So Aglaope only hummed, warming her voice, and made herself as comfortable as she could within her much more leanly padded nest, for they were perilously close to running out of their meager stock of fuel, as well as their water, and she had stripped the spire of all she did not need to feed their fire on the coldest nights.
“Not much longer,” Anthousa said. “And my lady need never worry over your kind again. I am not certain you have the strength to sing at all, even now.”
Aglaope smiled, took a breath, and proved her wrong.
The days wore on, the waters kind and gentle, though Anthousa did not come so often to taunt them. Perhaps she knew there was no reason for it—certainly there were no seabirds circling overhead, or looking to build their nests. Not anymore. And now that Aglaope refused to be goaded, it was clear the woman had grown bored by the duty as well.
But Aglaope dreamed, still, of her wings in the night. And with her dreaming eyes, she saw the restlessness of Odysseus’s crew, and the men working even at night by the bright moonlight to ready their ship to sail. It gave her the strength she needed, though she had little food left, to rise in the mornings and climb the spire. To ready herself for their arrival. And Aglaope thrilled at the knowledge that even Circe’s power had not held Akheloios. That he made ready, eager to sail from her side.
Eager to see to his daughters, after all this time.
“It will be any day now,” she promised Ligeia, watching carefully to be sure her mother at least drank the water she had drawn, and chewed upon the fresh seaweed she had found caught in the rocks. “We will be feasting before full summer is upon us, our heads spinning with wine and our stomachs sour with so much rich food.”
Ligeia smiled, humoring her. “As you say, dear one.”
“As the gods have shown me,” she assured her. “The men crawl over their ship like so many ants, as desperate as we are to sail again. Circe has lost her power over them, at last.”
“Or perhaps she knows she need not hold them for much longer, and gives them the illusion of freedom while she holds them carefully back, even still.”
“We are not so bad off as that,” Aglaope said.
But Ligeia’s gaze met hers, and she could not avoid the truth in her sunken eyes and too-thin face. “I fear if we must wait much longer, you will greet your Akheloios alone.”
“Mama—”
“No,” her mother said. “Promise me, Aglaope, that you will do what you must. That when my time comes, you will not waste what I can give you, but make my strength your own.”
She grasped her mother’s hand in both of hers and held it tightly. “It will not come to that. You’ll see. He’s coming for us, I know it.”
“I only hope you have not put too much faith in these dreams.”
“They are godsent,” Aglaope said. “When he looks at me, sees me flying overhead, I know it. And if Circe thinks we are no threat, that we are weak, it makes sense that she would send these men upon their way. Even more so if she warns them before they go. She will think we cannot reach them. That they will not dare to come too near without hearing our song. But with Akheloios aboard, their captain and commander, how can they not? He will not need our song to set his course. He knows to come to us.”
“That much is true,” her mother said, her forehead furrowed in thought. “And by now he must know we have need. That it is your time. And he cannot have been deaf to your hymns all these seasons, even if he does not hear you sing as he passes by, he will have heard your prayers.”
“And I will sing for him today again,” Aglaope told her, smiling. “As I have for all the days since my bleeding came. And you will see, Mama. You will see that my faith and my dreaming has not been misplaced.”
That night, when she dreamed of Circe’s island, there were no men inside the hall, no beached ship upon her shore. Just Circe and her women and darkness where there had been lamplight every other night. The witch-goddess paced upon a rocky ledge, staring out across the waters, as if expecting they’d come back.
Aglaope’s heart soared, then sank again, when she realized fully what it meant. For if Odysseus and his men had set sail—they had not passed her island or heard her song. She had seen no sails upon the horizon, nothing but the bright clear sky and the sun flashing in her eyes off the water.
And when she woke, she could not bring herself to speak of it to her mother. Not when she saw how carefully she moved, how slowly. Not when she knew Odysseus was the only hope they had left—and if he had somehow passed them by, they had nothing left to dream of but an easy death.
Aglaope did not sleep well the following night, cursing the itch between her shoulder blades when her dream-wings formed and jerking herself awake. She did not want to fly to Circe’s island and see that all was lost. She wanted to hold on to her last thread of hope—the image of Circe pacing anxiously upon the shore. For if Circe paced and waited, she had reason. Another ship, if not Odysseus’s. A ship Aglaope might yet sing into the rocks before her mother lost faith, for she had no doubt what would happen if no ship came.
Ligeia would not watch her daughter die as she had her mother. Nor would she allow herself to waste entirely away, until she was too thin and too dry to provide any real strength. She would kill herself first, drive a dagger through her own breast if she must. And Aglaope would be upon the spire, too far away, too busy singing to stop her.
At last the sky began to lighten, and Aglaope did not linger beneath her furs, but rose at once, fetching water for them both and seaweed from their stores. She watched Ligeia sleep a moment longer after she had eaten, humming a soft prayer to Persephone, to keep her safe another day. And then, with a grief-filled heart, she forced herself to climb.
The spire seemed taller that morning, and her limbs heavier somehow, but the salt-crusted stone did not crumble beneath her fingers or toes, and she did not fumble for any holds. Up and up, until she reached her nest. Aglaope’s eyes narrowed at the rose-red dawn, blinking away the dazzle splashing up from the wine-dark water, and as was her habit, she surveyed the horizon—though she was certain this morning she had risen before any sail, for darkness still had not wholly fled the sky.
Nothing, yet, as she had expected. Nothing, as there had been for so long now, she hardly remembered what it might look like if she found anything at all. But Aglaope warmed her voice, as she did every day, and began to sing all the same.
Akheloios, come to me...