At length, Odysseus calmed himself enough to look at me again, though he winced at the sight of me—at the white glow of my manifest power. “Where shall I go, then? I cannot stay here, nor return to Penelope—”
“Go to Hades,” I said coarsely, relishing the fresh gout of pain it caused him. “Go to Hades, for all I care.” But in the next moment, I relented. If I did not point him in some direction and shove him hard from my shore, neither he nor his men would leave. I pointed over the little bay toward the open sea. The moonlight limned the low, round shoulders of a few distant islands. “Look, Odysseus. Do you see those islands there, beneath the dog star? Sail straight toward those islands, you’ll reach the mainland in one full day. Or, if you go southeast, in ten days’ time you will find Thebes, and the blind prophet called Tiresias. If you truly think you cannot go home to Ithaca and Penelope, Tiresias will scry for you, and find a new destination. You may find warmer welcome than here on Aeaea.”
Odysseus gazed at the nearby islands for a moment, with the dog star sinking low and blue above. Then he turned, southeast. A wind stirred his cloak and mine. He took one step in that direction, then another, as if the wind directed him. “It sounds like a good plan,” he said dully. “As good a plan as any. But I’ll need some time to prepare the ship. It has been grounded for so long; I can’t make it ready again right away, though I know you wish me gone, Circe.”
“You have three weeks before the child is born,” I said. “You must be gone by that time.”
He nodded, still gazing southeast. Then he glanced at me, his face dark with shame. “Will you forgive me,” Odysseus said, “and grant me your blessing?”
The moon whispered in my heart. “If you were I, would you forgive Odysseus?”
I watch the distant ship for a moment longer as it skims southeastward, moving swiftly over the waves. The voice speaks inside my head, my heart, giving its imperative command. I listen to the voice of Hekate, my true mother. I have found her at last, now that I am a mother myself.
Act now, Hekate says. Work your magic now, daughter. The time is ripe, ripe as the leaf and seed in their season of gathering, ripe as the blood of the womb. This is the season of transformation. Strike now, and have your vengeance.
My women weep with fear, even brave, loyal Anthousa. But I have not come here to slay my son. I lower the spear; it glimmers, consecrated by moonlight, imbued with lunar magic. I pry open my child’s soft, tiny hand, fit his fingers around the spear’s shaft.
“Your name is Telegonus,” I say, hard and fierce, loud enough for all the world to hear. “Your fate is set in the stars, my son—in current and wave, in the billow of your father’s sail. This spear I place in your hand will thirst for the blood of Odysseus. That thirst will never be quenched, until you have grown to manhood, and plunged my curse into your father’s heart. Live, and be Revenge.”
My infant son did not cry then, but far below, on my island’s rocky strand, the wolves howled, high and long.
The Siren’s Song
Amalia Carosella
Their song, so beautiful and stunning, broke even my old warrior’s heart. And as we sailed past them, I strained against the ropes, shouting for the men to slow. Of course, Circe had prepared us, and my men knew their duty, besides. But I saw the Siren girl, mad with grief and desperation at her failure, throw herself into the water. And where her body cut into the sea, a new rock jutted up, sharp and biting.
* * *
Whatever treasures they hoarded upon their island, taken from the ships they had drawn into the trap of their sweet songs, those jagged rocks promised we would never discover it. Not without destroying ourselves, too. And in the end, that above all, was what sustained me. The knowledge that I must find my way home, still. I must find my way back, Penelope, to you.
—Odysseus
I
Aglaope had dreamed of her wings ever since she had first heard the story, told by her mother’s mother, by the driftwood fire as it sparked and snapped in rainbow hues. She dreamed of soaring through the skies, all across the earth in an endless, grief-stricken search for their lost goddess, their glorious and beautiful Persephone.
But the dreams always ended badly. As of course they must. She woke each morning stranded still on the rocky, barren island, cursed by the gods for her grandmother’s-grandmother’s failure to find Demeter’s daughter. Doomed to live upon nothing more than what the sea—and the men who sailed it—provided.
It had been little enough even in her childhood, and during the years of the great war between the Achaeans and the Trojans, when ships had come and gone full of plunder and supplies, and every third or fourth moon they might be so fortunate as to eat their fill of what was left upon the rocks. But of late, since they had sung the witch’s ship too near, unwitting, it had become much worse.
“Enough of your dreaming, Aglaope,” her mother chided, finding her still in her furs by the fire, staring at the small, half-starved flame. They were as short on wood as everything else, these days. “Up to your roost, and quickly before the sun is fully risen and we miss a ship sailing by.”
Aglaope sighed, snatching a scrap of dried and salted seaweed to quiet her growling stomach and lend some small strength to her legs and arms for the climb. Her mother and grandmother would not eat until sunset, and even then it would be no more than a cup of bone broth and the same dried seaweed in an even smaller portion. Unless Aglaope found a ship and sung it near. Unless the ship crashed close enough upon the rocks for her to reach and haul its bounty back without losing her prizes to Circe’s falcons, always winging overhead. Soaring as her grandmother’s grandmother had once soared.
It was cruel of the witch to use the falcons with their clean-curved wings against them. And even now, Aglaope could hear the laughter of Circe’s handmaiden in the distance, carried by the wind across their cursed island. The tall woman had made it her habit to taunt them since their larger ship had wrecked and another of the witch’s women had drowned. She floated just beyond the deadly rocks that rimmed their waters, casting her falcons into the sky to scare and assault the seabirds who might otherwise build their nests upon the rocks. Seabirds, who might provide Aglaope and her mother and grandmother with eggs and roasted flesh to eat. Seabirds, upon which they might have lived.
“Go on, girl,” her grandmother said, when Aglaope still stalled. “It will bring us all joy to hear your song, and goddess knows we’ve precious little of that.”
“Joy and song, at least, we need not portion out quite so carefully between us,” her mother said. “As long as one of us sings, there is hope. And as long as there is hope, there is joy to be found, enough to nourish us, even when the broth has run out.”