“The kill is mine!” yelled the first.
“Only because I stole its breath away!” yelled the second.
“A move you could only make after I held its attention!”
Not wanting to be subjected to the stench any more than he had to be, Alex interjected himself into their conversation. “Excuse me,” he called out, “but would either of you mind helping me a moment?”
The nearest of the two spun around with a welcoming smile. “Hail there, hero!” he said, waving enthusiastically. “It feels like a thousand years since someone new has come to our isle.”
“Thank you for the welcome,” Alex said. “Is this Elysium?”
The second man trotted over to Alex and slapped a powerful hand on his shoulder. “Yes, hero, it is!” With his free hand, he grabbed Alex’s and shook it with a vice grip. “I am Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcemene, husband to Hebe, and father of Alexiares and Anicetus.”
The first man was only a step behind Heracles, and like his friend, he too shook Alex’s hand with a crushing grip. “And I am Odysseus, son of Laertes and Anticlea, husband to Penelope, and father of Telemachus.”
“Holy snort!” Jessica said. “Heracles? The hero’s hero?”
“The one and only,” he said with a bow.
“It should be illegal how ripped you are,” she said, gawking like a schoolgirl.
When Heracles tilted his head, Alex offered an explanation. “She’s saying you have lots of muscles.”
Heracles flexed a bicep that looked like it could curl a cyclops all day and never tire. “It’s important to stay in shape, especially out here. Who might you two be?”
“My name is Alexander Weiss,” he replied before motioning to Jessica. “And this is my best friend since I was a kid, Jessica Turner.”
“Alexander Weiss?” Heracles repeated. His brow furrowed and suddenly he began snapping his fingers. “I know this name,” he said, still thinking. A moment later, recognition flashed across his face. “Odysseus!” he cried out. “This is the man I was telling you about! He who married a gorgon and beat Ares in the Olympics!”
Odysseus laughed. “You did such a foolish thing?” he said to Alex. “Ares’ anger knows no bounds.”
“Unintentionally, but yes, I beat him,” Alex said, thoroughly confused at this point. “How do you know me?”
“His father is Zeus!” Jessica said, laughing and punching him in the shoulder. “You think he wouldn’t know?”
“Precisely,” Heracles said. “News like yours does not escape my ears.”
Alex felt is mouth hang open as he tried to wrap his mind around the man’s family. “Zeus is your father?”
“Of course he is!” Heracles said, taken aback. “Did you not hear me the first time? And if you didn’t, could anyone as incredible as me come from any other line?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Alex.
“My feats are legendary!” Heracles went on. “Why today alone I’ve slain three monsters in Elysium!”
“You have monsters in Elysium?” said Alex, unsure if he’d heard correctly. If he had, he found it perplexing as to why that would ever be a good thing.
“What do you call that?” Heracles said, jutting a thumb back to the carcass on the shore.
“A monster,” Alex conceded. “But if this is paradise, what the hell is that thing doing here?’
“Can a potter truly be called a potter without clay to work?” asked Odysseus.
“Or a king be called a king without a land to rule?” Heracles added.
“Or a hero be called a hero without adversity,” finished Alex.
Heracles slapped him hard on the back. “Exactly! So relax and enjoy an afterlife well earned, Alexander of Weiss.” Heracles’ face suddenly reflected an inner puzzlement. “Hold on a moment. If you’ve married into a divine family, why are you here?”
“That,” Alex said with a deep breath and subsequent sigh, “is exactly why I’m here. Ares took my bride after the games. I was told Odysseus could help.”
“I’m afraid you were told wrong,” Odysseus gravely replied.
“How can you say that?” Jessica said. “Your forces drove Ares off at the Battle of Troy.”
Odysseus chuckled. “Diomedes had that honor, not me, and when he did that, he had divine help. Sorry, Alex, I’ve led many a battle, but Ares is a foe I cannot beat. Perhaps it is Heracles’ aid you should seek.”
“It’s not Ares I need help with,” said Alex. His voice suddenly became weak. He looked away, off to the lush green fields beyond, ashamed of what he was about to say.
“Tell us what’s on your mind, hero,” Odysseus prompted.
“I’m not sure if my heart is in this fight,” Alex finally confessed. “I’m not sure if I married my wife out of love or out of necessity. The Moirae said you would help in that regard.”
Odysseus thought for a moment, arms crossed. “To be clear, you want to know if you love your wife?”
Alex nodded.
“And if you love your wife, the Fates said you can beat a god?”
Alex shook his head. “No. But I need to know before I commit to any sort of action. I have…a means to end the war, but to use it, I must leave Euryale. So if our marriage is doomed, I might as well end things quickly. On the other hand, if I love my wife, I can worry about how to beat Ares later.”
“I see,” Odysseus replied. “You need to know what love is.”
“No. I know what love is,” Alex said. “It’s a wonderful song with notes of passion, refrains of joy, and undercurrents of inspiration and intimacy.”
“You misunderstood,” said Odysseus. “I wasn’t asking a question.”
“Hero,” Heracles cut in. “No one can tell another whether or not to love another.”
“I am ‘no one,’” Odysseus said with a wink. “But he’s right, Alex. I can’t tell you to love your wife or not. That is your decision, and yours alone.”
“If knowing my heart was in it was that simple, I’d have done it by now,” said Alex. “The fire I had for her is being snuffed out by this infernal war, and I’m afraid what’s left of my feelings for her won’t last. Can’t you consult an oracle or cast some bones to help? Why else would the Fates send me to you?”
Odysseus drummed his fingers on his arm. “There is something we could try.”
“What?” Alex asked, jumping at the idea. “Tell me, please!”
“The potion of agape,” Odysseus said. “Its brewing is known to me, but it needs a few ingredients that aren’t easy to get.”
“I don’t want to love Euryale because I’m under a spell,” said Alex, now thinking he’d reached a dead end. “I want it to be real.”
“No, no, my good man,” he replied, shaking his head. “It won’t force anything on you, but it will allow you unequalled introspection. Soul searching, if you will. I’m confident it will give you the answer you seek.”
“If that’s true, thank the gods,” Alex said with a heavy sigh.
“Thank the Fates,” Odysseus corrected. He knelt and drew in the sand a map of an island. When it was finished, Odysseus stood. “On this island lives someone called Polyphemus,” he said. “He keeps a special type of mandrake in his home, and that will be the first thing you’ll need. He stores the mandrake in a silver jar, trimmed with gold. The jar, kept by the spices, has an engraving of Poseidon’s trident on its bottom. You can’t miss it. Bring me three mandrake leaves and we’ll go from there.”
“Am I to steal this?” asked Alex, wondering why a price or bartering instructions hadn’t been included.
Odysseus nodded. “He won’t part with it willingly, and don’t bother reasoning with the poor fellow. He’s not the most gracious of hosts. So, yes, if I were you, I’d steal it. Try and strike a deal at your own risk.”
“But—” Alex protested.
“I’ve told you what I would do,” said Odysseus. “The choice is yours
whether you want to follow my advice or not.”
Alex looked down at the map and threw up his hands. What was one more stop, even if it ended in a little robbery?
* * *
The sun had crept high into the sky and was beating down on Alex’s neck by the time Polyphemus’s island came into view. It turned out that it was only a couple hours’ ride as the ponies fly, and for that Alex was thankful. As he and Jessica flew over a tiny cove, flanked on three sides by sheer cliffs, Alex silently prayed that finding this friend of Odysseus’s wouldn’t prove to be too much of a bother. But given how everything else in his afterlife had gone, it probably would.
Over the shoreline cliffs they flew, all the while scouring the grassy fields below for the signs of the first landmark they were to take. For all the gifts the gods had bestowed upon him, Alex wished a GPS system would’ve been part of them.
“How about that one over there?” Jessica said, pointing to a twenty-foot, rocky outcropping in the distance. “Looks like a rock as tall as three men, yes?”
“So does the one over there,” Alex said, spying a similar rock, maybe a half mile away from the first. “And that one, and that one, too.”
“For a hero, Odysseus gives pretty crappy directions,” Jessica said as she adjusted her pony tail.
“Damnit to hell,” Alex said, pulling the reins so they came to a stop. “This is stupid.”
“Maybe we could see his house if we flew higher,” Jessica suggested. “Or maybe we should start looking for a lightning-scared tree. How many of those can be around?”
“Who says it even still is?” Alex tugged the reins a few times, directing the ponies wherever his indecisiveness pointed him to. After the fifth time, one of them looked back at him and flipped its head, no doubt growing impatient at his indecision.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Alex scolded. “We’ve got two more landmarks to find after the first. I can’t pretend to know where to go.”
The pony flicked an ear and turned back around.
“Oh sure, you’d like wandering around this place, eating all the grass,” said Alex with a huff.
“Can’t blame him,” Jessica said, laughing. “I’m sure he would rather be eating grass than pulling you all over nowhere.”
“I suppose. What do you know about this Polyphemus guy? Anything that could help find him?”
Jessica tapped the sides of the chariot and a wrinkle appeared above the bridge of her nose as her brow dropped. “I feel like I should,” she said. “His name sounds familiar, but that’s about it.”
“I thought you were the guru of Greek Mythology.”
Jessica stuck out her tongue. “Even the master has her weak spots. Besides, do you know how much there is to all these myths? Anyway, at least I knew who the father of your bride was.”
“I still say that was luck. But you really can’t remember anything?”
“I want to say he was with Odysseus on his way back from Troy,” Jessica said with a shrug. “Or he met him somewhere along the way? I’ll be honest, I never really got into the Odyssey.”
“But he’s not like a high priest or anything for one of the Olympians, right?” Alex said as he thought about whether or not he wanted to commit a robbery. “I mean, seems lately everything I’ve done has had some sort of divine consequence, and I’d rather not be cursed with a dozen plagues and festering boils when someone realizes I helped myself to some mandrake.”
“Afraid I don’t know,” Jessica replied. “Sorry.”
Alex’s heart grew heavy at their lack of progress, but when he spied someone walking a herd of sheep far to the northeast, hope grew in his soul. “Let’s ask him,” he said, pointing.
“Oh, hang on a minute,” Jessica said. “I think there was something about Polyphemus and sheep. That can’t be too bad, right? I mean, how many shepherds sling curses?”
“None as far as I’m concerned,” he replied.
Alex skimmed the chariot toward the shepherd, all the while praying that if this man wasn’t Polyphemus, he’d at least be able to point them in the right direction.
About a hundred yards from the shepherd, the ponies ground to a halt, nearly throwing both Alex and Jessica over.
“Oh, come on!” groaned Alex.
Alex’s words got caught in his mouth as for the first time he got a good view of the shepherd. Even with a hunched back, the man towered over his sheep by seven feet at least. He had legs like the trunk of an old oak, gnarled, rough, and wide. His skin wrinkled and sagged, but it still hinted at powerful muscles beneath. In the man’s bony fingers he clutched a walking stick that had more in common with a small tree than a full-length quarterstaff. Most surprising of all was the single eyepatch upon the man’s face—a single eyepatch that covered the only eye socket the man had.
“A goddamn, blind, one-eyed giant,” Alex muttered. “Figures.”
“Cyclops,” Jessica corrected.
“Yeah, that. Think he’s friendly?”
The giant turned in place, hobbling on his staff as he did, and sniffed the air. A few seconds passed, and the creature kept his nose aloft as best as his broken frame could. Finally, he lowered his head and rested on his walking staff. “Who goes there?” he asked in a rough, scratchy voice.
Alex froze. Jessica dug her nails into his arm. Even the ponies held still, aside from a few nervous twitches of their tails that made Alex wonder how close they were to bolting on their own.
“Don’t torment me so,” the giant said, sniffing the air once again. “You know I can’t see you. Or hear very well.”
Alex didn’t answer and the creature continued its lament. “What threat is an old cyclops like me? Have you come to steal my sheep? Rob me blind? Woe is me, I say. Woe!”
Alex, taking pity on the creature, whispered to Jessica. “Stay here.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she whispered back.
Alex stepped off the chariot, cleared his throat, and raised his voice as he approached. “My name is Alex,” he said. “I’m looking for someone named Polyphemus.”
“Polyphemus?” the cyclops replied, bobbing his head. “What for?”
“You know the man?”
“I know Polyphemus,” he replied. “But answer me first. What do you want with him?”
“I come bearing a message from Odysseus,” he lied.
The cyclops straightened a couple of inches at the hero’s name. “Odysseus? You come on his behalf?”
“I do,” said Alex.
“You are his friend? His comrade?”
“In a sense, yes,” said Alex, growing impatient. He didn’t want to sit all day with an over-the-hill monster and chat about who knew whom. “Will you tell me where I can find Polyphemus?”
“I’ll take you to him myself,” the cyclops replied. He then stuck two fingers into his toothy mouth and whistled sharply. His herd of sheep, some thirty in all, jumped at the command, and in a loose blob, began heading north toward the island’s sole mountain. “Come, come. I need this done before dinner.”
Alex followed the cyclops and his sheep along a well-worn path, one that darted through sparse woods and up a gentle incline to the base of the island’s mountain. The hike lasted about thirty minutes, and the pace the cyclops kept surprised Alex.
A large fire pit was the first thing Alex saw when they reached the creature’s home. Coals smoldered in its bed, and two spits were in place, each as thick as Alex’s wrist and each skewered with large chunks of raw meat. A thick cloud of flies buzzed about, while an equal number sat on the uncooked food.
On the other side of the pit were animal pens, which the cyclops herded his sheep into. The animals readily complied, giving the occasional bleat as they did.
Alex wrinkled his nose and grimaced. A whiff of the air suggested that the muck-filled pens hadn’t been cleaned in a long, long time. “And here I thought the sea monster reeked,” he said to himself.
&nb
sp; “What was that?” said the cyclops.
“Nothing,” Alex quickly said, hoping not to offend his guide. “I was just wondering if Polyphemus was far.”
“No, he’s not far,” the cyclops answered, locking the pen and shaking it once for good measure. “But we will need the key to his home if we are to see him.”
Alex crossed his arms and tapped his foot as he watched the cyclops enter a nearby cave and get swallowed by the darkness.
“At least he doesn’t need to worry about light,” he said to keep his mood upbeat. Just once he’d like something simple. No more, “See the Moirae, Alex.” Or, “Grab this mandrake, Alex.” Or, “We need a key to keep going, Alex.” Just in, out, and done.
A loud crash sounded from deep in the cave, causing both Alex and the sheep to jump. Before his nerves settled, the cyclops called out with a strained voice, “Are you there, friend?”
Alex took a tentative step toward the mouth of the cave. “I am,” he said. “What happened?”
“My foot got caught and down I went,” the cyclops replied. “I fear my shelves have crashed upon me.”
Though Alex had pity for the creature, he did not like the scene before him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and goose bumps raised on his arms. “I’m not sure how I can help,” he finally said. “Or if I can. I can’t even see you back there.”
A whimper, low and mournful, echoed from the darkness. “Please, stranger,” the cyclops said. “At least come and see what might be done. There should be an unlit torch nearby. You can light it with the coals from the pit.”
Alex saw the torch near the mouth of the cave, propped up against the wall. “One second,” he said, sighing and capitulating to such a simple demand.
With the lit torch in hand, Alex cautiously moved though the cave. The floor glistened beneath his feet, and twice he nearly slipped. Alex hoped whatever coated the cavern floor was just water, but shuddered at the thought of what else it might be.
“Hurry, kind sir,” the cyclops groaned. “Pain fills my back.”
The Gorgon Bride Page 21