Circe

He put a hand to my arm. “You do not have to worry. I will be safe. Hermes is my ancestor through my father, he tells me. He would not betray me. Mother, do you hear?” He was peering at me anxiously from beneath his hair.

My blood ran cold to see his greenness. Had I ever been so young?

“He is a god of lies,” I said. “Only fools put their faith in him.”

He flushed, but a defiance had come into his face. “I know what he is. I do not just rely on him. I have packed my bow. And he has been teaching me a little spear-work besides.” He gestured to a stick leaning in the corner, one of my old kitchen knives laced to its end. He must have seen my horror, for he added, “Not that I will have to use it. It is just a few days to Ithaca, and then I will be safe with my father.”

He was leaning forward, earnestly. He thought he had answered all my objections. He was proud of himself, bright in his new-forged plans. How easily those words tumbled from him, safe, my father. I felt myself running with swift, clear rage.

“What makes you think you will be welcome on Ithaca? All you know of your father is stories. And he already has a son. How do you think Telemachus will like his bastard brother appearing?”

He flinched a little at bastard, but answered bravely. “I don’t think he would mind. I don’t come for his kingdom, or his inheritance, and so I will explain to him. I will stay the whole winter, and there will be time for us to know each other.”

“So that is it. It is settled. You and Hermes have the plan, and now you think all that is needed is for me to wish you fair wind.”

He looked at me, uncertain.

“Tell me,” I said. “What does all-knowing Hermes say about his sister who wants you dead? About the fact that you will be killed the moment you step away from the island?”

He nearly sighed. “Mother, it was so long ago. Surely she has forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” My voice clawed the cave walls. “Are you an idiot? Athena does not forget. She will eat you in one gulp, like an owl takes a stupid mouse.”

His face paled, but he pressed on like the valiant heart he was. “I will take my chances.”

“You will not. I forbid it.”

He stared at me. I had never forbidden him anything before. “But I must go to Ithaca. I have built the ship. I’m ready.”

I stepped towards him. “Let me explain more clearly. If you leave, you will die. So you will not sail. And if you try, I will burn that boat of yours to cinders.”

His face was blank with shock. I turned and walked away.

He did not sail that day. I stalked back and forth in my kitchen, and he kept to his woods. It was dusk when he returned to the house. He banged through the trunks, loudly gathered up bedding. He had come only to show me that he would not stay beneath my roof.

When he passed me I said, “You want me to treat you like a man, but you act like a child. You have been protected here your whole life. You do not understand the dangers that wait for you in the world. You cannot simply pretend that Athena does not exist.”

He was ready for me, like tinder for the spark. “You are right. I don’t know the world. How could I? You don’t let me out of your sight.”

“Athena stood upon that very hearth and demanded I give you to her so she could kill you.”

“I know,” he said. “You’ve told me a hundred times. Yet she has not tried since, has she? I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Because of the spells I cast and carry!” I rose to face him. “Do you know what I have had to do to keep them strong, the hours I have spent fretting over them, testing them to be sure she cannot break through?”

“You like doing that.”

“Like it?” The laugh scraped from me. “I like doing my own work, which I have scarcely had time for since you were born!”

“Then go do your spells! Go do them and let me leave! Be honest, you do not even know if Athena is still angry. Have you tried to speak with her? It has been sixteen years!”

He said it as if it were sixteen centuries. He could not imagine the scope of gods, the mercilessness that comes of seeing generations rise and fall around you. He was mortal and young. A slow afternoon felt like a year to him.

I could feel my face kindling, gathering heat. “You think all gods are like me. That you may ignore them as you please, treat them as your servants, that their wishes are only flies to be brushed aside. But they will crush you for pleasure, for spite.”

“Fear and the gods, fear and the gods! That is all you talk about. It is all you have ever talked about. Yet a thousand thousand men and women walk this world and live to be old. Some of them are even happy, Mother. They do not just cling to safe harbors with desperate faces. I want to be one of them. I mean to be. Why can’t you understand that?”

The air around me had begun to crackle. “You are the one who does not understand. I have said you will not leave, and that is the end of it.”

“So that’s it then? I just stay here my whole life? Until I die? I never even try to leave?”

“If need be.”