Circe

by Madeline Miller

Once when I was young I asked what mortals looked like. My father said, “You may say they are shaped like us, but only as the worm is shaped like the whale.” My mother had been simpler: like savage bags of rotten flesh.

Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not. If my herbs are not fresh enough, if my attention falters, if my will is weak, the draughts go stale and rancid in my hands.

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.

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.

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.

Over us the branches stirred, carving the moon into slivers.

The stars were very bright, and Vesper shone like a flame overhead.