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He thought and felt and acted, and all these things made a straight line. No wonder his father had been so baffled by him. He would have been always looking for the hidden meaning, the knife in the dark. But Telemachus carried his blade in the open.

“Gods pretend to be parents,” I said, “but they are children, clapping their hands and shouting for more.”

Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.

And Odysseus, I thought. The spiral shell. Always another curve out of sight.

“Though the truth is, her favorite thing about weaving is that while she works, everyone around her thinks she can’t hear what they’re saying. She gathers all the best news that way. She can tell you who’s getting married, who’s pregnant, and who’s about to start a feud.” “Your wife sounds like a clever woman.” “She is. I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.”

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.

“I want the creature dead, and that is final!” “It cannot be killed,” I told Minos. “Not now. It has a destiny far in the future.” “A destiny!” My sister clapped delightedly. “Oh, tell us what it is! Does it escape and eat someone we know?”

I was allowed license because it amused him, but I never knew when that amusement might end. You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

I did not lie dreaming of him during the days, I did not speak his name into my pillow. He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.

Watching Zeus and Helios negotiate is always good entertainment. Like two volcanoes trying to decide if they should blow.

I felt myself tremble, but I would not let him see it. Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it just the same.

I brought a withered flower back to life. I banished flies from my house. I made the cherries blossom out of season and turned the fire vivid green. If Aeëtes had been there, he would have choked on his beard to see such kitchen-tricks. Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not.

That is how it works, Circe. I tell Father that my sorcery was an accident, he pretends to believe me, and Zeus pretends to believe him, and so the world is balanced.

I had begun to know what fear was. What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too. A power greater than their own.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

“You are a daughter of Helios, are you not?” he said, when he had finished, and I’d stepped back. “Yes.” The question stung. If I had been a proper daughter, he would not have had to ask. I would have been perfect and gleaming with beauty poured straight from my father’s source.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

My father’s halls were dark and silent. His palace was a neighbor to Oceanos’, buried in the earth’s rock, and its walls were made of polished obsidian. Why not? They could have been anything in the world, blood-red marble from Egypt or balsam from Araby, my father had only to wish it so. But he liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone.

Often those men in most need hate most to be grateful, and will strike at you just to feel whole again.