Circe

by Madeline Miller

“What have you been doing all this while? You took forever. I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t a pharmakis after all.” It was not a word I knew. It was not a word anyone knew, then. “Pharmakis,” I said. Witch.

He must paint us just right: that we are threat enough that Zeus should think twice, but not so much that he is forced to act.” My brother, who had always seen into the cracks of the world. “What if the Olympians try to take your spells from you?”

But the certainty I had felt when I dripped the sap into Glaucos’ mouth and tainted Scylla’s cove, I could not seem to find anymore. Perhaps, I thought, if I could touch those flowers again. But I was not allowed to leave until my father spoke to Zeus.

Even the most beautiful nymph is largely useless, and an ugly one would be nothing, less than nothing. She would never marry or produce children.

I plan to have a hundred more, and they will make me a silver boat that flies through the clouds. We will rule upon Olympus.”

I felt a sickening unease that it went back further still, back to the first breath I ever drew.

What could I do? Pick flowers?

“He agrees that something new moves in the world. That these powers are unlike any that have come before. He agrees that they grow from my four children with the nymph Perse.”

She is exiled to a deserted island where she can do no more harm. She leaves tomorrow.”

“It could have been much worse, you know.” Aeëtes had come to stand in my doorway. He was leaving too, his dragons already summoned. “I heard Zeus wanted to make an example of you. But of course Father can only allow him so much license.”

“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.”

But he was like that column of water he had told me of once, cold and straight, sufficient to himself.