A Sea of Sorrow

by Libbie Hawker

  A heartbeat later, an icy realization struck me to stillness. Moly was long out of season; this plant should have been dead months ago. It never bloomed after the last frost of winter. I stared at the strange spectacle, awe-struck and distinctly uneasy.

  As if Odysseus could hear my thoughts, he touched the herb charm where it lay against his chest and said calmly, “Hermes gave it to me. A ward against your spells.”

  “That’s not possible.” I was and am a devout believer in the power of the gods, yet I knew that they did not simply appear to mortals, handing out charms to this man or that.

  Odysseus lifted his hands, an ambivalent gesture. Did he mean to say that he could not explain the miracle of the fresh moly-herb? Or did he simply not care whether I believed his story?

  The white blossom’s perfection, so far beyond its natural time, filled me with an eerie sense of foreboding. “You’re mad,” I said.

  “I’m not. But I am quite tired from a very long journey. It has been…” He trailed off into brief silence; for a moment his eyes grew distant, and something fleeting and vulnerable passed across his face—through his very spirit. “A longer journey than you can fathom, my lady. I need to collect necessary supplies and be on my way.”

  “I am glad to hear you intend to move on as soon as possible. But there are no supplies here; I have already told you as much. The mainland is a day’s sail away. I can show you which direction to take, and the best route to follow, but you must take your men and leave. They have done enough damage already, and I will not tolerate their presence—or yours—any longer.”

  Odysseus tossed his head. “Do you truly suggest I follow your route? Why should I believe you?”

  I laughed sourly. “Why believe me, a witch? Is that what you mean?”

  All trace of arrogant humor vanished from his face, his bearing. “Are you a witch?” he asked coolly.

  How I wished in that moment that I could answer him, Yes, yes! I am a witch! How I longed then for Hekate’s power. I would have called down all manner of curses upon that man, and every fool who followed him. I would have struck him blind, taken his tongue, stolen away his virility. I would have plagued every Ithacan with painful boils and water of the bowels. I would have called up a pack of wolf-shaped shadows, fire-eyed and hungry, to drive them from my shore.

  But I had no powers, no defense against this haughty king with his domineering manner and offhanded insolence. In those days, Hekate did not hear me—nor I her.

  “You’ll get no supplies from me.” All I could do was stand my ground. “What’s more, I’ll do whatever I must to defend my property and the people who depend on me.”

  “Property!” Odysseus fairly hooted in amusement. “Again I say, woman: you cannot own property. It is not done. Best wake to the realities of the world, even if you are an exile stranded on a rock in the middle of the sea.”

  I sprang to my feet, knocking over my stool and bumping the table; the pots of herbs rattled. This boorish creature had pushed me beyond the last reserves of dignity and restraint. He, a stranger who could not even see fit to wash the salt from his hair, thought to dictate what I could and could not do! My women and I had lived in harmony on this island—with our island—for seven years. We had not suffered for lack of any man’s interference. Perhaps the world would be a safer and better-ordered place if women tended to their own interests, rather than living in servility to men. I would certainly not be subject to this man’s whims, king or no. I brandished my staff and dodged around the oak table, charging toward Odysseus.

  I don’t know what I had in mind, what I planned to do once I reached him. Perhaps I would have struck him across the head—or in the groin, doubling him up with pain. Or I might have rained blows upon his back, driving him all the way across my island and back onto his gods-cursed ship. But I never had the chance to learn what my sudden surge of anger and courage might have wrought.

  Odysseus moved quickly, whipping a sword from beneath his cloak with such speed that I nearly ran my own body onto its wicked point. I staggered to a stop mere inches from the blade; the distaff fell from my nerveless hands, clattering on the stone floor.

  My astonished stare rose slowly from the sword to Odysseus’s face. A terrible light glittered in his eyes—an unmistakable appetite, predatory and sure. I knew what that look meant. I had seen it on Lycus’s face, years ago—and yet the memory of that look, and everything it meant, came back to me with such vivid clarity that it might have been mere days or hours since I’d seen Lycus last.

  “Well, well,” Odysseus said, grinning at my empty hands, at my distaff rolling useless under the table.

  I could scream, I thought, and wake my friends. But they were exhausted after our long, fraught night; their judgment would be little better than my own. If they attacked the king or even tried to defend me, Odysseus might hurt them, too. Worse, he might rouse his men and turn them loose upon us.

  Better for one of us to suffer than all seven, I realized with bleak acceptance. If I gave Odysseus what he wanted in that moment, then he would finally be satisfied. He would leave soon after, take his men, and I would never have to look at any of their faces again.

  I lowered my hands to my sides. The smile I forced felt weak and quivery, but it seemed to please Odysseus. He licked his lips.

  “There is no need for us to quarrel,” I said, amazed that my voice did not shake. “Why don’t you come along with me? To my bed.”

  How did one morning turn to days? I look back now, and I ask myself—how did those first days of occupation turn to weeks, and weeks to months—to a year?

  I lay with Odysseus that first morning in the privacy of my bed chamber, praying the whole while that none of my friends would wake. It was the first time I had been with a man in seven years—since my marriage—and it was every bit as horrible as those long-ago nights with Lycus had been. I wanted none of it; I fought to keep from squirming away from Odysseus’s touch, his rough, insistent hands. But when has it mattered to any man, what a woman wants?

  When he had finally taken all the pleasure he could wring from my uncooperative flesh, Odysseus did not get up and leave my bed. Instead, he remained dozing beneath the sheets, murmuring and smiling to himself as if vastly pleased by what he had done.

  After I’d lain stiffly beside him for half an hour or more, I lost hope that he would leave me be. I got out of bed myself, pulled on a clean woolen chiton, and slipped out of the farmhouse; it was quiet, thank the gods, for all my friends still slept.

  I ran from the house as quickly as my shaking legs would carry me, and immersed myself in the forest. I could not look at my ruined clearing as I crossed it, nor the men strewn about, still sleeping off the haze of sour wine. I wanted shadows and silence, cover and solitude. I wanted the healing, forgiving embrace of the earth.

  When I left the clearing behind and hid myself in the coolness of the woods, I’d had some thought of finding my pigs, bringing them home. But after an hour of fruitless searching—an hour of trying to evade the too-near memory of Odysseus and what he had done—I gave up all hope of recovering the swine herd. The twisted, moss-covered roots of an ancient oak beckoned to me; I sank down among them and curled into a ball, weeping against my knees, sinking deeper every moment into a cold, black pit of self-loathing. Exhaustion finally caught up to me; when my tears were drained dry, yielded to sleep at last, and the mercy of dreams carried me away from my pain and sadness.

  A slant of golden afternoon light woke me. I lay still, cradled in the oak tree’s roots, listening to birdsong in the canopy and the whispering of dry autumn leaves. Despair had fled, replaced by calm acknowledgment. I knew—though I could not say how I knew it—that neither Odysseus nor his men would leave my island any time soon. Odysseus had been too greedy with my body, too vain and imperious. That sense of possession—of the righteousness of a man’s ownership—was too deeply ingrained in his spirit. I could not fight against it; not yet.

  The Ithacans had
come to stay. That was the new reality we must face squarely, my friends and I. There was no sense railing against it, nor trying to change the gods’ design. The time was not yet ripe for changing; the season for transformation had not yet come. All things in their time, the leaves seemed to whisper. Unhappy but resigned, I climbed slowly to my feet and returned home.

  When I walked back into my clearing, the men had long since wakened. But as I’d foreseen, they showed no signs of leaving. They lounged in groups, dicing or telling stories, trimming their nails with daggers or pissing at the edges of our garden. My women moved among them, grim-faced and silent. I could at least lead and comfort my friends, I thought. We could hold ourselves together, make a bulwark against this distasteful onslaught until the season for transformation came—whenever that might be—and we could remove them from our land.

  Agathe was the first to see me coming. She called to the other women, who sifted through the ashes of the bonfire for shards of broken bowls. My friends came to meet me, huddled in a tight group. I could read the confusion and anger in their eyes; a knife of self-accusation sank into my spirit. I had done what I’d done to spare them from pain. But I had failed.

  “What in Hestia’s name has happened?” Agathe said. “Circe, why are they still here?”

  “I tried.” Tears threatened, but I blinked them away. “I…I did try.”

  Anthousa’s jaw clenched for a moment. Then she said gently, “I should have remained with you. I blame myself.”

  “Don’t.” I took her hand. “Please don’t. None of you are to blame. I’m not even sure I’m to blame, but I’ll take full responsibility, if you like.”

  “But what happened with that man?” Anthousa said. “What did you say to him?”

  “That man is their king,” I answered dully. “And I…I tried to convince him to leave. But I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  We stood in silence for a moment, our heads hung low, taking some small comfort in one another’s nearness. But after a moment I straightened and drew a deep breath, steadying myself for what lay ahead—not only the day’s work, but the struggle I knew was sure to follow. I sent up a brief, rather hopeless prayer that the gods would make our ordeal short and bearable.

  “Come,” I said to my women. “We must fix the swine-yard fence.”

  As days turned to weeks, the Ithacans filled our once-peaceful clearing with tents and lean-tos made from old, salvaged planks and driftwood they carried from the shore. They were a constant thorn in my side, but the men did prove useful as hunters; I could say at least that much on their account. Consider it small praise, though, for the first creatures they hunted were our pigs. It didn’t take long for them to discover our flocks of sheep, either, grazing on the dry autumn grass on the windy northern slopes of Aeaea. They left the wolves alone—or, more likely, Caicias warned his kin to stay well away from the Ithacans, understanding that they were nothing like we women. But I grew desperately afraid that the foolish men would kill too many of our animals, and leave us without healthy breeding stock when spring came.

  I understood right away that it was every bit as futile to ask the Ithacans to moderate their hunting as it would have been to demand the same. They would never listen to a woman. I was obliged to take the matter up with Odysseus. He was their king, after all, and had the power to command them. More than that: he was a man, and so the Ithacans would heed both his warnings and his requests. How it galled me, to yield power to that man—to any man, but especially Odysseus, who has possessed me so casually, without the least regard for my feelings or desires. But as soon as I’d brought the plight of the herds to Odysseus’s attention, he saw the sense in my plea. He told his men off to use common sense; he decreed that no more than one swine or sheep could be killed per week, and any man who violated the rule would eat nothing but roots for a month. The Ithacans slacked off their hunting; I had some hope that our herds would survive to spring.

  Weather grew colder and windier; the nights lengthened, the mornings were laced by frost. As winter crept ever nearer, we were all forced to eat ash-laden bread and dried-gull stew, stretching the last of our sad cache to its frightening limits. Odysseus did mingle whatever supplies remained aboard his ship with our depleted stores, but he’d had only a few sacks of flour and a crate of salted fish left over from his long, meandering journey.

  Early on, I’d clung to a hair-thin strand of hope that Odysseus would leave before the real hardship of winter set in. That strand soon frayed and broke. A strange lassitude had fallen over the Ithacan king. He seemed dully resigned, suddenly bereft of some crucial drive. Although we had little food, and winter still lay before us, he seemed content to linger on Aeaea for the rest of his life—even if his life was shortened by starvation. His men were either too loyal or too witless to speak to him; they did nothing to bestir their king from his bed of surrender. It seemed to me that the island itself had placed Odysseus under some queer spell. I was not the witch the Ithacans believed me to be, yet something had enchanted Odysseus, trapping him in a web of idleness.

  Now and then, I wondered whether he had fallen in love with me—whether I had inadvertently mired him here. It was difficult to imagine that Odysseus loved me, for I was constantly cold to him. Never a moment passed between us but I made it clear, with narrowed eyes or sulky mood, that I hated him and wished him gone forever. And yet, I was seldom free from his attentions. Often, after he had ushered me into my bedchamber to use my body without my leave—without even a tender touch, and even Lycus had tried to be tender, now and again—Odysseus would reminisce about a time when his life had been easy and joyful. Before.

  “Before, we had a great feast every autumn. We killed a young bull and roasted it, and we sang and danced for as long as there was still meat on the carcass. What a way to see the winter come in!”

  “Before, I would sit up for hours, sometimes all night, listening to my harpist play—just for the pleasure of it. Before, I had an excellent harpist, back in Ithaca. What I wouldn’t give for some music now.”

  Odysseus spoke so often of before that I came to feel some familiarity with the time and place, myself. I never know what he referenced, though. Before what? I could have asked him, but I did not care. I had no desire to learn the inner workings of my captor, the secrets of his heart and mind. I only wanted him to fall asleep as quickly as possible, so I could escape from the bed all the sooner, and wash the feel and stink of him from my skin.

  I suffered in Odysseus’s possession. I will not lie to you, nor soften the telling of my story. He never beat me, nor did he shout—but I suffered nonetheless. It’s a peculiar sort of pain, to know yourself owned—to understand that even the most secret parts of your body may be invaded and used at will. That knife stabs deep; the wound bleeds freely. But even that hurt was nothing, compared to the pain of losing my friends—the women who had been my companions and lovers for more than seven years. They still lived, of course, but the strain of our circumstances quickly tore apart the bonds between us. I had thought those ties stronger. It caused an ever-present, impossibly heavy stone to weigh upon my heart, when I understood how easily men could unravel us. I could scarcely look any of my friends in the eye. Within days of the Ithacan occupation, the other women had noticed how frequently Odysseus came to my bed. I feared they thought I wanted Odysseus—enjoyed all the disgusting things he did to my body. I might have explained it all to them, might have told them I knew Odysseus would kill me if I resisted, and then he and his men would do to them, my beloved friends, whatever they pleased. I tried, now and then, to speak of it, to apologize, to beg their forgiveness and plead with them to see that I had not chosen this life of degradation and servitude. But whenever I tried to speak of Odysseus, the words froze in my throat. I could only hang my head, and nurse my shame in silence.

  With time, I suspected that at least some of the other women must have fallen victim to the Ithacans in the same way. Or perhaps one or two of my friends became willing lovers
to the less boorish men. But I could never bring myself to speak about that, either. I don’t know which I would have preferred: that my friends were abused, or that they lay with our invaders of their own free will. Each possibility seemed as loathsome as the other.

  If I’d ever thought my subjugation to Odysseus could at least get no worse, the gods contrived to teach me a lesson. After three months of the Ithacan presence, when the dark of winter had descended fully, my monthly flow ceased. As cold with the dreadful knowledge as I was with winter’s chill, I walked up to the high promontory, my feet dragging, clumsy. There I sat for hours, all the windy day long, staring far across the gray, foam-tossed sea. This fear had haunted me since the first time Odysseus had taken me, and its persistent whisper had never ceased. Silphium did not grow on Aeaea; I had never thought to trade for it. What need had we, a society of women, for the womb-cleansing herb? I had expected this outcome, had waited for the inevitable with numb certainty. Now, at last, my fate was sealed.

  By the end of the summer, I would bear a child. Odysseus’s child.

  Each time that thought reared up in my mind, striking like a snake, flooding my veins with its hot poison, despair pummeled me with its brutal waves. I could not do it—carry and birth a child with my captor’s face. His arrogant smile. His cold, mocking eyes. I would not do it. As the sun set, faded reds and oranges bleeding into the cloudy sky, I picked myself up and went to the edge of the promontory. It was a long plunge—down and down, to the waves breaking on the sharp rocks, to the froth rippling around the hull of the Ithacan war ship. I contemplated the drop for a long time. The wind pulled at me, whipping my chiton and cloak, tangling my dark hair—urging me to make the leap.

  But I could not move. My feet remained rooted to stone. Some force stirred inside me, so small I could not see it, could not name it. But like a tiny seed, it was uncoiling, growing. It was not the child that made me cling to life—no. It was something gifted only to me. It whispered in my heart with a voice I alone could hear.