“Black roots,” I said. “White flowers.”
“Just so.”
“Mortals cannot pick moly.”
“No,” he said simply. “They cannot.”
“Who was it? No, never mind, I know.” I thought of all the times Hermes had watched me harvest, pressed me about my spells. “If you had the moly, why did you not drink? He must have told you that no spell I cast could touch you.”
“He did tell me,” he said. “But I have a quirk of prudence in me that’s hard to break. The Trickster Lord, for all I am grateful to him, is not known for his reliability. Helping you turn me into a swine would be just his sort of jest.”
“Are you always so suspicious?”
“What can I say?” He held out his palms. “The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.”
“I think you are Odysseus,” I said. “Born from that same Trickster’s blood.”
He did not start at the uncanny knowledge. He was a man used to gods. “And you are the goddess Circe, daughter of the sun.”
My name in his mouth. It sparked a feeling in me, sharp and eager. He was like ocean tides indeed, I thought. You could look up, and the shore would be gone.
“Most men do not know me for what I am.”
“Most men, in my experience, are fools,” he said. “I confess you nearly made me give the game away. Your father, the cowherd?”
He was smiling, inviting me to laugh, as if we were two mischievous children.
“Are you a king? A lord?”
“A prince.”
“Then, Prince Odysseus, we are at an impasse. For you have the moly, and I have your men. I cannot harm you, but if you strike at me, they will never be themselves again.”
“I feared as much,” he said. “And, of course, your father Helios is zealous in his vengeances. I imagine I would not like to see his anger.”
Helios would never defend me, but I would not tell Odysseus that. “You should understand your men would have robbed me blind.”
“I am sorry for that. They are fools, and young, and I have been too lenient with them.”
It was not the first time he had made that apology. I let my eyes rest on him, take him in. He reminded me a little of Daedalus, his evenness and wit. But beneath his ease I could feel a roil that Daedalus never had. I wanted to see it revealed.
“Perhaps we might find a different way.”
His hand was still on his hilt, but he spoke as if we were only deciding dinner. “What do you propose?”
“Do you know,” I said, “Hermes told me a prophecy about you once.”
“Oh? And what was it?”
“That you were fated to come to my halls.”
“And?”
“That was all.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m afraid that is the dullest prophecy I’ve ever heard.”
I laughed. I felt poised as a hawk on a crag. My talons still held the rock, but my mind was in the air.
“I propose a truce,” I said. “A test of sorts.”
“What sort of test?” He leaned forward a little. It was a gesture I would come to know. Even he could not hide everything. Any challenge, he would run to meet it. His skin smelled of labor and the sea. He knew ten years of stories. I felt keen and hungry as a bear in spring.
“I have heard,” I said, “that many find their trust in love.”
It surprised him, and oh, I liked the flash of that, before he covered it over.
“My lady, only a fool would say no to such an honor. But in truth, I think also only a fool would say yes. I am a mortal. The moment I set down the moly to join you in your bed, you may cast your spell.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you were to swear an oath you will not hurt me, upon the river of the dead.”
An oath by the River Styx would hold even Zeus himself. “You are careful,” I said.
“It seems we share that.”
No, I thought. I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.
“I will swear that oath,” I said.
Chapter Sixteen
LATER, YEARS LATER, I would hear a song made of our meeting. The boy who sang it was unskilled, missing notes more often than he hit, yet the sweet music of the verses shone through his mangling. I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero’s sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.
We lay together in my wide, gold bed. I had wanted to see him loosened with pleasure, passionate, laid bare. He was never laid bare, but the rest I saw. We did find some trust between us.
“I am not really from Argos,” he said. The firelight flickered over us, casting long shadows across the sheets. “My island is Ithaca. It’s too stony for cows. We run to goats and olive groves.”
“And the war? A fiction also?”
“The war was real.”
There was no rest in him. He looked as though he could have parried a spear-thrust out of the shadows. Yet the weariness had begun to show through, like rocks when the tide recedes. By the law of guests I should not question him before he had fed and refreshed himself, but we were past such observances.
“You said your journey was difficult.”
“I sailed from Troy with twelve ships.” His face in the yellow light was like an old shield, battered and lined. “We are all that is left.”
In spite of myself I was shocked. Eleven ships was more than five hundred men lost. “How did such disaster strike you?”
He recited the story as if he were giving a recipe for meat. The storms that had blown them half across the world. The lands filled with cannibals and vengeful savages, with sybarites who drugged their wills. They had been ambushed by the cyclops Polyphemus, a savage one-eyed giant who was a son of Poseidon. He had eaten half a dozen men and sucked their bones. Odysseus had had to blind him to escape, and now Poseidon hunted them across the waves in vengeance.
No wonder he limped, no wonder he was gray. This is a man who has faced monsters.
“And now Athena, who was ever my guide, has turned her back.”
I was not surprised to hear her name. The clever daughter of Zeus honored wiles and invention above all. He was just the sort of man she would cherish.
“What offended her?”
I was not sure he would answer, but he drew in a long breath. “War breeds many sins, and I was not last in committing them. When I asked her pardon, she always gave it. Then the sack of the city came. Temples were razed, blood spilled on altars.”
It was the greatest sacrilege, gore upon the holy objects of the gods.
“I was a part of such things with the rest, but when others stayed to offer her prayers, I did not stay with them. I was…impatient.”
“Ten years you had fought,” I said. “It is understandable.”
“You are kind, but I think we both know it is not. As soon as I was on board, the seas around me lifted wrathful heads. The sky darkened to iron. I tried to turn the fleet around, but it was too late. Her storm spun us far off from Troy.” He rubbed his knuckles as if they ached. “Now when I speak to her, she does not answer.”
Disaster upon disaster. Yet he had walked into a witch’s house, even weary as he was, and raw with grief. He had sat at my hearth showing no hint of anything but charm and smiles. What resolve that must have taken, what vigilant will. But no man is infinite. Exhaustion stained his face. His voice was hoarse. A knife I had named him, but I saw that he was sliced down to the bone. I felt an answering ache in my chest. When I had taken him to my bed, it had been a kind of dare, but the feeling that flickered in me now was much older. There he was, his flesh open before me. This is something torn that I can mend.
I held the thought in my hand. When that first crew had come, I had been a desperate thing, ready to fawn on anyone who smiled at me. Now I was a fell witch, proving my power with sty after sty. It reminded me suddenly of those old tests Hermes used to set me. Would I be skimmed milk or a harpy? A foolish gull or a villainous monster?