I came back when the sun was setting. Telemachus had gone to catch fish for dinner, and Penelope and I sat at the table. Her fingertips were stained green, and I could smell the spells in the air.
“I have long wondered something,” I said. “When we fought over Athena, how did you know to kneel to me? That it would shame me?”
“Ah. It was a guess. Something Odysseus said about you once.”
“Which was?”
“That he had never met a god who enjoyed their divinity less.”
I smiled. Even dead he could surprise me. “I suppose that is true. You said that he shaped kingdoms, but he also shaped the thoughts of men. Before him, all the heroes were Heracles and Jason. Now children will play at voyaging, conquering hostile lands with wits and words.”
“He would like that,” she said.
I thought he would too. A moment passed, and I looked at her stained hands on the table before me.
“And? Are you going to tell me? How goes your witchery?”
She smiled her inward smile. “You were right. It is mostly will. Will and work.”
“I am finished here,” I said, “one way or another. Would you like to be witch of Aiaia in my place?”
“I think I would. I think I truly would. My hair, though, it is not right. It looks nothing like yours.”
“You could dye it.”
She made a face. “I will say instead it has gone gray from my haggish sorceries.”
We laughed. She had finished the tapestry, and it hung behind her on the wall. That swimmer, striking out into the stormy deep.
“If you find yourself in want of company,” I said, “tell the gods you will take their bad daughters. I think you will have the right touch for them.”
“I will consider that a compliment.” She rubbed at a smudge on the table. “And what about my son? Will he be going with you?”
I realized I felt almost nervous. “If he wants to.”
“And what do you want?”
“I want him to come,” I said. “If it is possible. But there is a thing which still lies before me to be done. I do not know what will come of it.”
Her calm gray eyes held mine. Her brow was arched like a temple, I thought. Graceful and enduring. “Telemachus has been a good son, longer than he should have been. Now he must be his own.” She touched my hand. “Nothing is sure, we know that. But if I had to trust that a thing would be done, I would trust it to you.”
I carried our dishes away, washed them carefully until they shone. My knives I whetted and laid each in its place. I wiped down the tables, I swept the floor. When I came back to my hearth, only Telemachus was there. We walked to the small clearing we both loved, the one where a lifetime ago we had spoken of Athena.
“The spell I mean to do,” I said. “I do not know what will happen when I cast it. It may not even work. Perhaps Kronos’ power cannot be carried from its soil.”
He said, “Then we will go back. We will go back until you are satisfied.”
It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks? But a cracked heart was not enough, and I had grown wise enough to know it. I kissed him and left him there.
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE FROGS HAD GONE to their wallows; the salamanders slept in brown holes. The pool showed the moon’s half-face, the pinpoints of stars, and all around, bending near, the wavering trees.
I knelt on the bank, thick with grass. Before me was the old bronze bowl I had used for my magics since the very first. The flowers rested beside me in their pale root swaddles. Stem by stem, I cut them and squeezed out the drops of running sap. The bottom of the bowl grew dark. It too began to show the moon. The last flower I did not squeeze but planted there on the shore, where the sun fell every morning. Perhaps it would grow.
I could feel the fear in myself, gleaming like water. These flowers had made Scylla a monster, though all she had done was sneer. Glaucos had become a monster of sorts too, everything that was kind in him driven out by godhead. I remembered my old terror, from Telegonus’ birth: what creature waits within me? My imagination conjured up horrors. I would sprout slimy heads and yellow teeth. I would stalk down to the hollow and savage Telemachus to pieces.
But perhaps, I told myself, it would not be like that. Perhaps all I hoped would come to pass, and Telemachus and I would go to Egypt indeed, and all those other places. We would cross and recross the seas, living on my witchcraft and his carpentry, and when we came to a town a second time, the people would step out of their houses to greet us. He would patch their ships, and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers, and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.
The vision blossomed, vivid as the cool grass beneath me, as the black sky over my head. We would visit the Lion Gate of Mycenae, where Agamemnon’s heirs ruled, and the walls of Troy, their stones chilled by winds from ice-peaked Ida. We would ride elephants and walk in the desert night beneath the eyes of gods who had never heard of Titans or Olympians, who took no more notice of us than they did of the sand beetles toiling at our feet. He would say to me that he wanted children, and I would say, “You do not know what you are asking of me,” and he would say, “This time you are not alone.”
We have a daughter, and then another. Penelope attends my birthing bed. There is pain, but it passes. We live on the island when the children are young and visit often after. She weaves and casts spells while nymphs glide around her. However gray she gets she never seems to tire, but sometimes I see her eyes turn to the horizon where the house of the dead and its souls wait.
The daughters I dream to life are different from Telegonus, and different from each other. One chases the lions in circles, while the other sits in a corner, watching and remembering everything. We are wild with our love for them, standing over their sleeping faces, whispering about what she said today, what she did. We bring them to meet Telegonus, throned among his golden orchards. He leaps from his couch to embrace us all and introduces us to his captain of the guard, a tall, dark-haired youth who never leaves his side. He is not married yet, he may not ever be, he says. I smile, imagining Athena’s frustration. So polite he is, yet firm and immovable as one of his own city walls. I do not worry for him.
I have aged. When I look in my polished bronze mirror there are lines upon my face. I am thickened too, and my skin has begun growing loose. I cut myself at my herbs and the scars stay. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I am vain and dissatisfied. But I do not wish myself back. Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs. One day, Hermes will lead me down to the halls of the dead. We will scarcely recognize each other, for I will be white-haired, and he will be wrapped in his mystery as Leader of Souls, the only time he is solemn. I think I will enjoy seeing that.
I know how lucky I am, stupid with luck, crammed with it, stumbling drunk. I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life’s precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband’s pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children’s skin shows every faintest scratch. A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations. I do not forget either my father and his kind hanging over us, bright and sharp as swords, aimed at our tearing flesh. If they do not fall on us in spite and malice, then they will fall by accident or whim. My breath fights in my throat. How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom?