And beneath that, check out an exclusive excerpt from Chapter One.
Circehits shelves April 10, 2018.
They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins.
Credit: Nina Subin; Lee Boudreaux Books
Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities.
We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves.
That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures.
Lee Boudreaux Books
In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.
My mother was one of them, a naiad, guardian of fountains and streams.
She caught my fathers eye when he came to visit the halls of her own father, Oceanos.
Lee Boudreaux Books
Helios and Oceanos were often at each others tables in those days.
They were cousins, and equal in age, though they did not look it.
Oceanos palace was a great wonder, set deep in the earths rock.
Its high-arched halls were gilded, the stone floors smoothed by centuries of divine feet.
In their midst, outshining all that lily beauty, sat my mother.
Her hair was a warm brown, each strand so lustrous it seemed lit from within.
She would have felt my fathers gaze, hot as gusts from a bonfire.
I see her arrange her dress so it drapes just so over her shoulders.
I see her dab her fingers, glinting, in the water.
I have seen her do a thousand such tricks a thousand times.
My father always fell for them.
He believed the worlds natural order was to like him.
my father said to Oceanos.
Oceanos had many golden-eyed grandchildren from my father already, and was glad to think of more.
My daughter, Perse.
She is yours if you want her.
The next day, my father found her by her fountain-pool in the upper world.
It was a beautiful place, crowded with fat-headed narcissus, woven over with oak branches.
There was no muck, no slimy frogs, only clean, round stones giving way to grass.
Even my father, who cared nothing for the subtleties of nymph arts, admired it.
My mother knew he was coming.
Frail she was, but crafty, with a mind like a spike-toothed eel.
When he stood before her, arrayed in his glory, she laughed at him.
My father, of course, might have taken what he wanted.
But Helios flattered himself that all women went eager to his bed, slave girls and divinities alike.
His altars smoked with the proof, offerings from big-bellied mothers and happy by-blows.
It is marriage, she said to him, or nothing.
These were novelties to my father, and gods love nothing more than novelty.
By then they had learned what the four of us were.
You may have other children, they told her, only not with him.
But other husbands did not give amber beads.
It was the only time I ever saw her weep.
A third went to the door to admit my father.
A girl, my mother said to him, wrinkling her nose.
He placed his hand on my head in blessing.
She will make a fair match, he said.
my mother wanted to know.
This might be consolation, if I could be traded for something better.
A prince, I think.
You do not mean a mortal?
The revulsion was plain on her face.
Once when I was young I asked what mortals looked like.
My mother was simpler: like savage bags of rotten flesh.
Surely she will marry a son of Zeus, my mother insisted.
She had already begun imagining herself at feasts upon Olympus, sitting at Queen Heras right hand.
Her hair is streaked like a lynx.
There is a sharpness to it that is less than pleasing.
My mother did not argue further.
Like everyone, she knew the stories of Helios temper when he was crossed.
However gold he shines, do not forget his fire.
Her belly was gone, her waist reknitted, her cheeks fresh and virgin-rosy.
Come, she said.
Let us make a better one.
My infancy was the work of hours, my toddlerhood a few moments beyond that.
Mother, I said, aunt is gone.
My mother didnt answer.
My fathers halls were dark and silent.
Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone.
My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it.
Lie on the smooth earth floor and wear small holes in its surface with my fingers.
There were no grubs or worms, though I didnt know to miss them.
Nothing lived in those halls, except for us.
A moment later my mother returned, smelling of flowers.
I followed at his heels.
Welcome home, Father, welcome home.
While he drank his wine, he played draughts.
No one was allowed to play with him.
He placed the stone counters, spun the board, and placed them again.
My mother drenched her voice in honey.
Will you not come to bed, my love?
At my fathers feet, the whole world was made of gold.
What would happen, I said, if a mortal saw you in your fullest glory?
He would be burned to ash in a second.
What if a mortal saw me?
I listened to the draught pieces moving, the familiar rasp of marble against wood.
The mortal would count himself fortunate.
I would not burn him?
Of course not, he said.
But my eyes are like yours.
No, he said.
His gaze fell upon a log at the fireplaces side.
It glowed, then flamed, then fell as ash to the ground.
And that is the least of my powers.
Can you do as much?
All night I stared at those logs.
My sister was born, and my brother soon after that.
I cannot say how long it was exact.
Youd think my father would have taught us better, for he, after all, knows every sunrise.
But even he used to call my brother and sister twins.
Certainly, from the moment of my brothers birth, they were entwined like minks.
My father blessed them both with one hand.
You, he said to my luminous sister Pasiphae.
You will marry an eternal son of Zeus.
He used his prophecy voice, the one that spoke of future certainties.
My mother glowed to hear it, thinking of the robes she would wear to Zeus feasts.
Every son is a reflection of his mother.
My mother was pleased with this, and took it as permission to name him.
She called him Perses, for herself.
The two of them were clever and quickly saw how things stood.
They loved to sneer at me behind their ermine paws.
Her eyes are yellow as piss.
Her voice is screechy as an owl.
She is called Hawk, but she should be called Goat for her ugliness.
Those were their earliest attempts at barbs, still dull, but day by day they sharpened.
They had a hundred tormenting games that they devised.
Come, Melia, they coaxed.
It is the Olympian fashion to cut off your hair to the nape of your neck.
How will you ever catch a husband if you dont let us do it?
When Melia saw herself shorn like a hedgehog and cried, they would laugh till the caverns echoed.
I left them to it.
I preferred my fathers quiet halls and spent every second I could at my fathers feet.
I looked for mortals, but we were too high up to see them.
The herd lived on the grassy island of Thrinakia with two of my half-sisters as caretakers.
When we arrived these sisters ran at once to my father and hung from his neck, exclaiming.
Lampetia and Phaethousa, their names were.
And who is this you have brought with you?
She must be one of Perses children, look at her eyes.
LampetiaI thought it was Lampetiastroked my hair.
Darling, your eyes are nothing to worry about.
Your mother is very beautiful, but she has never been strong.
My eyes are like yours, I said.
No, darling, ours are bright as fire, and our hair like sun on the water.
Youre clever to keep yours in a braid, Phaethousa said.
The brown streaking does not look so bad then.
It is a shame you cannot hide your voice the same way.
She could never speak again.
That would work, would it not, sister?
Shall we go to see the cows?
Their coats were pure as lily petals and their eyes gentle and long-lashed.
In the sunset light, their backs gleamed glossy-soft.
May I touch one?
No, my father said.
Shall we tell you their names?
That is White-face, and that is Bright-eyes, and that Darling.
There is Lovely Girl and Pretty and Golden-horn and Gleaming.
There is Darling and there is
You named Darling already, I said.
You said that one was Darling.
I pointed to the first cow, peacefully chewing.
My sisters looked at each other, then at my father, a single golden glance.
But he was gazing at his cows in abstracted glory.
You must be mistaken, they said.
This one we just said is Darling.
And this one is Star-bright and this one Flashing and
My father said, What is this?
A scab upon Pretty?
Immediately my sisters were falling over themselves.
Oh, it cannot be!
Oh, wicked Pretty, to have hurt yourself.
Oh, wicked thing, that hurt you!
I leaned close to see.
It was a very small scab, smaller than my smallest fingernail, but my father was frowning.
You will fix it by tomorrow.
My sisters bobbed their heads, of course, of course.
We are so sorry.
We stepped again into the chariot, and my father took up the silver-tipped reins.
The first constellations were already peeping through the dimming light.
Then those astronomers were hauled before the kings they served and killed as frauds.
My father had smiled when he told me.
It was what they deserved, he said.
Father, I said that day, are we late enough to kill astronomers?
We are, he answered, shaking the jingling reins.
I did not look.
There was a twisting feeling in my chest, like cloth being wrung dry.
I was thinking of those astronomers.
I imagined them, low as worms, sagging and bent.
hey, they cried, on bony knees, it wasnt our fault, the sun itself was late.
The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones.
It is blasphemy to say so, you must die!
And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.
Father, I said, I feel strange.
You are hungry, he said.
It is past time for the feast.
Your sisters should be ashamed of themselves for delaying us.
I ate well at dinner, yet the feeling lingered.
Did you swallow a frog?
No, I said.
This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales.
My sister said, And how were our fathers golden heifers?
Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?
Never, my sister said.
What dont I know?
My sisters perfect mink face.
That he fucks them, of course.
Thats how he makes new ones.
He turns into a bull and sires their calves, then cooks the ones that get old.
Thats why everyone thinks they are immortal.
They howled, pointing at my reddened cheeks.
The sound drew my mother.
She loved my siblings japes.
Were telling Circe about the cows, my brother told her.
My mothers laughter, silver as a fountain down its rocks.
Such were my years then.
Excerpted from CIRCE 2018 by Madeline Miller, reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.
