Before the Waters Knew My Name

They said I was beautiful.

As if that were ever mine to keep.

I lived where the cliffs met the sea, a sliver of land kissed by foam and flame. The sun rose behind the hills and set over the waters, and in between, I lived—not as a nymph or goddess or monster, but as a girl. Just a girl. I would dip my feet into the cool salt tides and sing to the horizon. No crown on my brow. No curse in my blood. Just sea air and soft silence.

But beauty is a treacherous thing.

It makes you visible to gods.

And I—I only ever wanted to be invisible.

Glaucus loved me.

At least, that’s what he claimed. A sea-god, half-fish and salt-wrought, he rose from the waves like the dream of a storm. His eyes were distant things, full of tide and ache, and yet he swore they only looked for me.

He said he would give me the world.

I asked him to give me my peace.

He didn’t listen.

He came day after day, offering pearls and promises, trailing seaweed like garlands. His voice—low, thunderous, gentle—wove itself into my dreams. But I did not love him. I didn’t know him. And I did not want the weight of someone else’s wanting.

I was enough for myself.

Why is that never enough for others?

Then came Circe.

She looked at me the way storms look at harbors—hungry, knowing. They say she was a sorceress, a weaver of spells, a breaker of men. But she was more than that. She was womanhood weaponized. She was power buried in skin.

But when I first saw her, she was none of those things to me.

She was just another woman. And I was desperate.

I found her on her island, deep in the groves where nightshade grew and the air hummed with magic. I had heard stories—cautionary, reverent, fearful. Still, I came barefoot, unarmed, heart held out like a lamb.

"Please," I said. "Make him stop."

Her eyes flicked to mine, ancient and amused, and the silence between us stretched tight as thread.

"Most girls come to me to make them love someone," she said, tilting her head. "Not to make someone stop."

"I don’t want him," I said. "I want to be left alone."

She studied me then. Not the way a healer studies wounds, but the way a god studies fault lines before the quake. Her gaze lingered on my collarbones, my throat, my lips. The parts of me the world refused to ignore.

"You're afraid of being desired," she murmured.

I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That I wasn’t afraid—I was exhausted. That desire wasn’t a gift; it was a chain. That to be adored by someone who does not see you is its own kind of drowning.

But I only nodded.

And something in her shifted.

I didn’t see the moment she fell in love with me.

But I felt it, later—how her touch burned when she handed me a cup of herb-steeped water, how her words grew softer, almost tender.

She brushed a curl from my cheek once.

“Men are clumsy with beauty,” she said. “They mistake it for something they’re owed.”

She began to watch me like I was something fragile, something hers. A piece of music she didn’t want anyone else to hear. I saw it in the way she stood too close, the way her lips parted before she spoke—as if unsure whether to speak or kiss.

I thought she understood.

I thought, maybe, she knew what it was to be wanted in the wrong ways, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I didn’t see the danger.

Not until it was too late.

Because Circe didn’t want to protect me.

She wanted me for herself.

Glaucus went to her later, begging for a potion to make me love him.

And Circe—goddess, witch, wound—looked at him, then looked at me.

And she saw her chance.

She gave him nothing. Told him love cannot be forced. He left disappointed, muttering curses, the tides angry in his wake.

But she didn't forget what I asked her.

And she didn’t forgive me for not asking for her.

The curse was not loud.

It was not a crack of thunder or the scream of gods.

It came like rot in still air. Like blood blooming in water.

One day, I was Scylla.

The next, I was no longer girl, no longer body, no longer whole.

I remember the first time it happened—

how my arms bent wrong

how my skin split

how my stomach heaved as heads tore free from my sides

teeth gnashing, tongues writhing, eyes weeping blood

I screamed.

But it came out in six different voices.

None of them mine.

I clawed at my reflection in the water. I begged the waves to return what had been taken. But the sea does not give back what it swallows. And the gods do not undo what they do out of love, or envy, or pain.

The villagers began to whisper.

The shoreline emptied.

The sea, once a friend, became a mirror I couldn’t look into.

My reflection—twisted, scaled, fanged—made children cry and sailors pray.

They named me monster.

They forgot I had a name.

I want to ask the gods: what is cruelty, if not being remade into what you were never meant to be? What is grief, if not mourning the self you used to inhabit?

I do not remember the last time I felt sunlight without hiding.

I do not remember the last time someone looked at me and did not flinch.

I do not remember my own voice.

The six heads snarl in my sleep. I dream of bones and brine.

But beneath that—beneath the hunger and the rage—there is always silence.

The kind I used to crave.

Now it feels like a tomb.

And Glaucus? He fled.

Men always do, don’t they?

He could not love what he had broken.

And Circe, Circe, Circe—she smiled.

She said I was stronger now.

She said it like a gift, as if ruin were a chrysalis. As if I should thank her for freeing me from the burden of being beautiful.

But I never wanted strength.

I wanted silence.

Peace.

To be left alone.

She gave me teeth instead.

Now I dwell in the strait, coiled between cliff and current, watching ships drift into my jaws. Not because I hate them. Not because I am cruel.

But because I am hungry.

Not for flesh.

But for who I used to be.