Circe(18)

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.