“As long as they need to.”
“You are too quick.” She took a step towards me. The horse-hair plume hissed against my ceiling. “You have forgotten your place, nymph. I am a daughter of Zeus. Perhaps I cannot strike directly at your son, but the Fates say nothing about what I can do to you.”
She set the words in the room precisely as stones in a mosaic. Even among gods, Athena was known for her wrath. Those who defied her were turned to stones and spiders, driven mad, snatched up by whirlwinds, hounded and cursed to the ends of the world. And if I were gone, then Telegonus…
“Yes,” she said. Her smile was flat and cold. “You begin to understand your situation.”
She lifted her spear from the floor. It did not shine now. It flowed like liquid darkness in her hand. I stepped back against the woven side of the crib, my mind scrambling.
“It is true, you might harm me,” I said. “But I have a father too, and a family. They do not take lightly the careless chastising of our blood. They would be angry. They might even be stirred to action.”
The spear still hovered off the floor, but she did not heft it. “If there is war, Titan, Olympus will win it.”
“If Zeus wanted war, he would have sent his thunderbolt against us long ago. Yet he holds off. What will he think of you destroying his hard-won peace?”
I saw in her eyes the click of counters, stones tallied on this side and that. “Your threats are crude. I had hoped we might discuss this reasonably.”
“There can be no reason as long as you seek to murder my child. You are angry with Odysseus, but he does not even know the boy exists. Killing Telegonus will not punish him.”
“You presume, witch.”
If it were not my son’s life at stake, I might have laughed at what I saw in her eyes. For all her cleverness, she had no skill at concealing her emotions. Why would she? Who would dare harm the great Athena for her thoughts? Odysseus had said she was angry with him, but he did not understand the true nature of gods. She was not angry. Her absence was only that old trick Hermes had spoken of: turn your back on a favorite and drive him to despair. Then return in glory, and revel in the groveling you will get.
“If not to hurt Odysseus, why seek my son’s death?”
“That knowledge is not for you. I have seen what will come and I tell you that this infant cannot live. If he does, you will be sorry for it all the rest of your days. You are tender to the child and I do not blame you for it. But do not let a mother’s doting cloud your sense. Think, daughter of Helios. Is it not wiser to give him to me now, when he is barely set into the world, when his flesh and your affections are still half formed?” Her voice softened. “Imagine how much worse it will be for you in a year, or two, or ten, when your love is full-grown. Better to send him easy to the house of souls now. Better to bear another child and begin to forget with new joys. No mother should have to see her child’s death. And yet, if such must come, if there is no other way, still there may be recompense.”
“Recompense.”
“Of course.” Her face shone bright upon me as the forge’s heart. “You do not think I ask for sacrifice without offering reward? You will have the favor of Pallas Athena. My goodwill, through eternity. I will set a monument for him upon this isle. In time, I will send another good man to you, to father another son. I will bless the birth, protect the child from all ills. He will be a leader among mortals, feared in battle, wise in counsel, honored by all. He will leave heirs behind him and fulfill your every maternal hope. I will ensure it.”
It was the richest prize in all the world, rare as the golden apples of the Hesperides: the sworn friendship of an Olympian. You would have every comfort, every pleasure. You would never fear again.
I looked into that shining gray gaze, her eyes like two hanging jewels, twisting to catch the light. She was smiling, her hand open towards me, as if ready to receive mine. When she had spoken of children, she had nearly crooned, as if to lull her own babe. But Athena had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.
Children are not sacks of grain, to be substituted one for the other.
“I will pass over the fact that you think me a mare to be bred at your whim. The true mystery is why my son’s death is worth so much to you. What will he do that the mighty Athena would pay so dearly to avoid?”
All her softness was gone in an instant. Her hand withdrew, like a door slamming shut. “You set yourself against me then. You with your weeds and your little divinity.”
Her power bore down on me, but I had Telegonus, and I would not give him up, not for anything.
“I do,” I said.
Her lips curled back, showing the white teeth within. “You cannot watch him all the time. I will take him in the end.”
She was gone. But I said it anyway, to that great empty room and my son’s dreaming ears: “You do not know what I can do.”
Chapter Nineteen
ALL THE REST OF that night I paced, running through Athena’s words. My son would grow up to do something she feared, something that touched her deeply. But what? Something that I would be sorry for as well, she had said. I paced, turning it over and over, but I could find no answer. At last I forced myself to set it aside. There was no profit in chasing riddles of the Fates. The point was: she would come and come.
I had boasted that Athena did not know what I could do, but the truth was I did not know either. I could not kill her, and I could not change her. We could not outpace her, and we could not hide. No illusion I cast would cover us from her piercing gaze. Soon Telegonus would walk and run, and how could I keep him safe then? Black terror was rising in my brain. If I did not think of something, the vision in the pool would come to pass, his body ashen and cold in its shroud.
I remember those days only in pieces. My teeth clenched in concentration as I scoured the island, digging up flowers and grinding leaves, searching out every feather and stone and root in the hopes that one of them might help me. They teetered in piles around the house, and the air of the kitchen grew grainy with dust. I chopped and boiled, my eyes wide and staring like an over-ridden horse. I kept Telegonus bound against me while I worked, for I was afraid to put him down. He hated such constraint and screamed, his puffy fists shoving at my chest.