by P. J. Hoover
“And anyway, how do you know?” Dory asked Polites. “I’ve done a really good job keeping it a secret.”
That was true. Well except for the little things I’d noticed. And the fact that Dory never went to the bathroom around any of the other guys. He—I mean she—always wanted privacy.
“Tessa told me,” Polites said. “Back in Ismaros.”
“Ugh, Tessa,” Dory said. “She said she’d keep my secret.”
“Well, why’d you tell her?” I asked.
“Girl stuff,” Dory said.
I would have pried more, but that’s when we heard laughter and shouts of joy coming from a cave in the hillside. It was only about fifty yards ahead, with a wide rounded opening about ten feet across.
The idea of going into a cave didn’t seem like the smartest thing to me, and I guess it didn’t to Odysseus either because he stood out front also, not entering.
“Don’t tell anyone, Homer,” Dory whispered as we hurried over.
Odysseus would have flipped if he’d found out. Girls on ships were bad luck. Everyone knew that. He’d blame everything that had happened so far on Dory.
“Is your name really Dory?” I whispered back. “That’s a dude’s name.”
“It’s short for Doryclus, and everyone thinks I’m a dude, so it’s fine.” Then she did that eye roll thing again.
“You need to keep it a secret,” I said. “You can’t let anyone find out.”
“Duh, Homer,” she said. “So just promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“Duh,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”
“The men are inside?” Polites asked Odysseus as we hurried up to the cave. Odysseus wore his same yellow tunic, except it looked brand new, not torn in half like the last time I’d seen it.
I still couldn’t believe Dory was a girl. Except I also could totally believe it. And now that I knew it, it was so obvious. But no one would find out because of me.
“Sounds like they found—” he started.
“We found booty!” Moronios said, running from the cave’s mouth. In one hand he held a jug of what I guessed was wine since his mouth was stained bright red. In the other hand he held a huge hunk of bread with a few bites taken out. Around his neck were chains of gold.
“It looks like the mother lode,” Odysseus said.
“We should take inventory,” Dory said.
“A good plan,” Odysseus said. “Cook, you lead the inventory.”
“I don’t think going in the cave is such a good idea,” I said.
“Nonsense,” Odysseus said. “There is no one about.”
I had no plans to go into the cave. But then something let out a huge roar. I turned left, then right, but didn’t see anything.
“Over there!” Dory said, pointing to the hillside in front of us.
Once I spotted it, I wanted to unsee it. Because coming up from the hill was a giant monster with a single eyeball in the center of his forehead sniffing the air and roaring. He took one look at us with that giant eye of his and started running directly toward us.
“Into the cave!” Odysseus shouted.
And since there was nowhere else to go, we ran into the cave.
The monster ran—
“Be specific, Homer,” Dory said. “What kind of monster is it? Details make every story better.”
It wasn’t really the time for details, but Dory was always right. I wonder if that had something to do with her being a girl.
“Fine,” I said and scratched out the word “monster.”
The hideous, half-dressed, hairy, slobbering cyclops ran directly toward the cave.
“Hide, men!” Odysseus cried.
The cave was huge and there were tons of rocks, so we all dashed behind them. The cyclops ran into the cave and looked around with that great big blue eye of his, and then it settled on one of the biggest rocks. He lifted it up—seriously, he lifted it with one hand; I don’t think ten of Odysseus’ men could have budged the thing—and then he placed it directly in front of the cave opening, blotting out all the sunlight.
We were trapped.
DINNER FOR THE CYCLOPS
TWO GUYS HAD BEEN HIDING BEHIND THE BIG ROCK. Moronios was one. Spitter was the other. Spitter wore the same red shirt every single second of every single day. When the cyclops picked up the big rock, they tried to dash around another one, but they weren’t fast enough. The cyclops grabbed them with his huge hands. He raised Moronios to his mouth and bit him in half, squelching his screams before they even got started. I’d add more gory details, but it might not be appropriate.
As for Spitter, he started wiggling and squirming so violently, that the cyclops just squished him. Then he ate him.
(Insert more gory details here.)
(Redacted. Dory tells me that I shouldn’t add any more, so we’ll leave it at that.)
Odysseus was down two more men. Not that anyone was going to much miss Moronios or Spitter, may they rest in peace in the cyclops’s tummy.
The cave went silent. I don’t think anyone even breathed. Nobody wanted to be noticed by the cyclops. And the cyclops … he seemed satisfied. He sat on a rock near the middle of the cave and slowly finished his dinner. The only sound echoing through the confined space, which felt smaller by the second, was the occasional belch and the crunching of bones.
“No gory details,” Dory said.
I scratched out that part about the bones. The belching I left because burps are always funny.
“You’re just grossed out because you’re a girl,” I said.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Dory said.
“Oh no I don’t what?” I said.
“You don’t make a single comment like that about me being a girl. That’s exactly part of the reason why I’ve kept it a secret.”
“Because people make girl comments?” I asked.
“All the time! About how girls aren’t strong enough. Or how they aren’t good at math, which, by the way, is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m great at math. Stupid Demetrios can’t add two numbers. And his dad wouldn’t know how to balance his finances if he was down to four drachmas.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t good at math,” I said.
“You inferred that I was grossed out by things,” Dory said.
“That’s because it is gross,” I said. “I’m grossed out. And seriously, how many bites does it take for him to finish his meal? He’s been crunching for like ten minutes now.”
“Maybe he got a bone stuck in his throat,” Dory said.
“Possibly you two want to keep it down a bit?” Polites whispered from the next rock over.
But I guess it was too late, because that’s when the cyclops picked me and Dory up and turned us upside down.
Which gets us back to the beginning of the story.
“Not the beginning of the story,” Dory said. “We’re well into the thick of things.”
Yeah. True. So, we were upside down in the hands of the cyclops. My scroll and my pen fell to the ground. From behind the rocks, I could see all the guys looking up at us, but they kept their mouths shut. It was too late to point out that Dory and I should have done the same.
The cyclops lifted me close to his face. Way too close to his face. The stench rolled off his breath. If I didn’t think of something quick, I was totally hosed.
“Wait a second,” I said, hoping he understood Greek.
He cocked his head. “It speaks?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I speak,” I said. Maybe that would be enough. He’d realize I was human and decide that it was completely inhumane to eat humans. Hence the word inhumane.
“Does it taste good?” he asked.
I shook my head, fiercely. “No. I taste horrible. Dreadful. I’m a total reject.”
He narrowed that big eye at me. “How does it know?”
“Oh … well, you see … this other cyclops tried to eat me one time, and I tasted so awful that he spit me out whole. He brushed his teeth for five days st
raight after that. As he cursed the horrible taste in his mouth, he said the girl cyclopses would never like him if his breath smelled so bad. So, I highly recommend that you don’t eat me.”
“Hmmm …,” he said. “Which cyclops tried to eat it?”
Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. But it actually gave me a great idea. “He didn’t tell me his name,” I said. “Which was a huge mistake on his part. You see, I’m a storyteller. And the story I’m telling … well … It’s going to be famous. Epic even. And I want you to be a huge part of that story.”
“It wants me to be famous?” the cyclops said, and he batted his eyelid a few times as if this possibility had never occurred to him.
“Very famous,” I said. “The most famous cyclops ever. What is your name?”
“Polyphemus,” the cyclops said proudly, like it was the best cyclops name in the world.
“That’s an amazing name,” I said. “It will be perfect in my story.”
“It will tell other cyclopses about me?” Polyphemus said. “Even girl cyclopses?”
I nodded, probably more enthusiastically than I needed to. But I was making progress. “Not just cyclopses. I’ll tell the world. You, my friend, Polyphemus, will be remembered forever. But if you eat me, then I can’t make you famous.”
Polyphemus grinned. “I won’t eat it. I’ll eat the other one instead.” And he raised Dory toward his mouth.
“No!” I said. “You can’t eat her—I mean him either.”
This genuinely seemed to confuse Polyphemus. “Why can’t I eat it?”
The “tastes bad” excuse would only go so far, I knew.
“Because he’s my editor,” I said. “And if you eat my editor, then my stories will be awful. Sure, I can write them, but I completely need my editor to make them better. Editors are geniuses. They do magic with stories. Otherwise, stories die a long painful death, and no one ever reads them.”
The cyclops thought hard, trying to find a hole in my logic. Or maybe trying to understand my logic at all. Dory kept shooting me dirty looks, like I should keep talking, but I figured I’d let Polyphemus puzzle this out.
“I won’t eat it,” Polyphemus said. “I want to be famous.”
And he set us both on the ground.
“It will stay here,” the cyclops said. “I will bring it some dinner. It will read me its story when I get back.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure what kind of dinner he had in mind.
He lifted the rock out from in front of the cave, and then left, resetting the rock from the outside. Which left me, Dory, Odysseus, and all the guys, except the two who’d been eaten, alive in the cave.
Odysseus slapped me on the back. “Good thinking, Bard. Make the cyclops famous. That’s a quick mind you have.”
Quick and desperate. It got my creative juices flowing. I grabbed my scroll and pen from behind a rock where they’d fallen and got to work on the story. Now it wasn’t just the farm and my future on the line. It was my life. If the cyclops didn’t like this story, I was going to be dead.
“That’s his name, right?” Dory said, leaning over my shoulder. I’d just written Polyphemus.
“Yep,” I said, scribbling frantically in the firelight. Polyphemus still wasn’t back, and the guys had lit a fire and were roasting a sheep over it. Not the smartest of ideas. Odysseus, of course, had told them not to, but once the fire was lit and the sheep was dead, I guess he realized that he wouldn’t really be able to hide all the evidence so he might as well enjoy some mutton, too. He sat off to the side of the group, whittling a long stick.
Dory sounded out words over my shoulder as I wrote. I was so into the words, that it didn’t even bother me. It was like I’d entered some sort of magical writing zone. I only hoped it would be enough that Polyphemus would let me out so I’d have the chance to share it with the world. I tried to capture every detail. I also tried to embellish some of those details, describing what a great big strong, good-looking cyclops Polyphemus was. This was not true. Polyphemus smelled like he never showered. He looked like he never showered. I was pretty sure that he never had showered. But none of this needed to go into the story.
I was still scribbling when the scraping sound of the rock being moved echoed through the cave.
“Hide, men!” Odysseus shouted, but of course it was too late. The men sat around the fire with bellies full of roasted mutton.
“What is this?!” Polyphemus bellowed, and he grabbed one of the men—no clue what his name was; we’ll just call him cyclops victim number three—and snapped his head off with his teeth.
We all shuddered from the noise.
“Don’t you say a word,” Dory said. “That wasn’t the least bit gross.”
But here’s where things really got interesting. Polyphemus stepped closer to the fire, reaching for another of the guys. Odysseus—I guess he hadn’t just been sitting there idle—grabbed the long stick he’d been whittling and raised it like a spear. The end was sharpened to a long spike.
He came from behind a rock and launched himself right at Polyphemus. The stick plunged forward. The spike went directly through the cyclops’s giant eye.
“Ah!” Polyphemus cried, grabbing at the spear sticking out of his eye. “Where did the world go?”
The spear must’ve blinded him because once he yanked it out of his eye and threw it across the cave, he started flailing his arms around, knocking over rocks and stepping on sheep, and howling in pain. Two more guys got crunched in the madness. Cyclops victims four and five.
“What did it?” Polyphemus shouted. “What did this to me?”
“I did it,” Odysseus yelled, stepping forward and sticking his hulking chest out like he’d solved all our problems.
“What is I?” Polyphemus cried.
“I am No One,” Odysseus said.
“No One made the world go away,” the cyclops cried. “Curse No One. I hate No One!”
“To the exit!” Odysseus yelled, and we all started running.
Minus points to Odysseus. The spear was smart. Not telling the cyclops his real name was smart. Announcing our exit strategy wasn’t. Polyphemus floundered to the cave exit and positioned his giant body in front of it while he felt around for the rock. We were close to the exit now. Cupcake was nearly outside. We were all jealous until Polyphemus slammed the rock back into place, smooshing Cupcake and sealing us back into the cave. And then Polyphemus sank to the ground with his back against the rock and started crying, big slobbery tears that mixed with his blood and pooled down his face. I would’ve felt sorry for him except we were down six guys by now.
With him distracted and blind, we all ran back toward the rocks.
“Storyteller?” Polyphemus cried out, stopping me in my tracks. He sniffed the air, almost like he could smell me.
I didn’t say a word.
“Are you still there, storyteller?” he called, and then he sniffed loudly and cried anew. And I couldn’t go any farther.
“I’m here,” I said, stepping back toward him.
Dory grabbed my arm and tried to drag me to the back of the cave, but I shook her off.
“Tell me a story,” Polyphemus said. “Please.”
So, I sank to the ground in front of Polyphemus, and even though he couldn’t see me, he could hear me. I told him about Ismaros. And about the island of the Lotus Eaters. And Tessa. And even of what I’d seen of the war, with the giant wooden horse. And Polyphemus listened until he stopped crying, and then he listened until he fell asleep.
CLOAKED IN MUTTON
“WE ATTACK AT DAWN,” EURYLOCHUS SAID, TRYING to sound like he was all in charge and stuff.
“We don’t attack,” Odysseus said.
“So you lead more men to their deaths?” Eurylochus said.
It got under my skin how he always challenged Odysseus. Not that Odysseus was always right. But Eurylochus grated on my nerves like two pieces of limestone rubbing against each other.
“Why does Odysseus keep that gu
y around?” Dory asked Polites. “He’s so annoying.”
Now that I knew Dory was a girl, she sounded more and more like one. Like every phrase she said and the tones she used in her voice. And I had to tell her about the hands on hips thing. Guys just didn’t do that.
“He’s related to King Odysseus,” Polites said. “A relative of the king’s wife.”
“Penelope,” I said. “Right?” After Polyphemus had fallen asleep, I’d worked on filling in some of the details. Things like that. Turns out the guy in the red shirt who’d been eaten did have a name besides Spitter. It was Pyrrhus. Moronios was really Myronius. Cupcake was Stephanos. Odysseus promised we’d have a ceremony for the fallen once we were back on the ship.
“If we don’t attack, then what do we do? Wait for it to eat all of us?” Eurylochus said.
“Of course not,” Odysseus said, and that’s when he told us the plan.
It was actually very clever. And took way more patience than I ever would have assumed Odysseus had. We waited until Polyphemus woke up, and then, like it was their morning ritual, the sheep all started making noise. They needed to go out to pasture. The first sheep wandered toward the front of the cave. Polyphemus pushed the giant stone out of the way, and then felt the top of the sheep, just to make sure it was a sheep and not one of us.
So, we all grabbed hold of a sheep, from underneath. Not a fun spot to be, but it fooled Polyphemus. He let every single sheep out, not realizing we all clung to their undersides. Once we were free of the cave, we ran, not looking back.
“To the boats!” Odysseus called.
What was it with this guy? Did he not learn the first time?
Of course, Polyphemus heard him. He erupted with terrible shouts and anger and started throwing rocks at us. We ran toward the ship, down the rocky hill. No one was worried about heading back to get any booty out of the cave. When we finally clambered aboard, the guys raised the anchors and we cast off, away from the rocky shore.
“Too bad, cyclops!” Odysseus shouted. “We’ve escaped your grasp. You’ll have to find your dinner with no eye!”
It was completely unnecessary taunting.
“Tell me its true name,” Polyphemus bellowed from the shore.