Circe(80)

I stepped towards him. “Let me explain more clearly. If you leave, you will die. So you will not sail. And if you try, I will burn that boat of yours to cinders.”

His face was blank with shock. I turned and walked away.



He did not sail that day. I stalked back and forth in my kitchen, and he kept to his woods. It was dusk when he returned to the house. He banged through the trunks, loudly gathered up bedding. He had come only to show me that he would not stay beneath my roof.

When he passed me I said, “You want me to treat you like a man, but you act like a child. You have been protected here your whole life. You do not understand the dangers that wait for you in the world. You cannot simply pretend that Athena does not exist.”

He was ready for me, like tinder for the spark. “You are right. I don’t know the world. How could I? You don’t let me out of your sight.”

“Athena stood upon that very hearth and demanded I give you to her so she could kill you.”

“I know,” he said. “You’ve told me a hundred times. Yet she has not tried since, has she? I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Because of the spells I cast and carry!” I rose to face him. “Do you know what I have had to do to keep them strong, the hours I have spent fretting over them, testing them to be sure she cannot break through?”

“You like doing that.”

“Like it?” The laugh scraped from me. “I like doing my own work, which I have scarcely had time for since you were born!”

“Then go do your spells! Go do them and let me leave! Be honest, you do not even know if Athena is still angry. Have you tried to speak with her? It has been sixteen years!”

He said it as if it were sixteen centuries. He could not imagine the scope of gods, the mercilessness that comes of seeing generations rise and fall around you. He was mortal and young. A slow afternoon felt like a year to him.

I could feel my face kindling, gathering heat. “You think all gods are like me. That you may ignore them as you please, treat them as your servants, that their wishes are only flies to be brushed aside. But they will crush you for pleasure, for spite.”

“Fear and the gods, fear and the gods! That is all you talk about. It is all you have ever talked about. Yet a thousand thousand men and women walk this world and live to be old. Some of them are even happy, Mother. They do not just cling to safe harbors with desperate faces. I want to be one of them. I mean to be. Why can’t you understand that?”

The air around me had begun to crackle. “You are the one who does not understand. I have said you will not leave, and that is the end of it.”

“So that’s it then? I just stay here my whole life? Until I die? I never even try to leave?”

“If need be.”

“No!” He slammed the table between us. “I will not do it! There is nothing for me here. Even if another ship comes and I beg you to let it land, what then? A few days’ respite, then they will leave, and I will still be trapped. If this is life, then I would rather die. I would rather Athena kills me, do you hear? At least then I will have seen one thing in my life that was not this island!”

My vision went white.

“I do not care what you would rather. If you are too stupid to save your own life, then I will do it for you. My spells will do it.”

For the first time, he faltered. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you would not even know what you missed. You would never think of leaving again.”

He took a step backwards. “No. I will not drink your wine. I will not touch anything you give me.”

I could taste the venom in my mouth. It was a pleasure to see him frightened at last. “You think that will stop me? You have never understood how strong I am.”

His look I will remember all my life. A man who has seen the veil lifted and beholds the true face of the world.

He wrenched open the door and fled into the dark.



I stood there a long time, a bolt-struck tree scorched to its roots. Then I walked down to the shore. The air was cool but the sand still held the day’s heat. I thought of all the hours I had carried him there, his skin against mine. I had wanted him to walk freely in the world, unburnt and unafraid, and now I had gotten my wish. He could not conceive of a relentless goddess with her spear aimed at his heart.

I had not told him of his infancy, how angry and difficult it was. I had not told him the stories of the gods’ cruelty, of his own father’s cruelty. I should have, I thought. For sixteen years, I had been holding up the sky, and he had not noticed. I should have forced him to go with me to pick those plants that saved his life. I should have made him stand over the stove while I spoke the words of power. He should understand all I had carried in silence, all that I had done for his safekeeping.

But then what? He was somewhere in the trees, hiding from me. So easily those spells had risen in my mind, the ones that would let me cut his desires from him, like paring rot from fruit.

I ground my jaw. I wanted to rage and tear myself and weep. I wanted to curse Hermes for his half-truths and temptations—but Hermes was nothing. I had seen Telegonus’ face when he used to look into the sea and whisper, horizon.

I closed my eyes. I knew the shore so well, I did not have to see to walk. When he was a child I used to make lists of all the things I would do to keep him safe. It was not much of a game, because the answer was always the same. Anything.