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.
My brother smiled, as if he could hear my thoughts. “And that is the least of my powers. They are drawn from the earth itself, and so are not bound by the normal laws of divinity.” He let the words hang a moment in the air. “I understand of course that you can make no judgments now. You must take counsel. But you should know that I would be happy to give Zeus a more…impressive demonstration.”
A look flashed in his eyes, like teeth in a wolf’s mouth.
My father’s words came slowly. That same numbness still masked his face. I understood with an odd jolt. He is afraid.
“I must take counsel, as you say. This is…new. Until it is decided, you will remain in these halls. Both of you.”
“I expected no less,” Aeëtes said. He inclined his head and turned to go. I followed, skin prickling with the rush of my thoughts, and a breathless, rearing hope. The myrrh-wood doors shut behind us, and we stood in the hall. Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if he had not just performed a miracle and silenced our father. I had a thousand questions ready to tumble out, but he spoke first.
“What have you been doing all this while? You took forever. I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t a pharmakis after all.”
It was not a word I knew. It was not a word anyone knew, then.
“Pharmakis,” I said.
Witch.
News ran like spring rivers. At dinner, the children of Oceanos whispered when they saw me and skittered out of my path. If our arms brushed they paled, and when I passed a goblet to a river-god, his eyes dodged away. Oh no, thank you, I am not thirsty.
Aeëtes laughed. “You will get used to it. We are ourselves alone now.”
He did not seem alone. Every night he sat on my grandfather’s dais with my father and our uncles. I watched him, drinking nectar, laughing, showing his teeth. His expressions darted like schools of fish in the water, now light, now dark.
I waited till our father was gone, then went to sit in a chair near him. I longed to take the place beside him on the couch, lean against his shoulder, but he seemed so grim and straight, I did not know how to touch him.
“You like your kingdom? Colchis?”
“It is the finest in the world,” he said. “I have done what I said, sister. I have gathered there all the wonders of our lands.”
I smiled to hear him call me sister, to speak of those old dreams. “I wish I could see it.”
He said nothing. He was a magician who could break the teeth of snakes, tear up oaks by their roots. He did not need me.
“Do you have Daedalus too?”
He made a face. “No, Pasiphaë has him trapped. Perhaps in time. I have a giant fleece made of gold, though, and half a dozen dragons.”
I did not have to draw his stories out of him. They burst forth, the spells and charms he cast, the beasts he summoned, the herbs he cut by moonlight and brewed into miracles. Each tale was more outlandish than the last, thunder leaping to his fingertips, lambs cooked and born again from their charred bones.
“What was it you spoke when you healed my skin?”
“A word of power.”
“Will you teach it to me?”
“Sorcery cannot be taught. You find it yourself, or you do not.”
I thought of the humming I had heard when I touched those flowers, the eerie knowledge that had glided through me.