by P. J. Hoover
“What?” I asked.
“Your men,” Tessa said. “They’ve sacked the village.”
Urg. I wanted to choke Odysseus.
“I knew it was a bad idea to expect the Cicones to just give us stuff,” Dory said.
“They’ll be back in the morning,” Tessa said. “With reinforcements.”
“And that’s when we’ll be going,” Polites said. And then he kind of smiled at Tessa, and she smiled back, and I wanted to roll my eyes because he was completely flirting with her.
So, we ate our dinner and then went to bed. Dory and I slept outside so we could keep watch—or at least hear if there was any kind of commotion. There was commotion, but not coming from the beach. Still, I managed to drift off to sleep.
I woke to Polites limp-running from the shack.
“We need to go now!” he said.
Dory and I jumped to our feet.
“Safe and swift travels,” Tessa said from the doorway.
At this, Polites stopped and turned back and bowed deeply to Tessa and then kissed her on the hand. “I hope our paths cross again.”
“Oh, they will,” she said, like she could see the future or something.
Already some sort of fight had broken out on the beach. The sound of steel hitting steel echoed through the air.
“Thank you!” I said, remembering my manners.
Tessa grabbed my hand. “Homer?”
“What?” I asked, watching Polites and Dory clamber down the path.
“I’m not a witch,” she said.
“Thank the gods,” I said. Now that I’d learned Dactylic Hexameter, I didn’t want her to turn me into a toad.
“But I can see the future,” she said.
I knew it!
“Do I become a soldier? Do I save the farm?” I asked. “Is the story good enough?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Homer. But I do know this. The mark is the secret.”
“What mark?” I asked. I had no clue what she was talking about.
“The mark is the secret,” she said again. “That’s all I know. It’s important.”
The mark is the secret. I doubted I’d ever know what it meant, but it didn’t really matter.
“Thank you, I guess,” I said.
She gave my hand a squeeze and let go. “Watch out for Dory.”
“I will,” I said, and then I ran, catching up with Polites and Dory. With his bum leg, Polites couldn’t move all that fast, but we hurried as best we could.
When we finally came down out of the hills and got back to Ismaros, the peacefulness of the night before had vanished. The Cicones had come back early this morning and fought with a vengeance. Some of Odysseus’ guys fought them, some grabbed as much food and drink as they could. I figured we’d find food elsewhere.
“We need to get to the boats,” I said, but the city was a mess. Dory and I were small enough that we were able to cut and curve around most of the action. The fighting thickened once we got to the beach. Polites ran to Odysseus’ side and joined in, battling five skinny dudes that had no reason picking a fight in the first place. And to Odysseus’ credit, he didn’t kill them. He only fought them off until most of his men had cleared the town.
“To the boats!” he called.
The guys didn’t need to be told twice. They ran, dropping melons and mead bottles on the way. Dory and I ran, too. Since our ship was anchored to the dock, we jumped aboard. And in the quickest two minutes of my life, the ship pushed off and headed away from Ismaros.
“Well, that went nicely,” Eurylochus said, patting Odysseus on the back.
“Are you insane, man?” Odysseus said. “That went horribly. We fought innocent people. We lost men.” His yellow shirt was ripped nearly in half, showing off his enormous muscles. He also sported cuts on his arms and chest, just like a lot of the guys.
“Our provisions are full,” Eurylochus said, as if that justified everything.
“We don’t fight with villagers,” Odysseus said. “It will anger the gods.” He put his head in his hands like he couldn’t believe the awful turn of events.
I wanted to pipe in and mention how Odysseus was the one who’d suggested taking food from the villagers in the first place, but I kept my mouth shut. Still, in my head, I constructed a brilliant retort in Dactylic Hexameter.
“Does it seem exceptionally windy?” Polites said. He still had the same perma-grin on his face that had been there since we met Tessa.
Odysseus licked his finger and held it up into the air. The bright blue sails billowed in the wind. “Exceptionally. And …”
“And what?” I said.
The concern grew on his face with every passing second. The ships moved with a vengeance through the water.
“And it’s blowing the wrong way.”
FLOWER CHILDREN
THIS WAS WHERE THE GODS GOT MAD. I MAY HAVE been just a farm boy, but I knew that the wind didn’t blow for nine days straight in the complete opposite direction of Ithaca just by coincidence. Odysseus and his guys had really ticked the gods off. Their stupid, selfish pilfering was going to do us all in.
I wasn’t sure which god Odysseus had upset. He complained about a bunch of them. Except for Athena. The way he talked about Athena made me think he wasn’t thinking about his wife, Penelope, at home all that much. Not that it was any of my business.
“Then why are you writing it down?” Dory asked. Since we’d had a whole bunch of free time in the last nine days, I’d started teaching him. He could sing the entire alphabet song and recognized all the letters. We found the old gold paint they’d used to paint the Trojan Horse and had starting writing letters on the walls of the storage room. Dory’s writing wasn’t bad though he kept getting phi and psi confused.
“I just wrote that Athena is Odysseus’ favorite god,” I said. “I left out the part about his wife.”
“That’s good,” Dory said. “Women don’t want to read stuff like that about their husbands.”
I wasn’t sure how Dory knew this, but I was too busy counting syllables to ask.
The afternoon of the ninth day, Polites, who was perched up in the crow’s nest because even though he only had one eye, he could see farther than anyone else on the ship, hollered, “Land!”
The guys erupted with cheering. This was because in addition to having no control of the boat for nine days thanks to the wind, we also hadn’t seen any land. It didn’t take a genius to guess that we were going to dock.
“Gods above, let this not be another Ismaros,” Dory said. “And also, let’s hope they have some fruit. If we go much longer without it, people’s teeth are going to start to fall out.”
Lots of the guys already had missing teeth, a testament to the number of fights they’d been in. It made my dreams of being a soldier seem not quite so glamorous. I hoped for their sake we found fruit, too. They couldn’t stand to lose any more.
The boats pulled into the port, and like before, our boat was the only one to actually dock. For the others, the guys had to row ashore in life boats.
Odysseus jumped to the dock first. “We only take what we’re offered,” he said, like he was talking to small children.
“What if they have mead?” this one stupid-looking guy who I was pretty sure was drunk most of the time said. Dory and I had started calling him Rum.
“Only if it’s offered,” Odysseus said.
“Or cake,” a chubby guy we called Cupcake said. “I love cake.”
“Only if it’s offered,” Odysseus said.
It continued on this way. I would have used up the entire scroll if I’d written down all their comments. Suffice it to say, they covered every possible edible. And no sooner did Odysseus turn his back, they all ran off, straight for the city, Rum and Cupcake leading the way.
“We should go, too,” Dory said. “Check for fruit.”
“Do we have anything to trade?” I asked.
Dory put his hands together into a big zero. “Nope. But I�
��m hoping they’ll take pity on us since we’re kids.”
Polites limped over to join us. “I’ll come with you two. Keep you out of trouble.”
We hadn’t gotten into any trouble before, but I didn’t mind Polites. He got along with most everyone, even that slimy weasel Eurylochus, which was the equivalent to getting along with a rodent.
“Moldy bread,” Dory said. “That’s what Eurylochus reminds me of.”
“Not a rodent?” I asked. Here I’d thought the whole simile thing was pretty clever.
“Some people think rodents are cute,” Dory said.
I wasn’t sure what people he was talking about. Maybe Demetrios back in Ionia?
“Nobody thinks moldy bread is cute,” Dory said.
That was true.
“Are you coming?” Polites asked Odysseus.
Odysseus narrowed his eyes and studied the city ahead. It was hard to see much of anything from here except the men running toward it. “Not yet. But report back to me if you see anything suspicious. I have a funny feeling about this place.”
That didn’t fill me with confidence. Still, we’d been on the boat for nine days. My stomach and legs needed a break.
Polites, Dory, and I headed toward the city. It was weird, because even though Rum and Cupcake hadn’t left all that long before us, they were already out of sight. Of course, they were running, and we weren’t.
“How’d you hurt your leg?” I asked Polites. “And how’d you lose your eye?”
“Right to the point, I see,” he said.
I shrugged and shifted the pen in my fingers. “I’m a storyteller. What can I say? I’m out to get information.”
In addition to the entire Trojan Horse thing, I’d added every detail from Ismaros. Elder Pachis was going to pee his pants with excitement when he saw what an epic story I’d written. I figured anything from this point on was just icing on the cake.
“Will you write about it?” Polites asked.
“Are you a hero? Did you do something heroic?” I asked. After all, my story was supposed to be totally heroic.
“Maybe,” Polites said.
“Well then, maybe I’ll write about it,” I said.
At that Polites laughed. “I got it defending Odysseus.”
“Against who?” I said.
“Against whom,” Dory corrected. “Against is a preposition.”
I wasn’t sure what a preposition was, but I added the extra letter and kept writing.
“Against Ajax,” Polites said.
“Ajax?” Dory said. “I’ve heard rumors about that guy. But wasn’t he a Greek?”
“Sure,” Polites said. “But he and Odysseus … They had this disagreement going on for years. It had all sorts of things to do with racing and Athena and glory and victory. And this one time, about halfway through the battle, things got a little heated. They started fighting, out on the beach, in the middle of everyone. Ajax cursed the name of Athena. Odysseus was not going to stand for that. But you know Odysseus. He’s smart, but he’s a little impulsive. He’d been drinking all night and had no right to get into a fight.”
“So, you stepped in and saved him?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Polites said. “I stepped in and saved him. Lost my eye. Hurt my leg. But, you know, these things happen.”
“So, you are kind of a hero,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be upset if you wrote that,” Polites said, and then he winked at me. Or at least I think he did. With an eyepatch, it’s hard to tell when someone’s winking.
“You guys see that?” Dory had stopped walking and pointed ahead.
We were over halfway across the beach, but someone must’ve seen us because there were a few people headed our way.
Polites’ hand immediately went to his sword. I grabbed my pen. For my purposes, the pen was definitely mightier that the sword.
“They look friendly,” Dory said, squinting ahead.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Polites said.
But I had to agree with Dory. The three people heading our way looked like they were dressed to go out visiting temples in their finest clothes. As they got closer, I could see that their hair was brushed until it shone, their teeth sparkled in the sunlight, but best of all, they carried trays loaded with flowers and fresh fruit.
It took everything in me not to run directly toward them and start shoving the fruit into my mouth like a starving sailor. No offense to the guys on the boat. Let’s just say that they didn’t have the best of manners.
“Fruit!” Dory said, and he took off running.
So much for manners.
I ran after him, and Polites hurried as best he could. And when I reached the people and saw how plump and juicy the fruit was, I was ready to trade away the scroll and my pen just for one small bite.
“Would you like refreshments, young travelers?” one of the three people said. It was a guy in a white toga with gold twine wrapped around it.
“You don’t mind?” I almost drooled at the sight of it.
“Of course not,” another of the people said. It was another guy, maybe a couple years older than the first, in a green toga the same color as Dory’s shirt.
“We want to share,” the third said, this one a girl. She was probably only about twenty and wore a purple toga.
“Well, in that case,” Dory said, and he grabbed a fresh peach with a huge flower attached to the top of it from the platter. Polites and I were right behind him, and when the juice from the fruit hit my lips, I was sure I’d died and gone to the Elysian Fields.
“Thank you so much,” I said, after about five bites. Mom would be horribly upset with me if I forgot to thank them, even if my excuse was that I was starving to death.
“It’s our pleasure,” the first guy said.
And they all smiled, brilliant smiles. And their eyes shone. It was kinda weird because even though their skin colors were varied, they all had the same bright blue eyes, like the ocean, where I could almost see right through them.
“Would you like some more?” the girl asked.
We all did, so we followed them back in the direction they’d come from. When we reached the town, all of the guys from the boats had already made themselves comfortable. Eurylochus was stretched out on a lounge chair with an entire plate of fruit and flowers on a table next to him. Rum and Cupcake and three other guys sat around a table, sharing trays, passing them around and trying all the different varieties that were offered.
With twelve ships and fifty guys per ship, that was a lot of sailors to feed, but the people—I didn’t know what they called themselves—didn’t seem to care. Speaking of which, that seemed like a pretty big oversight on my part. I needed details.
“What are your people called?” I asked as we followed the two guys and the girl to a table with a giant umbrella overhead. It blocked out the hot sun perfectly, and mist floated through the air down onto our heads.
“We’re just the Flower Children,” the girl said, and she sat down, so we all did. And even though I’d just eaten four huge pieces of fruit, my stomach grumbled.
The table was decorated with bright flowers that were so plump and full of life that they almost looked like they could be eaten, too. Not that I was going to eat flowers.
“Are flowers poisonous?” I asked Dory.
Dory shook his head. But it almost seemed kind of slowed down, and he smiled really slightly, almost like the sly grin I’d seen girls at school give. Well, they never gave those grins to me. More Demetrios, since he was rich and his dad was the mayor.
“Some flowers are poisonous,” Dory said. “But not these.” And he picked one up and ate it in a single bite.
I turned to look, but somewhere along the way to the table, we’d lost Polites. It was just me and Dory and the flower children who’d led us here.
“I should write this down,” I said, unrolling my scroll.
“What are you writing?” she asked, but she didn’t look down at the scroll or anything, so I
got the distinct feeling that she didn’t really care.
“Just a story,” I said.
“Can I read it?” she asked.
“I guess,” I said, pushing the scroll her way.
“Here, have a flower while I read.” She handed me two of the plump flowers from the table, and since Dory hadn’t died yet from eating them, I figured they’d be okay. So, I popped one in my mouth.
I’d never had candy, but I imagine that once candy got invented, it would taste like these flowers. Because they melted in my mouth and soothed my stomach and made my head go all happy. And all I could think was that I wanted more. So, I popped another in my mouth, and then, because it didn’t seem like the people cared, I grabbed another. And I sank back in my chair and stared up at the blue sky and listened to the sound of the birds singing. They sang for five minutes straight, not missing a single note. I forgot about everything in those five minutes. Elder Pachis. The story. Mom. Being a soldier. Even Dad. Like this horrible fantasy took over. What if I could just never go back? Stay here on this island with the Flower Children. Eat fruit and flowers and drink … well, whatever it was they drank. I’m sure it was delicious.
Would Mom eventually forget about me? Go on with her life? Maybe she could keep the farm. Maybe it would all work out if I just wasn’t there.
I reached for another flower and listened to the birds for a few minutes. Their song echoed my thoughts.
“Stay with us,” they sang. “Be free of your cares.”
“I will,” I said, living in the fantasy.
“Never leave,” they sang.
“I won’t,” I said.
And for a few more minutes our harmony went on.
“Another flower?” the girl said, handing one over to me.
I turned to look at her, even though that simple movement was a huge effort. All I wanted to do was keep looking up at the sky, listening to the birds, dreaming of a life with no cares at all.
“What?” I managed to say, because I was so far into the fantasy, that nothing else really made sense.
“A flower,” she said, passing me another one.
I nodded slowly and held my hand out. And then I swiveled my head around since it was already moving and the momentum made it easier. Dory still sat next to me.