Circe

by Madeline Miller

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.

I paced the rocks. I had walked the earth for a hundred generations, yet I was still a child to myself. Rage and grief, thwarted desire, lust, self-pity: these are emotions gods know well. But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.

Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, as Prometheus had told me, the story that they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke.

The nymphs wafted around me. Their smothered laughter drifted down the halls. At least, I told myself, it was not their brothers, who would have bragged and fought and hunted down my wolves. But of course that was never a real danger. Sons were not punished.

I could not stop smiling. The fragility of mortals bred kindness and good grace. They knew how to value friendship and an open hand. If only more of them would come, I thought. I would feed a ship a day, and gladly. Two ships. Three. Perhaps I would start to feel like myself again.

My name in his mouth. It sparked a feeling in me, sharp and eager. He was like ocean tides indeed, I thought. You could look up, and the shore would be gone.

No, I thought. I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. “I will swear that oath,” I said.

HOW WOULD THE SONGS frame the scene? The goddess on her lonely promontory, her lover dwindling in the distance. Her eyes wet but inscrutable, cast inward to private thoughts. Beasts gather at her hem. The lindens bloom. And at the last, just before he disappears over the horizon, she lifts one hand and touches it to her belly.

Once again, I wished that someone else were there on the island. Not to commiserate now, but to cherish him with me. I would say, Look, can you believe it? We have come through the rocks and winds. I failed him, yet he is a sweet wonder of this world.

You cannot make that promise, I wanted to shout. You know nothing. But whose fault was that? I had kept the face of the world veiled from him. I had painted his history in bright, bold colors, and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it. If I was so old, I should be wise. I should know better than to howl when the bird was already flown.

Two children he had had, and he had not seen either clearly. But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

I looked at her, as vivid in my doorway as the moon in the autumn sky. Her eyes held mine, gray and steady. It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.

But I remembered the greed in her eyes when she spoke of him: an owl with a kill in its claws. Her favorite could never be allowed to grow dull and domestic. 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.

The sailors dropped to their knees. I would not be able to bear it, I thought. I would seize him, hold him to me. But I only embraced him a final time, pressing hard as if to set him into my skin. Then I watched him take his place among them, stand upon the prow, outlined against the sky. The light darted silver from the waves. I lifted my hand in blessing and gave my son to the world.

Sixty, seventy years, a mortal might have. Then he would leave for the underworld, where I could never go, for gods are the opposite of death. I tried to imagine those dusky hills and gray meadows, the shades moving slow and white among them. Some walked hand in hand with those they had loved in life; some waited, secure that one day their beloved would come. And for those who had not loved, whose lives had been filled with pain and horror, there was the black river Lethe, where one might drink and forget. Some consolation.

“I am listening,” he would answer. “You see?” I said, when I was finished with the tale. “Gods are ugly things.” “We are not our blood,” he answered. “A witch once told me that.”

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.

Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.