Chapter Text
Penelope found Odysseus in the palace’s temple room. He was kneeling with his forehead on the ground - praying, she assumed. Their small temple room’s walls were filled with tapestries showing gods and goddesses and the family’s favorite heroes. Odysseus himself was in one, which depicted several boats on the sea and an owl just over his shoulder. It was the first tapestry she had ever made, and the scene was what she had viewed on her first voyage to Ithaca many years ago: Athena on Odysseus’s shoulder.
Goddess blessed.
Or cursed.
He was bathed and dressed in his old clothes, the robes a bit too large. He had not had much to eat in the past few weeks. The sea had not been kind or generous to her husband. His sandals still fit well, his hair was still the oil-rubbed bronze that she loved, his curls not as curly perhaps as once they were. He was still heavily muscled, a tribute to the work he put into getting home. To staying alive.
The other tapestries showed other stories. Her grandfather Nereus, sinking the ships that had been sent to sell her into slavery. Athena giving the olive tree to Athens. Appropriate, Penelope had thought, since the olives they grew on the island helped them barter for almost all of the goods they could not produce.
The ground was carpeted thickly with a bright blue rug, reminding them that their livelihood depended on the sea.
The sea, ruled by Posiedon, who hated her husband.
Who was back as their king. She couldn’t see how their kingdom would be safe, but they would pray. They would offer sacrifices.
The gods had heard her prayers to send Odysseus home. Her prayers to have the suitors gone had also been heard and answered, but certainly not in a manner that left everyone satisfied; the suitors were dead. Returned to their families or burned last night on a funeral pyre lit by Telemachus and two loyal slaves. The female slaves that had conspired with them had been hung. She wondered if they were still hanging or if they had been cut down and fed to the sea. She didn’t want to know. The slaughter was not what she had prayed for.
Her boy had been initiated into the ways of men, killing and battling for his home.
The thought made her weep. Yesterday, he was a belligerent teenager. Today he was a man, blooded and tried in battle. She wiped away her tears. There had been too many tears.
She joined Odysseus in prayer. First she gave thanks for bringing their family back together. Then she prayed to anyone who would listen to help restore their fractured kingdom, even with a king who had slaughtered his subjects to regain his throne after being absent for twenty years.
She rose from her knees, surprised that Odysseus was still beside her. She had gotten lost in prayer, as she had so often while he had been gone. He was leaning between two of the tapestries, looking at the newer ones that he hadn’t seen before.
“Your skill has improved - and you were skilled to begin with,” he noted.
“Athena is gracious,” she said automatically.
He looked at her sharply, knowing that her heart wasn’t in her words. “That she is,” he admonished.
She bowed her head, acknowledging that she should have been more honest in her respects. Athena loved her husband but Penelope felt she was only barely tolerated. If Penelope hadn’t known she was a virgin goddess, she would have sworn that Athena was in love with Odysseus. Perhaps she was, even so.
“My lord, have you decided what you wish to do for the remainder of the day?” She was nervous in a way she hadn’t been since they had first met. Even after a long night together, loving and talking, today in the light she felt as if she were meeting with a stranger.
“I was going to walk the island.” he said.
“May I attend you?” she asked hesitantly. She was hoping to show him what had been done under her hand - and what needed to be done, in her estimation.
“I was hoping you would. Perhaps Telemachus can also join us?” She tried to hide the hurt that his words caused, but must not have been quick enough to shield her feelings. He immediately recalled his words, saying, “If we see him…”
He was of course anxious to get to know his son. She understood this well. There was much, however, that she needed to discuss with him, that should be talked over without Telemachus present.
“Of course, my lord.” She bit her lip. She could feel herself reverting to the naive seventeen-year-old who had been too unsure to use her husband’s name. “Odysseus,” she corrected herself.
“Telemachus is probably still cleaning up - let’s just you and I go.” Odysseus smiled at her, a worn, tired smile.
She reached out and touched his face. He was real, wasn’t he? Her fingers met the familiar stubble of a beard that refused to be shaved off completely, and pain shot through her heart.
He was home. She would probably need to remind herself for years to come.
He took her hand, winding their fingers together.
“What would you like to see first?”
“Something beautiful,” he said, “something quiet.”
“I know just the place,” she said.
Penelope led them on a small game trail behind and around the top of the hill into which the palace was built. They ducked under low trees and hopped over rocks, climbing over a tree felled by lightning. The brush was not dense, but the land was challenging as it moved first downward, then back upwards to another peak. “You seem to have taken some lessons from the mountain goats,” Odysseus remarked, a little winded from the route.
“And you seem to have been working more on rowing than climbing,” she huffed, winded herself. It had been some time since she had scaled this mountain.
He smiled back at her. The smile did not reach his eyes. They had a half moon until the next throne day, and she was certain they would be hearing more about the massacre of the suitors then. Not for the first time, she wished she had come up with a solution to rid the island of those boys before Odysseus had come home.
They stopped on a small knoll that gave them a view of the sea on one side and rocky hillsides on the others. Odysseus’s eyes were hungry as they took in his native land, turning his back to the sea.
“You’ll love this,” Penelope said, walking into a dell filled with small but ancient trees. She dropped his hand and began looking at the trunks of trees, and he followed suit. She quickly found the tree she was looking for, and looked up to see Odysseus studying another tree nearby. “What have you found?” she asked, joining him.
He pointed to the stunted oak tree in front of him. It was filled with tally marks that had grown over, so old that some of the groupings were no longer complete. She looked to him for an explanation, and he said, “I used to keep track of the competitions I won, whether they were just against a local or…anywhere else. I stopped once I was crowned. It seemed a silly thing to do, and I worried it would kill the tree if I continued.” He ran his hand over the marks. “It’s still here,” he murmured in an undertone.
“I wonder if Telemachus found it - look -” she pointed to the other tree that she had been standing near, that also bore markings. These looked like small pictures instead of tallies, and Penelope traced them with a finger. “He used to come here and draw on the tree with his knife. He doesn’t think I know about it,” she said with a wink, “so please don’t tell him. He thinks it is a secret.”
Odysseus looked at the symbols. “What does it say?”
“I hate my mom,” she said, pointing to one group. “King Telemachus,” she said, pointing to another. “This one I can’t quite make out.” She shrugged. “Normal boy stuff.”
“You taught him to read,” he said. “Thank you.”
She grinned. “I kept trying with you, you know…”
He waved the comment away. “I know, I was always too busy…” He traced the characters on the tree, lost in thought. She waited for him to finish, then she led him away from the dell.
They took a winding path that was a little more trampled than the game path they had been on and walked steadily through the afternoon, stealing glances at one another, until they could see the sea again. Every so often, he would pull her into an embrace, steal a kiss.
Eventually the path led down to an isthmus, a strip of land leading from their island to the next. The open sea was to the north, and a bay extended to the south, its tides much gentler than the sea.
Odysseus stopped, gaping at the view before them. They were still a good walk away from reaching the base of the hill and the isthmus, but it was smoother than the surrounding hillside and covered in grasses and flowers. He reached out his hand, following the land from sea to bay. “Where is Zola?”
When he left, this area held a small town looking across a strait. The town had hugged the sea, enjoying immediate access to fishing. There was no sign of the town now, no evidence that it had ever existed.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” she said quietly. “It is beautiful, no?” She indicated the fields of flowers. “Come, let’s put our feet in the bay.”
They clambered down the remainder of the rocky hillside and walked steadily across the soft rolls of earth covered in grasses and flowers to the bay. A small outcrop of rocks leaned into the bay, and Penelope sat on one, indicating another for Odysseus.
“About nine years ago…perhaps ten? There was a sunny day, with no clouds in the sky. Beautiful, like today.” She looked up at the sky, which didn’t even carry a wisp of a cloud. “Clouds came from nowhere. Rain poured like arrows from the gods. Mud ran like rivers. I was terrified that Telemachus was caught out in it, but he returned just as I went to look for him.” She hugged herself at the memory. “He was fine. There was so much water, Odysseus. So many were flooded. Everyone was trying to cut channels in the earth to direct the water away from the homes,” she pointed back to their town, “and we didn’t realize how much trouble Zola was in. We heard it, though.” She stopped, remembering the sliding, crashing sound that had resounded over the entire island. She pointed to the large island east of them, now connected to theirs. “Remember that large mountain that used to sit right there?”
He nodded, searching the site for any sign of the large amount of earth that used to grace the side of the island.
“It is now here -” she gestured to where they sat, “- and the hill on this side also went. The entire town slid into the sea.” She shrugged with helplessness. “There was one survivor. One, out of so many.” She had estimated that about 350 people had been buried in the sea that day, but she did not share the number with Odysseus. “It was just a mud slick for a long time,” she continued. “I asked that no one be allowed across…until it settled.” She was quiet for a moment, looking across the low land that now lay between the islands. “Now we have a true bay,” she pointed to the south. “The islanders and I come here once a year to remember. We spread the grass seeds and flowers - because they are constantly sprayed with the salt water, they had a difficult time establishing, but they are growing well now.”
“Ten years?” he checked.
“I think so.”
He stood, frustration roiling off his frame, and paced until he found a rock. He tossed it as far as he could into the bay. Then he threw another. “Ten years.” His voice was bitter, his eyes hard. “This was my fault.”
“What? No!” She scrambled up to join him. “How could it be your fault? You weren’t here -”
He pointed to the south. “I was there. I could see our island, Penelope. I could see it.” The remembered longing was fresh in his voice and tears sprang to her eyes. “Poseidon sent a storm that blew us away. And it killed my people.” He fisted his hands in his hair, kneeling in the swaying grasses. “One? One survivor?”
Penelope nodded, pointing to a small home on the eastern island side, perched to the north. “He and his family are settled there now.”
Odysseus looked to the house, then dropped his hands on the ground, bowing his head. “My fault,” he moaned, the sound threaded with bitterness.
She dropped to his side, afraid to touch him, afraid he would throw her off. “No, I don’t believe it. Storms are a part of life, Odysseus. You cannot blame yourself for all of them.” She stroked his hair back from his face. “I’m sorry. I’ve become accustomed to seeing this place as a refuge…a place of reflection. Remembered sorrow. I didn’t realize how fresh it would be for you.”
He nodded, then bent in towards her, letting her embrace him as he wept.
There had been boats that day, blown away by the storm.
They had been so close.
He was back, but he was carrying the weight of those twenty years.
Odysseus and Penelope took their time returning to the palace. She hoped he would someday see the beauty that had sprouted in that hallowed place. Today was not that day. She walked behind him, trying to memorize - again - his stride, the way he swung his arms, the way he brushed his hair away from his face.
He did not look back until they had topped the hill, until he could not see the isthmus, the burial ground that was once a village. Then he waited for her, his eyes watching her every move as if he, too, were trying to remember, and memorize.
He did not touch her. The tension in him was coiled like a snake and she kept her eyes on him, wary.
“What else?” he asked.
She bit her lip. “Hmm.” They had talked about his mother, briefly. They had not yet touched on Ctimene.
Penelope’s biggest failure.
She did not want to discuss it - not now, perhaps not ever.
He narrowed his eyes. Anyone could tell she was hiding something - and Odysseus had once known her better than anyone.
After a moment, he let it go. Penelope was starting to feel winded, the exertion too much for her. She stopped and turned back to Odysseus. When she could speak, she said, “Do you mind if we turn back for today?”
He didn’t hide his relief.
She should have realized that the walk was taxing for both of them.
When they returned to the palace, Telemachus met them at the gates. “Patéras.” he greeted his father.
Odysseus did not return the greeting, but waited. When Telemachus shuffled uncertainly, Odysseus flicked his eyes to Penelope.
Telemachus gulped. “Mitéra.” He nodded in her direction.
Satisfied, Odysseus asked, “Report?”
He stood taller, a warrior now. “All is taken care of, my lord,” he answered. Then, with hope shining in his eyes, he asked, “May I show you?”
“Tomorrow,” Odysseus said.
The hope in Telemachus’s eyes dimmed. “Will you join the elders this evening?”
Odysseus shook his head, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “There is a throne day in half a moon, yes?” He looked to Penelope for confirmation, and she nodded. “I will join them after that time. They need time.”
He put his arm around Penelope’s waist. “And I need rest.”