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  It was a long way to land. My arms and back ached as if they had been whipped, and Telemachus must have been worse, yet our sail was miraculously intact and it bore us on. The sun seemed to drop into the sea like a falling plate, and night rose over the water. I sighted land through the star-pricked black, and we dragged the boat onto its beach. We had lost all our fresh water stores, and Telemachus was dull-eyed, nearly speechless. I went to find a river and carried back a brimming bowl I’d transformed from a rock. He drained it, and afterwards he lay still so long I began to be afraid, but at last he cleared his throat and asked what food there was. I had gathered a few berries by then, and caught a fish which was spitted over the fire. “I am sorry I put you in such danger,” I said. “If you had not been there, we would have been smashed to pieces.”

  He nodded wearily as he chewed. His face was still drawn and pale. “I confess I am glad we will not have to do it again.” He leaned back upon the sand, and his eyes drooped closed.

  He was safe, for our camp was backed into the corner of a cliff, so I left him to walk the shore. I thought we were on an island, but I could not tell for certain. There was no smoke rising above the trees, and when I listened, I heard nothing but night birds and brush and the hiss of the waves. There were flowers and forests growing thickly inland, but I did not go look. I was seeing before me again that rocky mass that had been Scylla. She was gone, truly gone. For the first time in centuries, I was not lashed to that flood of misery and grief. No more souls would walk to the underworld written with my name.

  I faced the sea. It felt strange to have nothing in my hands, no spear-haft to carry. I could feel the air moving across my palms, salt mingling with the green scent of spring. I imagined the gray length of the tail, sinking through the darkness to find its master. Trygon, I said, your tail comes home to you. I kept it too long, but I made good use of it at last.

  The soft waves washed across the sand.

  The darkness felt clean against my skin. I walked through the cool air as if it were a pool I bathed in. We had lost everything but the pouch of tools he had worn at his waist, and my spell bag, which had been tied to me. We would have to make oars, I thought, and lay in new stores of food. But those thoughts were for tomorrow.

  I passed a pear tree drifted with white blossoms. A fish splashed in the moonlit river. With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

  Telemachus slept on. His hands were clasped like a child’s under his chin. They had been bloodied at the oars, and I had salved them, their warm weight resting in my lap. His fingers had been more calloused than I imagined, but his palms were smooth. So often on Aiaia, I had wondered how it would feel to touch him.

  His eyes opened as if I had spoken the words aloud. They were clear as they always were.

  I said, “Scylla was not born a monster. I made her.”

  His face was in the fire’s shadows. “How did it happen?”

  There was a piece of me that shouted its alarm: if you speak he will turn gray and hate you. But I pushed past it. If he turned gray, then he did. I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unraveling them again at night, making nothing. I told him the whole tale of it, each jealousy and folly and all the lives that had been lost because of me.

  “Her name,” he said. “Scylla. It means the Render. Perhaps it was always her destiny to be a monster, and you were only the instrument.”

  “Do you use the same excuse for the maids you hanged?”

  It was as if I had struck him. “I make no excuse for that. I will wear that shame all my life. I cannot undo it, but I will spend my days wishing I could.”

  “It is how you know you are different from your father,” I said.

  “Yes.” His voice was sharp.

  “It is the same for me,” I said. “Do not try to take my regret from me.”

  He was quiet a long time. “You are wise,” he said.

  “If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.”

  “Yet at least what you loved, you fought for.”

  “That is not always a blessing. I must tell you, all my past is like today, monsters and horrors no one wants to hear.”

  He held my gaze. Something about him then reminded me strangely of Trygon. An unearthly, quiet patience.

  “I want to hear,” he said.

  I had kept away from him for so many reasons: his mother and my son, his father and Athena. Because I was a god, and he a man. But it struck me then that at the root of all those reasons was a sort of fear. And I have never been a coward.

  I reached across that breathing air between us and found him.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  THREE DAYS WE STAYED upon that shore. We made no oars and patched no sails. We caught fish and picked fruit, and looked for nothing but what we found at our fingers’ ends. I laid my palm on his stomach, feeling it rise and fall with his breath. His shoulders were wiry with muscle, the back of his neck roughened with sunburn.

  I did tell him those stories. By the fire, or the morning’s light, when our pleasures were set aside. Some of it was easier than I thought it would be. There was a kind of joy in drawing Prometheus for him, in making Ariadne and Daedalus live again. But other parts were not so easy, and sometimes as I spoke an anger would come over me, and the words would curdle in my mouth. Who was he to be so patient, while I spilled my blood? I was a woman grown. I was a goddess, and his elder by a thousand generations. I did not need his pity, his attention, anything.

  “Well?” I would demand. “Why don’t you say something?”

  “I am listening,” he would answer.

  “You see?” I said, when I was finished with the tale. “Gods are ugly things.”

  “We are not our blood,” he answered. “A witch once told me that.”

  On the third day he cut new oars, and I transformed waterskins and filled them, then gathered up fruit. I watched him rig the sail with easy competence, check the hull for any leaks. I said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I cannot sail a boat. What would I have done if you hadn’t come?”

  He laughed. “You would have gotten there eventually, it just would have taken some of your eternity. Where do we go next?”

  “A shore, east of Crete. There is a small cove, half sand, half rocks, and a scrub forest in sight, and hills. Overhead, at this time of the year, the Dragon seems to point the way.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “If you get me close enough, I think I will be able to find it.” I watched him. “Are you going to ask what is there?”

  “I do not think you want me to.”

  Less than a month we had spent together, yet he seemed to know me better than anyone who had ever walked the world.

  It was a smooth voyage, the wind fresh and the sun still shy of its blistering summer heat. At night, we made our camp on whatever shores we could find. He was used to living like a herder, and I found I did not miss my gold and silver bowls, my tapestries. We roasted our fish on stick-ends, I carried fruits in my dress. If there was a house, we might offer services in return for bread and wine and cheese. He carved toys for children, patched skiffs. I had my salves, and if I kept my head covered, I could pass for an herbwoman coming to ease their aches and fevers. Their gratitude was simple and plain, and ours was the same. No one knelt.

  While the boat sailed beneath the blue-arched sky, we would sit together on the boards talking of the people we had met, the coastlines we passed, the dolphins that followed us for half the morning, grinning and splashing at our rails.

  “Do you know,” he said, “that before coming to Aiaia, I only left Ithaca once?”

  I nodded. “I have seen Crete and some islands on the way, and that is all. I have always wished to go to Egypt.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And Troy, and the great cities of Sumeria.”

  “Assur,” I said. “And I want to see Aethiopia. And the North as well, the ice-ribbed lands. And Telegonus’ new kingdom in the West.”

  We looked out over the waves, and a silence hung between us. The next sentence should be: let us go together. But I could not speak that, not now and perhaps not ever. And he would keep silent, for he did know me well.

  “Your mother,” I said. “Do you think she’ll be angry at us?”

  He snorted. “No,” he said. “She likely knew before we did.”

  “I would not be surprised if we come back and find her a witch.”

  It always made me happy to startle him, to see his evenness blown wide. “What?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “She has eyed my herbs from the beginning. I would have taught her, if there had been time. I will wager with you.”

  “If you are so sure, I do not think I will take your odds.”

  At night we crossed the hollows of each other’s skin, and when he slept I would lay beside him, feeling the warmth where our limbs touched, watching the soft pulse at his throat. His eyes had creases, and his neck had more. When people saw us, they thought I was younger. But though I looked and sounded like a mortal, I was a bloodless fish. From my water I could see him, and all the sky behind, but I could not cross over.

  Between the Dragon and Telemachus, we did at last find my old shore. It was morning when we reached the narrow bay, my father’s chariot halfway to its peak. Telemachus held the anchor stone. “Drop, or draw onto the sand?”

  “Drop,” I said.

  Hundreds of years of tides and storms had changed the shoreline’s shape, but my feet remembered the sand’s fineness, the rough grass with its burrs. In the distance drifted faint gray smoke and the sound of goat bells. I passed the jutting rocks where Aeëtes and I used to sit. I passed the forest where I had lain after my father burned me, now only a stand of straggling pines. The hills I had dragged Glaucos up were crowded with spring: strawflowers and hyacinths, lilies, violets, and sweet rock roses. And at their center, the small clutch of yellow flowers, sprung from Kronos’ blood.

  The old humming note rose up as if in greeting. “Do not touch them,” I said to Telemachus, but even as the words were out, I realized how foolish they were. The flowers could do nothing to him. He was himself already. I would not see a hair changed.

  Using my knife, I dug up each stalk by its roots. I wrapped them with soil in strips of cloth and settled them in the darkness of my bag. There was no more reason to linger. We hauled up the anchor and pointed the prow towards home. The waves and islands passed but I scarcely saw them. I was drawn taut as an archer sighting against the sky, waiting for the bird to flush. On the last evening, when Aiaia was so close I thought I could smell her blooms drifting on the sea air, I told him the story that I had kept back, of the first men who had come to my island, and what I had done to them in return.

  The stars were very bright, and Vesper shone like a flame overhead. “I did not tell you before because I did not want it to lie between us.”

  “And now you do not mind if it does?”

  From the darkness of my bag, the flowers sang their yellow note. “Now I want you to have the truth, whatever comes.”

  The light salt breeze rifled in the shore-grass. He was holding my hand against his chest. I could feel the steady beat of his blood.

  “I have not pressed you,” he said. “And still I will not. I know there are reasons you cannot answer me. But if—” He stopped. “I want you to know, if you go to Egypt, if you go anywhere, I want to go with you.”

  Pulse by pulse, his life passed under my fingers. “Thank you,” I said.

  Penelope met us on Aiaia’s shore. The sun was high, and the island bloomed wildly, fruits swelling on their branches, new green growth leaping from every crook and crevice. She looked at ease amid that profusion, waving to us, calling her greetings.

  If she noticed a change between us, she said nothing. She embraced us both. It had been quiet, she said, no visitors, yet not quiet at all. More lion cubs had been born. A mist had covered the east bay for three days, and there had been such a torrent of rain that the stream burst its banks. Her cheeks showed her blood as she talked. We wound past the glossy laurels, the rhododendrons, through my garden and the great oak doors. I breathed my house’s air, thick with the clean smell of herbs. I felt that pleasure the bards sing of so often: homecoming.

  In my room the sheets of my wide, gold bed were fresh as they ever were. I could hear Telemachus telling his mother the story of Scylla. I left and went barefoot to walk the island. The earth was warm beneath my feet. The flowers tossed their bright heads. A lion followed at my heels. Was I saying farewell? I was pointed up into the sky’s wide arch. Tonight, I thought. Tonight, beneath the moon, alone.

  I came back when the sun was setting. Telemachus had gone to catch fish for dinner, and Penelope and I sat at the table. Her fingertips were stained green, and I could smell the spells in the air.

  “I have long wondered something,” I said. “When we fought over Athena, how did you know to kneel to me? That it would shame me?”

  “Ah. It was a guess. Something Odysseus said about you once.”

  “Which was?”

  “That he had never met a god who enjoyed their divinity less.”

  I smiled. Even dead he could surprise me. “I suppose that is true. You said that he shaped kingdoms, but he also shaped the thoughts of men. Before him, all the heroes were Heracles and Jason. Now children will play at voyaging, conquering hostile lands with wits and words.”

  “He would like that,” she said.

  I thought he would too. A moment passed, and I looked at her stained hands on the table before me.

  “And? Are you going to tell me? How goes your witchery?”

  She smiled her inward smile. “You were right. It is mostly will. Will and work.”

  “I am finished here,” I said, “one way or another. Would you like to be witch of Aiaia in my place?”

  “I think I would. I think I truly would. My hair, though, it is not right. It looks nothing like yours.”

  “You could dye it.”

  She made a face. “I will say instead it has gone gray from my haggish sorceries.”

  We laughed. She had finished the tapestry, and it hung behind her on the wall. That swimmer, striking out into the stormy deep.

  “If you find yourself in want of company,” I said, “tell the gods you will take their bad daughters. I think you will have the right touch for them.”

  “I will consider that a compliment.” She rubbed at a smudge on the table. “And what about my son? Will he be going with you?”

  I realized I felt almost nervous. “If he wants to.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I want him to come,” I said. “If it is possible. But there is a thing which still lies before me to be done. I do not know what will come of it.”

  Her calm gray eyes held mine. Her brow was arched like a temple, I thought. Graceful and enduring. “Telemachus has been a good son, longer than he should have been. Now he must be his own.” She touched my hand. “Nothing is sure, we know that. But if I had to trust that a thing would be done, I would trust it to you.”

  I carried our dishes away, washed them carefully until they shone. My knives I whetted and laid each in its place. I wiped down the tables, I swept the floor. When I came back to my hearth, only Telemachus was there. We walked to the small clearing we both loved, the one where a lifetime ago we had spoken of Athena.

  “The spell I mean to do,” I said. “I do not know what will happen when I cast it. It may not even work. Perhaps Kronos’ power cannot be carried from its soil.”

  He said, “Then we will go back. We will go back until you are satisfied.”

  It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks? But a cracked heart was not enough, and I had grown wise enough to know it. I kissed him and left him there.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  THE FROGS HAD GONE to their wallows; the salamanders slept in brown holes. The pool showed the moon’s half-face, the pinpoints of stars, and all around, bending near, the wavering trees.

  I knelt on the bank, thick with grass. Before me was the old bronze bowl I had used for my magics since the very first. The flowers rested beside me in their pale root swaddles. Stem by stem, I cut them and squeezed out the drops of running sap. The bottom of the bowl grew dark. It too began to show the moon. The last flower I did not squeeze but planted there on the shore, where the sun fell every morning. Perhaps it would grow.

  I could feel the fear in myself, gleaming like water. These flowers had made Scylla a monster, though all she had done was sneer. Glaucos had become a monster of sorts too, everything that was kind in him driven out by godhead. I remembered my old terror, from Telegonus’ birth: what creature waits within me? My imagination conjured up horrors. I would sprout slimy heads and yellow teeth. I would stalk down to the hollow and savage Telemachus to pieces.

  But perhaps, I told myself, it would not be like that. Perhaps all I hoped would come to pass, and Telemachus and I would go to Egypt indeed, and all those other places. We would cross and recross the seas, living on my witchcraft and his carpentry, and when we came to a town a second time, the people would step out of their houses to greet us. He would patch their ships, and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers, and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.

  The vision blossomed, vivid as the cool grass beneath me, as the black sky over my head. We would visit the Lion Gate of Mycenae, where Agamemnon’s heirs ruled, and the walls of Troy, their stones chilled by winds from ice-peaked Ida. We would ride elephants and walk in the desert night beneath the eyes of gods who had never heard of Titans or Olympians, who took no more notice of us than they did of the sand beetles toiling at our feet. He would say to me that he wanted children, and I would say, “You do not know what you are asking of me,” and he would say, “This time you are not alone.”

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