Circe

by Madeline Miller

I 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.

always been. Circe, he cried, I am changed! There was no time to go to the forest, no time to draw him to me on the moss. He was wild with his new strength, snorting like a bull in spring air. “Look,” he said, holding

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow.

If my childhood had given me anything, it was endurance.

Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

But I was not the same as I had been. I owed him nothing. He would have of me only what I wanted to give.

“And why should I do that?” “For novelty’s sake, of course. The first good deed in your dissolute life. Aren’t you curious what it would feel like?”

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

Monsters are a boon to gods. Imagine all the prayers.”

“Begone,” I said. “I prefer you in the dark.”

them. Daedalus was watching me, his face shadowed. Far beyond his shoulder, my father’s

new one every moment: the small dimple in her chin, the

you a seat?” Daedalus said. I turned, glad for the

she was finished with me? Ash, smoke? Immortal bones dragging across the bottom of the sea. My feet had

one neck turned back to see, but that was enough. I hefted the draught and threw it. It hit her in the back

We climbed. I heard Daedalus’ breaths behind me and Polydamas’ in front. The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet. At last we reached the top and crossed the threshold into

than the last time I had come. The palace was like a hive indeed, each hall leading to an ornate

frame. I had forgotten how vivid she was, how beautiful.

that I must be careful to find its head. I did not want it

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.

Despite your wet-mouse weeping, I saw how you would not be ground into the earth. You loathed them as I did. I think it is where our power comes from.”

They cannot bear any pain at all. They are not like us.”

Timidity creates nothing.

“We bear it as best we can,” I said.

It was borrowed time, we knew it, which made it all the sweeter.

A golden cage is still a cage.

My ambivalence, of course, only encouraged him. Any challenge was a game, and any game a pleasure.

you.” “No,” I said. “In Colchis you may work your will. But this is Aiaia.” A second moment’s true surprise on his

everything, clinging like spiderwebs, unavoidable. I ran along the beach, gasped up and down the forest paths, trying to shake it from me. I sifted

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.

servant.” I felt as if I dreamed. Slowly, I got to my feet.

she reasoned. So I was

he said, “you are not. You are being very dull.

and loneliness, and turn them into rats indeed. A hundred

all the years that had passed,

nothing else to clean, I sat before the hearth ash. I was not shaking anymore. I did not move at

“The world is an unjust place. Look what happened to that counselor of Agamemnon’s. Palamedes, his name was. He served the army well, but fell in a pit while on a night watch. Someone had set sharpened stakes in the bottom. Terrible loss.”

themselves through it hour after hour. The fifth day, Odysseus’ awl slipped and punctured the pad of his thumb. I gave him salves and worked my charms to drive

Whoever saw him must salute and say: There is a man who has seen the world. There is a captain with stories to tell.

My wife, he always said, when he talked of her. My wife, my wife. Those words, carried before him like a shield. Like country folk who will not say the god of death’s name, for fear he will come and take their dearest heart.

You will never get the whole truth from her. She has as many coils as a snake, and an eye always to her advantage.”

“Nothing she says has a single meaning, nor a single intention, yet she is steady. She knows herself.”

It is a son’s highest duty to avenge his father.

I touched the thought like a bruise, testing its ache.

for a moment. Athena had been barred, yet there still remained all the ordinary dangers of the island, rocks and cliffs and stinging creatures that I had to pry from his hands. Whenever I tried to reach for him, he would run, darting and defiant, towards

with him. He toppled over a table filled with plates; he climbed up the shelves and smashed my phials. I would set

sink if they do not land!” It was not the first time he had spotted sailors. They passed often by our isle. But it was the first time he had wanted to help them. I let him pull me out to the cliff. It was true, the ship was tilted over and the

as always. The captain, did he look like a coiled snake? I could not tell. I felt a sudden, gagging nausea.

remaking themselves, the wet tearing of flesh from its shape. They sat at my benches. They ate, and the wine