Circe

A marvel it was, but also a message. I had been raised at my father’s feet and knew a boast of power when I saw it. Another king, if he had such a treasure, would keep it under guard in his most fortified hall. Minos and Pasiphaë had set it on a ship, exposed to brine and sun, to pirates and sea-wrack and monsters. As if to say: This is a trifle. We have a thousand more, and better yet the man who makes them.

The drumbeat drew my attention away. The sailors had taken their benches, and I felt the first judders of motion. The harbor waters began to slide past us. My island dwindled behind.

I turned my eye to the men filling the deck around me. There were thirty-eight in all. At the stern five guards paced in capes and golden armor. Their noses were lumpen, twisted from too many breakings. I remembered Aeëtes sneering at them: Minos’ thugs, dressed up like princes. The rowers were the pick of Knossos’ mighty navy, so large the oars looked dainty in their hands. Around them, the other sailors moved swiftly, raising a canopy to keep off the sun.

At Minos and Pasiphaë’s wedding, the huddle of mortals I had glimpsed seemed distant and blurred, as alike as leaves on a tree. But here, beneath the sky, each face was relentlessly distinct. This one was thick, this one smooth, this one bearded with a hooked nose and narrow chin. There were scars and calluses and scrapes, age-lines and cowlicks of hair. One had draped a wet cloth around his neck against the heat. Another wore a bracelet made by childish hands, and a third had a head shaped like a bullfinch’s. It made me dizzy to realize that this was but a fraction of a fraction of all the men the world had bred. How could such variation endure, such endless iteration of minds and faces? Did the earth not go mad?

“May I bring you a seat?” Daedalus said.

I turned, glad for the respite of his single face. Daedalus could not have been called handsome, but his features had a pleasing sturdiness.

“I prefer to stand,” I said. I gestured to the prow-piece. “She is beautiful.”

He inclined his head, a man used to such compliments. “Thank you.”

“Tell me something. Why does my sister have you under watch?” When we had stepped on board, the largest guard, the leader, had roughly searched him.

“Ah.” He smiled slightly. “Minos and Pasiphaë fear that I do not fully…appreciate their hospitality.”

I remembered Aeëtes saying: Pasiphaë has him trapped.

“Surely you might have escaped them on the way.”

“I might escape them often. But Pasiphaë has something of mine I will not leave.”

I waited for more, but it did not come. His hands rested on the rail. The knuckles were battered, the fingers hatched with white nicks of scars. As though he had plunged them into broken wood or shards of glass.

“In the straits,” I said. “You saw Scylla?”

“Not clearly. The cliff was hidden in spray and fog, and she moved too quickly. Six heads, striking twice, with teeth as long as a leg.”

I had seen the stains on the deck. They had been scrubbed, yet the blood had soaked deep. All that was left of twelve lives. My stomach twisted with guilt, as Pasiphaë had meant it to.

“You should know I was the one who did it,” I said. “The one who made Scylla what she is. That is why I am exiled, and why my sister had you take this route.”

I watched his face for surprise or disgust, even terror. But he only nodded. “She told me.”

Of course she had. She was a poisoner at heart; she wanted to be sure I came as villain, not savior. Except this time it was nothing but the truth.

“There is something I do not understand,” I said. “For all my sister’s cruelty she is not often foolish. Why would she risk you on this errand?”

“I earned my place here myself. I am forbidden to say more, but when we arrive in Crete, I think you will understand.” He hesitated. “Do you know if there is anything we can do against her? Scylla?”

Above us, the sun burned away the last shreds of cloud. The men panted, even under the canopy.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I will try.”

We stood in silence beside that leaping girl as the sea fell away.

That night we camped on the shore of a flourishing green land. Around their fires, the men were tense and quiet, muffled by dread. I could hear their whispers, the wine sloshing as they passed it. No man wanted to lie awake imagining tomorrow.

Daedalus had marked out a small space for me with a bedroll, but I left it. I could not bear to be hemmed in by all those breathing, anxious bodies.