The Mask of Circe by Henry Kuttner

Author:Henry Kuttner [Kuttner, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IT WAS long ago—three thousand years ago. Part of my mind knew that. But the living part of my mind just now dwelt in that forgotten past which was sweeping back upon me in wave after wave of memory. Jason’s memory. Each veil of it, I thought, relived in a flash and torn aside forever.

Argo cleaving the purple Aegean water— the dark groves of Aeaea—the faces of many women.

Argo, my own, my swift and beautiful.”

What was any woman to me? What was Circe, or Hecate herself, or this monstrous battle between those, people called gods—who were not gods? True, I had sworn an oath—

But Jason had broken oaths before.

We came to Aeaea three weeks ago, to the white temple and the lovely Enchantress who dwelt there among her half-human beasts.

Medea and I, traveling overland to be cleansed of blood-guilt and to wait the coming of the Argo. But there were storms that year, and Argo did not come. And while we waited on that strange isle in the Adriatic where Circe wrought her spells, dim, unreal days and nights went by. There was something strange in the very air of the island, as though Aeaea hovered on the edge of the veil that hides another world.

Slowly, during the long summer evening, Jason’s thoughts turned from Medea, who was a well-known story now, and lingered upon Circe, the Enchantress. I knew from the first that she had been watching me, not for my own sake, though I did not guess it then, but for another reason—for the sake of another man.

I have a double mind. Always I have had that. Perhaps I was born to it, perhaps it developed in the days when I was a student under the wisdom of Charon, the Centaur. But sometimes another man, a ghost from some unknown Hades, looks through Jason’s eyes and speaks with his tongue. Not often. But on Aeaea it happened more often than I liked, and Circe lingered near me while the madness had reign in my mind, her strange ember-green eyes hot upon mine.

Mine? No, that other man’s. He was that nameless ghost who shared Jason’s brain.

And—a new look began to come into the green gaze. I had seen that look on a woman’s face often enough to know what it implied. Well, it was nothing new to Jason that a woman should love him. But uneasiness nagged at me beneath the complacence. There was something here I did not understand.

The weeks were long before the Argo came. And before that happened, Circe spoke to me of Hecate, and Hecate herself stepped down from her altar . . .

We had been drinking wine together in the cool summer evening, Circe and I. After awhile she said to me,

“I have a message for you, Jason—a message from the goddess.”

I considered that. The wine was in my head. I wondered if the goddess herself had looked upon me and found me good. Perhaps that was what lay behind the strangeness I had sensed.

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