Circe: Chapters 1–5

My father glowed bright as just-forged bronze, while Oceanos had been born with rheumy eyes and a white beard to his lap.

The light came from everywhere at once, his yellow skin, his lambent eyes, the bronze flashing of his hair.

Divine days fall like water from a cataract, and I had not learned yet the mortal trick of counting them.

They were a motley group: river-men with muscles like the trunks of trees, brine-soaked mer-gods with crabs hanging from their beards, stringy old-timers with seal meat in their teeth.

Some said it was because Helios had always hated Kronos’ vaunting pride; others whispered that his prophetic gift gave him foreknowledge of the outcome of the war.

My uncle Nereus, once the mighty ruler of the sea, was now lackey to its new god, Poseidon.

"This is the chastisement of a renegade and no more. Prometheus was led astray by his foolish love for mortals. There is no lesson here for a Titan. Do you understand?”

The slender dryads flowed out of their forests, and the stony oreads ran down from their crags.

My family was in its usual place of preeminence, and I stood at the front of that great throng, my eyes fixed upon the door.

I heard an aunt beside me whisper that the fetters had been made by the great god of smiths, Hephaestus himself, so not even Zeus could break them.

The Fury rose up on her vulture wings and drove the manacles high into the wall.

He spoke carefully, almost tentatively, yet his treason had been so brazen.

I am embarrassed to tell it, so rudimentary it seems, like an infant’s discovery that her hand is her own.

I knew of ships from paintings, I had heard of them in stories. They were golden and huge as leviathans, their rails carved from ivory and horn.

The deck was hot through my sandals, and its motion pleasing, a faint undulation, like I rode upon a snake.