Circe(53)

“Why were you punished?”

“I fell in love with a mortal,” she said. “A noble shepherd. My father disapproved and now I must do a year’s penance.”

I considered her. Her back was straight, her eyes up. She showed no fear, not of me, not of my wolves and lions. And her father disapproved of her.

“Sit,” I said. “Be welcome.”

She sat, but her mouth was puckered as if she sucked an unripe olive. She looked around with distaste. When I offered her food, she turned her head aside like a sulky baby. When I tried to speak to her, she folded her arms and pursed her lips. They only opened to voice her complaints: about the smell of the dyes bubbling on the stove, the lion hairs on the rugs, even Daedalus’ loom. And for all her protestations about serving, she did not offer to carry a single dish.

There is no need to be surprised, I told myself. She is a nymph, which means a dry well. “Go home, then,” I said, “if you are so miserable. I release you from your sentence.”

“You cannot. The great gods have commanded me. There is nothing you can do to release me. I am staying a year.”

It should have upset her, but she was smirking. Preening as if in victory before a crowd. I watched. When she had spoken of the gods exiling her, she had showed no anger, and no grief either. She took their authority as natural, irresistible, like the movements of the spheres. But I was a nymph like her, and an exile too, a daughter of a greater father, yes, but with no husband and dirty fingers and oddly dressed hair. It put me in her reach, she reasoned. So I was the one she would fight.

You are being foolish. I am not your enemy, and pulling faces is no real power. They have convinced you—But even as the words formed in my mouth, I let them go. It would be like Persian to her. She would not understand it, not in a thousand years. And I was done giving lessons.

I leaned forward and spoke the language she understood. “Here is how it will go, Alke. I will not hear you. I will not smell your rose oil or find your hairs about my house. You will feed yourself, care for yourself, and if you cause me a moment’s more trouble, I will turn you into a blindworm and drop you in the sea for the fish.”

Her smirks were wiped away. She blanched and pressed her fingers to her mouth and fled. After that she kept to herself as I had ordered. But word had spread among the gods that Aiaia was a good place to send difficult daughters. A dryad arrived who had fled her intended husband. Two stone-faced oreads followed, exiled from their mountains. Now whenever I tried to cast a spell, all I could hear was rattling bracelets. As I worked at the loom, they flashed in and out of the corners of my vision. They whispered and rustled from every corner. There was always someone leaning moon-faced over a pool when I wanted to swim. As I passed, their snickering laughter washed against my heels. I would not live that way again. Not on Aiaia.

I went to the clearing and called Hermes. He came, smiling already. “So? How do you like your new handmaids?”

“I do not,” I said. “Go to my father and see how they can be taken away.”

I feared he might object to being sent on an errand, but it was too amusing for him to miss. When he came back he said, “What did you expect? Your father is delighted. He says it’s only right that his high blood is served by lesser divinities. He will encourage more fathers to send their daughters.”

“No,” I said. “I will take no more. Tell my father.”

“Prisoners don’t usually dictate their own conditions.”

My face stung, but I knew better than to show it. “Tell my father I will do something awful to them if they do not leave. I will turn them into rats.”

“I can’t imagine Zeus would like that. Weren’t you already exiled for acts against your kin? You should beware further punishment.”

“You could speak on my behalf. Try to persuade him.”

His black eyes glittered. “I’m afraid I’m only a messenger.”

“Please,” I said. “I do not want them here, truly. I am not being funny.”

“No,” he said, “you are not. You are being very dull. Use your imagination, they must be good for something. Take them to your bed.”

“That is absurd,” I said. “They would run screaming.”

“Nymphs always do,” he said. “But I’ll tell you a secret: they are terrible at getting away.”

At a feast on Olympus such a jest would have been followed by a roar of laughter. Hermes waited now, grinning like a goat. But all I felt was a white, cold rage.

“I am finished with you,” I said. “I have been finished a long time. Let me not see you again.”

If anything, his grin deepened. He vanished and did not return. It was no obedience. He was finished with me too, for I had committed the unpardonable sin of being dull. I could imagine the stories he was telling of me, humorless, prickly, and smelling of pigs. From time to time, I could sense him just out of sight, finding my nymphs in the hills, sending them back flushed and laughing, giddy from the great Olympian who had shown them favor. He seemed to think I would go mad with jealousy and loneliness, and turn them into rats indeed. A hundred years he had been coming to my island, and in all that time he had never cared for more than his own entertainment.

The nymphs remained. When they finished their terms of service, others arrived to take their place. Sometimes there were four, sometimes six or seven. They trembled when I passed, ducking and calling me mistress, but it meant nothing. I had been put in my place. At a word and a whim from my father all my vaunted power blew away. Not even my father: any river-god had the right to fill my island, and I could not stop him.