Circe

by Madeline Miller

I was only restless in those days, and a little sad. But she had stripped me to my skin, and I saw myself now in her eyes: a bitter, abandoned crone, a spider, scheming to suck out her life.

‘Listen to me. You are young, and Iolcos will make you old. There is no safety for you there.’

As for that safety, I do not want it. It is only more chains.

She would not understand it, not in a thousand years. And I was done giving lessons.

Know yourself is carved above their doors. But I had been a stranger to myself, turned to stone for no reason I could name.

Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

No, I thought. It is too late for that. I have been found. Let them see what I am. Let them learn the world is not as they think.

A few of these, so few I can count them on my fingers, I let go. They did not see me as their dinner. They were pious men, honestly lost, and I would feed them, and if there was a handsome one among them, I might take him to my bed. It was not desire, not even its barest scrapings. It was a sort of

rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own. And did I like the answer I found?

I did not want their prayers, nor my name in their mouths. I wanted them gone.

‘Are you always so suspicious?’ ‘What can I say?’ He held out his palms. ‘The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.’

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom.

I knew I was a fool. Even if he stayed past that spring to the next, such a man could never be happy closed up on my narrow shores.

‘She is constant. Constant in all things. Even wise men go astray sometimes, but never her. She is a fixed star, a true-made bow.’ A silence, in which I felt him moving deep among his memories. ‘Nothing she says has a single meaning, nor a single intention, yet she is steady. She knows herself.’

I prayed to Eileithya, goddess of childbirth. She had the power to loosen the womb’s hold and bring the child into the world. She was said to watch over the birth of every god and demigod. Help me, I cried out. But she did not come. The animals whined in their corners and I began to remember the whispers of my cousins in Oceanos’ halls so long ago. If a god did not wish your child to be born, they might hold Eileithyia back. The thought seized my careering mind. Someone was keeping her from me. Someone dared to try to harm my son. It gave me the strength I needed. I bared my teeth at the dark and crawled to the kitchen. I seized a knife and dragged a great bronze mirror to face me, for there was no Daedalus now to help. I leaned against the marble wall, amid the broken table legs. The coolness of the stone calmed me. This child was no Minotaur, but a mortal. I must not cut too deep. I had been afraid the pain would undo me, but I scarcely felt it. There was a rasping sound, like stone upon stone, that I realised was my own breath. The layers of flesh parted, and I saw him at last: limbs curled like a snail in its shell. I stared, afraid to move him. What if he was dead already? What if he was not, and I killed him with my touch? But I drew him forth, and his skin met the air, and he began to wail. I wailed with him, for I had never heard a sweeter sound. I laid him on my chest. The stones beneath us felt like feathers. He was shuddering and shuddering, pressing my skin wit...

He was not happy. A moment, I thought, I only need one moment without his damp rage in my arms. But there was none. He hated sun. He hated wind. He hated baths. He hated to be clothed, to be naked, to lie on his belly and his back. He hated this great world and everything in it, and me, so it seemed, most of all.

‘You are right. I don’t know the world. How could I? You don’t let me out of your sight.’

‘I will not do it! There is nothing here for me. Even if another ship comes and I beg you to let it land, what then? A few days’ respite, then they will leave, and I will still be trapped. If this is life then I would rather die. I would rather Athena kills me, do you hear? At least then I will have seen one thing in my life that was not this island!’

Did he know how much those words cost me? I do not think he could. It is youth’s gift not to feel its debts.

but all I saw were the thousand soft places of his body where his life might be ended.

There is no must to the life of a mortal, except death.

those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.

This was always the path you walked. You must take comfort in that.’

you must understand people if you would rule them.’

‘I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.

I’ve found that courage is not a matter of age, but true-made spirits.”’

‘The truth is, I think he would have preferred me as a traitor. At least then I would have been a son he could understand.’

I had seen him in such moods. Every petty defect of the world enraged him,

My father could plot and rage, but I did not have to see it. My mother could eat one piece of cheese all day and let her eyes turn grey on her loom, but I did not have to see that either.’

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

we would turn everything we touched to our advantage.

He must live in action’s eye, bright and polished, always striving and seeking, always delighting her with some new twist of cleverness, some brilliance he summoned out of the air.

I have to keep idle on it day after day.’

‘You have a patient temper.’

He wanted to know how to do such things for curiosity’s sake, but he did not want to actually have to do them.’

It seemed absurd to me that they did not just confess their faults and sorrows and be done. But they were like eggs, each afraid to crack the other.

a quiet assurance that made him companionable without being intrusive.

I had fed off that look once, when I had been starving and thought such crumbs a feast.

What you weave, you cannot unravel with a tug.

some people are like constellations who only touch the earth for a season.

He will be a good ruler, I thought. Fair-minded and warm. He will not be consumed like his father was. He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.

‘You are not angry?’ ‘No,’ I said. It had never truly been anger, only fear and sorrow.

Wherever Telemachus was, he did not return for dinner. No matter, I told myself. The time when I had softened like wax was past. My path was laid before me. I packed my things.

I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unravelling them again at night, making nothing.

One chases the lions in circles, while the other sits in a corner, watching and remembering everything.

Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.

This too is good fortune. How many have such power and leisure and defence as I do?

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that

we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.