Page 12 of Circe

“I do not have a spring and I do not need any gratitude. Please. I will never see him again if you do not help me.”

She looked at me and sighed. She must have heard such pleas a thousand times. That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

“I will grant your wish and fill his nets. Yet in return, let me hear you swear you will not lie with him. You know your father thinks to match you better than with some fish-boy.”

“I swear,” I said.

He came skimming across the waves, shouting for me. His words poured over themselves. He had not even had to work the nets, he said. The fish leapt by themselves onto his deck, big as cows. His father was pacified, and the levy paid, with credit for next year. He knelt before me, head bowed. “Thank you, goddess.”

I drew him up. “Do not kneel to me, it was my grandmother’s power.”

“No.” He took my hands. “It was you. You were the one who persuaded her. Circe, miracle, blessing of my life, you have saved me.”

He pressed his warm cheeks to my hands. His lips brushed my fingers. “I wish I were a god,” he breathed. “Then I could thank you as you deserve.”

I let his curls fall around my wrist. I wished I were a real goddess so I could give him whales upon a golden plate, and he would never let me go.

Every day we sat together talking. He was full of dreams, hoping that when he was older he might have his own boat, and his own cottage instead of his father’s. “And I will keep a fire,” he said, “burning for you always. If you will allow me.”

“I would rather you keep a chair,” I said. “So I may come to speak with you.”

He flushed, and I did too. I knew so little then. I had never lolled with my cousins, those broad-shouldered gods and lissom nymphs, when they talked of love. I had never crept off with a suitor into a private corner. I did not know enough even to say what I wanted. If I touched my hand to his, if I bent down my lips for a kiss, what then?

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 Aeëtes had used, when he spoke of herbs with wondrous powers, sprung from the fallen blood of gods.