Her eyes snapped open and she hissed at the woman, bobbing upon the waters in her small skiff. “May Poseidon Earth-Shaker swallow you up and spit you out broken and bleeding back upon your green island’s shore! How dare you threaten a god, our father!”
Anthousa laughed, delighted with her success. “You forget you are not the only ones with divine ichor in your veins. Our lady Circe is the daughter of Hekate herself, a goddess in her own name and right. How dare you, Siren. You, who lured our ship to crash upon your rocks, dooming Circe’s beloved servant, her lover and mine, and thinking yourselves safe from a goddess’s power, even when you steal from her open hand!”
“Had I known that thrice-cursed ship was Circe’s, and the trouble it would cause, I would have thrown myself into the sea before I sung it near,” Aglaope snarled. “But your witch’s rule does not reach us here, goddess or not. She has no rights to anything that sails within our waters. Had your captain kept her course, or bothered to stop her ears with wax when she knew she risked the lure of our song, she’d have been safe enough from us. She has no one to blame for the loss but herself, thinking she lived beyond our power, after all these years.”
“Tell the seabirds that Circe does not rule them,” Anthousa said. “Tell it to your mother and grandmother who starve, because you were too foolish to let our lady’s ship pass!”
“And if I had not sung it into the rocks, my family would not be alive to tell at all,” Aglaope called back. “Dead then or starving now, it makes no difference to me, for Zeus will give us all what we deserve, no more and no less. But I promise you, from this day on, I will sing as I have never sung before if it means I might take another ship and crew from Circe!”
The falcon dived upon her then, at some signal from Anthousa, and Aglaope ducked, drawing a fur over her head to protect herself from the sharp-curved beak and slashing talons. That thrice-cursed handmaiden only laughed, and Aglaope swore to herself, by all the gods she knew, that before the day was through, she would have one of Circe’s precious falcons for her supper.
Furs and skins, leather and rock they had aplenty—for they had not grown so poor in firewood that they must burn the stinking, smoking hides upon which they slept. Nor did they dare to give up the small protection they had left against the wind and rain and sun, even for flame. But Aglaope could not waste good wood on a spear or an arrow with which to hunt the smug, soaring falcon. But perhaps—just perhaps—a sling would do.
She sang as she worked, trimming the thinnest strips of leather from the nest of her perch, one eye upon the sea, though she knew in her heart she would see no sails upon it. Not if what the handmaiden had said was true, and Aglaope had no reason to doubt her, for waylaying every ship that passed was certainly something Circe would do.
After she had cut the strips with the bronze knife—a gift from Akheloios himself, the last time he had come, in answer to her mother’s song—she braided them carefully, testing the strength and give as she went. It would be a crude weapon, she knew, and she had little practice with such a tool, for the sling Butes-Akheloios had used to hunt the seabirds for her grandmother had long ago frayed and crumbled into nothing.
But it was as her grandmother had said the night before, after all. She must simply have patience and faith. And she certainly had no shortage of rocks to throw while she refined her aim.
Aglaope sang her thanks to the gods, that day. She sang for the strength and skill to see her plan through. And while she sang and worked, she let the handmaiden’s words turn over in her thoughts.
Circe held a hero captive, a man of fame and renown, as well as immortal blood. Odysseus, she had called him. Grandson of Autolycus, the son of Hermes. Bred from the Giant-Killer, the fleet-footed, the friend of travelers and thieves. Surely if there was any man living with the talent to thread the rocks of her island without losing his ship, it would be a man of Hermes’s blood, that hero in Circe’s clutches. And just as surely, she would not hold him if she did not think he might sail too near.
And if he was half the hero the handmaiden had boasted of, even Circe could not hold him for long.
Akheloios, come to me...
Aglaope need only survive until he slipped her leash, and then—then she would sing with all she had left inside her, and pray to the gods it would be enough.
Anthousa was still wailing with rage into the setting sun when Aglaope dropped the last arm length from her perch, the falcon’s cooling body tucked into her belt.
“We’ll have meat tonight, Mama!” she called, half-skipping to the sheltered nook where they made their beds, cooked and ate, the three of them together. “It will be a feast for three!”
“A seabird?” her mother asked.
Aglaope dropped the falcon into her hands. “Better.”
Her mother gasped. “Oh, Aglaope, what have you done?”
“Fed us,” she said, pleased still with her success. “And given that handmaiden something to fear, too. If I can knock the witch’s falcons from the sky, perhaps the seabirds will return again, and we need not starve any longer.”
But her mother did not seem to share her pleasure, her expression stricken instead of smiling, though her fingers did not hesitate in the work of readying the bird for their supper. “I fear Circe will not forgive it, my love. She will punish us even further for such an offense as this.”
“Circe will be busy enough with the men she must keep entertained upon her island, to stop them from sailing on toward us. She will not have a thought to spare for a single falcon, lost. Not if what her handmaiden says is true about the man she holds hostage now. A hero bred of Hermes’s own blood, though he is only the grandson of the god’s son. She would not be half so determined in starving us out if she did not think he might sail into our song and save us.”
“Even if he escapes, she is bound to have stripped him of provisions for the journey,” her mother said, shaking her head. “He will come to us with nothing but the flesh upon his bones, if he comes at all.”
“He will sail his way through our rocks to tether his ship safe upon our shore!”
Her mother sighed, shaking her head slowly in response. “You dream such dreams, girl.”
She was stung by her mother’s dismissal. “Even if he doesn’t manage such a feat as that, perhaps Akheloios is among his crew,” she argued. “I cannot sing forever, and I will not have the strength of my youth for much longer, either, if Circe and Anthousa keep on. He must come.”
“Draw a cauldron of seawater to scald this fool bird, Aglaope, and do not think so much about the rest. The gods give and take as they see fit, and there’s no purpose in wasting your strength in worrying.”
“But Mama—”