by P. J. Hoover
Dory looked to the shelves in the storeroom and seemed to do some sort of mental math. “A week,” he said. “We should be able to stretch it that far.”
“Stretch what that far?” Odysseus said, sauntering in. Since the last time I’d seen him, he’d cleaned up quite a bit. He wore a fresh yellow tunic, and his dark hair and beard had been trimmed and washed to the point where I hoped he’d gotten rid of all the lice. Lice was not anything I wanted to experience again. I’d had it once and had to endure hours of Mom picking through my hair, removing it.
“Not too much backstory,” Dory said. He’d been saying this a lot. I guess talking about having lice when I was five years old might be considered backstory. So I scratched out a couple of the other sentences. I did leave in the part about how his royal pain-in-my-butt, Demetrios, had lice, too. He was probably the one who gave it to me.
“Stretch our food for the next week,” Dory said. “I should be able to make it last that long. But it would be helpful if you asked the guys not to eat so much.”
“Nonsense,” Odysseus said. “My men have spent the last ten years fighting a war. They will eat however much they want.”
Dory grimaced. This was a perfect example of Odysseus not being all that smart.
I kept my mouth shut. Not Dory.
“Fine,” Dory said, putting his grain-covered hands on his hips in a totally non-dude-like way. “We’re going to run out.”
Odysseus closed his mouth and seemed to ponder this deep statement. He placed a finger to his lips. I noticed he did this when he thought a big decision was coming. Finally, he snapped his fingers.
“I have a solution,” he said. “We’ll stop in Ismaros.”
“Stop!” I said. “I thought we were heading straight to Ithaca.” Stopping was not part of the plan. I had to get home and get back to school.
Odysseus waved my comment away like it was of no concern. “Don’t worry, little Bard. It’ll only be a day out of our way. We’ll stop at the port, find provisions, and then be on our way.”
Little Bard. What kind of nickname was that? Like I was some kind of pet he was keeping around. But I didn’t complain because I’d rather be writing the story than cleaning up after his guys, and I didn’t see myself as qualified for much else on the ship. I may want to be a soldier when I was older, but I wasn’t ready yet.
“Only a day?” I said.
Odysseus’ face filled with his kingly confidence. The kind that said “this is my decision and you better not question it.”
“Only a day,” he said.
So, we set sail for Ismaros.
Okay, side note here. I have to mention that Odysseus was wrong. I’d noticed this was a recurring habit of his. Instead of the promised one day, it took us nearly four days to reach Ismaros. I panicked the first day and the second, but then I noticed that the hourglass still moved in slow motion, as if maybe in this adventure Hermes had sent us on, time moved differently. That had to be within the power of the gods. I mean, there was even a god of time, Kronos. Maybe he and Hermes were in this thing together. Anyway, I tried not to panic even though I was about to go down there and row the boats myself.
Because. That. Was. The. Problem.
The men didn’t want to row the boats. All they wanted to do was party. And even Odysseus, with his kingly commands, had a hard time controlling them. It was only when Dory served cold stone soup for dinner that they finally got the idea. If they didn’t start rowing, they’d die of starvation.
“Where’d you get the idea for stone soup?” I asked as I drew a little picture of the port of Ismaros. I’d never been so happy to see land. I was going to get off this boat and get some fresh air, even if it was only for a few hours.
Dory shrugged. “Back in Ionia. Demetrios’ dad is actually the one who told me about it.”
“He told you about soup made with stones? For him to eat?”
“No. Of course not. To feed the peasants who beg at his door every day.”
“He feeds the peasants stone soup?” As if I didn’t already think Demetrios and his family were worthless. I had no clue how they’d managed to come to power. It seemed like King Telamon was losing power, at least within Ionia. Something about the royal line dying off.
“Pretty bad, right?” Dory said. “And that’s only minimal compared to some of the other stuff they do.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go back to them,” I said. Sure, Mom and I did plenty of hard labor, but we owned the farm. Dory was a slave which meant that he’d never be able to own anything. He’d always be owned. The only way for slaves to be freed was if their masters granted it, and I couldn’t imagine Demetrios or his family doing anything nice without some ulterior motive.
“Whatever,” Dory said, but he turned away. I didn’t push it, but I reaffirmed my promise to him. I may not be legally allowed to teach him to read and write, but I was going to, no matter what the risk. Maybe then, once we got back, he’d have some kind of chance at something besides a life of slavery.
IT ALL STARTS WITH ONE BAD CHOICE
ODYSSEUS ORDERED ALL THE BOATS BUT HIS TO anchor offshore. Since there were twelve boats, they wouldn’t all fit at the dock. Luckily for us, this meant we didn’t have to wade through the water which was dull and gray like the sky. I guess it’s good when you’re the king.
“What’s our budget?” Dory asked Odysseus as we came up onto the deck.
“Budget?” Odysseus looked perplexed.
“Yeah, for our provisions,” Dory said. “We need food, water. Alcohol will be pricier, so we may want to not get so much of that. We’ll also be needing first aid supplies. Bandages. Salves.”
“Bandages? Salves?” Odysseus scratched his head. “For what?”
“In case anyone gets hurt.”
Odysseus let out a bellowing laugh. “In case anyone gets hurt! That’s a good one!”
I guess Odysseus didn’t think anyone was going to get hurt.
“Okay, then just the other provisions,” Dory said. “What’s the budget?” He put his hand out for some gold coins.
Odysseus looked at the hand with curiosity but didn’t offer anything to put it in. “We ask for provisions,” Odysseus said. “We don’t pay for them. These men just fought in a ten-year long war to defend Greece. We will not be paying for anything that is rightfully ours.”
Dory gritted his teeth like he was trying really hard to keep from saying something completely disrespectful to Odysseus. “So, you’re not planning on paying for anything?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re sure?” Dory said.
“Absolutely,” Odysseus said.
This visit was going to be a disaster.
Since Dory wasn’t about to go steal food from the locals—we’d leave that up to the guys—he and I set out into the city. I needed to track down someone who knew something about storytelling.
“Not storytelling,” Dory said. “You’re doing fine with that part. Just the format of the story.”
Right. I needed to find someone who understood Dactylic Hexameter, because that someone was not me.
We went door to door in the rainy weather, talking to the Cicones—that’s what the people who lived in the city were called. They didn’t speak quite the same language as we did, but it was enough to get some basic messages passed back and forth. Writing. Stories. Some old dude with a ton of missing teeth finally pointed to the hills on the outskirts of the city and told us to find Old Lady Tessa. Just as we were setting out on the path out of the city, someone grabbed us from behind.
“Where do you two think you’re going?”
We turned to find one of Odysseus’ men—the guy with the eyepatch—holding us at the shoulders. In addition to the bright red eyepatch, he also had a bum leg that made him limp when he walked. And his hair was done up in at least a hundred tiny little braids, each with a seashell at the end like personal, portable wind chimes.
“We need to talk to an old lady,” I said
.
“And you’re going alone?” he said.
I tossed up my hands. “Sure. Why wouldn’t we be?” We were twelve. Almost teenagers. It’s not like we needed to have our mommies with us at all given times. Plus, how dangerous could some old hag be?
“I’ll come along,” he said.
“Okay, sure,” I said. It didn’t much matter to me. Also, he did have a sword which would be handy if we ran into a wild boar or something.
We set out walking again, and though the guy limped on his leg, it didn’t slow him down too much.
“My name’s Polites,” the guy said. He said it like Po-Light-Us.
Dory and I had been trying to settle on a nickname for him for the last couple days. I’d suggested Patch but Dory told me that wasn’t politically correct.
“Polites,” I said, happy to know his real name. “Bet you have good manners.”
“Never heard that one before,” Polites said, and he made some weird funny laugh that kind of bounced around in the back of his throat. I hoped it meant he thought my joke was at least kind of funny.
“Why aren’t you helping get food?” Dory asked. “Don’t they need you to haul stuff onto the boats?”
“Tomorrow they will,” Polites said. “Today all they’ll do is drink mead.”
I’d found out a year ago that mead was this completely gross old-person drink that made me puke for three hours straight the one time I’d tried a sip. I completely don’t recommend it unless you want to suffer the same fate as me.
“It’s pretty cool that these people are going to share so much with us,” I said.
“Yeah, sharing,” Polites said, and he did that weird funny laugh thing again. “So where are we going, anyway?”
“Old Lady Tessa’s,” I said. “She lives in a shack up in the hills.”
“The guy who told us about her said she was some kind of witch,” Dory added.
Polites scratched behind his eyepatch and then readjusted it. “And why are we going to see some witch?”
Oy. I hoped she wasn’t a witch. I’d never met a witch firsthand, but Elder Pachis told us in school that witches would put a curse on you so fast, you’d be begging to end your own existence. Living an entire life never meeting a real witch would be fine with me.
“She knows Dactylic Hexameter,” I said. “Or at least that’s what some old geezer down in town told us.”
“What’s Dactylic Hexameter?” Polites asked.
“That’s what we need to find out,” I said.
The three of us left the city and started up into the hills. Since they were all rocky and barren, nobody else lived there, so it didn’t take long at all to find the rundown little shack. And I hated to admit it, but with all the wind chimes hanging from the rafters and the glass jars on the windowsills, it did look like the kind of place a witch would live.
“Gods help me,” I said. “The only reason I’m doing this is for Mom.” Bringing home the story wasn’t going to be good enough. With the battle at Troy, I’d already gotten more than enough adventure to fill the scroll. Now I just needed to make it right.
I knocked on the door, afraid it would disintegrate under the force of my fist. The witch would put a curse on me for sure if that happened.
The door opened instantly, as if whoever was on the other side was standing there waiting for us. A really cute lady, who was probably younger than Mom, stood there. She had big green eyes and dark, dark hair with skin to match.
“I saw you coming,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but words wouldn’t come out. Polites seemed to be having the same problem.
But Dory wasn’t having any issues. “We’re looking for Old Lady Tessa. She’s supposed to be some old hag who lives up around here.”
The woman grinned and winked at us. “You found her.”
It took me a second to realize that she was talking about herself.
“You?” I said.
“Me!”
“But you’re not old.”
“And neither are you,” Old Lady Tessa said, reaching out to pinch my cheek. I stepped back out of her reach. “What are you, ten?”
I stood up a little taller. “Twelve. Almost thirteen.” Actually, I wouldn’t be thirteen for another six months.
“I’m twenty-nine,” Polites said, smoothing his braids and making sure his red eyepatch was lying flat.
Oh gods. If he started flirting with her, I was going to throw up.
“This old guy down in the village told us you could help us,” Dory said.
Old Lady Tessa opened the door wider, inviting us in. And though the outside of the shack looked like it would blow down if the breeze picked up, the inside was spotless.
“Sure, I’ll help,” she said.
Against every sane bone in my body, I stepped inside. I had to make my story right.
Old Lady Tessa closed the door behind us. I realized that we were trapped. There was no easy way out now.
“Are you a witch?” I asked. If we’d allowed ourselves to be locked in the house of a witch, we’d deserve our fate. She was probably about to throw us in the oven and bake us into cookies.
Polites elbowed me, hard.
Old Lady Tessa just laughed. “I’m not a witch. Well, not really too much of a witch.”
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be comforting or not.
“Now what do you need help with?” she asked.
“Dactylic Hexameter,” I said.
Old Lady Tessa—well, she wasn’t really an old lady, so just Tessa—clasped her hands together. “Oh, I love Dactylic Hexameter. Second only to Iambic Hexameter. King of the meters. I could speak it all day. Let’s see …
“There once was a meter I knew.
I spoke it when I put on my shoe.
I knew all the beats.
They sounded so sweet.
I also made a mean beef stew.”
Relief flooded through me. We’d definitely come to the right spot.
“Beef stew?” Dory said, narrowing his eyes at Tessa. “What does that have to do with Dactylic Hexameter?”
“Yeah, rhyme isn’t my strongest skill,” Tessa said. “It’s trickier than people think. Everyone thinks writing little rhyming poems is simple, but it takes practice. Lots and lots of practice.”
“It would be my epic debut,” I suggested, thinking about how amazing my story was going to be. And debut totally rhymed with shoe.
“Good,” Tessa said. “I like that. Epic debut.”
“So is that Dactylic Hexameter?” I asked. I grabbed my scroll and pen and prepared to take a few notes in the margin. If that’s all there was to Dactylic Hexameter, I’d get it no problem.
“Oh, no,” Tessa said. “That’s a silly little limerick. Dactylic Hexameter is way harder than that. It’s the heroic hexameter. The meter of epic. Only the greatest of stories deserve to be told in Dactylic Hexameter.”
No pressure or anything. I was so not the right person for this job. But Old Man Pachis had said I needed an epic story. And sure, maybe this whole Dactylic Hexameter thing was one more stupid test of his, but if it made the difference between keeping me in school or having us cast out onto the streets, I was going to give it my best.
“Teach me,” I said.
Polites eyed me. “Manners,” he said.
“I mean, teach me, please?”
Tessa launched into some lengthy explanation about long syllables and short syllables and trochees and anceps and spondees and caesura and diphthongs. And after the first five minutes, it all started sounding the same to me. But I pushed past the normal sleepiness that would have taken over were I back in the barn schoolhouse, and I tried. I really focused. And pretty soon, words started coming together in my mind. They took shape and made structure, and I could see the syllables like real elements floating in the air, waiting for me to grasp and manipulate.
“Time for a break,” Polites said, refilling his mead jug.
“A break!�
� I said. “But I’m just starting to get the hang of it.”
“We’ve been at it for hours,” Polites said.
“No way,” I said. “It’s only been, like …” I checked my dad’s hourglass, but the sand was still barely moving. I couldn’t count on it for real time. And the only sundial I’d seen was back in town.
“It’s been four hours,” Tessa said. “Polites is right. You’re doing great. Time to break.”
Tessa and Dory made us dinner. Polites and I went outside to wait because they said we were just getting in the way. And though I couldn’t hear anything they were talking about, there sure was a lot of giggling coming from inside the shack. Hopefully Dory would tell me what was so funny, because Polites and I just sat there, not talking, looking out at the boats on the water. There were no sign of Odysseus and the guys leaving, and seeing as how it was almost night, I figured the earliest we’d leave would be the morning.
An hour went by with neither of us saying a word, but finally Polites said, “The villagers are running away.”
He was right. The Cicones had taken off from Ismaros, heading north.
“I wonder / what the / reason for / them flee / ing so haste / ily is,” I answered in perfect Dactylic Hexameter. Or at least as perfect as I’d gotten it down so far. I wasn’t keen on splitting my words across the feet, but I’d only just learned today. I would get better.
Polites smacked me upside the head. Not in a mean way. More in a fun way. The kind of way Dad used to do when we’d sit outside and watch the stars and I’d start making up funny names for the constellations. It made this really weird lump form in my throat, so I kept the next line of Dactylic Hexameter to myself. But I loved this hexameter stuff. I planned to speak this way all the time.
“Side note, Homer. That’s a horrible idea. I’m not going to be your friend if you talk like that,” Dory said later, as I was writing down the whole incident.
I left the sentence anyway.
“I’ll tell you the reason they’re running away,” Tessa said, opening the shack door. Whatever scents came from inside made my stomach growl. Maybe it was beef stew. I could not wait to eat.