by P. J. Hoover
“Fine. So, we make an offering to Athena. Maybe she likes coconuts,” I said, letting the sarcasm drip off my tongue.
Dory smacked me on the shoulder. It hurt. “That’s a great idea, Homer.”
“I was kidding.”
“No, it’ll be really creative,” Dory said. “I have the best idea.”
So, we spent the next week crafting the perfect offering. We had plenty of time so that wasn’t an issue, and I admit that by the end of the week, I was into the plan, too. Our offering was perfect and awesome, and Athena was going to love it.
“You’re sure the eyes aren’t too big?” Dory said as I placed the final one.
“Owls have huge eyes,” I said and wedged the final eye into place.
And then we both stepped back to admire our work of art. In front of us was the most bodacious owl constructed from coconut shells in the entire world. And then we prayed because we wanted to make sure we got her attention. I did not want to be a failure before I’d even become a teenager.
My prayers went something like, “Please help us get off this boring island, or I am going to go completely insane.” Sure, I also added some more serious stuff about how I had to get home to Mom and tell her about Dad and how I really wanted to see her again and how I didn’t want her disappointment to be the last thing she remembered about having me as a son. But I kept these prayers to myself.
Not a day later, while we were on the beach praying, Hermes strolled up.
“You can stop praying to her,” Hermes said. “She’s heard you since the first day.”
“Did she like the owl?” Dory asked.
“She loved the owl,” Hermes said. “She’s been bragging about it to all the other gods.”
“It’s made completely of coconuts,” I said.
“Yeah, we’ve heard that from her about a hundred times,” Hermes said. “Athena loves coconuts. You kids did good.”
“Does that mean she’s going to help us?” Dory said, but it was weird the way she phrased it. Like maybe praying to get off the island wasn’t her only prayer either. But if I had my own private prayers, Dory must also.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Hermes said.
“Because you’re going to take us back to Ionia right now?” I said. Hope filled my words. That would be so much better than floating away on a raft.
“No, Homer,” Hermes said. “What kind of story ending would that be?”
“A really good one?”
“Not good enough,” Hermes said. “Plus, the story isn’t over yet. Odysseus isn’t home.”
“So, you can magically take him back, too,” I said.
Hermes shook his head. “Not today. But I am going to politely ask Calypso to let Odysseus go.”
“You’re going to politely ask her?” I said. “Are you kidding? She’ll say no. She’s a crazy, psychotic deity who’s woven two hundred rugs in the last year.”
“Last seven years,” Hermes said.
“Ha ha. Not funny.”
“What’s not funny?” Hermes said.
“Seven years.” I held up my hourglass. I still had only flipped it the one time since we’d been on the island.
Hermes leaned forward to get a closer look and tapped on the glass. A huge clump of sand seemed to break free, and the remaining sand in the hourglass whooshed to the bottom.
I almost choked on a piece of seaweed.
“It was stuck,” he said.
Stuck. Was he kidding? That was not good.
“How much time has really passed?” Dory asked.
“Seven years, like I said,” Hermes said. “Which means you have about a week to get home.”
“A week! But …”
“But what?”
“But that’s not enough time,” I said. “That can’t be right.”
“And yet it is,” Hermes said, twirling his hat. The wings spread out wide and then settled back down.
It was the worst news possible. One week. How could seven years have gone by on this stupid island? Seven years!
Hermes grinned. “But I do have a direct order from Zeus here telling Calypso she has to let Odysseus go. She’ll have to say yes, whether she wants to or not.”
“And then we’ll go home?” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Hermes said. “If Odysseus can evade Poseidon and make it to Ithaca, the story will be over.”
Now that was good news. Finally. Of course, the “if Odysseus can evade Poseidon” part wasn’t going to be the easiest task in the world, but maybe since we had Athena’s blessing, Poseidon would leave us alone.
Hermes headed for Calypso’s house, so I took the opportunity to update the story. Finally, after weeks of nothing, I had something new to add.
I’d just finished getting the first draft of the new part down when Hermes came out of the house with Odysseus, looking fresh and groomed and all put together, and Calypso trailing behind him.
Let’s put it this way. Calypso did not look happy. Not at all. Instead she looked like she’d swallowed a giant bullfrog and it had lodged in her throat. Her dark face was red, and she looked so angry, I thought she would have yanked Hermes’ winged hat off and hit him upside the head with it.
But Odysseus? His face glowed like it hadn’t since we set out from Troy ten years ago.
“You can’t do this,” Calypso said, and she stomped her foot like she was ready to have a giant tantrum.
“I can and I did,” Hermes said. “It’s time for Odysseus to go.”
“But he’s supposed to stay here forever and ever and ever,” Calypso said. “That means always.” She balled up her fists, like she was channeling the anger through them. But then, her face shifted, and large tears formed in the corners of her eyes. And she started bawling. Ugly crying. Huge sobs escaped from her mouth, and she fell to her knees in the sand and begged and pleaded with Odysseus for him to stay.
But Odysseus was a changed man. He patted her head like a child and told her that he would miss her but that he had to leave. That he had responsibilities back on Ithaca that could not be forgotten, no matter how much he might want to spend the rest of his life here on her island (Ogygia was its name, by the way).
But in the end, Calypso had no choice but to agree. So, she gave us some food and water and showed us a bunch of logs and rope that was even more perfect for making a raft than coconuts, and then she ran back to her house crying the entire time, like she thought somehow that would make Odysseus change his mind.
There was no changing it. Once the raft was finished, a huge grin formed on his face.
“Bard. Cook. Let’s show Poseidon who’s boss.”
I hated the way he phrased that. Even now, he was still mocking Poseidon? And I got this horrible, awful feeling that I shouldn’t climb on the raft. That I should run back to the house I’d been living in for the last seven years and just stay there. Except that’s when I looked at the hourglass hanging around my neck. There wasn’t much sand left. One week. We had to leave.
So Dory, Odysseus, and I climbed onto the raft and cast away from the island of Calypso. But no sooner was the island out of sight, a giant wave came. A last gift from Poseidon. The raft turned upside-down and smacked me hard on the head. Everything went black.
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
OKAY, LET’S GO BACK TO THAT OTHER CHAPTER where I woke up on the beach. Yeah, this one is really pretty similar except when I woke up, I was face up in the sand. The sun warmed me from above, and I could see its brightness from behind my closed eyes. Also, I was alive. I don’t want to minimize this part, because it made me happy. Unless I was really dead this time and in the Underworld. But I’d been to the Underworld, or at least part of it. This didn’t smell like death and rot. It smelled like the beach. Also, my head throbbed with so much pain, I had to be alive. I ran my fingers over the spot. There was a goose egg the size of … well, a goose egg for lack of a better description. I could almost hear Dory telling me to not be lazy in my similes, but it hur
t too much to think of anything else.
I opened my eyes so I could get a better view of my surroundings because, alive or not, if we were back on Calypso’s island, I was going to scream. Seriously scream. Except when I tried to open my eyes, I realized that they were already opened. I just couldn’t see anything except the pure white of the sun.
I turned my head left and right. I tried holding my eyelids open with my fingers. But it didn’t make a difference. I was completely blind.
LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
“DORY?” I SAID.
“I’m right here, Homer.”
I turned my head in the direction of her voice, but I didn’t see anything.
“Where?”
“Right here. Like five feet away from you.”
Five feet away? All I saw was white.
“I can’t see you.” I tried to keep the quivering out of my voice, but it was useless. This was horrible, awful.
“What do you mean, you can’t see me?” she asked.
I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. “I mean that I can’t see you. I can’t see anything.”
I heard some shuffling and then felt Dory’s hand on my arm.
“Here I am, Homer. Right here.”
I grabbed her hand with my other hand without thinking. And I didn’t let go. Because I had to know she was there.
“I think I’m blind,” I said. Blind and completely and utterly hosed.
“It’s just the sun, Homer. It’s probably a temporary thing.”
I wanted to believe her. I really did. But everything felt pretty hopeless right now. I’d been hit on the head by the raft, and it had made me go blind.
“What do you see?” I asked. “Odysseus?”
She didn’t say anything at first, and then she said, “Oh, sorry.”
“For what?”
“I nodded but you didn’t see me. Yeah, I see Odysseus. We’re on a beach. He’s sitting there looking like the world has come to an end.”
“And has it?”
“No, Homer,” Dory said. “The world has not come to an end. We’re on a beach, but there are all sorts of buildings, and I can even see people from here.”
“So, we’re somewhere?”
She laughed. “Yeah, we’re somewhere.”
“Do they look like they’re going to eat us?” I asked.
“No.”
“Attack us?”
“Nope.”
“Tear us limb from limb?”
“Not at all, Homer.”
That, at least, was good news.
I patted the front of my shirt, like I’d done for the entire journey, but the scroll wasn’t there.
“Do you have it again?” I asked.
“Have what?”
“The scroll. It’s gone.” This was no different than last time. Dory had probably grabbed it when we landed on this beach.
There was a pause again that I hoped was Dory nodding her head, but then she said, “No, Homer. I don’t have it.”
“Ha ha. You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. I don’t have it.”
That’s when the real panic set in. I patted at my shirt again and felt the sand all around me, but I couldn’t see anything. And if I thought I was hosed before because I couldn’t see, then I was fifty gazillion times that hosed right now. If I couldn’t find the scroll, everything was lost.
“You have to help me find it,” I said. “Please.”
Dory patted my arm. “Don’t worry, Homer. You sit right here. I’ll search the beach for it.”
And so she set off, and I sat there and tried completely unsuccessfully not to panic. I could not lose the scroll.
“Did you find it?” I asked, hoping she was in earshot.
“Not yet.”
I waited a few more minutes.
“Did you find it now?”
“Not yet.”
I listened to the gulls flying overhead, trying to focus on all the little noises around me, but all I could think about was the stupid scroll.
“Okay, how about now?”
“Listen, Homer. I’ll tell you when I find it. Just stay here. I’m heading farther down the beach near where Odysseus is.”
“You’ll come back?” I asked.
She leaned down and gave me a quick hug. Almost like it wasn’t even a hug. Except that it was. And then it was over.
“I’ll come back.”
And so, I sat and waited. I traced my hands through the sand, making designs I couldn’t see. I listened to the waves hitting up against the beach. They came from my left which meant that if I wanted to make it to people, I should head right, just in case Dory didn’t come back. Except she would come back. She would not leave me here.
After the longest ten minutes in the history of the universe, I finally heard her voice again.
She must’ve sat down in the sand in front of me because she grabbed both my hands.
“Homer, I can’t find it.”
Her words entered my mind and twisted around like fog filling in all the spaces. They were horrible words. Words I didn’t want to be true. I wanted to take those words back and throw them away.
“Please please please tell me you’re kidding,” I said.
“I wish I was,” she said. “But I looked everywhere. There is no sign of anything that even looks like bits and pieces of it. The scroll is gone.”
No. I was not going to give up yet.
“Did you ask Odysseus?”
Small silence. Maybe she was nodding her head again?
“He left the beach before I could,” Dory said. “He headed into town.”
A small flicker of hope filled me. “So he could have it.”
“I don’t know, Homer. He wasn’t carrying anything. And his yellow tunic was in complete tatters, just like ours.”
I didn’t care if my clothes fell off me at this point. This was it. The end of the journey. There was no point to go on from here.
“How is the hourglass?” I asked. “Is there any sand left?”
Another small silence. Then, “It’s almost empty,” Dory said. “We can’t have more than a couple days left.”
A couple days. A week. A month. It didn’t matter. With no scroll, there was no story. And with no story, my future was dead.
“I’m never going to get back to Ionia, Dory,” I said, as the horrible truth set in. Everything I’d wanted was pointless. I couldn’t do anything to save Mom. I was a complete and utter failure.
“You know what, Homer?”
“What?”
“Let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s go into town and find something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I bet they have falafel.”
“I’m still not hungry,” I said. But I let her pull me to my feet and started trudging through the sand.
TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES
IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE I BEGAN HEARING OTHER people’s voices. Like real people who sounded like they were doing real things. Not trying to eat us. Or kill us. There were kids laughing and crying and songs being sung like some sort of outdoor block party.
Dory led me by the hand, and I trailed along, completely helpless. Sure, I stumbled once or twice. Or maybe five or six times. But I didn’t fall once. She was either a really good guide or the ground was pretty even.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“It’s a town,” Dory said. “With lots of building, like some even two stories high. And we’re coming up on some kind of outdoor plaza. And there are a ton of people. Oh! There’s a falafel stand.”
“Do you see Odysseus?” He could have the scroll. He knew how important it was. He could have it tucked into the belt of his pants. Dory might just not have seen it.
“Not yet, Homer, but we’ll keep looking. Are you hungry?”
Even if I were, I didn’t see how it would matter. “Do you have any money?” I asked.
“Nope,” Dory said. “But I have charm. I’m
sure I can get us something to eat.”
So, I let Dory drag me to one of the food stands. She positioned me so I could sit up on the barstool. I tried to pretend it was some kind of game, like I was closing my eyes and seeing how much I could do without seeing. Except then I remembered that it wasn’t a game. It wasn’t fun at all, like games were supposed to be. I really couldn’t see. That got me all depressed again.
“Two falafels,” Dory said.
“You got any coins?” a guy’s voice asked. Not mean or gruff. Just kind of curious and happy because this was a party and he was a part of it.
“Nope,” Dory said. “But my friend here will recite you a poem on the spot on a subject of your choosing.”
“No, I won’t!” I said, because I realized that she was talking about me.
But I guess the guy didn’t hear me, or he really wanted a poem because he said. “Sure. How about falafels?”
I shook my head. This was ridiculous. But whatever. Dactylic Hexameter was second nature by now.
Oh I eat / falafels / for lunch and / for breakfast / each day of / the week
When I have / a mouth of / falafels / so tasty / I don’t want / to speak
Don’t ask me / a question / if you see / me chewing / or you’ll break / my mood
You’ll find out / you’re sorry / when I / have to / show you / my food
Falafels / are tasty / and crunchy / and crispy / and simply / divine
Show me a / falafel / and I will / be willing / to wait in / a line
But don’t cook / them wrong / or your / business will / turn quite / a mess
I’ll let the / world know in / one hundred / and forty / letters / or less
The guy exploded with laughter. “Brilliant! I love it!”
And even though I was depressed, I couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto my lips.
“Do you love it enough for two falafels?” Dory asked.
“Today and any other day,” the guy said, and pretty soon I felt something being shoved into my hands which was slick with grease and smelled like the Elysian Fields themselves. And despite myself, I took a bite and enjoyed every moment of it.
Maybe this was it. This could be my new life. Dory and I could live here—wherever here was—and make a living. I could stand on the street corner and recite on-the-spot poems and people could give us money. Dory wouldn’t have to be a slave anymore. It was almost brilliant. And since everything else was already lost, there was really nothing more to lose.