Circe(37)

“Oh, please,” my sister spat. “The world will be ended before you stammer to your finish. I fucked the sacred bull, all right? Now get the thread.”



I stitched my sister up. Soldiers came, their faces carefully blank, and bore the cage to an inner closet. My sister called after them, “No one goes near it without my word. And give it something to eat!” Silent handmaids rolled up the soaked rug and carried off the ruined couch as if they did such work every day. They burned frankincense and sweet violets to mask the stench, then bore my sister to the bath.

“The gods will punish you,” I had told her, while I sewed. But she had only laughed with a giddy lushness.

“Don’t you know?” she had said. “The gods love their monsters.”

The words made me start. “You talked to Hermes?”

“Hermes? What does he have to do with it? I don’t need some Olympian to tell me what is plain before my face. Everyone knows it.” She smirked. “Except for you, as usual.”

A presence at my side brought me back. Daedalus. We were alone, for the first time since he had come to my island. There were drops of brown spattered across his forehead. His arms were smeared to the elbow. “May I bandage your fingers?”

“No,” I said. “Thank you. They will fix themselves.”

“Lady.” He hesitated. “I am in your debt for all my days. If you had not come, it would have been me.”

His shoulders were taut, tensed as if against a blow. The last time he had thanked me, I had stormed at him. But now I understood more: he, too, knew what it was to make monsters.

“I am glad it was not,” I said. I nodded at his hands, crusted and stained like everything else. “Yours cannot grow back.”

He lowered his voice. “Can the creature be killed?”

I thought of my sister shrieking to be careful. “I don’t know. Pasipha? seems to believe it can. But even so it is the child of the white bull. It may be guarded by a god, or it may bring down a curse upon any who harm it. I need to think.”

He rubbed at his scalp, and I saw the hope of an easy solution drain from him. “I must go make another cage then. That one won’t hold it long.”

He left. The gore was drying stiff upon my cheeks, and my arms were greasy with the creature’s stink. I felt clouded and heavy, sick from the pollution of so much blood. If I called the handmaids, they would bring me to a bath, but I knew that would not be enough. Why had my sister made such an abomination? And why summon me? Most naiads would have fled, but one of the nereids might have done it, they were used to monsters. Or Perses. Why had she not called for him?

My mind had no answers. It was limp and dulled, useless as my missing fingers. One thought came clear: I must do something. I could not stand by while a horror was loosed upon the world. I had the thought that I should find my sister’s workroom. Perhaps there would be something there to help me, some antidote, some great drug of reversal.

It was not far, a hall off her bedchamber separated by a curtain. I had never seen another witch’s craft room before, and I walked its shelves expecting I do not know what, a hundred grisly things, kraken livers, dragons’ teeth, the flayed skin of giants. But all I saw were herbs, and rudimentary ones at that: poisons, poppies, a few healing roots. I had no doubt my sister could work plenty with them, for her will had always been strong. But she was lazy, and here was the proof. Those few simples were old and weak as dead leaves. They had been collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time of day.

I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me. And my own herbs from Aiaia would not be enough, strong as they were. The monster was bound to Crete, and whatever would be done, Crete must guide me.

I traced back through the halls and corridors to the palace center. There I had seen stairs that ran not to the harbor but inland, to the wide, bright gardens and pavilions, which in turn opened out to distant fields.

All around, busy men and women swept flagstones, picked fruits, hefted their baskets of barley. They kept their eyes diligently lowered as I went. I suppose living with Minos and Pasipha? they had grown used to ignoring bloodier things than me. I passed the outlying houses of peasants and shepherds, the groves and grazing herds. The hills were lush and so golden with sun that the light seemed to rise from them, but I did not stop to savor the view. My eyes were fixed upon the black outline that stood against the sky.

Mount Dicte, it is called. No bears or wolves or lions dare to tread there, only the sacred goats, their great horns curling like conch shells. Even in the hottest season, the forests remain dark and cool. At night, the huntress Artemis is said to roam its hills with her shining bow, and in one of its shadowed caves Zeus himself was born and hidden from his devouring father.

There are herbs there that grow nowhere else. They are so rare, few have been given names. I could feel them swelling in their hollows, breathing tendrils of magic into the air. A small yellow flower with a green center. A drooping lily that bloomed orange-brown. And best of all, furred dittany, queen of healing.

I did not walk as a mortal walks, but as a god, and the miles fell away beneath my feet. It was dusk when I reached the foothills and began to climb. The branches laced over me. The shade rose deep as water, tingling across my skin. The whole mountain seemed to hum beneath me. Even bloodied and aching as I was, I felt a spurt of giddiness. I traced the mosses, the hummocks of ground upwards, and, at the base of a white poplar, I found a blooming patch of dittany. Its leaves were threaded with power, and I pressed them to my broken fingers. The spell took hold with a word; my hand would be whole by morning. I gathered some of the roots and seeds for my bag, and kept on. The stink and weight of blood hung still upon me, and at last I found a pool, cold and clear, fed by icy melt. I welcomed the shock of its waters, their clean, scouring pain. I worked those small rites of purification which all gods know. With pebbles from the bank, I scrubbed the filth away.