I felt my mouth go dry.
He stepped out from my stand of laurels. Every line of his body was beautiful, perfect with grace. His dark, loose hair was crowned with a wreath. From his shoulder hung a shining, silver-tipped bow carved from olive wood.
“Circe,” Apollo said, and it was the greatest chime of all. Every melody in the world belonged to him.
He held up an elegant hand. “My brother warned me about your voice. I think it will be better if you speak as little as possible.”
His words carried no malice. Though perhaps that was what malice sounded like in those perfect tones.
“I will not be silenced on my own island.”
He winced. “Hermes said that you were difficult. I come with a prophecy for Odysseus.”
I felt myself tense. Olympian riddles were always double-edged. “He is inside.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
The wind struck me across the face. I had no time to cry out. It rushed into my throat, battering its way to my belly as if all the sky were being funneled through me. I gagged, but its swelling force poured on and on, choking off my breath, drowning me in its alien power. Apollo watched, his face pleasant.
The island clearing was swept away. Odysseus stood on a shore with cliffs rising around him. In the distance were goats and olive groves. I saw a wide-halled house, its courtyard set with stones, its walls gleaming with ancestral weapons. Ithaca.
Then Odysseus stood upon a different shore. Dark sand and a sky that never saw my father’s light. Shadowed poplars loomed and willows trailed their leaves in black water. No birds sang, no beast moved. I knew the place at once, though I had never been there. A great cave gaped, and in its mouth stood an old man with unseeing eyes. I heard his name in my mind: Teiresias.
I threw myself down into the dirt of my garden bed. Scrabbling, tugging up the moly roots, I stuffed a few into my mouth, brown earth still clinging. At once the wind ceased, dying as quickly as it had come. I coughed, my whole body shaking. My tongue tasted of slime and ash. I fought to my knees.
“You dare,” I said. “You dare to misuse me on my own island? I am Titan blood. This will bring war. My father—”
“It was your father who suggested it. My vessels must have prophecy in their blood. You should be honored,” he said. “You have borne a vision of Apollo.”
His voice was a hymn. His beautiful face showed only the faintest puzzlement. I wanted to tear him with my nails. The gods and their incomprehensible rules. Always there was a reason you must kneel.
“I will not tell Odysseus.”
“That is beneath my concern,” he said. “The prophecy is delivered.”
He was gone. I pressed my forehead to the wrinkled bole of an olive. My chest was heaving. I shook with rage and humiliation. How many times would I have to learn? Every moment of my peace was a lie, for it came only at the gods’ pleasure. No matter what I did, how long I lived, at a whim they would be able to reach down and do with me what they wished.
The sky was not yet fully blue. Inside, Odysseus still slept. I woke him and led him to the hall. I did not tell him the prophecy. I watched him eat and fingered my rage as if it were a knife’s point. I wanted to keep it sharp as long as I could, for I knew what would come after. In the vision, he had been back again on Ithaca. The last of my little hopes were gone.
I set out my best dishes, broached my oldest wine. But there was no savor in it. His face was abstracted. All day he kept turning to look out the window as if someone would come. We spoke politely, but I felt him waiting for the men to eat, to go to bed. When the last of their voices had died into sleep, he knelt.
“Goddess,” he said.
He never called me that, and so I knew. I truly knew. Perhaps some divinity had come to him as well. Perhaps he had dreamed of Penelope. Our idyll was finished. I looked down at his hair, woven with gray. His shoulders were set, his eyes on the ground. I felt a dull anger. At least he might look me in the face.
“What is it, mortal?” My voice was loud. My lions stirred.
“I must go,” he said. “I have stayed too long. My men are impatient.”
“Then go. I am a host, not a jailer.”
He did look at me then. “I know it, lady. I am grateful to you beyond measure.”
His eyes were brown and warm as summer earth. His words were simple. They had no art to them, which of course was also art. He always knew how to show himself to best advantage. It felt a kind of vengeance to say:
“I have a message for you from the gods.”
“A message.” His face grew wary.
“You will reach home, they say. But first they command you to speak with the prophet Teiresias in the house of death.”
No sane man could hear such a thing without quailing. He had gone rigid and pale as stone. “Why?”
“The gods have their own reasons, which they have not seen fit to share.”
“Will there never be an end to it?”
His voice was raw. His face was like a wound that had opened again. My anger drained away. He was not my adversary. His road would be hard enough without the hurt we might do each other.
I touched his chest where his great captain’s heart beat. “Come,” I said. “I do not desert you.” I led him to my room and spoke there the knowledge that had been rising in me all day, quick and unceasing, like bubbles from a stream.
“The winds will carry you past lands and seas to the living world’s edge. There is a strand there, with a black poplar grove, and still, dark waters hung with willows. The entrance to the underworld. Dig a pit, as big as I will show you. Fill it with the blood of a black ewe and ram, and pour libations all around. The hungry shadows will come swarming. They will be desperate for that steaming life after so long in the dark.”
His eyes were closed. Imagining, perhaps, the souls spilling from their gray halls. He would know some of them. Achilles and Patroclus, Ajax, Hector. All the Trojans he had killed, and all the Greeks too, and his crew that had been eaten, still crying out for justice. But this would not be the worst. There would be as well souls there he could not predict: the ones from home who had died in his absence. Perhaps his parents or Telemachus. Perhaps Penelope herself.
“You must hold them off from the blood until Teiresias comes. He will drink his fill and give you his wisdom. Then you will return here, for a single day, as there may be more help I can give you.”
He nodded. His lids were gray. I touched his cheek. “Sleep,” I said. “You will need it.”
“I cannot,” he said.
I understood. He was bracing himself, summoning up his strength to do battle once more. We lay beside each other in silent vigil through the long hours of the night. When it was dawn, I helped him dress with my own hands. I pinned his cloak around his shoulders. I settled his belt and gave him his sword. When we opened the front door, we found Elpenor sprawled upon the flagstones. He had fallen from my roof at last. We gazed down at his bluing lips, the ugly angle of his neck.
“Already it comes.” Odysseus’ voice was grim with resignation. I knew what he meant. The Fates had him in their yoke again.
“I will keep him for you. You have no time for a funeral now.”
We carried the body to one of my beds, wrapped it in a sheet. I brought out stores for their journey, and the sheep he needed for the rite. The ship was already prepared, his men had rigged it days ago. Now they loaded it, and pushed it into the waves. The seas were churning and cold, the air misted with spray. They would have to fight for every league, and by night their shoulders would be knots. I should have given them salves for it, I thought. But it was too late.