Circe Read online

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  A hundred times I had seen some fool caught between my sister’s claws. Minos took it worse than most. He stabbed a finger through the air at me. “You hear? She threatens me openly. This is your fault, you and your whole lying family. Your father gave her to me as if she were a treasure, but if you knew the things she has done to me—”

  “Oh, tell her some of them! I think Circe would appreciate the witchcraft. What about the hundred girls who died while you heaved over them?”

  I could feel Ariadne, very still, beside me. I wished she were not there.

  The hate in Minos’ eyes was a living thing. “Foul harpy! It was your spell that caused their deaths! All you breed is evil! I should have ripped that beast from your cursed womb before it could be born!”

  “But you did not dare, did you? You know how your dear father Zeus dotes on such creatures. How else can all his bastard heroes win their reputations?” She cocked her head. “In fact, shouldn’t you be slavering to take up a sword yourself? Oh, but I forgot. You have no taste for killing unless it is serving girls. Sister, truly, you should learn this spell. You need only—”

  Minos had risen from his seat. “I forbid you to speak further!”

  My sister laughed, her most silver-fountain sound. It was calculated, like everything she did. Minos raged on, but I was watching her. I had dismissed her coupling with the bull as some perverse whim, but she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead. When was the last time that I had seen true emotion on her face? I recalled now that moment on her childbed when she had cried out, her face twisted with urgency, that the monster must live. Why? Not love, there was none of that in her. So the creature must somehow serve her ends.

  It was my hours with Hermes that helped me to an answer, all the news that he had brought me of the world. When Pasiphaë had married Minos, Crete was the richest and most famous of our kingdoms. Yet since then, every day, more mighty kingdoms were rising up, in Mycenae and Troy, Anatolia and Babylon. Since then too, one of her brothers had learned to raise the dead, the other to tame dragons, and her sister had transformed Scylla. No one spoke of Pasiphaë anymore. Now, at a stroke, she made her fading star shine again. All the world would tell the story of the queen of Crete, maker and mother of the great flesh-eating bull.

  And the gods would do nothing. Think of all the prayers they would get.

  “It’s just so funny,” Pasiphaë was saying. “It took you so long to understand! Did you think they were dying from the pleasure of your exertions? From the sheer transported bliss? Believe me—”

  I turned to Ariadne, standing beside me silent as air.

  “Come,” I said. “We are finished here.”

  We walked back to her dancing circle. Over us, the laurels and oaks spread their green leaves. “When your spell is cast,” she said, “my brother will not be so monstrous anymore.”

  “That is my hope,” I said.

  A moment passed. She looked up at me, hands clasped to her chest as if she kept a secret there. “Will you stay a little?”

  I watched her dance, arms curving like wings, her strong young legs in love with their own motion. 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.

  Ariadne’s light feet crossed and recrossed the circle. Every step was perfect, like a gift she gave herself, and she smiled, receiving it. I wanted to seize her by the shoulders. Whatever you do, I wanted to say, do not be too happy. It will bring down fire on your head.

  I said nothing, and let her dance.

  Chapter Eleven

  WHEN THE SUN TOUCHED the distant fields, guards arrived to collect Ariadne. The princess is wanted by her parents. They marched her off, and I was shown to my room. It was small and near the servants’ quarters. This was meant, of course, to be an insult, but I liked the respite of the unpainted walls, the narrow window that showed only a sliver of the relentless sun. It was quiet as well, for all the servants crept past, knowing who lay within. The sister witch. They left food for me while I was gone and took the tray only when I was out again.

  I slept, and the next morning Daedalus came for me. He smiled when I opened my door, and I found myself smiling in return. One thing I could thank the creature for: the ease between us had returned. I followed him down a staircase to the twisting corridors that ran beneath the palace. We passed grain cellars, storage rooms lined with rows of pithoi, the great ceramic jars that held the palace’s largesse of oil and wine and barley.

  “Whatever became of the white bull, do you know?”

  “No. It vanished when Pasiphaë began to swell. The priests said it was the bull’s final blessing. Today I heard someone say that the monster is a gift from the gods to help us prosper.” He shook his head. “They are not naturally fools, it is only that they are caught between two scorpions.”

  “Ariadne is different,” I said.

  He nodded. “I have hopes of her. Have you heard what they’ve decided to name the thing? The Minotaur. Ten ships go out with the announcement at noon, and ten more will go out tomorrow.”

  “Clever,” I said. “Minos claims it, and instead of being a cuckold he shares in my sister’s glory. He becomes the great king who begets monsters and names them after himself.”

  Daedalus made a noise in his throat. “Exactly.”

  We had come to the large cellar room that held the creature’s new cage. It was wide as a ship’s deck and half as long, forged of a silver-gray metal. I put my hands to its bars, smooth and thick as saplings. I could smell the iron in it, but what more I could not tell.

  “It is a new substance,” Daedalus said. “Harder to work, but more durable. Even so, it will not hold the creature forever. He is already freakishly strong, and only just born. But it will give me time to devise something more permanent.”

  The soldiers followed behind, carrying the old cage on poles to keep their distance. They set it clanging down inside the new and were gone before the echoes had faded.

  I went and knelt beside it. The Minotaur was larger than it had been, its flesh plump, pressing at the metal lattice. Clean of birth fluids now and dry, the line between bull and baby was starker than ever, as if some madman had lopped a steer’s head and sewed it to a toddler. It stank of old meat, and the cage-bottom rattled with long bones. I felt a wash of nausea. One of Crete’s prisoners.

  The creature was watching me with huge eyes. It rose and snuffled forward, nose working. A moan came from it, sharp and excited. It remembered me. My smell and the taste of my flesh. It opened its squat mouth, like a baby bird begging. More.

  I took my moment: spoke the words of power and poured the draught through the cage, down its open throat. The creature choked and lunged against the bars, but even as it did its eyes were changing, the fury in them ebbing away. I held its gaze and put out my hand. I heard Daedalus draw in a breath. But the creature did not leap for me. Its rigid limbs had loosened. Another moment I waited, then undid the lock and opened the cage.

  It shuffled a little, the bones clattering under its feet. “It is all right,” I murmured, whether to myself or Daedalus or the creature, I could not say. Slowly, I moved my hand towards it. Its nostrils flared. I touched its arm, and it made a huff of surprise, but nothing more.

  “Come,” I whispered, and it did, crouching and stumbling a little as it passed through the cage’s small opening. It looked up at me, expectantly, almost sweetly.

  My brother, Ariadne had called it. But this creature had not been made for any family. It was my sister’s triumph, her ambition made flesh, her whip to use against Minos. In thanks, it would know no comrade, no lover. It would never see the sun, never take a free step. The
re was nothing it might ever have in the world but hatred and darkness and its teeth.

  I picked up the old cage and stepped back. It watched me as I moved away, its head tilted with curiosity. I shut the cage door, and its ear flicked at the metallic sound. When harvest came, it would scream with rage. It would tear at the bars, trying to rip them apart.

  Daedalus let out a low breath. “How did you do that?”

  “It is half beast,” I said. “All the animals on Aiaia are tame.”

  “Can the spell be undone?”

  “Not by another.”

  We locked the cage. All the while the creature watched us. It made a low noise and rubbed at a hairy cheek with one of its hands. Then we swung the wooden door of the room closed and saw no more.

  “And the key?”

  “I plan to throw it away. When we have to move it, I will cut the bars.”

  We walked back through the twisting under-passages and up to the corridors above. In the painted hall, the breeze was blowing, and the air bright. Pretty nobles passed on every side, murmuring their secrets. Did they know what lived beneath them? They would.

  “There is a feast this evening,” he said.

  “I am not going,” I said. “I am finished with the court of Crete.”

  “You are leaving soon, then?”

  “I am at the king and queen’s mercy for that, they are the ones with the ships. But I imagine it will not be much longer. I think Minos will be glad to have one less witch on Crete. It will be good to be home.”

  It was true, yet in those ornate corridors, the thought of returning to Aiaia was strange. Its hills and shore, the stone house with my garden, all seemed very distant.

  “I must show my face tonight,” he said. “Yet I hope to make my excuses before the meal.” He hesitated. “Goddess, I know I presume, but will you do me the honor of dining with me?”

  He had told me to come when the moon was up. His rooms were at the opposite end of the palace from my sister’s. If that was luck or design I could not say. He wore a finer cloak than I had seen him in before, but his feet were bare. He drew me to a table, poured a wine dark as mulberries. There were platters set out, heaped with fruits and a salty white cheese.

  “How was the feast?”

  “I am glad to be gone.” His voice was curdled. “They had a singer in, to tell the tale of the glorious bull-man’s birth. Apparently he fell from a star.”

  A boy ran out from an inner room. I did not know mortal ages well then, but I think he may have been four. His black hair curled thick and wild around his ears, and his limbs were still babyishly round. He had the sweetest face I had ever seen, gods included.

  “My son,” Daedalus said.

  I stared. I had not even considered that Daedalus’ secret could be a child. The boy knelt, like an infant courtier.

  “Noble lady,” he piped. “I welcome you to my father’s house.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And are you a good boy, for your father?”

  He nodded seriously. “Oh, yes.”

  Daedalus laughed. “Don’t believe a word. He looks sweet as cream, but he does what he wants.” The boy smiled at his father. It was an old joke between them.

  He stayed for some time, prattling of his father’s work and how he helped. He brought out the tongs he liked to use and showed me with a practiced grip how he could hold them in the fire and not be burnt. I nodded, but it was his father I watched. Daedalus’ face had gone soft as ripe fruit, his eyes full and shining. I had never thought of having children, but looking at him, for a moment I could imagine it. As if I peered into a well and far below glimpsed a flash of water.

  My sister, of course, would have seen such love in an instant.

  Daedalus put his hand to his son’s shoulder. “Icarus,” he said, “it is time for bed. Go find your nurse.”

  “You will come kiss me goodnight?”

  “Of course.”

  We watched him go, small heels brushing the hem of his too-long tunic.

  “He is handsome,” I said.

  “He has his mother’s face.” He answered the question before I asked it. “She passed at his birth. A good woman, though I did not know her long. Your sister arranged the marriage.”

  So I had not been so wrong after all. My sister had baited the hook, but she caught the fish another way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He bowed his head. “It is difficult, I admit. I have done my best to be father to him and mother too, but I know he feels the lack. Every woman we pass, he asks if I will marry her.”

  “And will you?”

  He was silent a moment. “I think not. Pasiphaë has enough to scourge me with already, and I would never have married in the first place, if she had not insisted. I know what an unfit husband I make, for I am happiest when my hands are busy at my work, and then I come home late and filthy.”

  “Witchcraft and invention have that in common,” I said. “I do not think I would make a fit wife either. Not that my door is battered down. Apparently the market for disgraced sorceresses is thin.”

  He smiled. “Your sister I think has helped poison that well.”

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

  “Do you know yet how you will keep the creature when it is grown?”

  He nodded. “I have been thinking. You see what a honeycomb the palace is beneath. There are a hundred storerooms that go unused, for all the wealth of Crete is in gold these days, not grain. I think I may make them into a sort of maze. Close it at both ends and let the creature roam. It is all dug in the bedrock, so there will be nowhere to break out.”

  It was a good idea. And at least the creature would have more room than a narrow cage. “It will be a marvel,” I said. “A maze that can hold a full-grown monster. You will have to come up with a good name for it.”

  “I’m sure Minos will have a suggestion, involving himself.”

  “I’m sorry that I cannot stay to help.”

  “You have helped more than I deserve.” His gaze lifted to touch mine.

  A throat cleared. The nurse stood in the doorway. “Your son, sir.”

  “Ah,” Daedalus said. “Excuse me.”

  I felt too restless to sit patiently. I wandered the room. I had expected it to be filled with more of his wonders, statues and inlay in every corner, but it was simple, the furniture unadorned wood. Yet looking more closely, I saw Daedalus’ stamp. The polish glowed and the grain was rubbed soft as flower petals. When I passed my hand over a chair, I could not find its seams.

  He came back. “The bedtime kiss,” he explained.

  “A happy child.”

  Daedalus sat, drank a swallow of wine. “For now, he is. He is too young to know himself a prisoner.” Those white scars seemed to flare on his hands. “A golden cage is still a cage.”

  “And where would you go, if you might escape?”

  “Wherever would have me. But if I may choose, Egypt. They are building things that make Knossos look like a mudflat. I have been learning the language from some of their traders on the docks. I think they would welcome us.”

  I looked into his good face. Not good because it was handsome, but because it was itself, like fine metal, tempered and beaten for strength. Two monsters we had fought side by side, and he had not wavered. Come to Aiaia, I wanted to say. But I knew there was nothing for him there.

  Instead I told him, “I hope you will get to Egypt one day.”

  We finished our meal, and I walked the dark corridors back to my room. The evening had been pleasant, but I felt roiled and muddy, my mind like river-silt stirred up from its beds. I could not stop hearing Daedalus talking of his freedom. There had been such yearning in his voice, and bitterness too. At least I had earned my exile, but Daedalus was innocent, kept only as a trophy for my sister and Minos’ vanity. I thought of his eyes when he had spoken of Icarus, that pure, shining love. To my sister, it wa
s no more than a tool, a sword to hang over his head and make him her slave. I remembered the pleasure on her face when she had ordered him to cut her open. She had had the same look when I had stepped through her door.

  I had been so consumed with the Minotaur that I had not seen what a triumph this had all been for her. Not just the monster and her new fame, but everything that went with it: Daedalus forced into complicity, Minos cringing and humiliated, and all of Crete held hostage to fear. And me, I was a triumph too. She might have summoned others, but I had always been the dog she liked to whip. She had known how useful I would be, dutifully cleaning her messes, protecting Daedalus, seeing the monster safely contained. And all the while she could laugh from her golden couch. Do you like my new pet? I give her nothing but blows, yet see how she runs to my whistle!

  My stomach burned. I turned away from my cell. I walked as a god, unseen, past the drowsing guards, past the night servants. I reached the door of my sister’s room and stepped through it. I stood over her bed. She was alone. My sister trusted her sleep to none but herself. I had felt the spells when I passed the threshold, but they could not stop me.

  “Why did you summon me here?” I demanded. “Let me hear you admit it.”

  Her eyes opened at once, keen, as if she had been expecting me. “It was a gift, of course. Who else would have enjoyed seeing me bleed so much?”

  “I can think of a thousand.”

  She smiled, as cats smile. It was always more fun to play with a live mouse. “What a shame it is that you can’t use your new binding spell on Scylla. But of course you would need her mother’s blood. I don’t think that shark Krataiis will oblige you.”

  I had thought of it already. Pasiphaë always knew where to aim the spear.

  “You wanted to humiliate me,” I said.

  She yawned, pink tongue against her white teeth. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “of naming my son Asterion. Do you like it?”

  Starry one, it meant. “The prettiest name for a cannibal I ever heard.”