“I did!” Polyphemus roared. He shrugged off my grasp and stepped out into the open, a dark-skinned titan filled with wrath. One long-fingered hand stripped the scarf from his face. “You shall not be, dog of Ithaca! Your name shall not be! Your grasp shall not be! Your plans shall not come to fruition! Your power shall not be! Let that which you have planned have power over you! You shall not approach your wretched home! The Lady of Vengeance has decreed: you shall die in the circle of foreign lands! Praise blessed Sekhmet, who has brought you forth to hear your doom!”
And just so, did the hand of Eris toss a golden apple among the goddesses gathered to celebrate the wedding of immortal Thetis to mortal Peleus—an apple with the inscription ‘To the fairest’. Such taunts can only end in funeral pyres.
The world upended, dear Eirene. That is the best way to describe it—as though a giant caught up our city and shook it like a jar of oil and vinegar. Odysseus did not try and bluster his way to peace, where he might betray us later. No, his fair-seeming face sloughed away to reveal the bones of hatred and ambition. He snatched a spear from the hands of one of his men, a slender javelin with a head of razor-honed bronze. Now, he could have driven it into the king’s breast and thrown our whole force in disarray. Instead, though, he twisted and slung that barb at Polyphemus. Blind Polyphemus, who had just called upon his gods to curse the Ithacan…and the man who would become a monster at the hands of Ionian poets pitched back and fell on top of me, an Achaean javelin lodged in his heart. I watched, Eirene, as the life fled from him. I watched this man whose true name I never knew, who served the goddess of the sea in some inscrutable way, who murdered a man so he might have his vengeance…I watched the light dim in his face as he went, finally, to his ka.
* * *
6
* * *
It grows late, child. What? The tale is not finished, you say? You want to hear the rest of it? I ask you: what is left to tell after the lead actor has had his moment and died for it? Not glory, for that is fleeting. Legacy, then? Let it be legacy. For the sake of your children and your children’s children, I will tell you what befell after the death of Polyphemus.
Of course, Odysseus fought his way clear. For is he not the sacker of cities? Laertes’s son, who is king in Ithaca? Our blessed King Aeolus fought clear, as well. But never again would that shrine be a place of silver chimes and breezes sighing through the oak boughs. Aeolus brought in priests and moved the sacred space nearer his palace. I chanced upon the site a year and more ago, on one of my rambles about the city. The oak trees have grown wild; at the heart of the grove rests an altar on the spot where most think the Kyklops died. On it, men whose souls have turned to hate leave offerings to one-eyed Nemesis.
Oh, the Achaeans retreated back to the cove. They might have sallied forth again and done real harm to the city had my father not the foresight to suggest to our archers that they prepare the one weapon sailors fear most: fire. It was not our doughty fishermen or the gleaming sons of Aeolus who drove the would-be invader away, child. No, it was a flight of arrows bearing strips of pitch-soaked cloth, set alight at the instant the nocks left the string. After a few volleys, even the mighty sacker of cities thought better of testing our resolve. He put back to sea with the greatest of haste. His men resumed their places on the rowers’ benches and struck the waters with their oars. I saw none of this, though. I no longer cared. My friend was dead, and I sat by his body, holding his hand and weeping, until my father came to fetch me.
That was not the last we heard of Laertes’s son, the king of Ithaca, to be sure. Outlandish tales came back to Aeolia, borne by traders who heard them from merchants who had heard it from travelers. Tales of cannibals and witches and monsters beyond reckoning. But I cannot vouch for the truth of any of it, for it is the poet’s gift to take the mundane and paint it with a gloss of fiction.
What is that? You want to hear more? Dear, greedy little Eirene! Look, we have nattered the day away. The hour grows late, the shadows long, and I would be alone with my memories ere your mother calls us to supper. Go, run along, child. I will tell you all I know another day…
Hekate’s Daughter
Libbie Hawker
Penelope, my love, in the years of our separation I have done things I am not proud of, committed acts I can neither countenance nor excuse. I can only beg your forgiveness. But know that when I fall to my knees before you and confess my vilest acts, I will hear inside my head a woman’s voice, a woman’s words: “If you were I, would you forgive Odysseus?’”
—Odysseus
I am still weak and aching from the birth when I climb the promontory. My legs shake, not from weariness but with a terrible energy, a flow of sudden knowledge coursing through body and mind. Cloaked by a veil of starlight, I reach the pinnacle and pause to catch my breath, to still the trembling in my bones. Here the pines give way to barren stone. Lichen makes a hard carpet underfoot. Somewhere far below, near the forest clearing and the stone house that have been my sanctuary for nearly eight years, a wolf howls.
From the bald peak of this hill, it seems I can see the whole world—everything the gods ever made. Flat, smooth blackness of sea, the wall that kept me safe and hidden for so many years. The islands dropped like ripe figs upon its surface, mounded and dark. The stars are forceful tonight. The long band of white arcs from horizon to horizon, a spray of milk from Hera’s breast as she shoves away the unwanted infant, Heracles. The shadow that cleaves the star-spray does not hide tonight. It displays itself before my eyes with grim clarity. To either side of that long, black tear, the stars flare with desperate light, but just beyond, they fade quickly; they separate, isolate themselves, islands in a deep black sea. A shadow has torn the sky asunder. It will never be whole again.
Panting, my handmaids ascend the last stretch of the promontory trail and hurry to my side. Anthousa carries the baby in her strong arms, wrapped in a woolen blanket. It gives a little mewling cry—he cries. My son. The son I never wanted, never sought, but which the gods have given me, nonetheless.
“Circe,” Anthousa says, shifting the baby’s weight, “you cannot run about this way. It is too soon. You must return to the house. Please, my lady.”
Demetria and Eumelia echo her plea. They seldom say that anymore—my lady. We have lived together too long for such formalities, alone on our island, shielded by our blessed peace. Their careful speech betrays their desperation. And their fear.
“Sit down first.” Demetria takes me by the shoulder, tries to guide me down to the bare granite. “You need rest.”