Pasipha?’s mother had been as pretty as she was kind. I remember her, some…though I could not have been older than five or six years when she died, victim of the fever that had swept through Colchis that summer. Her name was Perse. She was one of many daughters of some Black Sea tribal chief, of little importance in her father’s house, but unparalleled in beauty. Perse had given her auburn-red hair and fine face to Pasipha?. To me, she gave the same tenderness I might have expected from my real mother, had she survived my birth.
If Perse had lived longer, perhaps she would have told me about my own mother—in time, when I was old enough to understand. For Heliodoros had only one wife—Perse—and no concubines. At least, my father had no concubines whom he cared to acknowledge. Now that I am grown, and can look back on my childhood with the wisdom of distance, I understand all too well: my mother must have been a whore, or someone little better. When she died birthing me, only the gods know why Heliodoros chose to take me into his house and raise me as a true daughter. And only the gods know why Perse accepted me as readily as she did. Perhaps it was simply a measure of her innate kindness. Perhaps it hurt her heart too badly, to leave an infant without a home and loving arms to hold it—even if that infant was a girl, and a product of her husband’s dalliance.
The mystery of my mother’s identity died with sweet Perse, for Heliodoros was not the sort of man whom a daughter ever questioned. My brothers, Ae?tes and Perses, did not know my mother’s name. They made up fantastical tales, in answer to all my questions about the mother I never knew. Their stories were full of fond teasing, the sort of games older brothers have played with their little sisters since the beginning of time. They meant no harm with their tales—on the contrary, I feel sure that Ae?tes and Perses believed they were somehow helping me with those fanciful inventions. Out of love, they wove a bright tapestry to cover the holes in my history—in my knowledge of myself.
“No one ever speaks your mother’s name because to do so would be blasphemy,” Ae?tes once told me. “Your mother was a goddess, little Circe…but I cannot tell you which one. It’s a great and terrible secret.”
Perses corroborated Ae?tes’ claim. “A very powerful goddess came to our father, wearing an ordinary woman’s body, just as you wear a tunic or a cloak. She came for one purpose only: to get with child, for she knew her daughter would be lovely and charming and good when she was born.”
I remember asking, “But if my mother was a goddess, then how did she die at my birth?”
“Ah,” Perses said sagely. “It was only her disguise that died. The real goddess whisked herself back to Olympus as soon as she saw you laid safely in the arms of our mother, Perse. And that’s how you became part of our family, dear little sister.”
Perses lifted me up to his shoulders then, and ran about the flat, dry yard outside our father’s house until a pair of dogs gave playful chase and I was shrieking and gasping with laughter. For a time, I forgot all my questions.
After sweet Perse was gone, Pasipha? and I became inseparable, as close as true, full-blooded sisters—closer than twins. We played together in the orchards and among the dusty grape vines; we walked slowly along temple paths, swinging our offerings carelessly in our baskets, dawdling so we might have more time together. But the seasons turned too quickly, and all too soon the idyll of our childhood had fled. Womanhood was fast approaching.
There was one feast I remember with painfully vivid clarity. Pasipha? and I were in our fourteenth year. Music of harp, horn, and drum drifted from the andron to the screened cloister of the gynaeceum, where we, the last living females of our father’s house, lay on our small couches amid nurses and maids and scullery women, the servants who made the great house of Heliodoros run. We had finished our bowls of fish stew quickly, and licked the last crumbs of honey-soaked bread from our fingers.
Pasipha? nudged me with her elbow. “If we go now, we can see the jugglers in the andron, and be back before the second course is served.”
“You go if you like,” I whispered, so our nurses could not hear. “I don’t want to see the andron tonight.”
“Don’t want to see it? Why not?”
A sour weight sank in my stomach. “There is nothing amusing about the andron, Pasipha?. Better to leave it alone. We have everything we need here; we can even hear the music.”
“You sound like an old grandmother! Where’s your sense of fun?”
I had clutched her hand then, squeezing hard, as if I could force understanding through her skin and into her blood, her heart. “Don’t you see? The men we’ll marry are probably in that room right now, drinking and feasting with Father.”
“Of course they are, you goose! You’ve always liked spying on the men, and trying to guess which will be your husband.”
“I don’t want a husband,” I said with a sudden flare of passion. I’d never thought it through before, had never asked myself whether I looked forward to the inevitable path my life would take. But now that the words had flown from my mouth, a bitter taste of truth lingered on my tongue. “I don’t want to marry, and I don’t ever want to become a mother—not ever!”
The two old nurses who had looked after us since Perse’s death gasped in horrified disapproval. In my wildness and fear, I’d allowed my voice to rise above a whisper.
I hung my head, blushing, but I spoke on, loud enough for every woman in the gynaeceum to hear me. “It’s true. I want nothing to do with men, nor babies. You all know what happened to my mother.”
Korinna, my old nurse, patted my shoulder with her dry, wrinkled hand. “There there, little one. The same fate won’t befall you in childbed.”
“How do you know?” I cried. “You can’t say! Only the gods can say!”
Pasipha? had pushed herself up from her couch, then, and sat upon my own. She embraced me, stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. “Marriage is nothing to fear, Circe.”
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, shaming me before the eyes of the servants. “How can you say that? Once Father has chosen our husbands—once he has given us, like a pair of ewes or a couple of sows—we’ll be sent off to new houses. We’ll never see each other again!”
“But of course we will,” Pasipha? said. “I’ll come and visit you every year, even if I must take a ship from the farthest island. Even if I get terribly seasick, I’ll still do it, every single year until we’re too old to stir from our beds.”
“Once a year isn’t enough,” I sobbed against my sister’s shoulder. “It’s all going to change, Pasipha?. And I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready!”
“But you have so much to look forward to. Father will make you a good match. Don’t you want to be mistress of your own house?”