Circe

Chapter Fifteen

I PICKED UP THE overturned benches, wiped the soaked floors. I stacked the platters and carried them to the kitchen. I had scrubbed myself in the waves with sand till the blood came through. I’d found the glob of spit on the flagstone and scrubbed that too. It did nothing. With every movement I could feel the prints of his fingers.

The wolves and lions had crept back, shadows in the dark. They lay down, pressing their faces to the floor. At last, when there was nothing else to clean, I sat before the hearth ash. I was not shaking anymore. I did not move at all. My flesh seemed to have congealed around me. My skin stretched over it like a dead thing, rubbery and vile.

It was shading to dawn, when the silver horses of the moon go to their stables. My aunt Selene’s chariot had been full all night, her light strong in the sky. By the brightness of her face I had dragged those monstrous carcasses down to the boat, struck flint, and watched the flames leap up. She would have told Helios by now. My father would appear any moment, the patriarch outraged at the insult to his child. My ceiling would creak as his shoulders pressed against it. Poor child, poor exiled daughter. I should never have let Zeus send you here.

The room turned gray, then yellow. A sea breeze stirred, but it was not enough to push away the stink of burnt flesh. My father had never spoken that way in his life, I knew it. But surely, I thought, he would still have to come, if only to reproach me. I was no Zeus, I would not be allowed to strike down twenty men in a moment. I spoke out to the pale edge of my father’s rising chariot. Did you hear what I did?

The shadows moved across the floor. The light crept over my feet, touched the hem of my dress. Each moment stretched into the next. No one came.

Maybe the true surprise, I thought, was that it had not happened sooner. My uncles’ eyes used to crawl over me as I poured their wine. Their hands found their way to my flesh. A pinch, a stroke, a hand slipping under the sleeve of my dress. They all had wives, it was not marriage they thought of. One of them would have come for me in the end and paid my father well. Honor on all sides.

The light had reached the loom, and its cedar scent was rising in the air. The memory of Daedalus’ white-scarred hands, and the pleasure I had taken in them, was like a hot wire pushed through my brain. I dug my nails into my wrist. There are oracles scattered across our lands. Shrines where priestesses breathe sacred fumes and speak the truths they find in them. Know yourself is carved above their doors. But I had been a stranger to myself, turned to stone for no reason I could name.

Daedalus had told me a story once about the lords of Crete who used to hire him to enlarge their houses. He would arrive with his tools, begin taking down the walls, pulling up the floors. But whenever he found some problem underneath that must first be fixed, they frowned. That was not in the agreement!

Of course not, he said, it has been hidden in the foundation, but look, there it is, plain as day. See the cracked beam? See the beetles eating the floor? See how the stone is sinking into the swamp?

That only made the lords angrier. It was fine until you dug it up! We will not pay! Close it up, plaster over. It has stood this long, it will stand longer.

So he would seal that fault up, and the next season the house would fall down. Then they would come to him, demanding back their money.

“I told them,” he said to me. “I told them and told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.”

The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache.

Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

They came, I cannot say why. Some revolution of the Fates, some change in trade and shipping routes. Some scent upon the air, wafting: here are nymphs, and they live alone. The boats flew to my harbor as if yanked on a string. The men splashed to shore and looked around, pleased. Fresh water, game, fish, fruits. And I thought I saw hearth smoke above the trees. Is that someone singing?

I could have cast an illusion over the island to keep them away, I had the power to do it. Drape my gentle shores in an image of staving rocks and whirlpools, of jagged, unscaleable cliffs. They would sail on, and I would never need to see them, nor anyone, again.

No, I thought. It is too late for that. I have been found. Let them see what I am. Let them learn the world is not as they think.

They climbed up the trails. They crossed the stones of my garden path. They all had the same desperate story: they were lost, they were weary, they were out of food. They would be so grateful for my help.

A few of these, so few I can count them on my fingers, I let go. They did not see me as their dinner. They were pious men, honestly lost, and I would feed them, and if there was a handsome one among them I might take him to my bed. It was not desire, not even its barest scrapings. It was a sort of rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own. And did I like the answer I found?

“Leave,” I told them.

They knelt to me on my yellow sands. “Goddess,” they said, “at least give us your name so we may send you our thankful prayers.”

I did not want their prayers, nor my name in their mouths. I wanted them gone. I wanted to scrub myself in the sea until the blood showed through.

I wanted the next crew to come, so I might see again their tearing flesh.

There was always a leader. He was not the largest, and he need not be the captain, but he was the one they looked to for instruction in their cruelty. He had a cold eye and a coiling tension. Like a snake, the poets might say, but I knew snakes better by then. Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.

I did not send my animals away anymore when men came. I let them loll where they liked, around the garden, under my tables. It pleased me to see the men walk among them, trembling at their teeth and unnatural tameness. I did not pretend to be a mortal. I showed my lambent, yellow eyes at every turn. None of it made a difference. I was alone and a woman, that was all that mattered.

I set my feasts before them, the meats and cheese, the fruits and fish. I set as well my largest bronze mixing bowl, filled to the brim with wine. They gulped and chewed, seized dripping cuts of mutton and dangled them down their throats. They poured and poured again, soaking their lips, slopping the table with red. Bits of barley and herbs stuck to their lips. The bowl is empty, they would say to me. Fill it. Add more honey this time, the vintage has a bitter tang.

Of course, I said.

The edge came off their hunger. They began to look around. I saw them notice the marble floors, the platters, the fine weave of my clothes. They smirked. If this was what I dared to show them, imagine what might be hiding in the back.

“Mistress?” the leader would say. “Do not tell me that such a beauty as yourself dwells all alone?”

“Oh, yes,” I would answer. “Quite alone.”

He would smile. He could not help it. There was never any fear in him. Why should there be? He had already noted for himself that there was no man’s cloak hanging by the door, no hunter’s bow, no shepherd’s staff. No sign of brothers or fathers or sons, no vengeance that would follow after. If I were valuable to anyone, I would not be allowed to live alone.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said.

The bench would scrape, and he would stand. The men watched with bright eyes. They wanted the freeze, the flinch, the begging that would come.

It was my favorite moment, seeing them frown and try to understand why I wasn’t afraid. In their bodies I could feel my herbs like strings waiting to be plucked. I savored their confusion, their dawning fear. Then I plucked them.

Their backs bent, forcing them onto hands and knees, faces bloating like drowned corpses. They thrashed and the benches turned over, wine splattered the floor. Their screams broke into squeals. I am certain it hurt.

I kept the leader for last, so he could watch. He shrank, pressed against the wall. Please. Spare me, spare me, spare me.

No, I would say. Oh, no.

When it was over it remained only to drive them out to the pen. I raised my staff of ash wood and they ran. The gate closed after them and they pressed back against the posts, their piggy eyes still wet with the last of their human tears.

My nymphs said not a word, though I suspected they watched sometimes through the crack of the door.

“Mistress Circe, another ship. Shall we go back to our room?”

“Please. And pull out the wine for me before you go.”

From one task to another I went, weaving, working, slopping my pigs, crossing and recrossing the isle. I moved straight-backed, as if a great brimming bowl rested in my hands. The dark liquid rippled as I walked, always at the point of overflow, yet never flowing. Only if I stopped, if I lay down, did I feel it begin to bleed.

Brides, nymphs were called, but that is not really how the world saw us. We were an endless feast laid out upon a table, beautiful and renewing. And so very bad at getting away.

The rails of my sty cracked with age and use. From time to time the wood buckled and a pig escaped. Most often, he would throw himself from the cliffs. The seabirds were grateful; they seemed to come from half the world away to feast on the plump bones. I would stand watching as they stripped the fat and sinew. The small pink scrap of tail-skin dangled from one of their beaks like a worm. If it were a man, I wondered if I would pity him. But it was not a man.

When I passed back by the pen, his friends would stare at me with pleading faces. They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.

On my bed, the lions rested their chins on my stomach. I pushed them off. I rose and walked again.

He asked me once, why pigs. We were seated before my hearth, in our usual chairs. He liked the one draped in cowhide, with silver inlaid in its carvings. Sometimes he would rub the scrolling absently beneath his thumb.

“Why not?” I said.

He gave me a bare smile. “I mean it, I would like to know.”

I knew he meant it. He was not a pious man, but the seeking out of things hidden, this was his highest worship.

There were answers in me. I felt them, buried deep as last year’s bulbs, growing fat. Their roots tangled with those moments I had spent against the wall, when my lions were gone, and my spells shut up inside me, and my pigs screamed in the yard.

After I changed a crew, I would watch them scrabbling and crying in the sty, falling over each other, stupid with their horror. They hated it all, their newly voluptuous flesh, their delicate split trotters, their swollen bellies dragging in the earth’s muck. It was a humiliation, a debasement. They were sick with longing for their hands, those appendages men use to mitigate the world.

Come, I would say to them, it’s not that bad. You should appreciate a pig’s advantages. Mud-slick and swift, they are hard to catch. Low to the ground, they cannot easily be knocked over. They are not like dogs, they do not need your love. They can thrive anywhere, on anything, scraps and trash. They look witless and dull, which lulls their enemies, but they are clever. They will remember your face.

They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs.

In my chair by the hearth, I lifted my cup. “Sometimes,” I told him, “you must be content with ignorance.”

He did not like that answer, yet that was the perversity of him: in a way he liked it best of all. I had seen how he could shuck truths from men like oyster shells, how he could pry into a breast with a glance and a well-timed word. So little of the world did not yield to his sounding. In the end, I think the fact that I did not was his favorite thing about me.

But I am ahead of myself now.

A ship, the nymphs said. Very patched, with eyes upon the hull.

That caught my attention. Common pirates did not have the gold to waste on paint. But I did not go look. The anticipation was part of the pleasure. The moment when the knock came, and I would rise from my herbs, swing wide the door. There were no pious men anymore, there had not been for a long time. The spell was polished in my mouth as a river stone.

I added a handful of roots to the draught I was making. There was moly in it, and the liquid gleamed.

The afternoon passed, and the sailors did not appear. My nymphs reported they were camped on the beach with fires burning. Another day went by, and at last on the third day came the knock.

That painted ship of theirs was the finest thing about them. Their faces had lines like grandfathers. Their eyes were bloodshot and dead. They flinched from my animals.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You are lost? You are hungry and tired and sad?”

They ate well. They drank more. Their bodies were lumpish here and there with fat, though the muscles beneath were hard as trees. Their scars were long, ridged and slashing. They had had a good season, then met someone who did not like their thieving. They were plunderers, of that I had no doubt. Their eyes never stopped counting up my treasures, and they grinned at the tally they came to.

I did not wait anymore for them to stand and come at me. I raised my staff, I spoke the word. They went crying to their pen like all the rest.

The nymphs were helping me set right the toppled benches and scrub away the wine stains when one of them glanced at the window. “Mistress, another on the path.”

I had thought the crew too small to man a full ship. Some of them must have waited on the beach, and now one had been sent to scout after his fellows. The nymphs set out new wine and slipped away.

I opened the door at the man’s knock. The late sun fell on him, picking out the red in his neat beard, the faint silver in his hair. He wore a bronze sword at his waist. He was not so tall as some, but strong, I saw, his joints well seasoned.

“Lady,” he said, “my crew has taken shelter with you. I hope I may as well?”

I put all my father’s brightness into my smile. “You are as welcome as your friends.”

I watched him while I filled the cups. Another thief, I thought. But his eyes only grazed my rich trappings. They lingered instead on a stool, still upended on the floor. He bent down and set it upright.

“Thank you,” I said. “My cats. They are always tumbling something.”

“Of course,” he said.

I brought him food and wine, and led him to my hearth. He took the goblet and sat in the silver chair I indicated. I saw him wince a little as he bent, as if at the pull of recent wounds. A jagged scar ran up his muscled calf from heel to thigh, but it was old and faded. He gestured with his cup.

“I have never seen a loom like that,” he said. “Is it an Eastern design?”

A thousand of his kind had passed through this room. They had catalogued every inch of gold and silver, but not one had ever noticed the loom.

I hesitated for the briefest moment.

“Egyptian.”

“Ah. They make the best things, don’t they? Clever to use a second beam instead of loom weights. So much more efficient to draw the weft down. I would love to have a sketch.” His voice was resonant, warm, with a pull to it that reminded me of ocean tides. “My wife would be thrilled. Those weights used to drive her mad. She kept saying someone ought to invent something better. Alas, I have not found time to apply myself to it. One of my many husbandly failings.”

My wife. The words jarred me. If any of the men in all those crews had had a wife, they never mentioned her. He smiled at me, his dark eyes on mine. His goblet was lifted loosely in his hand, as if any moment he would drink.

“Though the truth is, her favorite thing about weaving is that while she works, everyone around her thinks she can’t hear what they’re saying. She gathers all the best news that way. She can tell you who’s getting married, who’s pregnant, and who’s about to start a feud.”

“Your wife sounds like a clever woman.”

“She is. I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.”

It surprised me to a huff of laughter. What man spoke so? None that I had ever met. Yet at the same time there was something in him that felt nearly familiar.

“Where is your wife now? On your ship?”

“At home, thank the gods. I would not make her sail with such a ragged bunch. She runs the house better than any regent.”

My attention was sharp on him now. Common sailors did not talk of regents, nor look so at home next to silver inlay. He was leaning on the carved arm of the chair as if it were his bed.

“You call your crew ragged?” I said. “They seem no different from other men to me.”

“You are kind to say so, but half the time I’m afraid they behave like beasts.” He sighed. “It’s my fault. As their captain, I should keep them in better line. But we have been at war, and you know how that can tarnish even the best men. And these, though I love them well, will never be called best.”

He spoke confidingly, as if I understood. But all I knew of war came from my father’s stories of the Titans. I sipped my wine.

“War has always seemed to me a foolish choice for men. Whatever they win from it, they will have only a handful of years to enjoy before they die. More likely they will perish trying.”

“Well, there is the matter of glory. But I wish you could’ve spoken to our general. You might have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“What was the fight over?”

“Let me see if I can remember the list.” He ticked his fingers. “Vengeance. Lust. Hubris. Greed. Power. What have I forgotten? Ah yes, vanity, and pique.”

“Sounds like a usual day among the gods,” I said.

He laughed and held up his hand. “It is your divine privilege to say so, my lady. I will only give thanks that many of those gods fought on our side.”

Divine privilege. He knew I was a goddess then. But he showed no awe. I might be his neighbor, whose fence he leaned over to discuss the fig harvest.

“Gods fought among mortals? Who?”

“Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite. Athena, of course.”

I frowned. I had heard nothing of this. But then, I had no way to hear anymore. Hermes was long gone, my nymphs did not care for worldly news, and the men who sat at my tables thought only of their appetites. My days had narrowed to the ambit of my eyes and my fingers’ ends.

“Fear not,” he said, “I will not tax your ear with the whole long tale, but that is why my men are so scraggled. We were ten years fighting on Troy’s shores, and now they are desperate to get back to home and hearth.”

“Ten years? Troy must be a fortress.”

“Oh, she was stout enough, but it was our weakness that drew the war out, not her strength.”

This too surprised me. Not that it was true, but that he would admit it. It was disarming, that wry deprecation.

“It is a long time to be away from home.”

“And now it is longer still. We sailed from Troy two years ago. Our journey back has been somewhat more difficult than I would have wished.”

“So there is no need to worry about the loom,” I said. “By now your wife will have given up on you and invented a better one herself.”

His expression remained pleasant, but I saw something shift in it. “Most likely you are right. She will have doubled our lands too, I would not be surprised.”

“And where are these lands of yours?”

“Near Argos. Cows and barley, you know.”

“My father keeps cows himself,” I said. “He favors a pure-white hide.”

“They are hard to breed true. He must husband them well.”

“Oh, he does,” I said. “He cares for nothing else.”

I was watching him. His hands were wide and calloused. He gestured with his cup now here, now there, sloshing his wine a little, but never spilling it. And never once touching it to his lips.

“I am sorry,” I said, “that my vintage is not to your liking.”

He looked down as if surprised to see the cup still in his hand. “My apologies. I’ve been so much enjoying the hospitality, I forgot.” He rapped his knuckles on his temple. “My men say I would forget my head if it weren’t on my neck. Where did you say they’ve gone again?”

I wanted to laugh. I felt giddy, but I kept my voice as even as his. “They’re in the back garden. There’s an excellent bit of shade to rest in.”

“I confess I’m in awe,” he said, “they’re never so quiet for me. You must have had quite an effect on them.”

I heard a humming, like before a spell is cast. His gaze was a honed blade. All this had been prologue. As if we were in a play, we stood.

“You have not drunk,” I said. “That is clever. But I am still a witch, and you are in my house.”

“I hope we may settle this with reason.” He had put the goblet down. He did not draw his sword, but his hand rested on the hilt.

“Weapons do not frighten me, nor the sight of my own blood.”

“You are braver than most gods then. I once saw Aphrodite leave her son to die on the field over a scratch.”

“Witches are not so delicate,” I said.

His sword hilt was hacked from ten years of battles, his scarred body braced and ready. His legs were short but stiff with muscles. My skin prickled. He was handsome, I realized.

“Tell me,” I said, “what is in that bag you keep so close at your waist?”

“An herb I found.”

“Black roots,” I said. “White flowers.”

“Just so.”

“Mortals cannot pick moly.”

“No,” he said simply. “They cannot.”

“Who was it? No, never mind, I know.” I thought of all the times Hermes had watched me harvest, pressed me about my spells. “If you had the moly, why did you not drink? He must have told you that no spell I cast could touch you.”

“He did tell me,” he said. “But I have a quirk of prudence in me that’s hard to break. The Trickster Lord, for all I am grateful to him, is not known for his reliability. Helping you turn me into a swine would be just his sort of jest.”

“Are you always so suspicious?”

“What can I say?” He held out his palms. “The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.”

“I think you are Odysseus,” I said. “Born from that same Trickster’s blood.”

He did not start at the uncanny knowledge. He was a man used to gods. “And you are the goddess Circe, daughter of the sun.”

My name in his mouth. It sparked a feeling in me, sharp and eager. He was like ocean tides indeed, I thought. You could look up, and the shore would be gone.

“Most men do not know me for what I am.”

“Most men, in my experience, are fools,” he said. “I confess you nearly made me give the game away. Your father, the cowherd?”

He was smiling, inviting me to laugh, as if we were two mischievous children.

“Are you a king? A lord?”

“A prince.”

“Then, Prince Odysseus, we are at an impasse. For you have the moly, and I have your men. I cannot harm you, but if you strike at me, they will never be themselves again.”

“I feared as much,” he said. “And, of course, your father Helios is zealous in his vengeances. I imagine I would not like to see his anger.”

Helios would never defend me, but I would not tell Odysseus that. “You should understand your men would have robbed me blind.”

“I am sorry for that. They are fools, and young, and I have been too lenient with them.”

It was not the first time he had made that apology. I let my eyes rest on him, take him in. He reminded me a little of Daedalus, his evenness and wit. But beneath his ease I could feel a roil that Daedalus never had. I wanted to see it revealed.

“Perhaps we might find a different way.”

His hand was still on his hilt, but he spoke as if we were only deciding dinner. “What do you propose?”

“Do you know,” I said, “Hermes told me a prophecy about you once.”

“Oh? And what was it?”

“That you were fated to come to my halls.”

“And?”

“That was all.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m afraid that is the dullest prophecy I’ve ever heard.”

I laughed. I felt poised as a hawk on a crag. My talons still held the rock, but my mind was in the air.

“I propose a truce,” I said. “A test of sorts.”

“What sort of test?” He leaned forward a little. It was a gesture I would come to know. Even he could not hide everything. Any challenge, he would run to meet it. His skin smelled of labor and the sea. He knew ten years of stories. I felt keen and hungry as a bear in spring.

“I have heard,” I said, “that many find their trust in love.”

It surprised him, and oh, I liked the flash of that, before he covered it over.

“My lady, only a fool would say no to such an honor. But in truth, I think also only a fool would say yes. I am a mortal. The moment I set down the moly to join you in your bed, you may cast your spell.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you were to swear an oath you will not hurt me, upon the river of the dead.”

An oath by the River Styx would hold even Zeus himself. “You are careful,” I said.

“It seems we share that.”

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 will swear that oath,” I said.