Page 3 of Circe

“No,” my father said.

“Shall we tell you their names? That is White-face, and that is Bright-eyes, and that Darling. There is Lovely Girl and Pretty and Golden-horn and Gleaming. There is Darling and there is—”

“You named Darling already,” I said. “You said that one was Darling.” I pointed to the first cow, peacefully chewing.

My sisters looked at each other, then at my father, a single golden glance. But he was gazing at his cows in abstracted glory.

“You must be mistaken,” they said. “This one we just said is Darling. And this one is Star-bright and this one Flashing and—”

My father said, “What is this? A scab upon Pretty?”

Immediately my sisters were falling over themselves. “What scab? Oh, it cannot be! Oh, wicked Pretty, to have hurt yourself. Oh, wicked thing, that hurt you!”

I leaned close to see. It was a very small scab, smaller than my smallest fingernail, but my father was frowning. “You will fix it by tomorrow.”

My sisters bobbed their heads, of course, of course. We are so sorry.

We stepped again into the chariot and my father took up the silver-tipped reins. My sisters pressed a last few kisses to his hands, then the horses leapt, swinging us through the sky. The first constellations were already peeping through the dimming light.

I remembered how my father had once told me that on earth there were men called astronomers whose task it was to keep track of his rising and setting. They were held in highest esteem among mortals, kept in palaces as counselors of kings, but sometimes my father lingered over one thing or another and threw their calculations into despair. Then those astronomers were hauled before the kings they served and killed as frauds. My father had smiled when he told me. It was what they deserved, he said. Helios the Sun was bound to no will but his own, and none might say what he would do.

“Father,” I said that day, “are we late enough to kill astronomers?”

“We are,” he answered, shaking the jingling reins. The horses surged forward, and the world blurred beneath us, the shadows of night smoking from the sea’s edge. I did not look. There was a twisting feeling in my chest, like cloth being wrung dry. I was thinking of those astronomers. I imagined them, low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn’t our fault, the sun itself was late.

The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.

“Father,” I said, “I feel strange.”

“You are hungry,” he said. “It is past time for the feast. Your sisters should be ashamed of themselves for delaying us.”

I ate well at dinner, yet the feeling lingered. I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphaë began to snicker from their couch. “Did you swallow a frog?”

“No,” I said.

This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, “And how were our father’s golden heifers?”

“Beautiful.”

Perses laughed. “She doesn’t know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?”

“Never,” my sister said.

I shouldn’t have asked, but I was still drifting in my thoughts, seeing those severed bodies sprawled on marble floors. “What don’t I know?”

My sister’s perfect mink face. “That he fucks them, of course. That’s how he makes new ones. He turns into a bull and sires their calves, then cooks the ones that get old. That’s why everyone thinks they are immortal.”

“He does not.”

They howled, pointing at my reddened cheeks. The sound drew my mother. She loved my siblings’ japes.

“We’re telling Circe about the cows,” my brother told her. “She didn’t know.”

My mother’s laughter, silver as a fountain down its rocks. “Stupid Circe.”

Such were my years then. I would like to say that all the while I waited to break out, but the truth is, I’m afraid I might have floated on, believing those dull miseries were all there was, until the end of days.

Chapter Two