Circe

by Madeline Miller

It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

had stood beside my father’s light. I had held Aeëtes in my arms, and my bed was heaped with thick-wooled blankets woven by immortal hands. But it was not until that moment that I think I had ever been warm.

I lay on the dirt, weeping. Those flowers had made him his true being, which was blue, and finned, and not mine. I thought I would die of such pain, which was not like the sinking numbness Aeëtes had left behind, but sharp and fierce as a blade through my chest. But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

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

It was easy to speak so openly with him. His face was like a quiet pool that would hold everything safe in its depths.

I had not fooled myself with false hope. I was a goddess, and he a mortal, and both of us were imprisoned. But I pressed his face into my mind, as seals are pressed in wax, so I could carry it with me.

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.

I had never seen him so angry before. I had never seen him angry at all. Even so, his face was beautiful, like the waves when they lift their storm-heads.

The fragility of mortals bred kindness and good grace. They knew how to value friendship and an open hand.

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 cupped my own hands in the dark. I did not have a thousand wiles, and I was no fixed star, yet for the first time I felt something in that space. A hope, a living breath, that might yet grow between.

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. But Odysseus’ slumber was like his life, tossed and restless, heavy with murmurs that made my wolves prick up their ears. I watched him in the pearl-gray light of dawn: the tremors of his face, the striving tension in his shoulders. He twisted the sheets as if they were opponents he tried to throw in a wrestling match. A year of peaceful days he had stayed with me, and still every night he went to war.

His words were simple. They had no art to them, which of course was also art.

Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. He stepped onto his ship, and when he turned back to look for me, I was gone.

I was used to unhappiness, formless and opaque, stretching out to every horizon. But this had shores, depths, a purpose and a shape. There was hope in it, for it would end, and bring me my child.

His look I will remember all my life. A man who has seen the veil lifted and beholds the true face of the world.

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

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.

She paled. A faint graying along her hairline, like the creeping edge of dawn.

It seemed absurd to me that they did not just confess their faults and sorrows and be done. But they were like eggs, each afraid to crack the other.

Outside, the seasons had turned. The sky opened its hands, and the earth swelled to meet it. The light poured thickly down, coating us in gold. The sea lagged only a little behind.

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

I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.

He would not ask where, he would not even wonder. 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. “You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure you do not dishonor me.” “I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.” His body was rigid with wrath. He looked as though he had swallowed a stone, and it choked him. “Give Mother my greetings,” I said. His jaw bit down and he was gone.

“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.