Page 18 of Circe

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.

Inch by slow inch, I drew myself to my feet. The thought of returning to my father’s halls was like a white coal in my throat. I could not go home. There was only one other place in all the world I knew: those woods I had dreamed of so often. The deep shadows would hide me, and the mossy ground would be soft against my ruined skin. I set that image in my eye and limped towards it. The salt air of the beach stabbed like needles in my blasted throat, and each touch of wind set my burns screaming again. At last, I felt the shade close over me, and I curled up on the moss. It had rained a little, and the damp earth was sweet against me. So many times I had imagined lying there with Glaucos, but whatever tears might have been in me for that lost dream had been parched away. I closed my eyes, drifting through the shocks and skirls of pain. Slowly, my relentless divinity began to make headway. My breath eased, my eyes cleared. My arms and legs still ached, but when I brushed them with my fingers I touched skin instead of char.

The sun set, glowing behind the trees. Night came with its stars. It was moondark, when my aunt Selene goes to her dreaming husband. It was that, I think, which gave me heart enough to rise, for I could not have endured the thought of her reporting it: That fool actually went to look at them! As if she still believed they worked!

The night air tingled across my skin. The grass was dry, flattened by high-summer heat. I found the hill and halted up its slope. In the starlight, the flowers looked small, bled gray and faint. I plucked a stalk and held it in my hand. It lay there limp, all its sap dried and gone. What had I thought would happen? That it would leap up and shout, Your father is wrong. You changed Scylla and Glaucos. You are not poor and patchy, but Zeus come again?

Yet, as I knelt there, I did hear something. Not a sound, but a sort of silence, a faint hum like the space between note and note in a song. I waited for it to fade into the air, for my mind to right itself. But it went on.

I had a wild thought there, beneath that sky. I will eat these herbs. Then whatever is truly in me, let it be out, at last.

I brought them to my mouth. But my courage failed. What was I truly? In the end, I could not bear to know.

It was nearly dawn when my uncle Achelous found me, beard foaming in his haste. “Your brother is here. You are summoned.”

I followed him to my father’s halls, still stumbling a little. Past the polished tables we went, past the draped bedroom where my mother slept. Aeëtes was standing over our father’s draughts board. His face had grown sharp with manhood, his tawny beard was thick as bracken. He was dressed opulently even for a god, robed in indigos and purples, every inch heavy with embroidered gold. But when he turned to me, I felt the shock of that old love between us. It was only my father’s presence that kept me from hurtling into his arms.

“Brother,” I said, “I have missed you.”

He frowned. “What is wrong with your face?”

I touched my hand to it, and the peeling skin flared with pain. I flushed. I did not want to tell him, not here. My father sat in his burning chair, and even his faint, habitual light made me ache anew.

My father spared me from having to answer. “Well? She is come. Speak.”

I quivered at the sound of his displeasure, but Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if my father’s anger were only another thing in the room, a table, a stool.

“I have come,” he said, “because I heard of Scylla’s transformation, and Glaucos’ too, at Circe’s hands.”

“At the Fates’ hands. I tell you, Circe has no such power.”

“You are mistaken.”

I stared, expecting my father’s wrath to fall upon him. But my brother continued.

“In my kingdom of Colchis, I have done such things and more, much more. Called milk out of the earth, bewitched men’s senses, shaped warriors from dust. I have summoned dragons to draw my chariot. I have said charms that veil the sky with black, and brewed potions that raise the dead.”

From anyone else’s mouth these claims would have seemed like wild lies. But my brother’s voice carried its old utter conviction.

“Pharmakeia, such arts are called, for they deal in pharmaka, those herbs with the power to work changes upon the world, both those sprung from the blood of gods, as well as those which grow common upon the earth. It is a gift to be able to draw out their powers, and I am not alone in possessing it. In Crete, Pasiphaë rules with her poisons, and in Babylon Perses conjures souls into flesh again. Circe is the last and makes the proof.”

My father’s gaze was far away. As if he were looking through sea and earth, all the way to Colchis. It might have been some trick of the hearth-fire, but I thought the light of his face flickered.

“Shall I give you a demonstration?” My brother drew out from his robes a small pot with a wax seal. He broke the seal and touched his finger to the liquid inside. I smelled something sharp and green, with a brackish edge.

He pressed his thumb to my face and spoke a word, too low for me to hear. My skin began to itch, and then, like a taper snuffed out, the pain was gone. When I put my hand to my cheek I felt only smoothness, and a faint sheen as if from oil.

“A good trick, is it not?” Aeëtes said.

My father did not answer. He sat strangely dumb. I felt struck dumb myself. The power of healing another’s flesh belonged only to the greatest gods, not to such as us.