“They will not meet us on the shore.”
None of my friends asked what I meant, or how I knew. I was grateful for their silence. I would have been hard-pressed to answer if they had demanded an explanation. My somber stillness—and Anthousa’s—made a definite impression. Agathe slipped inside the house to make ready our bows and hunting spears, in case they should be wanted, while Demetria and Galene called to our wolf friends, summoning them from the woodland shadows. The wolves had never attacked any person, so far as we knew. But all the same, I breathed a sigh of relief when the pack leader padded into the clearing, followed by six or seven of his keen-eyed relations. The leader was a tall, brown-coated male whom we had named Caicias. His muscular shoulder came level with my belt; his presence comforted me, for I hoped his imposing stature—and his cousins, lurking at the fringes of the wood—might deter the warship’s men if they intended us any harm.
The wait was unbearable. My hands itched for something to do, my mind shrieked hysterically for a distraction. “Eumelia,” I said quietly, “go inside and fetch my distaff.”
“Now seems an odd time for spinning, Circe.”
I smiled in wry agreement. “All the same, I want to spin.”
Eumelia was back in a flash with my spindle and the long, slender staff, but in her haste and distraction, she had forgotten to bring fleece. For a moment, all of us stared at the useless, naked staff and the empty spindle. Then we burst out laughing.
“Never mind,” I said. Our moment of humor was fleeting, but the relief it brought strengthened all our spirits. I tucked the end of my distaff into my belt, just as I would have done if it had borne a heavy swath of wool, ready for the spinning. The unused spindle hid neatly in the leather pouch I wore upon my hip. “Let the men wonder why I spin invisible wool. I will not explain myself to them.”
And that was how our visitors found us: arrayed before our home, the vulnerable heart of our island realm, an army of seven women—few, but determined to protect what we had built. And I, with my staff propped on my hip, its point rising high above my head like the scepter of a queen.
All of us flinched as the men appeared from the trail to the seaside. Men had set foot on Aeaea before, of course—many times, since we had made the island our home. But we had never permitted them to range far beyond the shore. These forward men flooded into the very yard of my beloved house.
It was an invasion I felt powerless to stop. The many trading parties that had come before numbered no more than ten at the most. Now I counted almost two dozen emerging from the forest. Their clothing was ragged and stained, their beards tangled. Salt had crusted their hair, forming it into ropy locks; it had dried their skin, too, leaving an ashy pallor on their faces and hands, especially visible on those whose natural complexions were dark. Every one of the men had a body like a spring bull—broad, hard-muscled, sharply defined. These were no ordinary traders. They looked as if they’d been traveling across the sea, pulling at their many oars, for years.
Anthousa stiffened beside me; her eyes sharpened and burned with a sudden fire, like one of her falcons sighting its prey.
“Steady,” I said quietly. “Any one of them is ten times stronger than all of us put together.”
She muttered, “Are they fast enough to dodge our spears?”
“Let’s find out,” Agathe whispered.
“No,” I answered quickly. “They are too many. Look at their swords—and those at the rear of the group have bows, too. We have eight spears and one bow, perhaps a dozen arrows.”
“We cannot take them all,” Demetria said uneasily. “Whatever they want, we must deal with them quickly and send them on their way.”
“Leave the negotiations to me,” I said. None of my friends argued. We had no formal leader on Aeaea, yet even as an exile, I had been the woman of highest rank from our earliest occupation. Whenever a pressing decision had to be made, it fell on me to make it. “I’ll keep them happy and send them on their way. If the gods are good, we’ll see the back of them by sunset.”
Caicias uttered a low growl as the men formed up ranks at the edge of the clearing. His cousins, bristling gray shadows, slipped from the trees, milling around their leader. The wolves formed a living barrier between us and the men—slinking, hackling, showing the hard white spear-points of their teeth. For a moment I had a mind to leave the wolves to their business—to watch them drive the men back to their ship, and drive the ship out into the waves. But although the pack might take a few men down to the Underworld with them, the sailors’ weapons would make as short a work of our wolves as they’d make of us.
I went to Caicias and laid a hand upon his head. Instantly, he stilled, as did his followers.
The men murmured in surprise. One of them said, in a thick, strange accent “What witchery is this?”
That word fell upon my ears like the crash of a temple cymbal, ringing and sharp. The traders who came to my island often stared at me with awe, or open fear—and so I surmised that rumor still painted me as a witch. But no one had dared speak that word in my presence since Heliodoros banished me from Colchis.
Choosing to ignore the slight, I stood with my hand upon the wolf’s head, waiting for one of those many men to find his bravery and speak.
After a protracted silence, punctuated by a good deal of shuffling and throat-clearing, one man stepped forward. His clothing had once been finer than the others’—his tunic had been dyed a deeper red, some years in the past, long before the sun had weathered it. His garb showed fewer stains and tears than his many companions’. He edged as close to Caicias as he dared.
“I am Eurylochus,” he said. His voice cracked; his throat sounded dry. “I lead these men.”
“You are their chieftain?” I asked. “Or their king?”
“No,” he said quickly, shrugging with embarrassment. “We all serve Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. I have the honor to be the king’s second-in-command.”
I nodded once. I did not know how I ought to respond.
“Our king sent me ashore with these men.”
“I can see as much,” I said. “What do you seek on my island, Eurylochus of Ithaca?”
I had expected Eurylochus to blurt out a need for some healing potion or salve—for his king, perhaps, who waited aboard the ship. If my reputation as a so-called witch had reached their ears, then surely these Ithacans had heard of my skill as a herb-worker, too. I blinked in surprise at Eurylochus’s response.
“Food. We need good, nourishing food. Hard bread and salt fish cannot sustain us any longer—not with our great numbers.”
“How many are you?” I said, momentarily startled out of composure.