I’m not old enough to have been there when it happened, but I have it on the good authority of my aunt that Circe never actually lifted the enchantment that turned those rapists and warmongers into pigs and chickens. They are still scratching and snouting around in a yard full of mud and acorns and their own shit. Their din has become a background of white noise while she weaves.
And when Odysseus arrived, when he threatened to murder her in her own home, when he brandished his sharpened broad sword at her, the goddess didn’t submit to him. She turned that charismatic and handsome murderer, thief, and violator into one of the rams to be bound with golden rope to his ship.
“Let Poseidon sink the whole fucking thing,” she said looking out into the angry sea.
Then, she went home and drew a warm bath.
My aunt tells me this at breakfast between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs.
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Biography
Ray Ball, Ph.D., is a history professor in Alaska. She is the author of two history books and her creative work has recently appeared in Cirque, L’Éphémère Review, Okay Donkey, and The Cabinet of Heed. She tweets @ProfessorBall
Image: Karolina Szczur
