“Have no fear, mother,” Spector replied, soothing her concern in the matter. “I have not yet seen her face with my own eyes, nor ever shall, or may Calamity come again.”

Spector stood on the balcony of his family’s penthouse in a swirl of realization; so, he had been speaking with the author of the work he admired this whole time, and had never even suspected. Now that he knew her identity, Spector could not help but think on his mysterious visitor, and what the artist behind such art might look like. And so he brought a small hand mirror to the gallery with him the next morning, producing it when his visitor arrived. In it, he saw Medusa’s face for the first time, but only her reflection—not with his own eyes, for he was a man of honor.

He lauded the sculptures as he always did, and watched as the smile spread across her face. But he was so entranced that he forgot himself, and ceased speaking for only a moment. It was then that Medusa realized what was happening, and saw the mirror.

“So, you are like the rest?” she challenged. “Come only to see with your eyes and not with your heart?” And she dashed the mirror to the floor, shattering it into a thousand jagged pieces. “You only pretend to love my work, but only wish to look upon me. Has it been so this whole time?”

“No, Medusa, please,” Spector begged, pulling his cloak over his eyes, for he was an honorable man and wished to keep his oath. “It was never so. I saw all I needed the moment I set foot in this gallery for the first time. You are beautiful, it is true, but you also have a devotion to your work that speaks of the beauty of your heart. You are passionate and gentle, strong and yielding, all at once. I have never been so taken by a thing of such beauty as the soul I have witnessed in this gallery.”

Medusa was taken with his words, and heard him speak a little more as he explained his mother’s will. Spector declared his love for Medusa, and begged her to meet him outside the city the next morning, so that they would not been seen together again, fearing what his mother might do.

And Spector’s fear was well founded, for that day the family’s attendant priestess came to his mother and delivered the news of what she had seen at the gallery that morning. “Go and curse that wretch,” said the mother, “for if Medusa or any woman of the Serpentine family ever meets the gaze of a son of mine, it will be for the last time.”

So the oath was spoken, but the priestess was stone-hearted and cold, and thought that the mother wished to curse her own son for betraying the family’s honor. And so the priestess bestowed a curse upon the women of the Serpentine line, that the first time she would meet the gaze of any but one of her own kind they would become as the statues that Medusa sculpted from stone, never to see again.

That night, Medusa prepared a place out in the forest near Wellstan where she and Spector could speak truly of themselves the next morning. But though her thoughts were on her newfound love as she gazed at the stars, her dreams that night were tormented with oracular doom; her nightmare revealed to her the nature of the priestess’ curse as surely as if she had been there when it was pronounced.

Medusa awoke to the sound of clopping hooves—the sound of her lover approaching on horseback. He had come with his hood down, for he was a man of honor, and all would have been well, but for Medusa’s frantic scream to stay away, lest Calamity befall…

But befall it did, for Medusa’s cry startled the horse, which reared back, throwing Spector’s hood from off his eyes. And for one brief moment he beheld Medusa’s beauty for the first time with his own eyes. Their gazes met, and both he and the horse were turned to stone, as life-like as any of Medusa’s sculptures.