Circe

My father’s gaze was far away. As if he were looking through sea and earth, all the way to Colchis. It might have been some trick of the hearth-fire, but I thought the light of his face flickered.

“Shall I give you a demonstration?” My brother drew out from his robes a small pot with a wax seal. He broke the seal and touched his finger to the liquid inside. I smelled something sharp and green, with a brackish edge.

He pressed his thumb to my face and spoke a word, too low for me to hear. My skin began to itch, and then, like a taper snuffed out, the pain was gone. When I put my hand to my cheek I felt only smoothness, and a faint sheen as if from oil.

“A good trick, is it not?” Aeëtes said.

My father did not answer. He sat strangely dumb. I felt struck dumb myself. The power of healing another’s flesh belonged only to the greatest gods, not to such as us.

My brother smiled, as if he could hear my thoughts. “And that is the least of my powers. They are drawn from the earth itself, and so are not bound by the normal laws of divinity.” He let the words hang a moment in the air. “I understand of course that you can make no judgments now. You must take counsel. But you should know that I would be happy to give Zeus a more…impressive demonstration.”

A look flashed in his eyes, like teeth in a wolf’s mouth.

My father’s words came slowly. That same numbness still masked his face. I understood with an odd jolt. He is afraid.

“I must take counsel, as you say. This is…new. Until it is decided, you will remain in these halls. Both of you.”

“I expected no less,” Aeëtes said. He inclined his head and turned to go. I followed, skin prickling with the rush of my thoughts, and a breathless, rearing hope. The myrrh-wood doors shut behind us, and we stood in the hall. Aeëtes’ face was calm, as if he had not just performed a miracle and silenced our father. I had a thousand questions ready to tumble out, but he spoke first.

“What have you been doing all this while? You took forever. I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t a pharmakis after all.”

It was not a word I knew. It was not a word anyone knew, then.

“Pharmakis,” I said.

Witch.

News ran like spring rivers. At dinner, the children of Oceanos whispered when they saw me and skittered out of my path. If our arms brushed they paled, and when I passed a goblet to a river-god, his eyes dodged away. Oh no, thank you, I am not thirsty.

Aeëtes laughed. “You will get used to it. We are ourselves alone now.”

He did not seem alone. Every night he sat on my grandfather’s dais with my father and our uncles. I watched him, drinking nectar, laughing, showing his teeth. His expressions darted like schools of fish in the water, now light, now dark.

I waited till our father was gone, then went to sit in a chair near him. I longed to take the place beside him on the couch, lean against his shoulder, but he seemed so grim and straight, I did not know how to touch him.

“You like your kingdom? Colchis?”

“It is the finest in the world,” he said. “I have done what I said, sister. I have gathered there all the wonders of our lands.”

I smiled to hear him call me sister, to speak of those old dreams. “I wish I could see it.”

He said nothing. He was a magician who could break the teeth of snakes, tear up oaks by their roots. He did not need me.

“Do you have Daedalus too?”

He made a face. “No, Pasiphaë has him trapped. Perhaps in time. I have a giant fleece made of gold, though, and half a dozen dragons.”

I did not have to draw his stories out of him. They burst forth, the spells and charms he cast, the beasts he summoned, the herbs he cut by moonlight and brewed into miracles. Each tale was more outlandish than the last, thunder leaping to his fingertips, lambs cooked and born again from their charred bones.

“What was it you spoke when you healed my skin?”

“A word of power.”

“Will you teach it to me?”

“Sorcery cannot be taught. You find it yourself, or you do not.”

I thought of the humming I had heard when I touched those flowers, the eerie knowledge that had glided through me.

“How long have you known you could do such things?”

“Since I was born,” he said. “But I had to wait until I was out from Father’s eye.”

All those years beside me, and he had said nothing. I opened my mouth to demand: how could you not tell me? But this new Aeëtes in his vivid robes was too unnerving.

“Were you not afraid,” I said, “that Father would be angry?”

“No. I was not fool enough to try to humiliate him in front of everyone.” He lifted his eyebrows at me, and I flushed. “Anyway, he is eager to imagine how such strength may be used to his benefit. His worry is over Zeus. He must paint us just right: that we are threat enough that Zeus should think twice, but not so much that he is forced to act.”

My brother, who had always seen into the cracks of the world.

“What if the Olympians try to take your spells from you?”