Circe

by Madeline Miller

Even I, who knew so little of discomfort, felt the ache of it.

‘Thank you for your kindness.’ I did not know if I was kind, I felt I did not know anything.

My mind struggled with the contradiction. Bold action and bold manner are not the same.

‘Will you tell me, what is a mortal like?’ It was a child’s question, but he nodded gravely. ‘There is no single answer. They are each different. The only thing they share is death. You know the word?’ ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘But I do not understand.’ ‘No god can. Their bodies crumble and pass into earth. Their souls turn to cold smoke and fly to the underworld. There they eat nothing and drink nothing and feel no warmth. Everything they reach for slips from their grasp.’

I watched them. I waited for someone to remark on my absence, but no one did, for no one had noticed. Why would they? I was nothing, a stone.

The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

Every moment he was with me, I felt a rushing in my throat, which was my love for him, so great sometimes I could not speak.

His mind worked best, he always said, without distractions.

‘Father is giving me a kingdom.’ I thought he was joking. ‘And may I live there?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is mine. You will have to get your own.’ His arm was through mine as it ever was, yet suddenly all was different, his voice swinging free, as if we were two creatures tied to separate cords, instead of to each other.

I remembered his eyes as I had pleaded with him. I knew him well, and could read what was in them when he looked at me. Not a good enough reason.

I sat on the rocks and thought of the stories I knew of nymphs who wept until they turned into stones and crying birds, into dumb beasts and slender trees, thoughts barked up for eternity. I could not even do that, it seemed. My life closed me in like granite walls. I should have spoken to those mortals, I thought. I could have begged among them for a husband. I was a daughter of Helios, surely one of those ragged men would have had me. Anything would be better than this.

For I was like any dull ass who has ever loved someone who loved another.

But most of all my father’s voice, speaking those words like trash he dropped. Such as you. Any other day in all my years of life I would have curled upon myself and wept. But that day his scorn was like a spark falling on dry tinder. My mouth opened.

Since you were born, I pitied you and allowed you licence, yet you grew disobedient and proud. Will you make me hate you more?’

I could not go home. There was only one other place in all the world I knew: those woods I had dreamed of so often. The deep shadows would hide me, and the mossy ground would be soft against my ruined skin. I set that image in my eye and limped towards it. The salt air of the beach stabbed like needles in my blasted throat, and each touch of wind set my burns screaming again. At last, I felt the shade close over me, and I curled up on the moss. It had rained a little, and the damp earth was sweet beneath me. So many times I had imagined lying there with Glaucos, but whatever tears might have been in me for that lost dream had been parched away.

I quivered at the sound of his displeasure, but Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if my father’s anger were only another thing in the room, a table, a stool.

‘You will get used to it. We are ourselves alone now.’

‘You like your kingdom? Colchis?’ ‘It is the finest in the world,’ he said. ‘I have done what I said, sister. I have gathered there all the wonders of our lands.’

‘I meant to tell you,’ he said. ‘I finally met your Glaucos last night. I have never seen such a buffoon.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘I hope you will choose better ahead. You have always trusted too easily.’ I looked at him leaning in my doorway with his long robes and bright, wolfish eyes. My heart had leapt to see him as it always did. But he was like that column of water he had told me of once, cold and straight, sufficient to himself.

you strike us, Olympian, we rise higher than before.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.

No wonder I have been so slow, I thought. All this while I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail.

I did not mind the emptiness either. For a thousand years I had tried to fill the space between myself and my family; filling the rooms of my house was easy by comparison.

For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay.

I pressed on. If my childhood had given me anything, it was endurance.

I learned to understand my own intention, to prune and to add, to feel where the power gathered and speak the right words to draw it to its height.

Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

Does no one have the courage? Will no one dare to face me? So you see, in my way, I was eager for what came.

But there was something in me that was sick of fear and awe, of gazing at the heavens and wondering what someone would allow me.

In the old days I would have rushed forth with a brimming cup of answers, to give him all he wanted. But I was not the same as I had been. I owed him nothing. He would have of me only what I wanted to give.

And that is how we came to be lovers. Hermes returned often in the years that followed, winging through the dusk. He brought delicacies of the gods – wine stolen from Zeus’ own stores, the sweetest honey of Mount Hybla, where the bees drink only thyme and linden blossoms. Our conversations were pleasures, and our couplings were the same.

‘Will you bear my child?’ he asked me. I laughed at him. ‘No, never and never.’

He asked only for curiosity’s sake, because it was his nature to seek out answers, to press others for their weaknesses.

He wanted to see how moonish I was over him. But all the sop in me was gone. I did not lie dreaming of him during the days, I did not speak his name into my pillow. He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.

came for her, but there was no one who would come for me.

The thought was steadying. After all, I had been alone my whole life.

‘It is funny,’ she said, ‘that even after all this time, you still believe you will be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls.

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power. It is not enough to be an uncle’s favourite, to please some god in his bed. It is not enough even to be beautiful, for when you go to them, and kneel and say, “I have been good, will you help me?” they

wrinkle their brows. Oh, sweetheart, it cannot be done. Oh, darling, you must learn to live with it. And have you asked Helios? You know I do nothing without his word.’

‘They take what they want, and in return they give you only...

‘Then Father gave me to that ass Minos. Well, I could work with him, and I have. He is fixed now, but it has been a long road, and I will never go back to what I was.

Tell me, what do you think would happen if I did not make monsters and poisons? Minos does not want a queen, only a simpering jelly he keeps in a jar and breeds to death. He would be happy to have me in chains for eternity, and he need only say the word to his own father to do it. But he does not. He knows what I would do to him first.’

Father picked you because you are worth the least.

Prometheus’ words, deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. ‘We bear it as best we can,’

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

A golden cage is still a cage.

She spoke each word as if it were a stone she built her future with.

Yet for the first time she seemed to me a creature clinging to a precipice, desperate, its claws already slipping.

They will seek to undermine you at every turn. It will not matter that you helped Jason. They will push that aside, or else use it against you as proof of your unnaturalness.’

‘With unbound power. Who need answer to none but herself.’