“You were wrong,” I said.
“You have always been insolent, Titan.” Sharply, as if to wound me with her precision, she turned her gaze to Telemachus. He was kneeling, Penelope beside him. “Son of Odysseus,” she said. Her voice changed, gilding itself. “Zeus has foretold that a new empire will rise in the West. Aeneas is fled there with his remnant Trojans, and I would have Greeks to balance and hold them at bay. The land is fertile and rich, thick with beasts of field and forest, overhung with fruits of every kind. You will found a prosperous city there, you will build stout walls and set down laws to hold back the tide of savagery. You will seed a great people who will rule in ages to come. I have gathered good men from across our lands and set them on a ship. They arrive this day to bear you to your future.”
The room burned with the aureate sparks of her vision. Telemachus burned too. His shoulders seemed broader, his limbs swollen with strength. Even his voice had deepened. “Goddess,” he said, “gray-eyed and wise. I am honored among mortals. No man can deserve such grace.”
She smiled like a temple snake over its bowl of cream. “The ship will come for you at dusk. Be ready.”
It was his cue to stand. To show off that glory she had bestowed on him, lift it like a glittering standard. But he knelt, unmoving. “I fear I am not worthy of your gifts.”
I frowned. Why was he groveling so much? It was not wise. He should thank her and be done, before she found some reason for offense.
Her voice had a tinge of impatience. “I know your weaknesses,” she said. “They will not matter, when I am there to steady your spear-arm. I guided you once to victory against the suitors. I will guide you again.”
“You have watched over me,” he said. “I thank you for it. Yet I cannot accept.”
The air in the room hung utterly still.
“What do you mean?” The words sizzled.
“I have considered,” he said. “For three days I have considered. And I find in myself no taste for fighting Trojans or building empires. I seek different days.”
My throat had gone dry. What was the fool doing? The last man who refused Athena was Paris, prince of Troy. He had preferred the goddess Aphrodite, and now he was dead and his city ash.
Her eyes were augers, boring through the air. “No taste? What is this? Has some other god offered you something better?”
“No.”
“What then?”
He did not flinch from her gaze. “I do not desire such a life.”
“Penelope.” The word was a lash. “Speak to your son.”
Penelope’s face was bent to the floor. “I have, goddess. He is set in his course. You know his father’s blood was always stubborn.”
“Stubborn in achievement.” Athena snapped each word like a dove’s neck. “In ingenuity. What is this degeneracy?” She swung back to Telemachus. “I do not make this offer again. If you persist in this foolishness, if you refuse me, all my glory will leave you. Even if you beg, I will not come.”
“I understand,” he said.
His calmness seemed to enrage her. “There will be no songs made of you. No stories. Do you understand? You will live a life of obscurity. You will be without a name in history. You will be no one.”
Each word was like the blow of a hammer in a forge. He would give in, I thought. Of course he would. The fame she had described was what all mortals yearn for. It is their only hope of immortality.
“I choose that fate,” he said.
Disbelief shone naked on her cold, beautiful face. How many times in her eternity had she been told no? She could not parse it. She looked like an eagle who had been diving upon a rabbit, and the next moment found itself in the mud.
“You are a fool,” she spat. “You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I spare you out of love for your father, but I am patron to you no more.”
The glory that had shone upon him vanished. He looked shriveled without it, gray and gnarled as olive bark. I was as shocked as Athena. What had he done? And so wrapped was I in these thoughts that I could not see the path we walked until it was too late.
“Telegonus,” Athena said. Her silver gaze darted to him. Her voice changed again; its iron grew filigree. “You have heard what I offered your brother. I offer it now to you. Will you sail and be my bulwark in Italy?”
I felt as though I had slipped from a cliff. I was in the air, falling, with nothing to hold me.
“Son,” I cried. “Say nothing.”
Fast as arrow-shot, she turned on me. “You dare to obstruct me again? What more do you want from me, witch? I have sworn an oath I will not harm him. I offer him a gift that men would trade their souls for. Will you keep him hobbled all his life, like a broken horse?”
“You do not want him,” I said. “He killed Odysseus.”
“Odysseus killed himself,” she said. The words hissed through the room like a scythe’s blade. “He lost his way.”
“It was you who made him lose it.”
Anger smoked in her eyes. I saw the thought in them, how her spearhead would look tearing the blood from my throat.
“I would have made him a god,” she said. “An equal. But in the end, he was too weak.”
It was all the apology you would ever get from a god. I bared my teeth and slashed the spear-tip through the air. “You will not have my son. I will fight you before I let you take him.”
“Mother.” The voice was soft at my side. “May I speak?”
I was breaking to pieces. I knew what I would see when I looked at him, his eager, pleading hope. He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms. I had let Penelope stay on my island so she would not lose her son. I would lose mine instead.
“I have dreamed of this,” he said. “Of golden fields that stretch out, unbroken, to the horizon. Orchards, gleaming rivers, thriving flocks. I used to think it was Ithaca I saw.”
He was trying to speak gently, to rein in the excitement that rose in him like a flood. I thought of Icarus, who had died when he was free. Telegonus would die if he were not. Not in flesh and years. But all that was sweet in him would wither and fall away.
He took my hand. The gesture was like a bard’s. But were we not in a sort of song? This was the refrain we had practiced so often.
“There is risk, I know it, but you have taught me to be careful. I can do this, Mother. I want to.”
I was a gray space filled up with nothing. What could I say? One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.
“My son,” I said, “it is yours to decide.”
Joy broke from him like a wave. I turned away so I would not have to see it. Athena would be glad, I thought. Here was her vengeance at last.
“Be ready for the ship,” she said. “It comes this afternoon. I do not send another.”
The light faded back to simple sun. Penelope and Telemachus eased away. Telegonus embraced me as he had not since he was a child. As maybe he never had. Remember this, I told myself. His wide shoulders, the curve of the bones in his back, the warmth of his breath. But my mind felt parched and windswept.
“Mother? Can you not be happy for me?”
No, I wanted to shout at him. No, I cannot. Why must I be happy? Is it not enough that I let you go? But I did not want for that to be the last he saw of me, his mother shrieking and keening as if he were dead, though he was still filled with so many hopeful years.
“I am happy for you,” I made myself say. I led him to his room. I helped him pack, filling trunks with medicines of every sort, for wounds and headaches, for pox and sleeplessness and even childbirth, which he blushed at.
“You are founding a dynasty,” I said. “Heirs are usually necessary.”
I gave him all the warmest clothes I had, though it was spring and would be summer soon. I said he should take Arcturos, who had loved him since she was a puppy. I pressed amulets on him, wrapped him in enchantments. I piled on treasure after treasure, gold and silver and finest embroidery, for new kings fare best when they have wonders to give.