Circe: Chapters 16–20

The lands filled with cannibals and vengeful savages, with sybarites who drugged their wills.

It was the greatest sacrilege, gore upon the holy objects of the gods.

I watched him from my loom, interested to see another facet: the commander with his men. He was as good at that as all the rest, amused at their antics, gently reproving, reassuringly untroubled.

These were no songs to sing before a court, no tales from the great golden age. Yet somehow in his mouth they did not seem dishonorable, but just and inspired and wisely pragmatic.

Thirteen years they had lived beside him, and though his twisting thoughts were mostly beyond their ken, they sensed a change, as hounds scent the moods of their master.

Perhaps he had dreamed of Penelope. Our idyll was finished.

The goddess on her lonely promontory, her lover dwindling in the distance.

Her eyes wet but inscrutable, cast inward to private thoughts.

I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it as soldiers face their enemies, girded and braced, sword up against the coming blows. Yet all my preparations were not enough.

She was burning certainty, and before her all the shuffling and stained dross of the world must shrink away.

But why had she assembled such a panoply against me, who knew nothing of combat?

I spent hours pacing in profitless conjecture: how I might try to suborn an infernal deity to pluck a handful of gray asphodels or scoop some of Styx’s waves, or else how I might build a raft and sail it to the underworld’s edge, then use Odysseus’ trick to lure the ghosts out and catch a bit of their smoke.

I spent hours pacing in profitless conjecture: how I might try to suborn an infernal deity to pluck a handful of gray asphodels or scoop some of Styx’s waves, or else how I might build a raft and sail it to the underworld’s edge, then use Odysseus’ trick to lure the ghosts out and catch a bit of their smoke.

Once again, I wished that someone else were there on the island. Not to commiserate now, but to cherish him with me.

Where the two waters met they did not mingle, but made a sort of membrane, viscous as a jellyfish.