Homer's Excellent Adventure

by P. J. Hoover

  She led me off the ship because I didn’t want to fall into the water and have Poseidon swallow me whole. And maybe I should have felt differently, now that we’d reached Odysseus’ homeland, except it was his homeland, not mine. His journey may be over, but mine and Dory’s still wasn’t.

  “How I wish my eyes could look upon my homeland and know that all was well,” Odysseus said, and heaviness filled his voice. “But this forebodes danger.”

  “What forebodes danger?” I asked Dory, under my breath.

  “There’s no one here to meet him,” Dory said. “Not his wife. Not his servants. Not his son. No one.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Where are they?”

  She leaned close. “One of our sailors heard that there’s a bunch of guys trying to become king. They all think Odysseus is dead.”

  “So, he should just tell people he’s not dead,” I said. It seemed really simple and straightforward, unlike anything else that had gone on so far in his story.

  Just then, I felt a hand clasp me on the shoulder.

  “That I cannot do,” Odysseus said. “If this journey that we’ve shared has taught me one thing, it’s that I must proceed with caution. Otherwise, everything I’ve learned in our travels, the death of my mother, being away from my homeland for so long … all of it will be for naught.”

  Wow. Just wow. Maybe after all these years, Odysseus really had changed. Maybe this is what Elder Pachis had meant when he told me about character growth. Odysseus was a way different person than he’d been ten years ago when we’d met him.

  “Bard, you’ve done me a great service,” Odysseus said. “And I wish I could repay you by taking you to your homeland this very moment. But …”

  Yeah. Yeah. I knew how the rest of that sentence was going to go. He was home, finally, and he couldn’t leave. At least not until things were settled. His story was over.

  Ours? Not so much. We still needed to get back within the next few hours or our time would run out.

  But Odysseus didn’t stand there and make a bunch of excuses. He told us the situation, he promised he would help when he’d secured the throne once again, and then he bade us farewell.

  “Bard, I am eternally in your debt,” he said. And then he clasped me in a hug and turned away, leaving us there, on the shore.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Dory because I couldn’t change Odysseus’ story. He had his responsibilities, and I had mine. “Maybe the Phaeacians will take us.”

  “The Phaeacians are gone already,” Dory said.

  “Gone? Seriously? What? Has it been a whole five minutes? They couldn’t wait around longer than that?”

  “They didn’t want to risk the wrath of Poseidon,” Dory said.

  “Well, that’s just perfect,” I said. “We have the worst luck ever.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dory said.

  I let her grab my arm and drag me forward. And since no one cared who we were, no one stopped us on our way to the city center.

  The sun was just coming up as we walked because light began to fill in my empty vision. And soon, the sounds of people and civilization reached my ears once again.

  “You hungry, Homer?” Dory asked.

  “No,” I said.

  She ignored my pouting and plunked me down on a stool somewhere in the middle of town.

  “We’ll take breakfast,” Dory said.

  “Breakfast!” the guy who must’ve run the food cart said. “I got something better for you.”

  And he set something down on the bar in front of me, and the center of my vision began to clear, just the smallest amount, like I could see through a fuzzy murky tunnel.

  “Homer …,” Dory said.

  “I see it,” I said. And then I reached out and grabbed it. It was a small wooden horse, like a child’s toy. A horse I’d seen before, almost in a different lifetime. And on the side of the horse was a small door, held closed by a latch.

  I used my thumb to push the latch open. And then we were sucked through.

  THE MARK IS THE SECRET

  WE ENDED UP BACK AT THE FALAFEL STAND. THE one in Ionia, that is. My vision was still really blurry and narrow, like I was looking down a long tunnel, but I could see shapes now, like shadows. I felt next to me. Dory wasn’t there.

  “Dory?”

  “Right here, Homer,” she said.

  I could barely make out her shape in the bright tunnel of my vision. She was across the bar, like she was running the stand.

  Like she’d been running the stand when we left on the journey.

  The wooden horse sat on the counter between us.

  “Um …” My hand still rested on the horse, but I pulled it back as fast as I could.

  “Um …,” Dory agreed.

  “What just happened?” I asked. The world slowly filled in around me. Or maybe it wasn’t so much the world as my memories, slipping back into the places they’d been ten years ago.

  Ten years ago. That didn’t even seem possible.

  “The hourglass,” I said, fumbling under my shirt to find it. “How much sand is left?”

  Dory grabbed the rope that hung around my neck and pulled out the hourglass.

  “Not good, Homer,” she said.

  I couldn’t see the details of the sand. My vision was still too blurry.

  “How much time?”

  She pushed it in front of my eyes. “Only a couple grains of sand are left.”

  A couple grains of sand. That wasn’t good at all.

  “Come on,” I said, and I jumped from the bar stool. But then I tripped on something because I couldn’t see more than a foot away. I landed hard on my knees, jamming the flats of my hands into the unforgiving stone ground.

  “Careful, Homer,” Dory said, and she grabbed the horse from the counter and came around to help me up.

  “I need to get to the school,” I said. “Before time runs out.”

  And so we ran, Dory holding my hand and guiding me around whatever or whoever happened to get in our way. I think we knocked into people and ran into a few vegetable carts because some of the town people started yelling at us. Each step we took, the worry growing inside me built up. I could not run out of time now. Not when we were so close. Not when we’d been through so much.

  It was only seconds before we were on the outskirts of town, where the barn-turned-school sat in the middle of the field, but it felt like a month. A year. My entire sense of time was gone. The dull white walls reflected the sun, making my already white-washed vision a renewed cloud of brilliant nothing. But Dory kept hold of me and pulled me forward. It was only when we got right up to the door that she finally stopped.

  “What are you doing?” I said. Every second counted.

  “I can’t go inside, Homer,” Dory said.

  “Of course, you can,” I said. “I can’t see without you.”

  “No,” Dory said. “You forget …”

  “Forget what?”

  She blew out a deep breath. “You forget I’m a slave, Homer. And slaves can’t go into schools. It’s against the law.”

  That had to be the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. After everything. Dory should be able to go anywhere I could. There was nothing that set us apart.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “No one will know.”

  “They’ll know,” she said.

  “But I need you.”

  The seconds ticked by. The precious seconds that we almost didn’t have. And then, even though I didn’t even believe my own words, Dory, to her credit, led me inside.

  Elder Pachis was yammering on about something up at the front of the classroom. At least one person was snoring. I couldn’t tell who since I couldn’t see hardly at all. But the second we stepped inside, he stopped talking. The snoring continued.

  “Homer,” Elder Pachis said. “This isn’t your school anymore. You need to leave.”

  I stepped forward and reached for the scroll inside my tunic.

  “I got the story,” I said, and I
pulled out the scroll. “I finished the project.”

  He made an annoying clucking sound with his tongue. “It’s too late. You’re out of time.”

  My head snapped to Dory. We could not be out of time. But my limited tunnel vision was enough to show me that she was nodding her head, super slowly. She held the hourglass in one hand.

  Out of time.

  No. I was not going to accept that.

  I pulled my hand from Dory’s and stepped forward, weaving around what I hoped were all the benches. The last thing I needed to do here was trip on something and have any hopes of me looking halfway cool crumble.

  “I got your story. Just like you said.” And then I let the scroll unroll in front of me.

  By now the entire class was listening. Whoever was snoring had stopped.

  Then Demetrios said, “Just leave already, Homer. Go pack your things. My dad—the mayor—is taking over your farm today.”

  That was not happening. But I wasn’t going to get into some pointless bickering match with Demetrios. Not now. Not ever.

  “It’s late,” Elder Pachis said, but his voice didn’t sound quite as convinced as it had only a minute ago.

  “It’s everything you wanted.” I was not backing down.

  I took another step forward. So did he. And I guess that’s when he saw the scroll.

  “It’s not the right scroll,” Elder Pachis said.

  “True,” I said. “But that scroll was lost at sea. Swallowed by the monster Charybdis. A most heinous creature.”

  “What’s Charybdis?” someone asked. I was pretty sure it was Lysandra, but I didn’t turn to look. Not like I’d have been able to see more than a foot, anyway.

  “A terrible sea monster,” I said. “Destroyer of ships and men. The scroll tells all about it.”

  “It does?” Elder Pachis said, and then he stepped forward again.

  “It does,” I said. “In perfectly measured Dactylic Hexameter.”

  I guess this last part got him because he leaned forward and craned his head so he could begin to read. And then he took the scroll in his hands and held it all proper and started to say the words aloud. And I listened as he read the stanzas and tasted the words on his lips. And it was funny, hearing my story from someone else. It was actually good. Really, really good. Way better than I’d even thought.

  Time slipped by as Elder Pachis read my story, becoming more animated as the story went on, almost like the poetry demanded attention. And in that time, I felt Dory creep up behind me.

  Finally, Elder Pachis said, “Homer.”

  I swallowed the lump that had been stuck in my throat since we got to the school.

  “Yeah?”

  “You did it,” Elder Pachis said. “You came up with a story of epic proportion.”

  “I know,” is what I wanted to say, but in the last ten years, I’d learned that maybe a witty sarcastic response isn’t always the best choice. So, what I said aloud was, “Thank you.”

  “This will work,” Elder Pachis said.

  “I can stay in school?”

  “You can stay in school.”

  I almost asked if I could still be a soldier, but even if I could see, now I wasn’t so sure that was what I wanted. Not anymore.

  “The farm is still ours?” I asked instead.

  “The farm is still yours,” Elder Pachis said.

  “No way!” Demetrios said. “That farm is mine now. And you and your mom need to leave today or we’re going to kick you out.”

  “You’re not kicking Homer out,” Dory said, stepping up next to me.

  “Shut up, slave,” Demetrios said. “Why is there a slave in the classroom, anyway? That’s against the law.”

  Dory opened her mouth and started to say something, but I cut her off.

  “Don’t talk to her that way,” I said. And then I kind of cringed because I’d completely used the wrong pronoun. Or at least the right pronoun, but the one I shouldn’t have used.

  “She,” Demetrios said, enunciating it, “is a slave. She belongs to my family.”

  I tried to stare Demetrios down, because he was such a jerk, but he was too far away for me to really see. My tunnel vision narrowed the more I tried, and the more I tried, the more it hurt my eyes.

  I whipped back around to Elder Pachis, and I opened my mouth to say something, except then I forgot what it was because my vision narrowed even more until all I could see was one tiny circle pinpoint of light, focused on the wall above Elder Pachis’ head.

  There, on the wall of the reclaimed barn, was a seal. A seal with a symbol I’d seen before.

  The siren’s song came back to me.

  “Look to the seal.”

  “The seal is the answer.”

  “The seal will set her free.”

  And then Old Lady Tessa’s words came back to me.

  “The mark is the secret.”

  Just like the mark on Dory’s neck. The tattoo.

  “What is that?” I pointed to the spot on the wall. It widened in my vision.

  Elder Pachis turned to look where I pointed. “What?”

  “That mark. On the wall.”

  “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s the ancient seal of the royal family.”

  “The royal family is dying out,” Demetrios said. “When Ajax died, it was all over for them. Once King Telamon kicks the bucket, my dad’ll be king.” He kept yammering, something about what a great job his dad was doing of being mayor of Ionia, but I stopped listening to him.

  “The family of Ajax. That’s it.” It was the same king. It was no coincidence that we’d met Ajax. That we’d heard his story. Or that he’d talked to Dory in the Underworld.

  “What’s it, Homer?” Elder Pachis said.

  “The line of Ajax,” I said. “It’s not gone.”

  “Is to,” Demetrios said.

  “Wrong,” I said. “Because this girl you see before you—yes, she’s a girl. That part kind of surprised me, too, except then I spent ten years with her, and there is no mistaking it—is actually the daughter of Ajax, hero of the Trojan War. If I remember my history of Ionia correctly—and I’m pretty sure I do since I was listening in class that day—King Telamon gave his son Ajax this land to rule over. But then your family took over when you thought he had died.”

  “He had died,” Demetrios said, fumbling over his words.

  “Maybe so,” I said. “But he left a child. A daughter, fathered during the war. Stowed away on a Greek ship after the war to be returned safely here. Not to be forced into slavery.”

  “But … but that’s not possible,” Demetrios said. “You don’t have any proof of that.”

  “Of course, I do,” I said. “You don’t think the gods just leave this stuff up to chance, do you?”

  “What proof?” Demetrios said.

  “Dory?” I craned my neck in her direction, even though I still was having trouble making out complete shapes. And I definitely couldn’t see faces.

  “What Homer?” she said.

  “Show your tattoo.”

  Her hand went to her neck.

  “No, Homer,” she said, keeping it hidden like she always did.

  “You have to,” I said. “The mark is the secret. That’s what Tessa told me. It’s the proof. It will set you free.”

  Dory took a deep breath, like she was ready to jump off the side of a cliff, and then she pulled her hair from off the back of her neck. And even though I couldn’t see the tattoo, I was sure everyone else in the classroom could because the entire group let out an audible gasp.

  “The crest of the king’s family,” I said. “Put there by Ajax and the gods after her birth. And what do you think King Telamon will say when he finds out that your family has kept his granddaughter as a slave for the last ten years?”

  “Oh crud,” Demetrios said, and he ran from the school, maybe to warn his dad.

  I guess Elder Pachis believed what I said, because he started making a huge deal about Dory, making sure she had the
best seat near the front of the classroom, even brushing off the dirt and hay from the bench himself. He hadn’t cleared off a space for me, but I shoved myself in there next to Dory, and then Elder Pachis returned to the front of the room and started lecturing again.

  And that’s how Dory went from being a slave to becoming the rightful heir of Ionia.

  THIS IS THE END

  SO THAT’S HOW OUR STORY ENDS. DORY GOT REUNITED with her family. There was all sorts of ceremony and celebration. King Telamon threw a weeklong feast. Then he wanted her to move back to the palace, but she insisted she wasn’t leaving Ionia since she’d be ruling it someday, so she moved into a fancy house with a bunch of servants—not slaves; she vowed to free all of them—not too far from the farm. I gave her one of the cats from our farm as a housewarming present. She named it Grumpy.

  As for the farm, Mom and I got to keep it. Actually own the farm forever, like no chance it could ever be taken away from us. That was a nice benefit of being best friends with the king’s granddaughter.

  And Demetrios? Let’s just say that his family was relieved of all their responsibilities around town. Sure, he was still allowed to come to school, but he sat in the back and moped the entire time. He even had to scrub pig dung off the walls. I didn’t miss his bullying once. Oh yeah, and Lysandra dumped him hard. In front of everyone. Totally embarrassing.

  Each day my vision got a little bit better. Still not perfect, and I had to have Dory help me with my writing.

  Yeah, I kept writing. Now that I’d figured out how much I loved it, I couldn’t let it go. Not now. Not ever. My destiny was not to be a soldier after all. Charon was right about that.

  One day, about a month later, I sat at the falafel stand. Dory still ran the thing after school. She insisted on it, no matter how much her grandpa—the king—insisted it wasn’t proper for royalty. But Dory wasn’t about to start listening to authority now.

  “What’cha writing about, Homer?” she asked. This was the fifth day in a row she’d asked the same question.

  I traced my pen along the scroll. What I was writing was a whole bunch of nothing. For the last week, I’d completely run out of ideas.