Circe Read online

Page 33


  “You were wrong,” I said.

  “You have always been insolent, Titan.” Sharply, as if to wound me with her precision, she turned her gaze to Telemachus. He was kneeling, Penelope beside him. “Son of Odysseus,” she said. Her voice changed, gilding itself. “Zeus has foretold that a new empire will rise in the West. Aeneas is fled there with his remnant Trojans, and I would have Greeks to balance and hold them at bay. The land is fertile and rich, thick with beasts of field and forest, overhung with fruits of every kind. You will found a prosperous city there, you will build stout walls and set down laws to hold back the tide of savagery. You will seed a great people who will rule in ages to come. I have gathered good men from across our lands and set them on a ship. They arrive this day to bear you to your future.”

  The room burned with the aureate sparks of her vision. Telemachus burned too. His shoulders seemed broader, his limbs swollen with strength. Even his voice had deepened. “Goddess,” he said, “gray-eyed and wise. I am honored among mortals. No man can deserve such grace.”

  She smiled like a temple snake over its bowl of cream. “The ship will come for you at dusk. Be ready.”

  It was his cue to stand. To show off that glory she had bestowed on him, lift it like a glittering standard. But he knelt, unmoving. “I fear I am not worthy of your gifts.”

  I frowned. Why was he groveling so much? It was not wise. He should thank her and be done, before she found some reason for offense.

  Her voice had a tinge of impatience. “I know your weaknesses,” she said. “They will not matter, when I am there to steady your spear-arm. I guided you once to victory against the suitors. I will guide you again.”

  “You have watched over me,” he said. “I thank you for it. Yet I cannot accept.”

  The air in the room hung utterly still.

  “What do you mean?” The words sizzled.

  “I have considered,” he said. “For three days I have considered. And I find in myself no taste for fighting Trojans or building empires. I seek different days.”

  My throat had gone dry. What was the fool doing? The last man who refused Athena was Paris, prince of Troy. He had preferred the goddess Aphrodite, and now he was dead and his city ash.

  Her eyes were augers, boring through the air. “No taste? What is this? Has some other god offered you something better?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  He did not flinch from her gaze. “I do not desire such a life.”

  “Penelope.” The word was a lash. “Speak to your son.”

  Penelope’s face was bent to the floor. “I have, goddess. He is set in his course. You know his father’s blood was always stubborn.”

  “Stubborn in achievement.” Athena snapped each word like a dove’s neck. “In ingenuity. What is this degeneracy?” She swung back to Telemachus. “I do not make this offer again. If you persist in this foolishness, if you refuse me, all my glory will leave you. Even if you beg, I will not come.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  His calmness seemed to enrage her. “There will be no songs made of you. No stories. Do you understand? You will live a life of obscurity. You will be without a name in history. You will be no one.”

  Each word was like the blow of a hammer in a forge. He would give in, I thought. Of course he would. The fame she had described was what all mortals yearn for. It is their only hope of immortality.

  “I choose that fate,” he said.

  Disbelief shone naked on her cold, beautiful face. How many times in her eternity had she been told no? She could not parse it. She looked like an eagle who had been diving upon a rabbit, and the next moment found itself in the mud.

  “You are a fool,” she spat. “You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I spare you out of love for your father, but I am patron to you no more.”

  The glory that had shone upon him vanished. He looked shriveled without it, gray and gnarled as olive bark. I was as shocked as Athena. What had he done? And so wrapped was I in these thoughts that I could not see the path we walked until it was too late.

  “Telegonus,” Athena said. Her silver gaze darted to him. Her voice changed again; its iron grew filigree. “You have heard what I offered your brother. I offer it now to you. Will you sail and be my bulwark in Italy?”

  I felt as though I had slipped from a cliff. I was in the air, falling, with nothing to hold me.

  “Son,” I cried. “Say nothing.”

  Fast as arrow-shot, she turned on me. “You dare to obstruct me again? What more do you want from me, witch? I have sworn an oath I will not harm him. I offer him a gift that men would trade their souls for. Will you keep him hobbled all his life, like a broken horse?”

  “You do not want him,” I said. “He killed Odysseus.”

  “Odysseus killed himself,” she said. The words hissed through the room like a scythe’s blade. “He lost his way.”

  “It was you who made him lose it.”

  Anger smoked in her eyes. I saw the thought in them, how her spearhead would look tearing the blood from my throat.

  “I would have made him a god,” she said. “An equal. But in the end, he was too weak.”

  It was all the apology you would ever get from a god. I bared my teeth and slashed the spear-tip through the air. “You will not have my son. I will fight you before I let you take him.”

  “Mother.” The voice was soft at my side. “May I speak?”

  I was breaking to pieces. I knew what I would see when I looked at him, his eager, pleading hope. He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms. I had let Penelope stay on my island so she would not lose her son. I would lose mine instead.

  “I have dreamed of this,” he said. “Of golden fields that stretch out, unbroken, to the horizon. Orchards, gleaming rivers, thriving flocks. I used to think it was Ithaca I saw.”

  He was trying to speak gently, to rein in the excitement that rose in him like a flood. I thought of Icarus, who had died when he was free. Telegonus would die if he were not. Not in flesh and years. But all that was sweet in him would wither and fall away.

  He took my hand. The gesture was like a bard’s. But were we not in a sort of song? This was the refrain we had practiced so often.

  “There is risk, I know it, but you have taught me to be careful. I can do this, Mother. I want to.”

  I was a gray space filled up with nothing. What could I say? One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.

  “My son,” I said, “it is yours to decide.”

  Joy broke from him like a wave. I turned away so I would not have to see it. Athena would be glad, I thought. Here was her vengeance at last.

  “Be ready for the ship,” she said. “It comes this afternoon. I do not send another.”

  The light faded back to simple sun. Penelope and Telemachus eased away. Telegonus embraced me as he had not since he was a child. As maybe he never had. Remember this, I told myself. His wide shoulders, the curve of the bones in his back, the warmth of his breath. But my mind felt parched and windswept.

  “Mother? Can you not be happy for me?”

  No, I wanted to shout at him. No, I cannot. Why must I be happy? Is it not enough that I let you go? But I did not want for that to be the last he saw of me, his mother shrieking and keening as if he were dead, though he was still filled with so many hopeful years.

  “I am happy for you,” I made myself say. I led him to his room. I helped him pack, filling trunks with medicines of every sort, for wounds and headaches, for pox and sleeplessness and even childbirth, which he blushed at.

  “You are founding a dynasty,” I said. “Heirs are usually necessary.”

  I gave him all the warmest clothes I had, though it was spring and would be summer soon. I said he should take Arcturos, who had loved him since she was a puppy. I pressed amulets on him, wrapped him in enchantments. I piled on treasure after treasure, gold and silver and finest embroidery,
for new kings fare best when they have wonders to give.

  He had sobered by then. “What if I fail?”

  I thought of the land Athena had described. The rolling hills, crowded with their heavy fruits and fields of grain, the bright citadel he would build. He would hand down judgments from a lofted chair in its sunniest hall, and men and women would come from far and wide to kneel to him. He will be a good ruler, I thought. Fair-minded and warm. He will not be consumed like his father was. He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.

  “You will not fail,” I said.

  “You do not think she means some harm to me?”

  Now he was worried; now that it was too late. He was only sixteen, so new in the world.

  “No,” I said. “I do not. She values you for your blood, and in time she will value you for yourself as well. She is more reliable than Hermes, though no god can be called steady. You must remember to be your own man.”

  “I will.” He met my eyes. “You are not angry?”

  “No,” I said. It had never truly been anger, only fear and sorrow. He was what the gods could use against me.

  A knock on the door. Telemachus, carrying a long wool parcel. “I am sorry to intrude.” His eyes kept away from mine. He held out the package to my son. “This is for you.”

  Telegonus unwrapped the cloth. A smooth length of wood, tapered at its ends and notched. The bowstrings were coiled neatly around it. Telegonus stroked the leather grip. “It is beautiful.”

  “It was our father’s,” Telemachus said.

  Telegonus looked up, stricken. I saw a shadow of the old grief pass across his face. “Brother, I cannot. I have already taken your city.”

  “That city was never mine,” he said. “Nor was this. You will do better with them both, I think.”

  I felt as though I stood a long way distant. I had never seen the age between them so clearly before. My keen son, and this man who chose to be no one.

  We carried Telegonus’ bags down to the shore. Telemachus and Penelope said their farewells, then stood back. I waited beside my son, but he scarcely knew it. His eyes had found the horizon, that seam of waves and sky.

  The ship came into the harbor. It was large, its sides fresh with resin and paint, its new sail shining. Its men worked cleanly, efficiently. Their beards were trimmed, their bodies honed with strength. When the gangplank was dropped, they gathered eagerly at the rail.

  Telegonus stepped forward to meet them. He stood broad and bright with sun. Arcturos heeled, panting at his side. His father’s bow was strung and hanging from his shoulder.

  “I am Telegonus of Aiaia,” he cried out, “son of a great hero, and a greater goddess. Welcome, for you have been led here by gray-eyed Athena herself.”

  The sailors dropped to their knees. I would not be able to bear it, I thought. I would seize him, hold him to me. But I only embraced him a final time, pressing hard as if to set him into my skin. Then I watched him take his place among them, stand upon the prow, outlined against the sky. The light darted silver from the waves. I lifted my hand in blessing and gave my son to the world.

  In the days that followed, Penelope and Telemachus treated me as if I were Egyptian glass. They spoke softly and walked on light feet past my chair. Penelope offered me the place at the loom. Telemachus kept my cup filled. The fire was always freshly stoked. All of it slid away. They were kind, but they were nothing to me. The syrups in my pantry had been my companions longer. I went to my herbs, but they seemed to shrivel in my fingers. The air felt naked without my spell. Gods might come and go as they wished now. They might do anything. I had no power to stop them.

  The days grew warmer. The sky softened, opening over us like the ripe flesh of a fruit. The spear still leaned in my room. I went to it, took off the sheath to breathe over its pale, envenomed ridges, but what I wanted from it, I could not say. I rubbed at my chest as if it were bread I kneaded. Telemachus said, “Are you well?”

  “Of course I am well. What could be wrong with me? Immortals do not take sick.”

  I went to the beach. I walked carefully, as if I held an infant in my arms. The sun beat upon the horizon. It beat everywhere, upon my back and arms and face. I wore no shawl. I would not burn. I never did.

  My island lay around me. My herbs, my house, my animals. And so it would go, I thought, on and on, forever the same. It did not matter if Penelope and Telemachus were kind. It did not matter even if they stayed for their whole lives, if she were the friend I had yearned for and he were something else, it would only be a blink. They would wither, and I would burn their bodies and watch my memories of them yellow and fade as everything faded in the endless wash of centuries, even Daedalus, even the blood-spatter of the Minotaur, even Scylla’s appetites. Even Telegonus. Sixty, seventy years, a mortal might have. Then he would leave for the underworld, where I could never go, for gods are the opposite of death. I tried to imagine those dusky hills and gray meadows, the shades moving slow and white among them. Some walked hand in hand with those they had loved in life; some waited, secure that one day their beloved would come. And for those who had not loved, whose lives had been filled with pain and horror, there was the black river Lethe, where one might drink and forget. Some consolation.

  For me, there was nothing. I would go on through the countless millennia, while everyone I met ran through my fingers and I was left with only those who were like me. The Olympians and Titans. My sister and brothers. My father.

  I felt something in me then. It was like the old, early days of my spells, when the path would open, sudden and clear before my feet. All those years I had wrestled and fought, yet there was a part of me that had stood still, just as my sister said. I seemed to hear that pale creature in his black depths.

  Then, child, make another.

  I did nothing to prepare. If I was not ready now, when would I be? I did not even walk up to the peak. He could come here, upon my yellow sands, and face me where I stood.

  “Father,” I said, into the air, “I would speak with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  HELIOS WAS NOT A god to be summoned, but I was the wayward daughter who had won Trygon’s tail. Gods love novelty, as I have said. They are curious as cats.

  He stepped from the air. He was wearing his crown, and its rays turned my beach to gold. The purple of his clothes was rich as deep-pooled blood. Hundreds of years and not a thread had changed. He was still that same image that had been seared upon me from my birth.

  “I am come,” he said. His voice rolled like heat from a bonfire.

  “I seek an end to my exile,” I said.

  “There is none. You are punished for eternity.”

  “I ask you to go to Zeus and speak on my behalf. Tell him you would take it as a favor to release me.”

  His face was more incredulous than angry. “Why would I do such a thing?”

  There were many answers I might have given. Because I have been your bargaining piece all along. Because you would have seen those men and known what they were and still you let them land on my island. Because after, when I was a broken thing, you did not come.

  “Because I am your daughter and would be free.”

  He did not even pause. “Disobedient as ever, and over-bold. Calling me here for foolishness and nothing.”

  I looked at his face, blazing with its righteous power. The Great Watchman of the Sky. The Savior, he is called. All-Seeing, Bringer of Light, Delight of Men. I had given him his chance. It was more than he had ever given me.

  “Do you remember,” I said, “when Prometheus was whipped in your hall?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Of course.”

  “I stayed behind, when all the rest of you left. I brought him comfort, and we spoke together.”

  His gaze burned into mine. “You would not have dared.”

  “If you doubt me, you may ask Prometheus himself. Or Aeëtes. Though if you get any truth from him it is a miracle.”

  My skin had begun to ache
at his heat; my eyes watered.

  “If you did such a thing, it is deepest treason. You are more owed to exile than ever. You deserve greater punishment still, all I can give you. You have exposed us to Zeus’ wrath for some foolish whim.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And if you do not see my exile ended, I will expose you again. I will tell Zeus what I did.”

  His face contracted. For the first time in my life, I had truly shocked him. “You would not. Zeus will destroy you.”

  “Perhaps he will,” I said. “But I think he will listen first. And you are the one he will truly blame, for you should have kept better check on your daughter. Of course, I will tell him other things as well. All those tiptoeing treasons I heard you whisper with my uncles. I think Zeus would be glad to know how deep the Titan mutiny goes, don’t you?”

  “You dare to threaten me?”

  These gods, I thought. They always say the same thing.

  “I do.”

  My father’s skin flared blinding bright. His voice seared at my bones. “You would start a war.”

  “I hope so. For I will see you torn down, Father, before I will be jailed for your convenience any longer.”

  His rage was so hot the air bent and wavered around him. “I can end you with a thought.”

  It was my oldest fear, that white annihilation. I felt it shiver through me. But enough. At last, enough.

  “You can,” I said. “But you have always been cautious, Father. You know I have stood against Athena. I have walked in the blackest deeps. You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows what is in me? Will you find out?”

  The words hung in the air. His eyes were discs of ignited gold, but I did not look away.

  “If I do this thing,” he said, “it is the last I will ever do for you. Do not come begging again.”

  “Father,” I said, “I never will. I leave this place tomorrow.”

  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.