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“Odysseus,” Her voice is cobwebbed with age. She cups his face. He wants to tell her; she can’t touch him, she mustn’t touch him. She is clean and pure, and he is ragged and bleeding. Even his name on her lips has sent a deep black slash across her tongue. He flinches away. She lowers her fingers.
If she was the witch, or the nymph, perhaps he’d yield. The witch’s hands are bloodstained already, and the nymph has blood-red lips and a smile like flint, and they are all anger and biting words and jagged edges and he deserves people like them, but his wife – his wife is sunlight and sea spray and the soft gurgling of a river. She is fine white linen and he is dripping with scarlet.
“Odysseus.” She says his name again, in a voice soft with sleep, and takes his hands. He bites back a scream. The scarlet is seeping from his hands to hers, running down her elbows, spattering into her lap. “Come back to me, love.”
Love. His throat closes in on itself with such force it pains him.
“I can’t.” He chokes. He hates the way his hands have clenched on hers, the way his knuckles have turned white. He is ruining her, and he cannot help it.
She doesn’t wince. She twines their fingers together. He watches them. They are long and thin. Blue veins shine through freckles and liver spots, beautiful interlocking lines and traces.
Scarlet is spilling into the crevices of her hands.
“Where are you?” She says. Her voice is kind.
Everywhere, he wants to say. His nails are filthy with dirt and blood. His hair is matted with salt and sand and the smell of Troy going up in flames. The witch’s voice is hissing in his ear, and the nymph is clawing at his shoulders, his men are heaving at the oars and a gull is screeching overhead and they are screaming and snatched into the air by Scylla. He is Odysseus and Hero and Lover. He is Nobody.
She knows. She smiles and her eyes are tired.
“Where am I, then?” She asks. Her thumbs move in circles on his hands. Her fingers are withering at his touch and she will die and it will be his fault. He has left her and is leaving her and he cannot come home.
Her thumbs continue their motion.
He knows this answer. She is in their bed in Ithaca, under their olive tree, wrapped in white sheets and her eyes are bleary with sleep. Her hair has spilled over her shoulder like a wild running river. Her hands are gentle and strong and he does not deserve them.
“Home.” He says. “You’re home.”
“That’s right.” She says. He has made her tired eyes smile. It is the best deed he has ever done. “I’m home, and you’re with me.”
But he is still sailing across oceans and he is thrown about in a storm and he is still lying facedown on a golden beach. He is still watching the sun go down with dread. He is still drowning in the smell of the nymph, in flowers and saltwater.
But his wife smells of grassy hills and fresh soil on the riverbank. She touches his face. He is trembling. She is letting his tears run down her hand.
“Odysseus.” She says his name as if she will never tire of saying it. The harsh sibilance is softened, the awkward syllables smoothed. His name is not a curse on her lips, nor a command. She has opened her arms.
There is no blood buried under her nails.
He lets himself lean, slowly, delicately, forward. He is afraid she might shatter if he falls all at once. His head fits under her chin. She wraps an arm around him. Her other hand is in his hair, combing through it. It is not so tangled after all.
Here, it is warm and dark and smells like freedom.
“I’m here.” She murmurs. He can feel her voice rumbling through her throat. She begins to hum.
His wife could not sing if her life depended on it. It is rough and fraying at the edges like a worn tapestry, and he cannot tell what tune she is attempting, if it is a tune at all. But he can feel it building in her throat, and he is leaning into her to hear the notes before they pass her lips.
He thinks it is the wedding song, or perhaps a lullaby. Her fingers are callused and her skin is rough. He had forgotten that.
“Penelope.” He says. Her name is not beautiful on his lips. His voice is thick and broken with sleep and it is beginning to slur, blending the sounds together until it is barely her name any longer. But he feels her smile, in the way her arms tighten around him and her humming hitches in her throat.
And if not quite the home he left, it is home enough for now.