Cursed by the Sea God

by Patrick Bowman

  At the navigator’s shout Zanthos obediently turned the ship. The wind pennant at the stern fluttered around as we changed course, but as we stared, it twisted slowly back until it was blowing dead astern again. The wind had shifted to counter us.

  “Navigator! Other way!” shouted Lopex. We turned again. This time the change was even swifter, the wind whipping around almost immediately to push us hard back toward the beach. He tried several times, rowing with one bank of oars only, rowing us backwards, even trying to pole us into open water. Nothing worked. It was as if something was trying to keep us there. At last Lopex sighed. “Okay, men. Take us in. We’ll stay here for the night and try again when the wind drops.”

  There was only one problem with Lopex’s plan: from that moment on, the wind never dropped. It remained a weak, constant breeze, even at night. The moment we tried to row out, it picked up, twisting to blow us back to the beach. Something was trapping us here, and when the men weren’t gambling or squabbling, they began offering libations in the hope of appeasing whichever god might be causing it. Proper meat sacrifices would have been better, but the only meat on this island was out of bounds.

  Without fresh provisions from the land, we were rapidly going through our ship’s stores. True to their oath, the men hadn’t touched the herds of cattle that roamed inland, but they stared at them more hungrily each day. Even with our rations cut to one meal a day, we had long since run out of dried fish and dates, and the remaining two olive oil pithoi in the hold had been drained to supplement the men’s meals. After about a month, I found myself upending our last sack of musty millet into the cooking pot for the men’s breakfast. It was the next morning, with the pinch of real hunger in everyone’s bellies now, that things came to a boil.

  “Now what?” demanded Ury, hands on his hips, bearded jaw thrust out at Lopex’s face. “What’s the plan now? Well? Should we go out and eat grass like those cattle you won’t let us touch?”

  Lopex was unmoved. “It was you who wanted to land here, Ury. I was against it. But now that we have, our lives depend on leaving those cattle alone. We will escape this island only if you do as I say and obey your oath.”

  “Do as you say?” Ury growled. “That’s all we’ve done. And look at us! After everything else, now we’re starving on an island full of fat cattle! Where’s the danger in filling our bellies?”

  Heads nearby were turning to listen. Lopex raised his voice. “Men of Ithaca! Ury has asked what harm there is in eating the cattle here. Would you so easily scorn the gods by breaking your oath? The sorceress Circe has warned me that these beasts are protected. If we leave them alone, we will return home safely. Slaughter even one and we will die. This is the fate the gods are preparing for us, the destroyers of Troy, if we fail to respect their wishes now.”

  “That witch?” Ury sputtered. “How can you believe her? After she turned your men into pigs!” He sounded as if he was about to burst a vein. “Elpenor died there, and you still trust her? Everything that’s happened since we sailed has been your fault, Lopex! You’re the one who’s cursed!”

  Lopex, source of the curse? I didn’t put much stock in anything Ury said, but that had a rare ring of truth. Regardless, Lopex refused to be drawn. “The curse I spoke of in Hades is real. All that you have seen is proof of that. As for Circe, she revealed many things, and they have all proven true.” He raised his voice again. “I will search the island alone and find a way for us to escape. Do as I say and we will all leave safely. On Athene’s sacred shield, I give you my word.” He went to his tent to collect his spear, then strode off into the hills behind the beach.

  That night he was still gone, and the one after that. By the third morning the men were closer to open revolt than I’d ever seen. Among Ury’s group, every third word was angry, and only lack of strength kept their arguments from turning deadly. Even Deklah seemed to be trying to pick a fight with Pharos that afternoon.

  “Again?” I heard Deklah say as I was on my way across the beach, hoping to lick a little oil from the ship’s empty fire pots. He was squatting beside Pharos, who was carefully blowing life into a small fire in his pebble-lined offering pit. “Where I come from we stopped worshipping gods like that a thousand years ago.”

  Pharos’s eyebrows went up but he refused to be angered. “Not worshipping the gods?” he replied. “The twelve immortals? Zeus the almighty, Hera his wife. Brothers had he Poseidon earth-shaker and Hades the brooding one. Music from—”

  “Names. Names to frighten children,” Deklah sniffed. “I’ve heard you recite that old chant a hundred times, Pharos. The one true god needs no name.”

  Pharos stared at him. “One god? One god only?” He frowned, thinking. “How to explain the healing and the dying? The rains and the drought, good fortune and bad?” He shook his head. “No, Deklah. There must be many gods, fighting always, bringing us their gifts and curses. This you know.”

  Deklah scowled. “The one god knows everything. It’s not up to us to understand his purpose.”

  Pharos shook his head again. “Changing his mind always, your god must be, to daily bring such different fortunes.”

  I couldn’t help a smile as I climbed the stern ladder, wondering how I could ever have thought Pharos was simple.

  True to his pattern, Kassander had kept out of sight of the Greeks since we’d landed, keeping his head down when he came out for food to avoid being spotted as the man they’d known as Arkadios. As for me, three years as an orphan in Troy had accustomed me to short rations, but after three days with no food at all, the constant ache of hunger was about to claw its way right out of my stomach into the open air. One or two of Ury’s angry bunch took to staring at me with the same lean look they used on the herds of glossy white cattle. Like Kassander, I began staying away as much as I could.

  Early in the morning of the fourth day after Lopex had gone, I took a walk around the outside of the camp, trying to forget my gnawing hunger. Near the south end of the encampment, one of the island’s cattle was standing on a hillside, watching me. Up close it looked rounded and fat, its skin a milky white that contrasted with its coal-black horns. I looked again, surprised. Hanging from one horn was a red bunch of grapes.

  I glanced around. Was this some sort of trick? But there were no Greeks nearby, and this wasn’t Ury’s style anyway. Besides, I was too hungry to care. I reached for the grapes as I came up, but the cow tossed its head and ambled off down the far side of the hill. I glanced around once more and set off after it.

  I didn’t have the energy to run, but whenever I tried to catch up, the cow broke into a playful trot. Frustrated, I straggled after it. Surely the grapes would drop soon. My eyes on them, I didn’t notice how far we’d come until I looked up and realized we were back in the small valley I’d visited a month ago. We were moving up one side of the valley beside the long pool, nearing the waterfall at the far end.

  The cow turned back to look at me, but as I approached, it gave a playful toss of its head, slinging the grapes into the pool. “Hey!” I shouted, leaping into the neck-deep water to snatch them up. At last! As the first sweet grape burst on my tongue, I lost control completely and stuffed them all into my mouth, barely chewing. After four days without food, the relief was so great that my knees buckled, momentarily dunking me. Once I was standing again, I heard a sound from the shore. I splashed in the water for a moment, scanning the stand of dwarf laurels near the water.

  There. Someone was peeking out from behind one of the bushes. I could just see part of a face behind a branch. I thought for a moment. The Greeks wouldn’t be hiding. Whoever this was, they weren’t from the Pelagios. And behind that thought came another: if they lived here, they would have food.

  The last time I’d been here, I’d tried chasing after them. It hadn’t worked. Perhaps this time I could get them to come to me. I climbed out, feeling clammy in my wet tunic, and sat down at the water’s edge, facing the pool.

  A rustle came from the bushes behind me. I cl
eared my throat. “Hello? Whoever you are, I just want to talk!”

  There was a sound of someone scrambling away through the laurels. Kopros. I waited until the noise stopped, then tried again, keeping my tone gentle. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  There was a long pause. I’d nearly given up when a quiet voice came from the bushes nearby. “You won’t hurt? Promise?”

  “I promise. See, I’m sitting down.”

  There was a movement in the bushes off to my left. I turned slowly. It was a girl! She was about my age, peering at me out of the bushes, with wide, brown eyes beneath a tight bun of fawn-brown hair. She looked ready to spring back into the bushes at a single wrong word.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to look harmless. She watched me from under dark eyebrows as if dealing with an exotic monster.

  “You’re . . . a boy, aren’t you?” she said at last, pronouncing the Greek word carefully.

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “Um—yes.”

  She paused, continuing to watch me. “I’m sorry,” she added. “It’s just—I’ve never met a boy before.”

  I nodded as though I heard this every day. “My name is Alexi.”

  She looked anxious for a moment, as though this was more than she wanted to know, but then seemed to reconsider. “Mine is Phaith. Short for Phaethusia.” There was another silence. My stomach growled, and she tensed again.

  “Sorry,” I said awkwardly.

  “That’s okay. I guess you’re hungry.” She smiled shyly. “Did you like the grapes I sent?”

  “You sent them?”

  “Gala can be naughty. I’m sorry she threw them in the pond.” She took a step out of the bushes and squatted on the ground nearby, staying out of arm’s reach. Her tunic came down to her knees, exposing long, coltish legs.

  I nodded. “It’s okay. I got them. Thanks.” Trying to sound casual, I added, “Do you have any more?”

  She stiffened. “More?”

  I shrugged an apology. “It’s just—I haven’t eaten in four days.”

  Her hand leapt to her mouth. “Four days? Oh, you poor thing!” She ducked into the bushes and came back with a linen satchel, from which she took out a lump of cheese. She crept forward to drop it into my outstretched hand, then darted back. Ravenous, I gobbled it down, tearing hunks off with my teeth and swallowing them whole.

  Phaith watched, wide-eyed. “Is that how boys eat?”

  I looked up as I finished, suddenly embarrassed. “Uh, no. Okay, maybe some of us. I’m just hungry.”

  She handed me a wineskin. “Are you thirsty too? Here.” Feeling her eyes on me, I drank it more carefully. She looked disappointed.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting the cork back in the goatskin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that hungry. Not even back in Troy.”

  “Troy?” she echoed.

  “Where I came from. It’s gone now. It was destroyed.”

  She nodded. “I’ve never been anywhere else. Just here.” She gestured around us. “I’m a shepherdess.”

  “A shepherdess?” I asked, surprised. “There are sheep here too?”

  She frowned. “No. Just cows. But I hate the word cowherd. It sounds so . . . ungraceful.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “So you look after all the cows on the island?”

  “That’s right. Me and my sister.” She frowned. “I don’t want to talk about her. She’s strange. Not like me.”

  Definitely no safe reply to that. Casting around for a change of topic, I smiled. “Thanks for the food, Phaith. I was hungry enough to eat a cow, horns to tail.”

  Her expression changed instantly. “Don’t touch them!” she shouted, leaping to her feet, her eyes wild. “Don’t you dare touch my cattle.” She snatched a dagger from her belt and waved it at me. “Do you hear me? Not ever!”

  Alarmed, I started to scramble to my feet but caught myself. “It’s okay, Phaith,” I said gently, sitting back down. “It’s just a saying. Of course I wouldn’t do that.”

  She stared at me for a moment longer. The fury faded slowly from her face and she squatted again and looked into my eyes. “I’m sorry, Alexi,” she said, her expression anxious. “It’s just that those cattle . . . well, I look after them for my father. They’re protected. Bad things will happen if you hurt one.” She shuddered, shaking her head. “Terrible things.”

  I stood up carefully. “I’d better be going. Thanks again for the food, Phaith.”

  She stepped forward and grabbed my shoulder as I turned to go. “Really. Don’t. And those men you’re with, don’t let them either.”

  I glanced back at her, surprised. “You know about them?”

  A sly smile crept across her face. “Of course. I’ve been watching you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Cattle Are Lowing

  URY WAS STANDING in the middle of camp. “This is what he won’t let us eat, the men who took Troy! Lopex is afraid of cows!”

  I had arrived back at the edge of camp as the late afternoon sun was stretching the shadows of inland hills across the beach. I was still unnerved by what Phaethusia had said, and the sight of Ury leading three milk-white cattle on leads into camp was twisting my stomach into a knot. What was he planning? I watched anxiously as he stopped near the cooking pit. The cows shambled to a halt behind him, chewing their cuds. The Greeks watched him from their driftwood seats and sand beds, their eyes as vacant as those of the cows.

  “He listens to that witch and we starve. On an island full of cattle!” Ury paused for a moment to gather his strength. “He speaks of a curse on us, but we all heard that one-eyed monster. The curse is on him! Not us. Thanks to him, we’ve had more bad luck since we left Troy than we did in ten years before the gates. Lopex is the real curse!” he shouted.

  The knot in my stomach tightened. Whatever it was that harming these cattle would trigger, Phaith had been too agitated even to talk about it.

  Ury staggered for a moment, then stood upright again with a swig from his goatskin, splashing red wine across his tunic. “You know what he’s doing? Waiting for us to die! Right now he’s sitting somewhere eating roasted beef! Once we’re dead he can sail home with all our treasure!”

  Even for Ury, that sounded stupid. Lopex alone couldn’t begin to push the ship off the beach, far less row it. I shook my head, my eyes on the knife that had appeared in Ury’s hand. Kassander slipped silently up beside me from somewhere. “What is it? What’s going on?” he murmured.

  I was still on edge from my encounter with Phaith. “What does it look like?” I snapped.

  In the centre of the camp, Ury was continuing to work himself up. “Look at you!” He took out his knife and waved it around at the men lying in the sand. “Heroes of Troy, starving because of an oath he forced on us!”

  “Stupid,” I muttered, thinking about Phaith’s warning. “He’s going to bring the curse down on us.”

  Beside me, Kassander shook his head. “Alexi, you must have realized by now that Ury is not the master of his fear.”

  I turned on him. “What the korakas do you know?”

  He looked at me calmly. “I know enough not to get worked up over things I can’t change. You might try it.”

  “What a surprise!” I muttered. “Kassander thinks we should do nothing!”

  “How did you plan to stop him? We’re slaves, Alexi. It’s not in our power.” Kassander pointed to Ury, now holding his knife. Long shadows from the hills had shaded Ury’s face, but as he waved his knife over his head it flared red in the setting sun.

  “Lopex will not defeat us!” he was shouting. “Can any death be worse than starvation?”

  “He has a point, Alexi,” said Kassander. “If we don’t eat soon, we’re going to die.”

  I grabbed his arm and stared into his face. “Didn’t you hear what Lopex said? Those cattle are cursed!”

  “Maybe so. But—” Kassander broke off and sniffed. “What’s on your breath? Is that . . . cheese?”

  I
tried to back away but Kassander grabbed my arm. “Alexi, do you have food?” He bent toward my face, sniffing intently. “What have you been eating?” he demanded. “Have you been hoarding food?”

  When I shook my head, he let go of my arm and stepped back, frowning. “I’m disappointed, Alexi,” he said quietly. “Hiding food from starving men? Was that considered honest, back in Troy?”

  Shame burned my cheeks. I hadn’t even thought to bring any food back. As I opened my mouth to reply, a shout behind me made me turn. Ury’s knife flashed down, plunging deep into the first cow’s throat and spattering him with blood as the cow slumped to the ground with a strangled bellow. Shocked and anxious, I replied to Kassander more harshly than I’d meant to.

  “Honesty? What would you know about it, Arkadios!”

  His head jerked up and I realized how loud I’d been. We’d been speaking Anatolean, but his real name was distinctly Greek. It might have passed unnoticed, but I made the mistake of looking around to see if I’d been heard. A soldier watching Ury had glanced over at my voice.

  “You!” he called. “What did you say? Get over here, both of you.” Kopros. I started over reluctantly, then noticed that Kassander wasn’t moving. I turned back toward him.

  “Kassander! Didn’t you hear?”

  “Of course I did, boy,” he said quietly, starting toward me. “But I couldn’t move until you translated for me. They don’t know I speak Greek, remember?”

  Of course. He was staying in character as a Trojan slave. Well, to the Greeks, that conversation would look like a translation. He caught up with me and we approached, his head down and shoulders hunched like a frightened slave. The soldier was a squat, black-haired troll named Nikias. One of Ury’s friends. Naturally.

  “What did you call him, boy?” he said as we halted in front of him. He turned to his companion, frowning. “Arkadios? Now why does that sound familiar?”