Circe

by Madeline Miller

lambent

cataract,

Bold action and bold manner are not the same.

fatuously.

“It is not fair,” I said. “It cannot be.” “Those are two different things,” my grandmother said.

My brother, who had always seen into the cracks of the world.

“Of course you do. It’s why it would have been a good punishment. 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. She would be a burden to her family, a stain upon the face of the world. She would live in the shadows, scorned and reviled. But a monster,” he said, “she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either. So whatever foolish sorrow you harbor, forget it. I think it may be said that you improved her.”

soughing

No wonder I have been so slow, I thought. All this while, I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail.

I cannot speak for my brothers and sister, but my answer is easy. For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay. Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

Into the air I said, Wherever you are, I hope you are finding your satisfaction.

Of all the mortals on the earth, there are only a few the gods will ever hear of. Consider the practicalities. By the time we learn their names, they are dead. They must be meteors indeed to catch our attention. The merely good: you are dust to us.

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.

Surely there was some divine trick to make the hours go faster. To let them slip past unseen, to sleep for years, so that when I woke again the world would be new. I closed my eyes. Through the window I heard the bees singing in the garden. My lion’s tail beat against the stones. An eternity later, when I opened my eyes, the shadows had not even moved.

ambit

The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. He shook his head. “How would I know myself?”

A door that did not open at his knock was a novelty in its own right, and a kind of relief as well. All the world confessed to him. He confessed to me.

Give him to me, I said. I held him up before me and looked into his screaming face. ‘Sweet son,’ I said, ‘you are right, this world is a wild and terrible place, and worth shouting at. But you are safe now, and all of us need to sleep. Will you let us have a little peace?’

Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.

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

“It is likely you are not a witch,” I said. “But you are something else. Something you have not found yet. And that is why you go.”

The ocean’s weight piled like mountains on my shoulders. But endurance had always been my virtue and I kept on.

I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

cormorants

“It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.” “All creatures that are not mad need them.”

aureate

An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. 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.

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.