1) "My father's gaze was far away. As if he were looking through sea and earth, all the way to Colchis. It might have been some trick of the hearth-fire, but I thought the light of his face flickered.
'Shall I give you a demonstration?' My brother drew out from his robes a small pot with a wax seal. He broke the seal and touched his finger to the liquid inside. I smelled something sharp and green, with a brackish edge.
He pressed his thumb to my face and spoke a word, too low for me to hear. My skin began to itch, and then, like a taper snuffed out, the pain was gone. When I put my hand to my cheek I felt only smoothness, and a faint sheen as if from oil.
'A good trick, is it not?' Aeëtes said.
My father did not answer. He sat strangely dumb. I felt struck dumb myself. The power of healing another's flesh belonged only to the greatest gods, not to such as us.
My brother smiled, as if he could hear my thoughts. 'And that is the least of my powers. They are drawn from the earth itself, and so are not bound by the normal laws of divinity.' He let the words hang a moment in the air. 'I understand of course that you can make no judgments now. You must take counsel. But you should know that I would be happy to give Zeus a more...impressive demonstration.'
A look flashed in his eyes, like teeth in a wolf's mouth.
My father's words came slowly. That same numbness still masked his face. I understood with an odd jold. He is afraid.
'I must take counsel, as you say. This is...new. Until it is decided, you will remain in these halls. Both of you.'
'I expected no less,' Aeëtes said. He inclined his head and turned to go. I followed, skin prickling with the rush of my thoughts, and a breathless, rearing hope. The myrrh-wood doors shut behind us, and we stood in the hall. Aeëtes' face was calm, as if he had not just performed a miracle and silenced our father. I had a thousand questions ready to tumble out, but he spoke first.
'What have you been doing all this while? You took forever. I was beginning to think you weren't a pharmakis after all.'
It was not a word I knew. It was not a word anyone knew, then.
'Pharmakis,' I said.
Witch."
2) "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. If my herbs are not fresh enough, if my attention falters, if my will is weak, the draughts go stale and rancid in my hands."
3) "Brides, nyphs were called, but that is not really how the world saw us. We were an endless feast laid out upon a table, beautiful and renewing. And so very bad at getting away.
The rails of my sty cracked with age and use. From time to time the wood buckled and a pig escaped. Most often, he would throw himself from the cliffs. The seabirds were grateful; they seemed to come from half the world away to feast on the plump bones. I would stand watching as they stripped the fat and sinew. The small pink scrap of tail-skin dangled from one of their beaks like a worm. If it were a man, I wondered if I would pity him. But it was not a man.
When I passed back by the pen, his friends would stare at me with pleading faces. They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.
On my bed, the lions rested their chins on my stomach. I pushed them off. I rose and walked again."
4) "I saved the cyclops for last, I cannot say why. Perhaps because I could remember Odysseus telling it so clearly.
[...]
When the creature fell at last into a stupor, he sharpened a great stake, heated it over the fire, and plunged it into his eye. The cyclops roared and thrashed but could not see to catch Odysseus and the rest of the crew. They were able to escape when he let his sheep out to graze, each man clinging to the underside of a wooly beast. The enraged monster called for help from his fellow one-eyes, but they did not come, for he cried, 'No one has blinded me! No one is escaping!' Odysseus and his crew reached the ships, and when they were safely distant, Odysseus turned back to shout across the waves, 'If you would know the man who tricked you, it is Odysseus, son of Laertes and prince of Ithaca!'
The words seemed to echo in the quiet air. Telemachus was silent, as if waiting for the sound to fade. At last he said, 'It was a bad life.'
'There are many who are unhappier.'
'No.' His vehemence startled me. 'I do not mean a bad life for him. I mean that he made life for others a misery. Why did his men go to that cave in the first place? Because he wanted more treasure. And poseidon's wrath that everyone pitied him for? He brought it on himself. Because he could not bear to leave the cyclops without taking credit for the trick.'
His words were running forward like an undammed flood.
'All those years of pain and wandering. Why? For a moment's pride. He would rather be cursed by the gods than be No one. If he had returned home after the war, the suitors would never have come. My mother's life would not have been blighted. My life. He talked so often of longing for us and home. But it was lies. When he was back on Ithaca he was never content, always looking to the horizon. Once we were his again, he wanted something else. What is that if not a bad life? Luring others to you, then turning from them?'"
