Circe(13)

He was watching me. His face was like the sand, showing a hundred impressions. “Your father—” he said, stumbling a little, for speaking of Helios always unnerved him. “He will choose a husband for you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What sort of husband?”

I thought I would weep. I wanted to press against him and say I wished it could be him, but my oath stood between us. So I made myself speak the truth, that my father sought out princes, or perhaps a king if he were foreign.

He looked down at his hands. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. You are very dear to him.”

I did not correct him. I went back to my father’s halls that night and knelt at his feet and asked him if it was possible to make a mortal a god.

Helios frowned at his draughts in irritation. “You know it is not, unless it is in their stars already. Not even I can change the laws of the Fates.”

I said no more. My thoughts were following upon themselves. If Glaucos remained a mortal, then he would grow old, and if he grew old he would die, and there would be a day upon that shore when I would come and he would not. Prometheus had told me, yet I had not understood. What a fool I had been. What a stupid fool. In a panic, I ran back to my grandmother.

“That man,” I said, nearly choking. “He will die.”

Her stool was oak, draped with softest weavings. The yarn in her fingers was river-stone green. She was winding it on her shuttle. “Oh, granddaughter,” she said. “Of course he will. He is mortal, that is their lot.”

“It is not fair,” I said. “It cannot be.”

“Those are two different things,” my grandmother said.

All the shining naiads had turned from their talk to listen to us. I pressed on. “You must help me,” I said. “Great goddess, will you not take him to your halls and make him eternal?”

“No god can do so much.”

“I love him,” I said. “There must be a way.”

She sighed. “Do you know how many nymphs before you have hoped the same and been disappointed?”

I did not care about those nymphs. They were not Helios’ daughter, raised on stories of breaking the world. “Is there not some—I do not know the word. Some device. Some bargain with the Fates, some trick, some pharmaka—”

It was the word Ae?tes had used, when he spoke of herbs with wondrous powers, sprung from the fallen blood of gods.

The sea snake at my grandmother’s neck uncoiled and flicked a black tongue from its arrow mouth. Her voice was low and angry. “You dare to speak of that?”

The sudden change surprised me. “Speak of what?”

But she was rising, her full height unfurling before me.

“Child, I have done as much for you as may be done, and there is no more. Go from here, and let me never hear you speak of that wickedness again.”

My head was churning, my mouth sharp as though I had drunk raw wine. I walked back through the couches, the chairs, past the skirts of whispering, smirking naiads. She thinks just because she is daughter of the sun, she may uproot the world to please herself.

I was too wild to feel any shame. It was true. I would not just uproot the world, but tear it, burn it, do any evil I could to keep Glaucos by my side. But what stayed most in my mind was the look on my grandmother’s face when I’d said that word, pharmaka. It was not a look I knew well, among the gods. But I had seen Glaucos when he spoke of the levy and empty nets and his father. I had begun to know what fear was. What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too.

A power greater than their own.

I had learned something from my mother after all. I bound my hair in ringlets and put on my best dress, my brightest sandals. I went to my father’s feast, where all my uncles gathered, reclining on their purple couches. I poured their wine and smiled into their eyes and wreathed my arms around their necks. Uncle Proteus, I said. He was the one with seal meat in his teeth. You are brave and led valiantly in the war. Will you not tell me about its battles, where they were fought? Uncle Nereus, what about you? You were lord of the sea before Olympian Poseidon robbed you. I long to hear the great deeds of our kind, tell me where the blood fell thickest.

I drew those stories from them. I learned the names of those many places that had been sown with gods’ blood, and where those places were. And at last I heard of one not far from Glaucos’ shore.





Chapter Five



“COME,” I SAID. IT was midday and hot, the earth crumbling beneath our feet. “It is very close. A perfect sleeping spot to ease your weary bones.”

He followed sullenly. He was always ill-tempered when the sun was high. “I do not like to be so far from my boat.”

“Your boat will be safe, I promise it. Look! We are here. Are not these flowers worth the walk? They are beautiful, palest yellow and shaped like bells.”

I coaxed him down among the crowding blossoms. I had brought water and a basket of food. I was aware of my father’s eye above us. A picnic, I meant it to appear, if he should glance our way. I could not be sure what my grandmother might have said to him.

I served Glaucos and watched while he ate. What would he look like as a god? I wondered. A little distance away grew a forest, its shade thick enough to hide us from my father’s eyes. When he was changed, I would pull him there, and show him that my oath did not hold us anymore.