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But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours,
as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
– Madeline Miller, Circe
Like my divine uncle Prometheus, so did I defy the gods in favour of mortals. I would gladly take honour in being compared to him, but I am a much lesser being and merely a nuisance. Almighty Zeus blinks and I pass effortlessly underneath him in my mediocre self. While my uncle is like a mountain casting a shadow over the world, I am more of a worm that threads itself beneath his feet. I am no threat, they believe, as I plait my hair and tie my skirts up.
“It was his love of mortals,” my father would criticise, his godly self would burn shadows into my eyes. But who else would condemn a mortal lover more than himself? Helios god of the sun, the one who purposefully delays day and night for greed and amusement. Perhaps a few cattle would die from drought, or an aging shepherd might pass out from the unexpected heat. But the bounties left at my father’s alter would only rise just as the stalks of wheat drooped. A balance of power that was always tipped. How else does a god or titan receive their gifts, if not off the grief of mortals?
Father, do you condemn me in the same way? Then bring out your whips.
Prometheus, who spilled his own golden blood for the love of mortals.
Would I too, spill my blood? And even when I’ve dug myself raw for them, whipped my heels and slit my throat – how will I bear their fickle lives?
How will I bear it?
He wasn’t the first mortal I loved, but it was the first being to ever love me. Daedalus, the maze builder himself who built his own gilded cage.
Whereas I was exiled to Aiaia for my skills, Daedalus was held close for his.
We found each other in the midst of cruelty and drew comfort that our pain mirrored each other. There is ease found in not needing to explain why you hurt. Instead, we shared love of our craft, him in inventing and me in my spells. Preciously, we held each other’s hands knowing how masterful they were.
This evening, I traced the scars on his hands as we lay beside each other. I looked for new ones and compared them to old ones – envying each of them. How I wished for my body to retain physical memory like his. To show him exactly where my mother scratched me, my father burnt my skin. Even the Minotaur, who had tasted my flesh, was now only in your stories.
I held my hands against his bare chest, his skin like the walnut of his carvings, rose quietly underneath my fingers.
My family, mouths red from the wine they drank, would tell me how a mortal’s flesh rotted as soon as they were born. My fingers search for it now on Daedalus’ body, looking for the truths in the gods’ lies. I found none.
“Circe,” Daedalus’ voice was quiet. His dark eyes shining from the glow of tapers in my room. “I need to say something to you before you leave.”
I waited.
“Whatever time the fates have granted us, no matter how little – I can only be forever indebted to them for it.” His hand, steady and constant, cupped my cheek. “I have found myself falling -”
My fingers had found his lips, still parted with the whisper of the word he was about to speak. “If you say it, I will take you with me, Daedalus. I will not be able to muster the strength to leave you.”
His eyes searched mine for a moment, they switched through emotion until he had carved out acceptance. I hesitated before removing my hand, his mouth was closed, and he bought me into him, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“Tell me about Egypt,” I asked, speaking into his chest. “Tell me about all the inventions there, about how Icarus will run with the sand blowing at his feet.”
I shut my eyes tightly as he spoke, speaking of freedoms my island could never offer him. His hands would wither, I told myself, they would wither and rot with boredom.
My body sat still in my silver chair, cold had washed over me.
Hermes stretched his legs out upon my hearth, the silver winged sandals glistening like jewels by the fire.
“How did he die?” I asked, my voice shook and sounded far off.
“He fell,” Hermes said simply. I could hear the smile on his lips. “Fell like a rock.”
I didn’t speak, I didn’t need to ask for more. Hermes would offer it like arrows to my back without me begging.
“Icarus thought himself a god, flew too close to the sun. Ironic, isn’t it? The boy that could have been your son in another life, grandson to the sun titan, thinking himself a deity like that.” Hermes laughed and I pictured drowning him in my potions to choke him. “Daedalus squawked so loudly, all the while flapping his wings to try reach his tumbling son - Apollo thought he were a seagull.”
He does what he wants, Daedalus once said about Icarus to me. Although in jest, it was said with pride then. I remembered Icarus pulling out every invention of his father’s like treasures, showing me with his small fingers at how they worked.
“Look,” he held tongs into the fire with a nimble grip. “This way, I will never get burnt. Isn’t my father the best inventor?”
My eyes burnt and Hermes yawned before continuing. “Daedalus wept tears thicker than honey, thicker that the wax that had melted off of his son’s wings. It is a shame that Icarus wasn’t like his father, more like his mother I’d say - dim and only pleasant to look at.”
In a tip of a cup I was up on my feet, I knew my eyes glowed with the fire that stung my bones. “Get out.” But Hermes had already left, leaving in his wake the smell of burnt incense.
I like you better in the dark anyways, Circe. I felt his whispered breath at the nape of my neck.
I dropped to my knees in the weight of grief.
Let Hermes boast about how he broke the sorceress, I felt no shame. Let the Olympic halls burst with laughter at how mortals rendered her into a worm who only pretended to be a snake. The cold stone beneath my knees carved into the skin over bone, I welcomed the pain and grieved.
I mourned like the mortal women do, I sang and wept for Icarus.
It wasn’t until some time that I called Hermes to me, though I had doubted the god would ever comply. But curiosity was always the thread that drew us together.
“And why would I take you to him?” Hermes laughed, brushing my hanging herbs with his fingers.
“I can offer you something,” I said “You find enjoyment in steeling cattle – yes?”
Hermes’ smile faltered only an inch. “Go on.”
“My father’s cattle, rumoured to be his own kin, are much more prized than Apollo’s.” I placed a vial onto the table before us. “This potion will let you steal from Helios’ pride, undetected.”
He paused, his youthful face studying me. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth, Circe?”
“Hermes,” I tutted. “I thought you dared anything.”
I kept to my promise, even if the idea of deceiving the trickster god felt enticing. I told him a secret and in return he offered me passage to Daedalus before he was escorted to the underworld.
I found him easily, sitting at a simple table too rough to be his own work. His hands were turned upright on the table as if in plea. There were no new scars since last I traced them, no longer calloused as my body had felt during those nights together. He was a shadow of who he had been.
My bare feet padded against the stone ground as quietly as my lioness’. Grief had not only taken my lover’s hands, but they had wasted his eyes, now pale and rimmed with blue.
And yet, he surprised me, as he always did.
“Circe.” He smiled up at me.
I smiled too and sat beside him, placing my hand into his palm.
His fingers, knobbly in age curved onto mine. “How I’ve missed you.”
I carefully studied him, pressing his face once more into my memory. His head no longer shaved, lay white and thin over his lined face. I brushed the hair out of his face and his eyelids shut under my touch.
“What you must think of me,” he said.
I smiled. “I would marry you even now. I’d marry your age and your sorrow. I’d carve the wood out of trees with my fingernails until every one of your inventions existed,” I whispered quietly to him, as if I soothed him to sleep. “I have always-”
His fingers reached for my mouth, and I kissed them as they tremored against my lips.
“Do not speak it, or I won’t bear to leave you.”
His fingers still pressed against me, I smiled.
Daedalus’ eyes softened, they searched for me in his darkness. “I am dying… isn’t it?”
My throat tightened but I didn’t sob. Later, I thought. Later.
“Your son waits for you, Daedalus.”
Tears filled the man’s eyes and a sob caught in his throat.
I leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead. I breathed in the smell of cedar that had engrained itself into the man I loved. I whispered a prayer of safe travel to the afterlife and let Hermes guide him to his son.
Daedalus, who when watched me leave Crete and my cruel sister whispered free, and now that I watched him die, I whispered free.
Aeëtes and Glaucos had been lulls in my loneliness. Even Odysseus, the father of my son and a man as ever changing as my spells, gave me respite as I nourished the battled scars on his body by night. They were merely a break in the waves, sharp but short.
Daedalus’ presence, even in his absence, was constant in my life. The man who gave me the most beautiful bridal gifts which were boarded on the ship that would leave him and return me to my exile. The words of promises and love still rested on each of our fingertips, caught on each other’s lips. The way his soul touched mine was as soft as wings and as constant as the west wind.
The great inventor and craftsman poets weaved songs of, the man who Chiron told his students about as both a cautionary and glorious tale. The man who found mortality in his son’s death.
I wish I had found mine in his death. But instead, it sinks inside me each day of my divine life. The scars never seep into my skin, but it delves deep into my chest like a rock in a well. My father never came to whip me like Prometheus had faced, no bird tore out my liver for the shame I bought the gods.
I don’t spill my blood for mortals, but I weep for one. I build my grief up for him and find my true punishment in its strength the next day. A man too good to be loved by Circe, lesser goddess. My bridal gift to him are the tears I will spill in my eternal life.
And I would bear it as best as I could.