Circe

by Madeline Miller

‘It is marriage,’ she said to him, ‘or nothing. And if it is marriage, be sure: you may have what girls you like in the field, but you will bring none home, for only I will hold sway in your halls.’

Conditions, constrainment. These were novelties to my father, and gods love nothing more than novelty.

I do not know which she treasured more: the luminous beads themselves, or the envy of her sisters when she wore them.