The black river slid along its banks. The pale flowers nodded on their stems. I was blind to all of it. One by one my hopes were dropping away. I would share no eternity with Glaucos. We would have no marriage. We would never lie in those woods. His love for me was drowned and gone.
Nymphs and gods flowed past, their gossip drifting in the fragrant, torch-lit air. Their faces were the same as always, vivid and glowing, but they seemed suddenly alien. Their strings of jewels clacked loud as bird-bills, their red mouths stretched wide around their laughter. Somewhere Glaucos laughed among them, but I could not pick his voice out from the throng.
Not all gods need be the same.
My face had begun to burn. It was not pain, not exactly, but a stinging that went on and on. I pressed my fingers to my cheeks. How long had it been since I’d thought of Prometheus? A vision of him rose before me now: his torn back and steady face, his dark eyes encompassing everything.
Prometheus had not cried out as the blows fell, though he had grown so covered in blood that he’d looked like a statue dipped in gold. And all the while, the gods had watched, their attention bright as lightning. They would have relished a turn with the Fury’s whip, given the chance.
I was not like them.
Are you not? The voice was my uncle’s, resonant and deep. Then you must think, Circe. What would they not do?
My father’s chair was draped with the skins of pure-black lambs. I knelt by their dangling necks.
“Father,” I said, “it was I who made Scylla a monster.”
All around me, voices dropped. I cannot say if the very furthest couches looked, if Glaucos looked, but all my uncles did, snapped up from their drowsy conversation. I felt a sharp joy. For the first time in my life, I wanted their eyes.
“I used wicked pharmaka to make Glaucos a god, and then I changed Scylla. I was jealous of his love for her and wanted to make her ugly. I did it selfishly, in bitter heart, and I would bear the consequence.”
“Pharmaka,” my father said.
“Yes. The yellow flowers that grow from Kronos’ spilled blood and turn creatures to their truest selves. I dug up a hundred flowers and dropped them in her pool.”
I had expected a whip to be brought forth, a Fury summoned. A place in chains beside my uncle’s on the rock. But my father only filled his cup. “It is no matter. Those flowers have no powers in them, not anymore. Zeus and I made sure of that.”
I stared at him. “Father, I did it. With my own hands, I broke their stalks and smeared the sap on Glaucos’ lips, and he was changed.”
“You had a premonition, which is common in my children.” His voice was even, firm as a stone wall. “It was Glaucos’ fate to be changed at that moment. The herbs did nothing.”
“No,” I tried to say, but he did not pause. His voice lifted, to cover mine.
“Think, daughter. If mortals could be made into gods so easily, would not every goddess feed them to her favorite? And would not half the nymphs be changed to monsters? You are not the first jealous girl in these halls.”
My uncles were beginning to smile.
“I am the only one who knows where those flowers are.”
“Of course you are not,” my uncle Proteus said. “You had that knowledge from me. Do you think I would have given it, if I thought you could do any harm?”
“And if there was so much power in those plants,” Nereus said, “my fish from Scylla’s cove would be changed. Yet they are whole and well.”
My face was flushing. “No.” I shook off Nereus’ seaweed hand. “I changed Scylla, and now I must take the punishment on my head.”
“Daughter, you begin to make a spectacle.” The words cut across the air. “If the world contained the power you allege, do you think it would fall to such as you to discover it?”
Soft laughter at my back, open amusement on my uncles’ faces. But most of all my father’s voice, speaking those words like trash he dropped. Such as you. Any other day in all my years of life I would have curled upon myself and wept. But that day his scorn was like a spark falling on dry tinder. My mouth opened.
“You are wrong,” I said.
He had leaned away to note something to my grandfather. Now his gaze swung back to mine. His face began to glow. “What did you say?”
“I say those plants have power.”
His skin flared white. White as the fire’s heart, as purest, hottest coals. He stood, yet he kept on rising, as if he would tear a hole in the ceiling, in the earth’s crust, as if he would not cease until he scraped the stars. And then the heat came, rolling over me with a sound like roaring waves, blistering my skin, crushing the breath from my chest. I gasped, but there was no air. He had taken it all.
“You dare to contradict me? You who cannot light a single flame, or call one drop of water? Worst of my children, faded and broken, whom I cannot pay a husband to take. Since you were born, I pitied you and allowed you license, yet you grew disobedient and proud. Will you make me hate you more?”
In another moment, the rocks themselves would have melted, and all my watery cousins dried up to their bones. My flesh bubbled and opened like a roasted fruit, my voice shriveled in my throat and was scorched to dust. The pain was such as I had never imagined could exist, a searing agony consuming every thought.
I fell to my father’s feet. “Father,” I croaked, “forgive me. I was wrong to believe such a thing.”
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!