My guts began to boil the moment his anchor was up. I, who had never been sick in my life, now was sick every moment. I heaved until my throat was torn, my stomach rattling like an old nut, my mouth cracked at its corners. As if my body would cast up everything it had eaten for a hundred years.
My nymphs wrung their hands and clutched each other. They had never seen such a thing. In pregnancy, our kind glowed and swelled like buds. They thought I was poisoned, or else cursed with some unholy transformation, my body turning itself inside out. When they tried to help me, I pushed them away. The child I carried would be called demigod, but that word was deceiving. From my blood he would have a few special graces, beauty or speed, strength or charm. But all the rest would come from his father, for mortality always bred truer than godhead. His flesh would be subject to the same thousand pricks and fatalities that threaten every man. I trusted such frailty to no god, no family of mine, to none but myself alone.
“Leave now,” I said to them in my new, ragged voice. “I do not care how you do it—send to your fathers and go. This is for me.”
What they thought of such words, I never knew. I was seized again, my eyes blind and watering. By the time I found my way back to the house, they were gone. I suppose their fathers obliged because they feared pregnancy by a mortal might be catching. The house felt strange without them, but I had no time to think of it, and no time to mourn for Odysseus either. The sickness did not cease. Every hour it rode me. I could not understand why it took me so hard. I wondered if it was the mortal blood fighting with mine, or if I was cursed indeed, if some stray hex of Aeëtes’ had circled all this while and found me at last. But the affliction yielded to no counterspell, not even moly. It is no mystery, I said to myself. Have you not always insisted on being difficult in everything you do?
I could not defend myself from sailors in such shape and I knew it. I crawled to my herb-pots and cast the spell I had thought of so long ago: an illusion to make the island look like hostile, wrecking rocks to any ship that passed. I lay on the ground after, breathing with effort. I would be left in peace.
Peace. I would have laughed if I were not so ill. The sour tang of cheese in the kitchen, the salt-stink of seaweed on the breeze, the wormy earth after rain, the sickly roses browning on the bush. All of them brought the bile stinging to my throat. Headaches followed, like urchin spines driven into my eyes. This is how Zeus must have felt before Athena leapt from his skull, I thought. I crawled to my room and lay in the shuttered dark, dreaming of how sweet it would be to cut through my neck and make an end.
Yet, as strange as it sounds, even in such extremities of misery I was not wholly miserable. I was used to unhappiness, formless and opaque, stretching out to every horizon. But this had shores, depths, a purpose and a shape. There was hope in it, for it would end, and bring me my child. My son. For whether by witchcraft or prophetic blood, that is what I knew he was.
He grew, and his fragility grew with him. I had never been so glad of my immortal flesh, layered like armor around him. I was giddy feeling his first kicks and I spoke to him every moment, as I crushed my herbs, as I cut clothes for his body, wove his cradle out of rushes. I imagined him walking beside me, the child and boy and man that he would be. I would show him all the wonders I had gathered for him, this island and its sky, the fruits and sheep, the waves and lions. The perfect solitude that would never be loneliness again.
I touched my hand to my belly. Your father said once that he wanted more children, but that is not why you live. You are for me.
Odysseus had told me that Penelope’s pains began so faintly, she thought them a stomachache from too many pears. Mine dropped from the sky like a thunderbolt. I remember crawling to the house from the garden, hunched against the tearing contraction. I had the willow draught ready, and I drank some, then all, and by the end I was licking the bottle’s neck.
I knew so little of childbirth, its stages and progression. The shadows changed, but it was all one endless moment, the pain like stones grinding me to meal. I screamed and pushed against it for hours, and still the baby did not come. Midwives had tricks to help the child move, but I did not know them. One thing I did understand: if it took too long, my son would die.
On it went. In my agonies, I overturned a table. After, I would find the room torn apart as if by bears, tapestries ripped from the walls, stools shattered, platters broken. I do not remember it. My mind was lurching through a thousand terrors. Was the baby dead already? Or was I like my sister, growing some monster within me? The unremitting pain only seemed a confirmation. If the baby were whole and natural, wouldn’t he come?
I closed my eyes. Putting a hand inside myself, I felt for the smooth curve of the child’s head. It had no horns, no other horrors I could tell. It was only stuck against the inner opening, squeezed between my muscles and my bones.
I prayed to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. She had the power to loosen the womb’s hold and bring the child into the world. She was said to watch over the birth of every god and demigod. Help me, I cried out. But she did not come. The animals whined in their corners, and I began to remember the whispers of my cousins in Oceanos’ halls so long ago. If a god did not wish your child to be born, they might hold Eileithyia back.
The thought seized my careering mind. Someone was keeping her from me. Someone dared to try to harm my son. It gave me the strength I needed. I bared my teeth at the dark and crawled to the kitchen. I seized a knife and dragged a great bronze mirror to face me, for there was no Daedalus now to help. I leaned against the marble wall, amid the broken table legs. The coolness of the stone calmed me. This child was no Minotaur, but a mortal. I must not cut too deep.
I had been afraid the pain would undo me, but I scarcely felt it. There was a rasping sound, like stone upon stone, that I realized was my own breath. The layers of flesh parted, and I saw him at last: limbs curled like a snail in its shell. I stared, afraid to move him. What if he was dead already? What if he was not, and I killed him with my touch? But I drew him forth, and his skin met the air, and he began to wail. I wailed with him, for I had never heard a sweeter sound. I laid him on my chest. The stones beneath us felt like feathers. He was shuddering and shuddering, pressing my skin with his wet, living face. I cut the cord, holding him all the while.
See? I told him. We do not need anyone. In answer, he made a froggy croak and closed his eyes. My son, Telegonus.
I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it as soldiers face their enemies, girded and braced, sword up against the coming blows. Yet all my preparations were not enough. In those months I had spent with Odysseus, I had thought I’d learned some tricks of mortal living. Three meals a day, the fluxes, the washing and cleaning. Twenty diaper cloths I had cut, and believed myself wise. But what did I know of mortal babies? Aeëtes was in arms less than a month. Twenty cloths got me only through the first day.
Thank the gods I did not have to sleep. Every minute I must wash and boil and clean and scrub and put to soak. Yet how could I do that, when every minute he also needed something, food and change and sleep? That last I had always thought the most natural thing for mortals, easy as breathing, yet he could not seem to do it. However I wrapped him, however I rocked and sang, he screamed, gasping and shaking until the lions fled, until I feared he would do himself harm. I made a sling to carry him, so he might lie against my heart. I gave him soothing herbs, I burned incenses, I called birds to sing at our windows. The only thing that helped was if I walked—walked the halls, walked the hills, walked the shore. Then at last he would wear himself out, close his eyes, and sleep. But if I stopped, if I tried to put him down, he would wake at once. Even when I walked without ceasing, he was soon up, screaming again. Within him was an ocean’s worth of grief, which could only be stoppered a moment, never emptied. How often in those days did I think of Odysseus’ smiling child? I tried his trick, along with all the rest. Held my son’s floppy body up into the air, promised him he was safe. He only screamed louder. Whatever made the prince Telemachus so sweet, I thought, it must have come from Penelope. This was the child I deserved.