Circe

by Madeline Miller

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

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

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.

This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.

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

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

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.

Loyal, songs called her later. Faithful and true and prudent. Such passive, pale words for what she was.