“No.”
“What then?”
He did not flinch from her gaze. “I do not desire such a life.”
“Penelope.” The word was a lash. “Speak to your son.”
Penelope’s face was bent to the floor. “I have, goddess. He is set in his course. You know his father’s blood was always stubborn.”
“Stubborn in achievement.” Athena snapped each word like a dove’s neck. “In ingenuity. What is this degeneracy?” She swung back to Telemachus. “I do not make this offer again. If you persist in this foolishness, if you refuse me, all my glory will leave you. Even if you beg, I will not come.”
“I understand,” he said.
His calmness seemed to enrage her. “There will be no songs made of you. No stories. Do you understand? You will live a life of obscurity. You will be without a name in history. You will be no one.”
Each word was like the blow of a hammer in a forge. He would give in, I thought. Of course he would. The fame she had described was what all mortals yearn for. It is their only hope of immortality.
“I choose that fate,” he said.
Disbelief shone naked on her cold, beautiful face. How many times in her eternity had she been told no? She could not parse it. She looked like an eagle who had been diving upon a rabbit, and the next moment found itself in the mud.
“You are a fool,” she spat. “You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I spare you out of love for your father, but I am patron to you no more.”
The glory that had shone upon him vanished. He looked shriveled without it, gray and gnarled as olive bark. I was as shocked as Athena. What had he done? And so wrapped was I in these thoughts that I could not see the path we walked until it was too late.
“Telegonus,” Athena said. Her silver gaze darted to him. Her voice changed again; its iron grew filigree. “You have heard what I offered your brother. I offer it now to you. Will you sail and be my bulwark in Italy?”
I felt as though I had slipped from a cliff. I was in the air, falling, with nothing to hold me.
“Son,” I cried. “Say nothing.”
Fast as arrow-shot, she turned on me. “You dare to obstruct me again? What more do you want from me, witch? I have sworn an oath I will not harm him. I offer him a gift that men would trade their souls for. Will you keep him hobbled all his life, like a broken horse?”
“You do not want him,” I said. “He killed Odysseus.”
“Odysseus killed himself,” she said. The words hissed through the room like a scythe’s blade. “He lost his way.”
“It was you who made him lose it.”
Anger smoked in her eyes. I saw the thought in them, how her spearhead would look tearing the blood from my throat.
“I would have made him a god,” she said. “An equal. But in the end, he was too weak.”
It was all the apology you would ever get from a god. I bared my teeth and slashed the spear-tip through the air. “You will not have my son. I will fight you before I let you take him.”
“Mother.” The voice was soft at my side. “May I speak?”
I was breaking to pieces. I knew what I would see when I looked at him, his eager, pleading hope. He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms. I had let Penelope stay on my island so she would not lose her son. I would lose mine instead.
“I have dreamed of this,” he said. “Of golden fields that stretch out, unbroken, to the horizon. Orchards, gleaming rivers, thriving flocks. I used to think it was Ithaca I saw.”
He was trying to speak gently, to rein in the excitement that rose in him like a flood. I thought of Icarus, who had died when he was free. Telegonus would die if he were not. Not in flesh and years. But all that was sweet in him would wither and fall away.
He took my hand. The gesture was like a bard’s. But were we not in a sort of song? This was the refrain we had practiced so often.
“There is risk, I know it, but you have taught me to be careful. I can do this, Mother. I want to.”
I was a gray space filled up with nothing. What could I say? One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.
“My son,” I said, “it is yours to decide.”
Joy broke from him like a wave. I turned away so I would not have to see it. Athena would be glad, I thought. Here was her vengeance at last.
“Be ready for the ship,” she said. “It comes this afternoon. I do not send another.”
The light faded back to simple sun. Penelope and Telemachus eased away. Telegonus embraced me as he had not since he was a child. As maybe he never had. Remember this, I told myself. His wide shoulders, the curve of the bones in his back, the warmth of his breath. But my mind felt parched and windswept.
“Mother? Can you not be happy for me?”
No, I wanted to shout at him. No, I cannot. Why must I be happy? Is it not enough that I let you go? But I did not want for that to be the last he saw of me, his mother shrieking and keening as if he were dead, though he was still filled with so many hopeful years.
“I am happy for you,” I made myself say. I led him to his room. I helped him pack, filling trunks with medicines of every sort, for wounds and headaches, for pox and sleeplessness and even childbirth, which he blushed at.
“You are founding a dynasty,” I said. “Heirs are usually necessary.”
I gave him all the warmest clothes I had, though it was spring and would be summer soon. I said he should take Arcturos, who had loved him since she was a puppy. I pressed amulets on him, wrapped him in enchantments. I piled on treasure after treasure, gold and silver and finest embroidery, for new kings fare best when they have wonders to give.
He had sobered by then. “What if I fail?”
I thought of the land Athena had described. The rolling hills, crowded with their heavy fruits and fields of grain, the bright citadel he would build. He would hand down judgments from a lofted chair in its sunniest hall, and men and women would come from far and wide to kneel to him. He will be a good ruler, I thought. Fair-minded and warm. He will not be consumed like his father was. He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.
“You will not fail,” I said.
“You do not think she means some harm to me?”
Now he was worried; now that it was too late. He was only sixteen, so new in the world.
“No,” I said. “I do not. She values you for your blood, and in time she will value you for yourself as well. She is more reliable than Hermes, though no god can be called steady. You must remember to be your own man.”
“I will.” He met my eyes. “You are not angry?”
“No,” I said. It had never truly been anger, only fear and sorrow. He was what the gods could use against me.
A knock on the door. Telemachus, carrying a long wool parcel. “I am sorry to intrude.” His eyes kept away from mine. He held out the package to my son. “This is for you.”
Telegonus unwrapped the cloth. A smooth length of wood, tapered at its ends and notched. The bowstrings were coiled neatly around it. Telegonus stroked the leather grip. “It is beautiful.”
“It was our father’s,” Telemachus said.
Telegonus looked up, stricken. I saw a shadow of the old grief pass across his face. “Brother, I cannot. I have already taken your city.”
“That city was never mine,” he said. “Nor was this. You will do better with them both, I think.”
I felt as though I stood a long way distant. I had never seen the age between them so clearly before. My keen son, and this man who chose to be no one.
We carried Telegonus’ bags down to the shore. Telemachus and Penelope said their farewells, then stood back. I waited beside my son, but he scarcely knew it. His eyes had found the horizon, that seam of waves and sky.
The ship came into the harbor. It was large, its sides fresh with resin and paint, its new sail shining. Its men worked cleanly, efficiently. Their beards were trimmed, their bodies honed with strength. When the gangplank was dropped, they gathered eagerly at the rail.