I watched the ship struggle over the horizon, then I went back and drew the sheet from Elpenor’s body. The only corpses I had ever seen were those that had lain broken on my floor, unrecognizable as men. I touched his chest. It was hard and cool. I had heard that in death faces looked younger than they were, but Elpenor had laughed often, and without the spark of life his face was slack with lines. I washed him and rubbed oils into his skin, as carefully as if he could still feel my fingers. I sang as I worked, a melody to keep his soul company while he waited to cross the great river to the underworld. I wrapped him again in his shroud, spoke a charm to keep away the rot, and closed the door behind me.
In my garden, the green leaves were so new they shone like blades. I ran my fingers through the soil. Humid summer was gathering, and soon I must start staking out the vines. Last year Odysseus had helped me. I touched the thought like a bruise, testing its ache. When he was gone, would I be like Achilles, wailing over his lost lover Patroclus? I tried to picture myself running up and down the beaches, tearing at my hair, cradling some scrap of old tunic he had left behind. Crying out for the loss of half my soul.
I could not see it. That knowledge brought its own sort of pain. But perhaps that is how it was meant to be. In the stories, gods and mortals never joined for long.
That night, I stayed in my kitchen stripping aconite. Already Odysseus would be facing his dead. As he’d left, I had pressed a phial into his hand and asked him to bring me blood from the pit he would make. The shades would infuse it with their chill presence, and I had wanted to feel that power, ashen and unearthly. Now I was sorry I had asked. It was something Perses or Aeëtes might do, someone with only witchcraft in their veins and no warmth.
I moved carefully through my work, my fingers precise, aware of every sensation. From their shelves my herbs watched me. Row upon row of simples whose powers I had harvested with my own hands. I liked to see them there, in their bowls and bottles: sage and rose, horehound, chicory, wild laurel, the moly in its stoppered glass. And last of all, still in its cedar box: silphium ground with wormwood, the draught I had taken each moon since the first time I lay with Hermes. Each moon except the last.
My nymphs and I waited on the sand, watching the ship row in. The men waded to the shore in silence. Their bodies sagged as if borne down by stones, sickly and aged. I searched Odysseus’ face. It was ghastly, I could not read it. Even their clothes were faded, the fabric leached and gray. They looked like fish, caught beneath a winter’s skim of ice.
I stepped forward, shining my eyes over them. “Welcome!” I cried. “Welcome back, you hearts of gold. You men of oak! You are heroes for the legends. You have done one of Heracles’ labors: seen the house of death and lived. Come, there are blankets here, laid for you upon the soft grass. There is wine and food. Rest and be well!”
They moved slowly, like old men, but they sat. The roast platters stood by, and the wine, deep and red. We served and poured until their cheeks took color. The sun beat down, burning off the cold mist of death.
I drew Odysseus aside to a green thicket. “Tell me,” I said.
“They live,” he said. “That is the best news I have. My son and wife live. My father too.”
Not his mother. I waited.
He stared across his scarred knees. “Agamemnon was there. His wife had taken a lover, and when he returned, she slaughtered him in the bath like an ox. I saw Achilles and Patroclus, and Ajax bearing the wound he gave himself. They envied me my life, but at least their battles are done.”
“Yours will be done. You will reach Ithaca. I have seen it.”
“I will reach it, but Teiresias said that when I do I will find men besieging my home. Eating my stores and usurping my place. I must find a way to kill them. But then I will die of the sea, while I still walk on land. The gods love their riddles.”
His voice was more bitter than I had ever heard it.
“You cannot think of it,” I said. “It will only torment you. Think instead of the path before you, which carries you home to your wife and son.”
“My path,” he said, darkly. “Teiresias laid it before me. I must pass Thrinakia.”
The word was an arrow striking home. How many years had it been since I had heard that island’s name? The memory rose before me: my shining sisters, and Darling and Pretty and all the rest, swaying like lilies in the gilded dusk.
“If I do not disturb the cattle, then I will reach home with my men. But if any are harmed, your father will loose his wrath. It will be years before I see Ithaca again, and all my men will die.”
“Then you will not stop,” I said. “You will not even land on the shore.”
“I will not stop.”
But it was not so simple, and we knew it. The Fates lured and tricked. They set obstacles to drive you into their toils. Anything might serve them: the winds, the waves, the weak hearts of men.
“If you run aground,” I said, “keep to the beach. Do not go look at the herds. You cannot know how they will tempt your hunger. They are to cows what gods are to mortals.”
“I will hold.”
It was not his will I feared. But what good would it do to say so, to sit over his door like a death-owl? He knew what his men were. And a new thought was rising in me. I was remembering the sea-routes Hermes had drawn for me so long ago. I traced them in my mind. If he went by Thrinakia, then…
I closed my eyes. Another punishment from the gods. For him, and me as well.
“What is it?”
I opened my eyes. “Listen to me,” I said. “There are things you must know.” I drew the journey for him. One by one, I laid out the dangers he must avoid, the shoals, the barbarous islands, the Sirens, those birds with women’s heads who lure men to their death with song. At last I could delay no more. “Your path takes you past Scylla as well. You know her?”
He knew. I watched the blow fall. Six men, or twelve.
“There must be some way to prevent her,” he said. “Some weapon I might use.”
It was one of my favorite things about him: how he always fought for his chance. I turned away, so I would not have to see his face when I said, “No. There is nothing. Not even for such a mortal as you. I faced her once, long ago, and escaped only through magic and godhead. But the Sirens, there you may use your tricks. Fill your men’s ears with wax, and leave your own free. If you tie yourself to the mast, you may be the first man to ever hear their song and tell the tale. Would that not make a good story for your wife and son?”
“It would.” But his voice was dull as a ruined blade. There was nothing I could do. He was passing from my hands.
We carried Elpenor to his pyre. We did the rites for him, sang his deeds of war, set his name in the record of men who lived. My nymphs wailed, and the men wept, but he and I stood dry and silent. After, we loaded his ship with all the stores of mine that it could hold. His men stood at the ropes and oars. They were eager now, darting glances at each other, scuffling at the deck with their feet. I felt hollowed, gouged like a beach beneath a keel.
Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.
He stepped onto his ship, and when he turned back to look for me, I was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
HOW WOULD THE SONGS frame the scene? The goddess on her lonely promontory, her lover dwindling in the distance. Her eyes wet but inscrutable, cast inward to private thoughts. Beasts gather at her hem. The lindens bloom. And at the last, just before he disappears over the horizon, she lifts one hand and touches it to her belly.