fish I could not see. I took a breath and stepped forward onto the beach.
“Hail, mortal.”
He fumbled his nets but did not drop them. “Hail,” he said. “What goddess do I address?”
His voice was gentle in my ears, sweet as summer winds.
“Circe,” I said.
“Ah.” His face was carefully blank. He told me much later it was because he had not heard of me and feared to give offense. He knelt on the rough boards. “Most reverend lady. Do I trespass on your waters?”
“No,” I said. “I have no waters. Is that a boat?”
Expressions passed across his face, but I could not read them. “It is,” he said.
“I would like to sail upon it,” I said.
He hesitated, then began to steer closer to the shore, but I did not know to wait. I waded out through the waves to him and pulled myself aboard. The deck was hot through my sandals, and its motion pleasing, a faint undulation, like I rode upon a snake.
“Proceed,” I said.
How stiff I was, dressed in my divine dignity that I did not even know I wore. And he was stiffer still. He trembled when my sleeve brushed his. His eyes darted whenever I addressed him. I realized with a shock that I knew such gestures. I had performed them a thousand times—for my father, and my grandfather, and all those mighty gods who strode through my days. The great chain of fear.
“Oh, no,” I said to him. “I am not like that. I have scarcely any powers at all and cannot hurt you. Be comfortable, as you were.”
“Thank you, kind goddess.” But he said it so flinchingly that I had to laugh. It was that laughter, more than my protestation, that seemed to ease him a little. Moment passed into moment, and we began to talk of the things around us: the fish jumping, a bird dipping overhead. I asked him how his nets were made, and he told me, warming to the subject, for he took great care with them. When I told him my father’s name, it sent him glancing at the sun and trembling worse than ever, but at day’s end no wrath had descended and he knelt to me and said that I must have blessed his nets, for they were the fullest they had ever been.
I looked down at his thick, black hair, shining in the sunset light, his strong shoulders bowing low. This is what all those gods in our halls longed for, such worship. I thought perhaps he had not done it right, or more likely, I had not. All I wanted was to see his face again.
“Rise,” I told him. “Please. I have not blessed your nets, I have no powers to do so. I am born from naiads, who govern fresh water only, and even their small gifts I lack.”
“Yet,” he said, “may I return? Will you be here? For I have never known such a wondrous thing in all my life as you.”
I had stood beside my father’s light. I had held Aeëtes in my arms, and my bed was heaped with thick-wooled blankets woven by immortal hands. But it was not until that moment that I think I had ever been warm.
“Yes,” I told him. “I will be here.”
His name was Glaucos, and he came every day. He brought along bread, which I had never tasted, and cheese, which I had, and olives that I liked to see his teeth bite through. I asked him about his family, and he told me that his father was old and bitter, always storming and worrying about food, and his mother used to make herb simples but was broken now from too much labor, and his sister had five children already and was always sick and angry. All of them would be turned out of their cottage if they could not give their lord the tribute he levied.
No one had ever confided so in me. I drank down every story like a whirlpool sucks down waves, though I could hardly understand half of what they meant, poverty and toil and human terror. The only thing that was clear was Glaucos’ face, his handsome brow and earnest eyes, wet a little from his griefs but smiling always when he looked at me.
I loved to watch him at his daily tasks, which he did with his hands instead of a blink of power: mending the torn nets, cleaning off the boat’s deck, sparking the flint. When he made his