A Sea of Sorrow

by Libbie Hawker

  Have you ever been to the Well of Geryon, child? No? You must go with me, one day. It’s a natural stone basin that’s fed by a stream that spills from the rocks above it, nestled at the foot of a low range of hills just beyond the city. Or, it was in my day. Truth be told, I’ve not laid eyes on it in years. For all I know, it sits at the heart of some tin-hearted nobleman’s villa, now. That night, though, the moon lent its burbling waters a tinge of silver; the stone basin was festooned with offerings to the naiad said to dwell within—a daughter of Asclepius, or so the rumor goes, who imbued the water with healing magic. Being but a boy, I was more interested in seeing what others had left behind. There were trifles of carved ox horn or driftwood, wreaths of shorn hair tied up with ribbon, crumbling cakes wrapped in linen, even a small bronze figurine gone waxy with verdigris. So consumed was I with examining these treasures that I did not see Galatea step from the shadows.

  I think blind Polyphemus knew she was there. Of course, he said not a word of warning to me, his supposed friend, so that when she emerged from the darkness not three paces from where I knelt on the rocks at the Well’s edge—trying to make sense of that figurine—I nearly went head-first into those roiling waters. I can laugh about it now, to be sure. Is it not a silly scene to imagine? But at the time, fear knotted my innards and that seed of an idea, so lovingly tended over the last hour, was very nearly choked to death by weed-like Panic.

  “You have done what was asked,” Galatea said to me. Her dark cloak rustled as she none-too-gently took Polyphemus’s arm; beneath that garment, she no longer wore the dress of an Aeolian, but some filmy, sheer fabric that she’d cinched at the waist with a brightly-beaded belt. “Go now.”

  Polyphemus nodded in agreement. “My thanks, son of Lykaon.”

  “Will you—”

  “I said go!” Galatea snarled.

  I stood there a moment, watching as spray from the falling water dampened my legs. Galatea took Polyphemus and led him out into the night. But to where? To a rendezvous? Or to an ignominious death and a shallow grave? That seed planted by Dolos blossomed and bore fruit. Screwing up my courage, I crept after them. And as I crept I prayed—to primordial Night, to the naiad of the Well, to Zeus Savior himself—that Galatea would not see me, nor Polyphemus hear me. All I can say, child, is the gods must have heard my plea. Galatea led him into the hills, along an old cart track rank with weeds and overgrown by gnarled chestnut trees, until they came to an ancient crossroads. A single torch flared in the darkness. Its flickering light drove me under cover, and I watched an eerie conclave unfold from the relative safety of an exposed root-ball.

  There was no preamble. Galatea led Polyphemus to the center of the crossroad, where a torchbearer stood. She was a woman, too, and clad in the same manner as Galatea—in diaphanous white linen that left nothing to the imagination. A bound and hooded figure lay in the dust at her feet. Galatea and the torchbearer, both, rattled sistrums…a strange and metallic din that sounded nothing like our melodious chimes. A third woman joined them. She swayed with the discordant tune and added music of her own, played on a bone flute. I heard chanting, deeper than a woman’s voice, and realized it must be Polyphemus. Here was old sorcery, child. It tore my resolve out by the roots, shook it free of courage, until it was only base fear that kept me there—fear of Galatea and these other foreign maenads who would surely carve my balls off with a blunt knife if they found me lurking about. I wish I had run, truth be told. For what happened next, dear Eirene…it haunts me to this day. Look at me! Three-score years later and the memory of what happened still makes me tremble like a bride on her wedding night.

  Do not think me a mad old fool, but believe me when I tell you: their sorcery summoned something. My heart leapt into my throat as a figure stepped into the circle of wan light. A woman—at least from the neck down—as naked as a babe in arms. But it was no woman, child. This creature of the night had no human face, but rather the head of a lion.

  Galatea and her sisters swayed to the clash of their sistrums and the skirling of the flute. This creature, this horror of Aegyptos that tainted the good earth of Aeolia, paced back and forth. Its breasts jounced; it snarled and strained against an unseen leash, as though the hand of some greater god kept it in check. I heard it ask something of Polyphemus, its voice muffled though undeniably feminine.

  The blind giant drew himself to his full height; he threw his arms wide. A name rolled off his lips. A name I recognized even though he spoke the tongue of his homeland. “Odysseus!” he roared in answer.

  The she-creature roared with him, its head tossed back to send the name into the star-flecked heavens. The torchbearer stooped and tore the hood from the head of the bound figure. It…it was a man, child. A Sikelian, I believe. Thin and disheveled, perhaps a laborer snatched from beneath the eaves of a wine shop. Galatea wrenched him upright and fairly dragged him over to Polyphemus. She pressed a knife into his fist…oh, child. So much blood! So much blood.

  No, Eirene, dear, you need not fetch your mother. I am all right. It is no spasm that afflicts me, just a clarity of memory that strips away Time’s soothing veil. I had forgotten that poor man’s fate, you see. They butchered him, collected his blood, and offered it to that she-creature in exchange for wrecking vengeance upon Odysseus.

  Some years ago, when I was still hale and hearty and the master of my own affairs, those affairs took me to the mouth of the River of Aegyptos, as I have said. Yes, the Nilus. I see you’ve been paying attention to this old man’s maunderings, eh? Well, during my time there I befriended a man called Amenophis. This dead Sikelian yet haunted my dreams, and I woke one night gripped by blinding terror. Like a river in spate, the tale of his death flowed from me and into the sympathetic ear of Amenophis, who was my host. Afterwards, I felt as limp and wrung-out as an old cloth. Amenophis prepared me a draught of wine laced with a few drops of poppy juice. As I drowsed, he revealed to me the truth of what I’d seen as a boy. It was an old rite, he had said. Poorly done, and long since fallen out of fashion. You saw theater, my friend. He claimed I had witnessed a sacrifice of blood in hopes of drawing the attention of the Lady of Vengeance, blessed Sekhmet. The lion-headed woman was, he told me, just a woman who sported a mask of the Goddess. Amenophis was a fine man, but I know what I saw.

  And bloody-handed maenads or no, I ran from that place and did not stop till I reached my sleeping pallet.

  * * *

  5

  * * *

  I woke the next afternoon in the grip of a fever. When I’d finally slept early that morning, my dreams were awash in blood, with mad-eyed women in scarlet-spattered white trying to plunge their daggers into my heart. I must have cried out, for the next thing I knew my father was there. Concern etched itself across his brow; later, he told me how frightful I looked—all pale and clammy, yet burning to the touch. He blamed the wine and the late night carousing. Like most harbor folk, he did not trust the physicians of the upper city. He sent for the wise woman who lived in the next street, followed her directions to the letter, and stayed at my bedside—my own mother, the great-grandmother whose name you bear, dear Eirene, died giving birth to me; I never knew her, beyond what my father told me. But I feel she would have approved of you. My father never took another wife, and thus I grew up bereft of brothers or sisters. So if ever I needed a woman’s care he was not shy about it. He could dab my forehead with a soft cloth or croon a lullaby with more tenderness than many a-woman I’ve known.

  When next I woke, it was to my father’s weary smile.

  “Papa,” I said, my voice cracking from thirst. He helped me drink, and then pressed my hand to his lips. I realized he was crying. “What’s wrong, Papa?”

  “I should not have let you go about with some god-cursed foreigner, boy,” he replied. “Those night-born sisters who hound him, the Eumenides, nearly took you off by mistake.” The image of the three furious Erinyes, goddesses of vengeance and retribution, brought to mind Galatea and the two other women, blood-s
oaked and fey. I shivered and sank back onto my pallet. But the young mind has a wonderful elasticity, child. It can be stretched nigh to breaking one day, and resume its shape seemingly overnight should the right poultice be applied. For me, that poultice was my father.

  I’d been unconscious for three days after that evil night beyond Geryon’s Well; I spent another two days recovering, eating sparingly at first and then with all the voraciousness of Tantalus, freed from his bondage. Cousins and uncles checked in on us and word of my recovery spread; neighbors wandered over and left honey cakes or loaves of bread. Even the Tyrrhenian envoy came calling, having first secured passage back to his homeland. By the next day—the sixth since the king’s supper—I was up and ready to be about the thousand little mischiefs of boyhood.

  But, before I could run off with my mates, I had a duty to discharge. “I must see him,” I told my father, meaning Polyphemus. He had sent no word, either to inquire about my well-being or to offer sympathy over my illness (which, my father mentioned later, even the king was kept abreast of). Even so, he was my guest-friend. “I must see him,” I repeated. After a moment, my father nodded.

  “Yes, you’re right, boy. You can’t just let it lie. That wouldn’t do. But there is a way to do such things so as not to offend the gods. I’ve heard he has taken up the king’s hospitality and shelters now in the palace. Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No,” I said after a moment’s reflection. “I took this burden of my own accord, so I should also lay it by of my own accord.”

  My father smiled, eyes crinkling with pride. He put out my best tunic—it was blue, if I recall, with a tasteful amount of embroidery around the hem; with the king’s gift on my wrist, I cut quite the dashing figure.

  I bear no shame by admitting to you, child, that I had no desire to see Polyphemus. The memory of him bellowing the king of Ithaca’s name before slaughtering that helpless man in an effort to bestir the Lady of Vengeance sickened me. He was xénos, a foreign barbarian. But, propriety trumped emotion. I had made the first gesture; now, it was upon me to make the last.

  My father saw me off. A bit of weakness yet lurked in my legs and my stomach griped over the bread I had earlier, its hard crust made soft by dunking it in a cup of watered wine. But I went slowly, returning the myriad greetings thrown at me—mostly by those who had attended the king’s supper; I was the harbor’s darling, it seemed.

  Ascending to the high city, I did not drag my feet crossing the market square despite the carnival of sights and sounds it offered. That was hard, but I had come on a man’s business; I’d leave the business of boys for later. I presented myself at the doors to the palace, told them my errand, and followed one of the king’s stewards. He showed me to a small, private garden on a terrace that overlooked the sea. There, beneath an awning of heavy fringed linen and surrounded by beautiful foliage he could not see, Polyphemus sat alone.

  His head tilted; he heard our footfalls as the steward brought me near and cleared his throat.

  “The son of Lykaon, called Glaukos, sir,” the man said.

  “By the lights of heaven,” Polyphemus said. He turned his head to look in my direction. A scarf woven from soft saffron-colored fabric hid the empty sockets that were once his eyes; his bare skull gleamed, and even his wiry beard was oiled and well-kept. “Yours is a name I did not expect to hear in my presence again, young sir.”

  The steward withdrew; I came around to stand near Polyphemus. “Why so?”

  “Foremost, my behavior the other night. It was appalling. Bad enough that I shunned your company in favor of that trollop’s, but to also make you accomplice to my lies? Then, I understand you have been ill. I did not know it was customary for friends to check in upon one another. Good King Aeolus tutored me in such manners as are practiced by your people. I have no excuse, son of Lykaon. I hope you can forgive me. Will you sit?” He motioned to a small stool.

  “I will,” was all I could manage. I sat, still wary. If he knew I had witnessed his crime, would he still be so eager to remain on friendly footing? Or would he arrange an accident to befall me on my way home? Enlist a certain knife-wielding trollop to do the deed? You see my dilemma, eh, child? Oh, he sounded sincere, but was he? Well, you’re more trusting than I was at your age.

  At any rate, he asked after my health, and I told him I was no longer in any danger of slipping across the benighted Styx; like my father, he blamed my fever on being too young for all that wine and revelry. Though I knew the truth of it, I did not disagree.

  “I was younger than you when my tribe came north from Aethiopia,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “We were herdsmen, but our cattle had died the year before of a bloody flux. So my father led us north to find more. We found a different sort of cattle. Human cattle. The lord of Syene, who had rounded up every malcontent and malingerer in his territory, offered us meat and milk if we would use our spears to herd this rabble north to Thebes, to face Pharaoh’s judgment. We thought him mad, or an idiot; but we were not so aloof that we would refuse meat and milk for merely doing what we have done for generations. That’s how we became Medjay; of course, by their reckoning any Aethiop with a spear was Medjay.

  “It was some ten years after, while serving the governor of Thonis, that I first saw the sea.” Polyphemus’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Such power! Such majesty! Neither the sun, Amun, who rules as a tyrant over the deserts of Aethiopia, nor the moon, Khonsu, who brought succor, could match the all-encompassing breadth of Naunet, the sea. Here was a goddess I could serve.” I leaned forward, listening in rapt silence. “And so, I left the land behind and became a soldier upon the waves. You know as well as I, son of Lykaon, how fickle a mistress this goddess can be. The sea gives sustenance, she gives shelter, she gives riches beyond measure…but she also brings grief; her storms can waste a countryside like an invading army, and though the song of her heart brings peace, there is only death upon her breast—for no man can long survive her watery embrace.”

  I found myself nodding along with him. My own father had said much the same, in the past. As had every fisherman and sailor who ever poured a libation into the green waves with the hope of placating the gods of the deep.

  Polyphemus shifted with a grimace; his hip pained him still. “The wrath of my goddess put me upon this island, the sole survivor from a crew of forty souls. We were bound for Gebal on the coast of Canaan with a hold full of papyrus when a storm snatched us up. For ten days it blew, and on the eleventh day our waterlogged hull struck an outcropping of rock and split open like a rotten egg. The goddess, perhaps sated on the blood of my companions, cast me upon the beach. And here I’ve stayed—never far from the sea. Even still, I love her. Though she hurled me upon this wretched shore, I love her. I sacrifice to her with the dawn, and pour libations to her at the gloaming. But never again have I dared tempt her wrath. She put me here for a reason.”

  “What is the reason?”

  Polyphemus gave a wistful smile. “If we knew in detail all the inner workings of divine logic, son of Lykaon, where would the spice of life come from?”

  I tell you this tale, child, so you might see some measure of the conflict that roiled in my own breast. On one hand, Polyphemus had proven he was a man willing to lie, to kill, if it meant taking his vengeance. On the other, I could not help but like him. I felt in him a kindred soul; I understood why he did the things he did. In another life, who’s to say I would not walk the same path, spilling blood if it meant my enemy might feel the wrath of Nemesis?

  I knew I must broach the subject with him; I dredged up my last reserves of courage and was on the verge of opening my mouth to speak when something happened that dwarfed my childish anxieties.

  From the heights above us—from the watch-tower overlooking the sea—came the clash and clangor of a great bronze-headed drum, calling the city to arms.

  Polyphemus came to his feet with a start. “What is it?”

  “The king’s men have spotted something,”
I replied. I hurried to the edge of the terrace upon which the garden sat and peered over the low rock wall. I craned my head this way and that, scanning the expanse of blue sea for some sign of what caused the alarm. On the third look, I saw it. “Ships,” I said, making a quick tally. “Twelve of them.”

  Blind Polyphemus’s breath caught in his throat. “Are they black-hulled?”

  I looked closer. “I think so. With red sails.”

  “Odysseus,” I heard him mutter. “Beware, son of Lykaon. The king of Ithaca returns to claim by the spear what he could not by flattery…”

  You’ve never seen this city gird itself for war, child. No, I expect not even your mother, who is famous for her flagrant disregard of convention (through no fault of mine, I’ll have you know; I blame her mother), would not countenance her daughter running amok in times of strife. Though ask her how she spent the night of the Great Arming, when an alliance between the Sikelians and the Elymians threatened our borders. Aye, that should put a bit of color in her cheeks, provided she doesn’t banish you to your room—and me to mine, for that matter.

  Polyphemus bid me take him to the king, which put me in the thick of things. Not a place any boy should be, mind you, much less a boy leading a blind man about. No longer was I a touchstone of good luck. I’d become a nuisance underfoot. The king’s sons snarled and snapped, cursing my lineage in the same breath as they bellowed for their servants to fetch their panoplies.