Circe

by Madeline Miller

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

“And what is in that shell? A snail?” “Nothing,” I said. “Air.” “Those are not the same,” he said. “Nothing is empty void, while air is what fills all else. It is breath and life and spirit, the words we speak.”

“Prometheus was a god of prophecy. He would have known he would be punished, and how. Yet he did it anyway.”

This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

What was I truly? In the end, I could not bear to know.

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.

“It is funny,” she said, “that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.”

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.

anywhere I was became my temple.

“A witch,” I said. “With unbound power. Who need answer to none but herself.”

They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs.

Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

Death’s Brother is the name that poets give to sleep. For most men those dark hours are a reminder of the stillness that waits at the end of days.

It is youth’s gift not to feel its debts.

“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.

Your father spoke to the hero warmly, praising him and assuring him of his reputation among men. But Achilles reproached him. He said he regretted his proud life, and wished he had lived more quietly, and happily.”

“What makes a witch, then? If it is not divinity?” “I do not know for certain,” I said. “I once thought it was passed through blood, but Telegonus has no spells in him. I have come to believe it is mostly will.”

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure you do not dishonor me.” “I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”

I had my salves, and if I kept my head covered, I could pass for an herbwoman coming to ease their aches and fevers. Their gratitude was simple and plain, and ours was the same. No one knelt.

He would patch their ships, and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers, and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.

I have aged. When I look in my polished bronze mirror there are lines upon my face. I am thickened too, and my skin has begun growing loose. I cut myself at my herbs and the scars stay. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I am vain and dissatisfied. But I do not wish myself back. Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.