Circe Read online

  “A leg,” she said. “A hideous leg. Like a squid’s, boneless and covered in slime. It burst from her belly, and another burst beside it, and more and more, until there were twelve all dangling from her.”

  My fingertips stung faintly where the sap had leaked.

  “That was only the beginning,” Selene said. “She was bucking, her shoulders writhing. Her skin turned gray and her neck began to stretch. From it tore five new heads, each filled with gaping teeth.”

  My cousins gasped, but the sound was distant, like far-off waves. It felt impossible to picture the horror Selene described. To make myself believe: I did that.

  “And all the while, she was baying and howling, barking like some wild pack of dogs. It was a relief when she finally dove beneath the waves.”

  As I had squeezed those flowers into Scylla’s cove, I had not wondered how my cousins would take it, those who were Scylla’s sisters and aunts and brothers and lovers. If I had thought of it, I would have said that Scylla was their darling, and that when the Furies came for me, they would have shouted loudest of all to see my blood. But now when I looked around me, all I saw were faces bright as whetted blades. They clung to each other, crowing. I wish I’d seen it! Can you imagine?

  “Tell it again,” an uncle shouted, and my cousins cried out their agreement.

  My aunt smiled. Her curving lips made a crescent like herself in the sky. She told it again: the legs, the necks, the teeth.

  My cousins’ voices swarmed up to the ceiling.

  You know she’s lain with half the halls.

  I’m glad I never let her have me. And one of the river-gods’ voices, rising over all: Of course she barks. She always was a bitch!

  Shrieking laughter clawed at my ears. I saw a river-god who had sworn he would fight Glaucos over her crying with mirth. Scylla’s sister pretended to howl like a dog. Even my grandparents had come to listen, smiling at the crowd’s edge. Oceanos said something in Tethys’ ear. I could not hear it, but I had watched him for half an eternity, I knew the movements of his lips. Good riddance.

  Beside me an uncle was shouting, Tell it again! This time my aunt only rolled her pearly eyes. He smelled like squids, and anyway, it was past time for the feast. The gods wafted to their couches. The cups were poured, the ambrosia passed. Their lips grew red with wine, their faces shone like jewels. Their laughter crackled around me.

  I knew that electric pleasure, I thought. I had seen it before, in another dark hall.

  The doors opened and Glaucos stepped through, his trident in his hand. His hair was greener than ever, fanned out like a lion’s mane. I saw the joy leap in my cousins’ eyes, heard their hiss of excitement. Here was more sport. They would tell him of his love’s transformation, crack his face like an egg and laugh at what ran out.

  But before they could say anything, my father was there, striding over to pull him aside.

  My cousins sank back on sour elbows. Spoilsport Helios, ruining their fun. No matter, Perse would get it out of him later, or Selene. They lifted their goblets and went back to their pleasures.

  I followed after Glaucos. I do not know how I dared, except that all my mind was filled up with a gray wash like churning waves. I stood outside the room where my father had drawn them.

  I heard Glaucos’ low voice: “Can she not be changed back?”

  Every god-born knows that answer from their swaddles. “No,” my father said. “No god may undo what is done by the Fates or another god. Yet these halls have a thousand beauties, each ripe as the next. Look to them instead.”

  I waited. I still hoped Glaucos would think of me. I would have married him in a moment. But I found myself hoping for another thing too, which I would not have believed the day before: that he would weep all the salt in his veins for Scylla’s return, holding fast to her as his one, true love.

  “I understand,” Glaucos said. “It is a shame, but as you say there are others.”

  A soft metal ping rang out. He was flicking the tines of his trident. “Nereus’ youngest is fair,” he said. “What is her name? Thetis?”

  My father clicked his tongue. “Too salted for my taste.”

  “Well,” Glaucos said. “Thank you for your excellent counsel. I will look to it.”

  They walked right by me. My father took his golden place beside my grandfather. Glaucos made his way to the purple couches. He looked up at something a river-god said and laughed. It is the last memory I have of his face, his teeth bright as pearls in the torchlight, his skin stained blue.

  In years to come, he would take my father’s advice indeed. He lay with a thousand nymphs, siring children with green hair and tails, well loved by fishermen, for often they filled their nets. I would see them sometimes, sporting like dolphins in the deepest crests. They never came in to shore.

  The black river slid along its banks. The pale flowers nodded on their stems. I was blind to all of it. One by one my hopes were dropping away. I would share no eternity with Glaucos. We would have no marriage. We would never lie in those woods. His love for me was drowned and gone.

  Nymphs and gods flowed past, their gossip drifting in the fragrant, torch-lit air. Their faces were the same as always, vivid and glowing, but they seemed suddenly alien. Their strings of jewels clacked loud as bird-bills, their red mouths stretched wide around their laughter. Somewhere Glaucos laughed among them, but I could not pick his voice out from the throng.

  Not all gods need be the same.

  My face had begun to burn. It was not pain, not exactly, but a stinging that went on and on. I pressed my fingers to my cheeks. How long had it been since I’d thought of Prometheus? A vision of him rose before me now: his torn back and steady face, his dark eyes encompassing everything.

  Prometheus had not cried out as the blows fell, though he had grown so covered in blood that he’d looked like a statue dipped in gold. And all the while, the gods had watched, their attention bright as lightning. They would have relished a turn with the Fury’s whip, given the chance.

  I was not like them.

  Are you not? The voice was my uncle’s, resonant and deep. Then you must think, Circe. What would they not do?

  My father’s chair was draped with the skins of pure-black lambs. I knelt by their dangling necks.

  “Father,” I said, “it was I who made Scylla a monster.”

  All around me, voices dropped. I cannot say if the very furthest couches looked, if Glaucos looked, but all my uncles did, snapped up from their drowsy conversation. I felt a sharp joy. For the first time in my life, I wanted their eyes.

  “I used wicked pharmaka to make Glaucos a god, and then I changed Scylla. I was jealous of his love for her and wanted to make her ugly. I did it selfishly, in bitter heart, and I would bear the consequence.”

  “Pharmaka,” my father said.

  “Yes. The yellow flowers that grow from Kronos’ spilled blood and turn creatures to their truest selves. I dug up a hundred flowers and dropped them in her pool.”

  I had expected a whip to be brought forth, a Fury summoned. A place in chains beside my uncle’s on the rock. But my father only filled his cup. “It is no matter. Those flowers have no powers in them, not anymore. Zeus and I made sure of that.”

  I stared at him. “Father, I did it. With my own hands, I broke their stalks and smeared the sap on Glaucos’ lips, and he was changed.”

  “You had a premonition, which is common in my children.” His voice was even, firm as a stone wall. “It was Glaucos’ fate to be changed at that moment. The herbs did nothing.”

  “No,” I tried to say, but he did not pause. His voice lifted, to cover mine.

  “Think, daughter. If mortals could be made into gods so easily, would not every goddess feed them to her favorite? And would not half the nymphs be changed to monsters? You are not the first jealous girl in these halls.”

  My uncles were beginning to smile.

  “I am the only one who knows where those flowers are.”

  “
Of course you are not,” my uncle Proteus said. “You had that knowledge from me. Do you think I would have given it, if I thought you could do any harm?”

  “And if there was so much power in those plants,” Nereus said, “my fish from Scylla’s cove would be changed. Yet they are whole and well.”

  My face was flushing. “No.” I shook off Nereus’ seaweed hand. “I changed Scylla, and now I must take the punishment on my head.”

  “Daughter, you begin to make a spectacle.” The words cut across the air. “If the world contained the power you allege, do you think it would fall to such as you to discover it?”

  Soft laughter at my back, open amusement on my uncles’ faces. But most of all my father’s voice, speaking those words like trash he dropped. Such as you. Any other day in all my years of life I would have curled upon myself and wept. But that day his scorn was like a spark falling on dry tinder. My mouth opened.

  “You are wrong,” I said.

  He had leaned away to note something to my grandfather. Now his gaze swung back to mine. His face began to glow. “What did you say?”

  “I say those plants have power.”

  His skin flared white. White as the fire’s heart, as purest, hottest coals. He stood, yet he kept on rising, as if he would tear a hole in the ceiling, in the earth’s crust, as if he would not cease until he scraped the stars. And then the heat came, rolling over me with a sound like roaring waves, blistering my skin, crushing the breath from my chest. I gasped, but there was no air. He had taken it all.

  “You dare to contradict me? You who cannot light a single flame, or call one drop of water? Worst of my children, faded and broken, whom I cannot pay a husband to take. Since you were born, I pitied you and allowed you license, yet you grew disobedient and proud. Will you make me hate you more?”

  In another moment, the rocks themselves would have melted, and all my watery cousins dried up to their bones. My flesh bubbled and opened like a roasted fruit, my voice shriveled in my throat and was scorched to dust. The pain was such as I had never imagined could exist, a searing agony consuming every thought.

  I fell to my father’s feet. “Father,” I croaked, “forgive me. I was wrong to believe such a thing.”

  Slowly, the heat receded. I lay where I had fallen upon the mosaic floor, with its fish and purpled fruits. My eyes were half blind. My hands were melted claws. The river-gods shook their heads, making sounds like water over rocks. Helios, you have the strangest children.

  My father sighed. “It is Perse’s fault. All the ones before hers were fine.”

  I did not move. The hours passed and no one looked at me or spoke my name. They talked of their own affairs, of the fineness of the wine and food. The torches went out and the couches emptied. My father rose and stepped over me. The faint breeze he stirred cut into my skin like a knife. I had thought my grandmother might speak a soft word, bring salve to sooth my burns, but she had gone to her bed.

  Perhaps they will send guards for me, I thought. But why should they? I was no danger in the world.

  The waves of pain ran cold and then hot and then cold again. I shook and the hours passed. My limbs were raw and blackened, my back bubbled over with sores. I was afraid to touch my face. Dawn would come soon, and my whole family would pour in for their breakfasts, chattering of the day’s amusements. They would curl their lips as they passed by where I lay.

  Inch by slow inch, I drew myself to my feet. The thought of returning to my father’s halls was like a white coal in my throat. I could not go home. There was only one other place in all the world I knew: those woods I had dreamed of so often. The deep shadows would hide me, and the mossy ground would be soft against my ruined skin. I set that image in my eye and limped towards it. The salt air of the beach stabbed like needles in my blasted throat, and each touch of wind set my burns screaming again. At last, I felt the shade close over me, and I curled up on the moss. It had rained a little, and the damp earth was sweet against me. So many times I had imagined lying there with Glaucos, but whatever tears might have been in me for that lost dream had been parched away. I closed my eyes, drifting through the shocks and skirls of pain. Slowly, my relentless divinity began to make headway. My breath eased, my eyes cleared. My arms and legs still ached, but when I brushed them with my fingers I touched skin instead of char.

  The sun set, glowing behind the trees. Night came with its stars. It was moondark, when my aunt Selene goes to her dreaming husband. It was that, I think, which gave me heart enough to rise, for I could not have endured the thought of her reporting it: That fool actually went to look at them! As if she still believed they worked!

  The night air tingled across my skin. The grass was dry, flattened by high-summer heat. I found the hill and halted up its slope. In the starlight, the flowers looked small, bled gray and faint. I plucked a stalk and held it in my hand. It lay there limp, all its sap dried and gone. What had I thought would happen? That it would leap up and shout, Your father is wrong. You changed Scylla and Glaucos. You are not poor and patchy, but Zeus come again?

  Yet, as I knelt there, I did hear something. Not a sound, but a sort of silence, a faint hum like the space between note and note in a song. I waited for it to fade into the air, for my mind to right itself. But it went on.

  I had a wild thought there, beneath that sky. I will eat these herbs. Then whatever is truly in me, let it be out, at last.

  I brought them to my mouth. But my courage failed. What was I truly? In the end, I could not bear to know.

  It was nearly dawn when my uncle Achelous found me, beard foaming in his haste. “Your brother is here. You are summoned.”

  I followed him to my father’s halls, still stumbling a little. Past the polished tables we went, past the draped bedroom where my mother slept. Aeëtes was standing over our father’s draughts board. His face had grown sharp with manhood, his tawny beard was thick as bracken. He was dressed opulently even for a god, robed in indigos and purples, every inch heavy with embroidered gold. But when he turned to me, I felt the shock of that old love between us. It was only my father’s presence that kept me from hurtling into his arms.

  “Brother,” I said, “I have missed you.”

  He frowned. “What is wrong with your face?”

  I touched my hand to it, and the peeling skin flared with pain. I flushed. I did not want to tell him, not here. My father sat in his burning chair, and even his faint, habitual light made me ache anew.

  My father spared me from having to answer. “Well? She is come. Speak.”

  I quivered at the sound of his displeasure, but Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if my father’s anger were only another thing in the room, a table, a stool.

  “I have come,” he said, “because I heard of Scylla’s transformation, and Glaucos’ too, at Circe’s hands.”

  “At the Fates’ hands. I tell you, Circe has no such power.”

  “You are mistaken.”

  I stared, expecting my father’s wrath to fall upon him. But my brother continued.

  “In my kingdom of Colchis, I have done such things and more, much more. Called milk out of the earth, bewitched men’s senses, shaped warriors from dust. I have summoned dragons to draw my chariot. I have said charms that veil the sky with black, and brewed potions that raise the dead.”

  From anyone else’s mouth these claims would have seemed like wild lies. But my brother’s voice carried its old utter conviction.

  “Pharmakeia, such arts are called, for they deal in pharmaka, those herbs with the power to work changes upon the world, both those sprung from the blood of gods, as well as those which grow common upon the earth. It is a gift to be able to draw out their powers, and I am not alone in possessing it. In Crete, Pasiphaë rules with her poisons, and in Babylon Perses conjures souls into flesh again. Circe is the last and makes the proof.”

  My father’s gaze was far away. As if he were looking through sea and earth, all the way to Colchis. It might have been some trick of the hearth-fi
re, but I thought the light of his face flickered.

  “Shall I give you a demonstration?” My brother drew out from his robes a small pot with a wax seal. He broke the seal and touched his finger to the liquid inside. I smelled something sharp and green, with a brackish edge.

  He pressed his thumb to my face and spoke a word, too low for me to hear. My skin began to itch, and then, like a taper snuffed out, the pain was gone. When I put my hand to my cheek I felt only smoothness, and a faint sheen as if from oil.

  “A good trick, is it not?” Aeëtes said.

  My father did not answer. He sat strangely dumb. I felt struck dumb myself. The power of healing another’s flesh belonged only to the greatest gods, not to such as us.

  My brother smiled, as if he could hear my thoughts. “And that is the least of my powers. They are drawn from the earth itself, and so are not bound by the normal laws of divinity.” He let the words hang a moment in the air. “I understand of course that you can make no judgments now. You must take counsel. But you should know that I would be happy to give Zeus a more…impressive demonstration.”

  A look flashed in his eyes, like teeth in a wolf’s mouth.

  My father’s words came slowly. That same numbness still masked his face. I understood with an odd jolt. He is afraid.

  “I must take counsel, as you say. This is…new. Until it is decided, you will remain in these halls. Both of you.”

  “I expected no less,” Aeëtes said. He inclined his head and turned to go. I followed, skin prickling with the rush of my thoughts, and a breathless, rearing hope. The myrrh-wood doors shut behind us, and we stood in the hall. Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if he had not just performed a miracle and silenced our father. I had a thousand questions ready to tumble out, but he spoke first.

  “What have you been doing all this while? You took forever. I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t a pharmakis after all.”