Circe

Yet their faces at the rail were pinched and tense. That smell was stronger now, and there was a heaviness in the air, a dragging weight that seemed to hang from the mast itself. They saw me, yet they made no sound and gave no signs of greeting.

The anchor dropped with a splash and the plank followed. Above, gulls circled, crying. Two descended, arms touching, heads bowed. A man, broad and muscular, his dark hair lifting in the late breeze. And—it surprised me—a woman, tall and wrapped in black, a long veil flowing down behind her. The pair moved towards me gracefully and without hesitation, as if they were expected guests. They knelt at my feet and the woman held her hands up, long-fingered and bare of any adornment. Her veil was arranged so that not one strand of hair showed beneath it. Her chin stayed resolutely down, concealing her face.

“Goddess,” she said, “Witch of Aiaia. We come to you for aid.” Her voice was low but clear, with a musicality to it, as if it were used to singing. “We have fled great evil, and to escape it we have done great evil. We are tainted.”

I could feel it. That unwholesome air had thickened, coating everything with an oily heaviness. Miasma, it was called. Pollution. It rose from unpurified crimes, from deeds done against the gods, and from the unsanctified spilling of blood. It had touched me after the Minotaur’s birth, until Dicte’s waters washed me clean. But this was stronger: a foul, seeping contagion.

“Will you help us?” she said.

“Help us, great goddess, we are at your mercy,” the man echoed.

It was not magic they asked for, but the oldest rite of our kind. Katharsis. The cleansing by smoke and prayer, water and blood. It was forbidden for me to question them, to demand their transgressions, if transgressions they were. My part was only yes or no.

The man did not have his partner’s discipline. When he had spoken, his chin had lifted a little, and I had glimpsed his face. He was young, even younger than I had thought, his beard still in patches. His skin was raw from wind and sun, but it glowed with health. He was beautiful—like a god, the poets would say. But it was his mortal determination that struck me most, the brave set of his neck, despite the burdens upon him.

“Rise,” I said. “And come. I will help you as I can.”

I led them up the pig trails. His hand clasped her arm solicitously, as if he would steady her, but she never stumbled. If anything, her feet were surer than his. And still she was careful to keep her face down.

I brought them inside. They stepped past the chairs and knelt silently upon the floor stones. Daedalus might have carved a lovely statue of them: Humility.

I went to the back door, and the pigs ran to me. I put my hand on one, a piglet not half a year old, pure and unspotted. If I were a priest I would have drugged him so he would not take fright and struggle, marring the ritual. In my hands, he went limp as a sleeping child. I washed him, tied the sacred fillets, wove a garland for his neck, and all the while he was quiet, as if he knew and agreed.

I set the golden basin on the floor and took up the great bronze knife. I had no altar, but I did not need one: anywhere I was became my temple. The animal’s throat opened easily beneath the blade. He did kick then, but only for a moment. I held him firm until his legs stilled, while the red stream poured into the bowl. I sang the hymns, and bathed their hands and faces in sacred water while fragrant herbs burned. I felt the heaviness lifting. The air grew clean, and the oily scent faded. They prayed while I carried away the blood to pour over a tree’s wrinkled roots. I would butcher the body later and cook it for their meal.

“It is done,” I told them, when I returned.

He lifted the hem of my cloak to his lips. “Great goddess.”

She was the one I was watching. I wanted to see her face, freed at last from its careful custody.

She looked up. Her eyes shone bright as torches. She drew off her veil, revealing hair like the sun on Crete’s hills. A demigod, she was, that potent mix of human and divinity. And more than that: she was my kin. None had such a golden look except the direct line of Helios.

“I am sorry for my deception,” she said. “But I could not risk you sending me away. Not when I have wished all my life to know you.”

There was a quality to her that is hard to describe, a fervency, a heat that went to your head. I had expected her to be beautiful, for she walked like a queen of the gods, but it was an odd beauty, not like my mother’s or sister’s. Each of her features alone was nothing, her nose too sharp, her chin over-strong. Yet together they made a whole like the heart of a flame. You could not look away.

Her eyes were clinging to me as if they would peel me. “You and my father were close as children. I could not know what messages he might have sent you about his wayward daughter.”