Aeolia had no standing army in those days. We relied on a militia; our fighting men were our fishermen, our shopkeepers, our cheese-makers. Any man hale enough to hold a spear or draw a bow had a place in the ranks. What horsemen we could muster were far-flung, drawn from the landsmen who dwelled round about, and they needed time—time to prepare their mounts and gather their retinues and don their armor. No, if these ships belonged to the lord of Ithaca, in truth, and if he came looking for a fight, we’d have to hold him at bay with what the city itself had to offer: a phalanx of a hundred spears and twice that number of archers and slingers. Three hundred Aeolians against half again as many Achaeans, veterans of the war at Troy.
Luckily, I was but a boy and had no conception of the dire straits our city faced. Our foe had men hardened in the crucible of war? Blooded killers tested on the threshing floor of Ares, and led by a man whose name was a byword for cunning? I snapped my fingers at that! Just so! Aeolia had my father, and the knot-hard men of the harbor-town ready with spear and harpoon, with shield and net; we had a good king with strong sons clad in shining bronze, with tall crests atop their helmets and shields painted with myriad devices; and if it came down to it, I did not doubt even Polyphemus and his trio of dagger-happy maenads might prove useful, if they could be coerced into summoning that lion-headed she-creature, once more.
Looking back across the gulf of years, with the experiences of a lifetime to draw upon, I realize it was the God’s hand that kept us from finding the king ere he left the city. What purpose could we have served? A boy so callow as to think a gaggle of fishermen could best hard-handed warriors in bronze corselets and a blind old man consumed by hate? Would either of us have given King Aeolus even the tiniest measure of wisdom beyond what he possessed innately? It was good that we straggled behind, for we were Strife personified and Death walked gleefully in our shadow.
The dozen black-keeled ships came in short of the harbor, choosing instead the sandy cove where we dried our nets and canted our boats when their hulls needed scraping. The Achaean ships—for it was, indeed, the war-fleet of Odysseus—came in stern first; lean-flanked men in tarnished bronze, bearded and bedraggled, flung themselves ashore. Their shields did not flash in the sun as ours did. They bore dents and scrapes, as from long use, while the heads of their spears gleamed with the same murderous purpose. The Achaeans did not form ranks as though expecting battle; instead, they milled about, stretching cramped limbs and making small offerings to the gods. Some brought out jars and fetched fresh water from a nearby spring. But each man remained armed, spear and shield close at hand. There was a wariness about them that reeked of wolf-cunning.
Soon, an embassy detached itself and made its way inland—a dozen Achaeans led by a short, powerfully-built man with a black and silver beard. Unlike his companions, he wore no armor and carried no weapons. He was simply clad in a tunic of faded blue, as wrinkled and careworn as his broad forehead.
Half way up from the cove stood an open-air shrine to Hippotades, Lord of the Winds. Silver chimes gave voice to the sighing breeze. I’d been there many times, to leave offerings of oat cakes and honey on the low altar so the birds that were the god’s messengers might bear good tidings of me and my father aloft to their mercurial master. Here, Odysseus and his small retinue stopped.
And there, in the shadow of the god who gave birth to his family line, King Aeolus met the king of Ithaca once again. Aeolus brought a larger force of men—his sons in their gleaming panoplies, along with the craftiest of the harbor men, my father included. Archers watched from above, and slingers lurked to either side, ready to launch their lead stones at the first sign of trouble. Odysseus knew they were there, as our king intended.
I did not hear the first of their speech together, as Polyphemus and I came late, but my father told me of it. Aeolus, as was proper, made his obeisance to the god who was also his kinsman, before turning to face the penitent king of Ithaca.
“What cruel fate returns you to my threshold, Odysseus,” Aeolus said. “By what god’s wrath? Did I not feed you and provision you? Did I not lend you one of my canniest navigators, a son of my own loins, to guide you through foreign waters and back to your home?”
“Forgive me, lord, but what you lent me was a bag of wind who could not find his way out of a wine jar. We have returned because your son failed us,” Odysseus said. “He lost us in a gale, and when we finally got our bearings we recognized the Mountain of Fire, once more.” Holy Aetna, child, where the lame smith-god, Hephaestus, forges the thunderbolts of Zeus. And, hearing this from my father, I thought that if the gods were just, one of those thunderbolts would have fallen from heaven at that moment and struck that lying Achaean between his teeth.
“And my son? I do not see him among you.”
Odysseus sighed. “He waits at the shores of the River Styx. I tried to save him, lord, but the wind was too strong. He was swept over the rail and into Poseidon’s keeping.”
My father, who was near enough to read the agony on the king’s face, said that it was then that the spirit of Aeolia died; the king was the soul of the kingdom, and a hateful knife wrought of words and poisoned by spite had found its way into King Aeolus’s heart. “Begone from my land, vile wretch!” the king said. He thrust a trembling finger at Odysseus’s breast. “Black-hearted villain! Breaker of oaths! ‘Sacker of cities’, I’ve heard you called! Such hubris! Do you wonder, son of Laertes, why the blessed gods hate you? Do you wonder why they curse your every step? Look no further than your own impious tongue, boy! Now, return to your ships of woe and never darken the bounds of my land again!”
Eris is a disagreeable goddess, child, hard-hearted and cruel. She takes monstrous delight in mortal bloodshed, provoking it and prolonging it at every opportunity. The blame for what happened next, I place firmly in her gore-slimed lap. Though the shame of it…the shame of it rests squarely on these old shoulders.
By ways known only to the boys of the harbor, I led Polyphemus down to this meeting between kings. We arrived unseen, and in time to hear this last exchange. From the shadows beneath the oaks that were sacred to Hippotades, I laid eyes upon the mighty Odysseus and trembled. And when he spoke, I felt Polyphemus stiffen with rage.
Odysseus looked away, and then returned his gaze to the hard-eyed visage of the king. “I broke no oaths to you, friend Aeolus. I protected your son as I swore to do. Am I to blame if it was he who offended Lord Poseidon? Are we not guest-friends? Did we not break bread and hail the gods as equals, king to king? That I can return in such dire straits and hear only cheap tittle-tattle spill from your lips makes me question the legitimacy of your oaths to me. Who spread such lies? ‘Sacker of cities’, you call me? Such is true, but I do not boast of it! Who told you I have?”
“I did!” Polyphemus roared. He shrugged off my grasp and stepped out into the open, a dark-skinned titan filled with wrath. One long-fingered hand stripped the scarf from his face. “You shall not be, dog of Ithaca! Your name shall not be! Your grasp shall not be! Your plans shall not come to fruition! Your power shall not be! Let that which you have planned have power over you! You shall not approach your wretched home! The Lady of Vengeance has decreed: you shall die in the circle of foreign lands! Praise blessed Sekhmet, who has brought you forth to hear your doom!”
And just so, did the hand of Eris toss a golden apple among the goddesses gathered to celebrate the wedding of immortal Thetis to mortal Peleus—an apple with the inscription ‘To the fairest’. Such taunts can only end in funeral pyres.
The world upended, dear Eirene. That is the best way to describe it—as though a giant caught up our city and shook it like a jar of oil and vinegar. Odysseus did not try and bluster his way to peace, where he might betray us later. No, his fair-seeming face sloughed away to reveal the bones of hatred and ambition. He snatched a spear from the hands of one of his men, a slender javelin with a head of razor-honed bronze. Now, he could have driven it into the king’s breast and thrown our whole force in dis
array. Instead, though, he twisted and slung that barb at Polyphemus. Blind Polyphemus, who had just called upon his gods to curse the Ithacan…and the man who would become a monster at the hands of Ionian poets pitched back and fell on top of me, an Achaean javelin lodged in his heart. I watched, Eirene, as the life fled from him. I watched this man whose true name I never knew, who served the goddess of the sea in some inscrutable way, who murdered a man so he might have his vengeance…I watched the light dim in his face as he went, finally, to his ka.
* * *
6
* * *
It grows late, child. What? The tale is not finished, you say? You want to hear the rest of it? I ask you: what is left to tell after the lead actor has had his moment and died for it? Not glory, for that is fleeting. Legacy, then? Let it be legacy. For the sake of your children and your children’s children, I will tell you what befell after the death of Polyphemus.
Of course, Odysseus fought his way clear. For is he not the sacker of cities? Laertes’s son, who is king in Ithaca? Our blessed King Aeolus fought clear, as well. But never again would that shrine be a place of silver chimes and breezes sighing through the oak boughs. Aeolus brought in priests and moved the sacred space nearer his palace. I chanced upon the site a year and more ago, on one of my rambles about the city. The oak trees have grown wild; at the heart of the grove rests an altar on the spot where most think the Kyklops died. On it, men whose souls have turned to hate leave offerings to one-eyed Nemesis.
Oh, the Achaeans retreated back to the cove. They might have sallied forth again and done real harm to the city had my father not the foresight to suggest to our archers that they prepare the one weapon sailors fear most: fire. It was not our doughty fishermen or the gleaming sons of Aeolus who drove the would-be invader away, child. No, it was a flight of arrows bearing strips of pitch-soaked cloth, set alight at the instant the nocks left the string. After a few volleys, even the mighty sacker of cities thought better of testing our resolve. He put back to sea with the greatest of haste. His men resumed their places on the rowers’ benches and struck the waters with their oars. I saw none of this, though. I no longer cared. My friend was dead, and I sat by his body, holding his hand and weeping, until my father came to fetch me.
That was not the last we heard of Laertes’s son, the king of Ithaca, to be sure. Outlandish tales came back to Aeolia, borne by traders who heard them from merchants who had heard it from travelers. Tales of cannibals and witches and monsters beyond reckoning. But I cannot vouch for the truth of any of it, for it is the poet’s gift to take the mundane and paint it with a gloss of fiction.
What is that? You want to hear more? Dear, greedy little Eirene! Look, we have nattered the day away. The hour grows late, the shadows long, and I would be alone with my memories ere your mother calls us to supper. Go, run along, child. I will tell you all I know another day…
Hekate’s Daughter
Libbie Hawker
Penelope, my love, in the years of our separation I have done things I am not proud of, committed acts I can neither countenance nor excuse. I can only beg your forgiveness. But know that when I fall to my knees before you and confess my vilest acts, I will hear inside my head a woman’s voice, a woman’s words: “If you were I, would you forgive Odysseus?’”
—Odysseus
I am still weak and aching from the birth when I climb the promontory. My legs shake, not from weariness but with a terrible energy, a flow of sudden knowledge coursing through body and mind. Cloaked by a veil of starlight, I reach the pinnacle and pause to catch my breath, to still the trembling in my bones. Here the pines give way to barren stone. Lichen makes a hard carpet underfoot. Somewhere far below, near the forest clearing and the stone house that have been my sanctuary for nearly eight years, a wolf howls.
From the bald peak of this hill, it seems I can see the whole world—everything the gods ever made. Flat, smooth blackness of sea, the wall that kept me safe and hidden for so many years. The islands dropped like ripe figs upon its surface, mounded and dark. The stars are forceful tonight. The long band of white arcs from horizon to horizon, a spray of milk from Hera’s breast as she shoves away the unwanted infant, Heracles. The shadow that cleaves the star-spray does not hide tonight. It displays itself before my eyes with grim clarity. To either side of that long, black tear, the stars flare with desperate light, but just beyond, they fade quickly; they separate, isolate themselves, islands in a deep black sea. A shadow has torn the sky asunder. It will never be whole again.
Panting, my handmaids ascend the last stretch of the promontory trail and hurry to my side. Anthousa carries the baby in her strong arms, wrapped in a woolen blanket. It gives a little mewling cry—he cries. My son. The son I never wanted, never sought, but which the gods have given me, nonetheless.
“Circe,” Anthousa says, shifting the baby’s weight, “you cannot run about this way. It is too soon. You must return to the house. Please, my lady.”
Demetria and Eumelia echo her plea. They seldom say that anymore—my lady. We have lived together too long for such formalities, alone on our island, shielded by our blessed peace. Their careful speech betrays their desperation. And their fear.
“Sit down first.” Demetria takes me by the shoulder, tries to guide me down to the bare granite. “You need rest.”
I step away, leave her and the other maidens behind. My body may quake, but it is strong—strong and certain, and ready for what I must do. I can see the whole world from here. Odysseus hasn’t sailed far enough to escape my gaze. He never will. I find him, headed north, a speck no bigger than a mustard seed down there among the waves. Starlight has robbed the red from his sails, but still I recognize them. Still I know him.
Ahead of his ship’s path, one slender horn of moon rises above the horizon. It is hardly wider than a thread, a pale crescent, curved like a reaper’s blade. The moon is waxing now. Waking from the dark of its slumber, gathering its power night by sacred night. I close my eyes and breathe deep; odors of salt and stone and pine-sap fill me, cleanse away the last shuddering memories of the pain of childbirth. They cannot blot out the pain of all that came before. And even with my eyes tight-shut, I can see Odysseus fleeing.
The baby cries again, stirring something within me, a hot, twisting, animal instinct. My arms burn to reach for the child and hold him to my breast—a mother’s instinct. For I am a mother now, whether I would be or no. I watch the moon as it climbs higher, exposing more of its curve, shedding more of its power on the dark sea. Then I turn back to Anthousa. “Bring me the child.”
Anthousa hesitates. She hugs the baby tighter to her chest. She has never looked at me before with any emotion but kindness, sympathy, devotion. But now I see a newborn suspicion in her black eyes, and something that borders on fear. “Please, my lady,” she says, “the baby is innocent.”
Eumelia and Demetria gasp. It had not occurred to them that I might harm the child. Eumelia, carrying my hunting spear over her shoulder, takes one step back, then another. I can read her thoughts as easily as I read the letters from Crete, written in my sister’s hand. Eumelia wants to run back down the trail and take that damned spear with her.
I repeat the command. “Bring the child to me.”
Trembling, Anthousa obeys. She has served me since I was a chieftain’s daughter; she has not forgotten the power of my station, even if I held it years ago.
When Anthousa lays the baby in my arms, an unwelcome surge of warmth rises in my gut, hums along my spine. My breasts tingle with a sudden flow of milk. For a moment, I yearn to feed the child, to feel the sweetness of an innocent mouth at my breast. But I am like Hera, wakened to find a small, unwelcome stranger in my arms. I must hold fast to my purpose.
“The spear, Eumelia.”
“No, my lady…please.” She chokes back a sob.
“I will send you away for disobeying,” I tell her. “You’ll never see me, or this island, again. Would you rather that?”
“I…I don�
��t know,” poor Eumelia stammers.
“Gods blast this night,” Anthousa says suddenly. “Gods blast this whole year. And most of all, may the gods blast that useless Achaean, Odysseus. Poseidon, take his ship now! Drown him a thousand times over, for what he did to our lady.” She wrenches the spear from Eumelia’s grip and marches to me. “If the gods will damn anyone for this act, then it shall be me. You keep your hands clean, Eumelia. You as well, Demetria.”
I tell my handmaids calmly, “If you do not wish to see what I will do here tonight, then you may go. You, too, Anthousa. I will make my way back to the house alone.”
“In the dark, so soon after giving birth?” Anthousa says.
“The moon and stars will light my way.”
Anthousa shakes her head, resolute. “I won’t leave you, Circe.” The others murmur reluctant agreement, and remain.
Gently, I lay the bundled child on the cold, bare stone. He makes a small complaint, a whimper and a cough. He works one hand free of the wrappings. A tiny fist waves in the air, neatly formed, soft and perfect. His eyes are screwed tightly shut; thick black lashes rest on his plump cheeks.
I kneel beside my son, lift my face and hands to the moon.
“Hekate,” I call out in a voice loud as thunder—a voice strong enough to carry across the sea, strong enough to fill the sails of Odysseus’s ship. “Hekate, goddess…Mother. Hear your daughter’s cry. Feel the pain that has filled me, Mother, Mistress of Witches, Queen of Sorcery. Take away my weakness, and in its place, give me the power of revenge!”
The baby opens his eyes. He screams, a crackling newborn wail; the women cringe and look away.
“The spear, Anthousa.” Without looking away from my son’s face, I hold out my hand. Anthousa hesitates again, but a moment later the smooth, dry wood of the spear’s shaft falls firmly into my palm.
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