Circe

by Madeline Miller

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.

There had never been a sweeter child. He smelled like honey and just-kindled flames. He ate from my fingers and did not flinch at my frail voice. He only wanted to sleep curled against my neck while I told him stories. 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.

All those years I had spent with them were like a stone tossed in a pool. Already, the ripples were gone.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.

I owed him nothing. He would have of me only what I wanted to give.

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

After all, I had been alone my whole life. Aeëtes, Glaucos, these were only pauses in the long stretch of my solitude.

“We bear it as best we can,” I said.

But I pressed his face into my mind, as seals are pressed in wax, so I could carry it with me.

I wished then that we had conceived a child together, to be some comfort to him. But that was a young and silly thought: as if children are sacks of grain, to be substituted one for another.

I had no right to claim him, I knew it. 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 witch,” I said. “With unbound power. Who need answer to none but herself.”

“I told them,” he said to me. “I told them and told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

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

He had more stories of his son from a single year, I thought, than my father had of me in all eternity.

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.

I would look at him and feel a love so sharp it seemed my flesh lay open.

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

I remember him running his hand along a trunk. It was one of my favorite things about him, how he admired the world like a jewel, turning its facets to catch the light.

Amusement flashed in his eyes. I had fed off that look once, when I had been starving and thought such crumbs a feast.

Then, child, make another.

So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?

I wanted to imagine her whole story, and I also wanted to push back against the one-dimensional way she’s been treated in popular culture. People generally remember her as a villain, a man-hating seductress. But Homer’s portrait is more complex: she’s terrifying, yes, but also benevolent. She invites Odysseus and his men to stay on her island and recover from their exhaustion, then sends them on their way with vital advice and full stores. I was interested to discover how Circe was able to carve out such an independent life for herself in a world that is hostile to women holding power. I loved as well that Circe is an artist; her witchcraft is both an art and a source of strength.