I lay with Odysseus that first morning in the privacy of my bed chamber, praying the whole while that none of my friends would wake. It was the first time I had been with a man in seven years—since my marriage—and it was every bit as horrible as those long-ago nights with Lycus had been. I wanted none of it; I fought to keep from squirming away from Odysseus’s touch, his rough, insistent hands. But when has it mattered to any man, what a woman wants?
When he had finally taken all the pleasure he could wring from my uncooperative flesh, Odysseus did not get up and leave my bed. Instead, he remained dozing beneath the sheets, murmuring and smiling to himself as if vastly pleased by what he had done.
After I’d lain stiffly beside him for half an hour or more, I lost hope that he would leave me be. I got out of bed myself, pulled on a clean woolen chiton, and slipped out of the farmhouse; it was quiet, thank the gods, for all my friends still slept.
I ran from the house as quickly as my shaking legs would carry me, and immersed myself in the forest. I could not look at my ruined clearing as I crossed it, nor the men strewn about, still sleeping off the haze of sour wine. I wanted shadows and silence, cover and solitude. I wanted the healing, forgiving embrace of the earth.
When I left the clearing behind and hid myself in the coolness of the woods, I’d had some thought of finding my pigs, bringing them home. But after an hour of fruitless searching—an hour of trying to evade the too-near memory of Odysseus and what he had done—I gave up all hope of recovering the swine herd. The twisted, moss-covered roots of an ancient oak beckoned to me; I sank down among them and curled into a ball, weeping against my knees, sinking deeper every moment into a cold, black pit of self-loathing. Exhaustion finally caught up to me; when my tears were drained dry, yielded to sleep at last, and the mercy of dreams carried me away from my pain and sadness.
A slant of golden afternoon light woke me. I lay still, cradled in the oak tree’s roots, listening to birdsong in the canopy and the whispering of dry autumn leaves. Despair had fled, replaced by calm acknowledgment. I knew—though I could not say how I knew it—that neither Odysseus nor his men would leave my island any time soon. Odysseus had been too greedy with my body, too vain and imperious. That sense of possession—of the righteousness of a man’s ownership—was too deeply ingrained in his spirit. I could not fight against it; not yet.
The Ithacans had come to stay. That was the new reality we must face squarely, my friends and I. There was no sense railing against it, nor trying to change the gods’ design. The time was not yet ripe for changing; the season for transformation had not yet come. All things in their time, the leaves seemed to whisper. Unhappy but resigned, I climbed slowly to my feet and returned home.
When I walked back into my clearing, the men had long since wakened. But as I’d foreseen, they showed no signs of leaving. They lounged in groups, dicing or telling stories, trimming their nails with daggers or pissing at the edges of our garden. My women moved among them, grim-faced and silent. I could at least lead and comfort my friends, I thought. We could hold ourselves together, make a bulwark against this distasteful onslaught until the season for transformation came—whenever that might be—and we could remove them from our land.
Agathe was the first to see me coming. She called to the other women, who sifted through the ashes of the bonfire for shards of broken bowls. My friends came to meet me, huddled in a tight group. I could read the confusion and anger in their eyes; a knife of self-accusation sank into my spirit. I had done what I’d done to spare them from pain. But I had failed.
“What in Hestia’s name has happened?” Agathe said. “Circe, why are they still here?”
“I tried.” Tears threatened, but I blinked them away. “I…I did try.”
Anthousa’s jaw clenched for a moment. Then she said gently, “I should have remained with you. I blame myself.”
“Don’t.” I took her hand. “Please don’t. None of you are to blame. I’m not even sure I’m to blame, but I’ll take full responsibility, if you like.”
“But what happened with that man?” Anthousa said. “What did you say to him?”
“That man is their king,” I answered dully. “And I…I tried to convince him to leave. But I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”
We stood in silence for a moment, our heads hung low, taking some small comfort in one another’s nearness. But after a moment I straightened and drew a deep breath, steadying myself for what lay ahead—not only the day’s work, but the struggle I knew was sure to follow. I sent up a brief, rather hopeless prayer that the gods would make our ordeal short and bearable.
“Come,” I said to my women. “We must fix the swine-yard fence.”
As days turned to weeks, the Ithacans filled our once-peaceful clearing with tents and lean-tos made from old, salvaged planks and driftwood they carried from the shore. They were a constant thorn in my side, but the men did prove useful as hunters; I could say at least that much on their account. Consider it small praise, though, for the first creatures they hunted were our pigs. It didn’t take long for them to discover our flocks of sheep, either, grazing on the dry autumn grass on the windy northern slopes of Aeaea. They left the wolves alone—or, more likely, Caicias warned his kin to stay well away from the Ithacans, understanding that they were nothing like we women. But I grew desperately afraid that the foolish men would kill too many of our animals, and leave us without healthy breeding stock when spring came.
I understood right away that it was every bit as futile to ask the Ithacans to moderate their hunting as it would have been to demand the same. They would never listen to a woman. I was obliged to take the matter up with Odysseus. He was their king, after all, and had the power to command them. More than that: he was a man, and so the Ithacans would heed both his warnings and his requests. How it galled me, to yield power to that man—to any man, but especially Odysseus, who has possessed me so casually, without the least regard for my feelings or desires. But as soon as I’d brought the plight of the herds to Odysseus’s attention, he saw the sense in my plea. He told his men off to use common sense; he decreed that no more than one swine or sheep could be killed per week, and any man who violated the rule would eat nothing but roots for a month. The Ithacans slacked off their hunting; I had some hope that our herds would survive to spring.