Work Text:
Silky strings loop around her finger, slowly unravelling the shroud once again, as she has done since twenty years ago. Every evening as the sun sets, Helios breathes his last rays upon Ithaca’s lapping shores, and Penelope sits near the window undoing Laertes’ shroud. Every evening, since her husband set sail for the Trojan war and watched his ship’s silhouette meld into the setting horizon; she waits and waits and waits for his return.
No longer does she hear rapping knocks every time of the day, vile laughs and curses behind her door dripping with insatiable lust, and her innocent son Telemachus fighting them off.
The knife at her bedside lies unused. Her fingers grace the hilt and cover the sharp glint of its blade. Penelope imagines it at her throat, freeing her from filthy claws that pin her to the wedding bed, grab and tear at her clothes, drain her of dignity and hope.
She would no less rather kill herself than be stripped bare by wild beasts unlike her husband.
The expanse of sky dyes a royal magenta and dispels away clouds, casting Ithaca’s port in shadows just like that one day. Penelope looks out the window, hopeful, but the number of ships remain the same.
Men haul ravaged wooden planks and wrecked ship supplies over their heads, their shouts of ‘Heave, ho!’ echoing in the quiet town. As Penelope passes through the town, down the grassy hills and across mossy cobblestone paths, a wide expanse of never-ending sea yawns before her.
The tumultuous tides since yesterday have settled to supple water, rippling as a breeze through wheat stalks, and sweeping sheets of wind skim the sea’s surface.
The rumbling thunder, spearing lightning and looming tides yesterday could destroy and sink any ship, no matter how grand or how strong the captain—
Unless? No, it can’t be.
She approaches the working men.
“Apostolos, your team may retire from today’s duties,” Penelope tucks her hands behind her back. Apostolos doesn’t flinch at her sudden arrival, instead flashing a yellow-toothed grin while hoisting another plank, covered with barnacles and sand grit upon his tanned shoulder.
“My lady, our docks have been horribly destroyed by the storm yesterday. Please allow us to continue working, so that our beautiful town may be restored.” With his free hand, he leans down sly as a snake to kiss her own— she instantly snatches her fingers away. Apostolos frowns.
“Go back home and rest. That is an order.”
“If I do so, will you accept my love?” She doesn’t respond. “…My lady?”
“I will not.”
“Good choice, my lady!” “Dodged a bullet there.” “Or you could say, Aphrodite’s arrow!” His team laughs boisterously behind his back, despite yearning the same. Apostolos scoffs and hurtles the plank to their blackened bare toes, effectively shutting them up.
“It has been twenty years. He isn’t coming back.”
He stares at her.
Penelope neither breaks her silence nor her unwavering eye contact.
Then he sighs and flicks his cape, signalling to the men.
“So be it, then. Let us go.” Apostolos stalks away with great strides, befitting of a leader, and the short ungroomed men scuttle behind him with teases and mocks.
Penelope returns to the palace the other direction.
In the distance and over windswept moors, a quaint little hut lies hidden behind tall grasses and under the shade of a lonely tree. Crowded round the hut are dense herds of fat pigs, snorting at mud and snuffling for truffles.
The old swineherd Eumaeus gathers berries and herbs in his basket, hobbling along accompanied by four giddy-tailed dogs. They rub and nuzzle his hairy legs, lick and kiss his bony hands. A gentle breeze almost sends the poor man toppling over, but they eagerly keep his wooden stick steady.
Leaves rustle quietly under her sandals as Penelope wades her way through, allowing a rare smile to grace her features when she meets his crinkled eyes.
She pauses.
The beasts’ beady eyes turn sharp and cunning, nose snarling and snotty as they prepare to pounce, crouching, stalking, prowling, and—
“Stop.”
Immediately, the puppers retreat at their master’s croaked command. They bow at the old Eumaeus’ shrivelled feet with tails tucked between their legs, whimpering for their master’s forgiveness.
“Old man Eumaeus, I must commend you for your control over these absolute beasts.”
He smiles crookedly while petting the savage monsters. They lean into his touch, transformed from Cerberus into precious puppers. “I’m afraid it’s getting less and less effective, my lady. Age truly withers the soul.”
“As long as I don’t get torn to shreds whenever I visit, you may age all you want.”
“Need,” he corrects, “If I could choose to age, I wouldn’t.”
“I solemnly agree.”
They sigh.
“I don’t wish to die before seeing my love return. Or after, for that matter.”
“We are not gods, Queen Penelope. Our time here,” he gestures to the rolling hills dyed in sparkling glints of the last light, “is limited.”
“I know that well.”
The world plunges into darkness as the sun finally disappears. Another day gone, like a wisp of smoke in the wind.
“May I invite you inside for supper? We wouldn’t want our queen to get lost in the night—“
“I am capable, Eumaeus.”
Penelope glances at him in the corner of her eye; he scrambles and fumbles for words, almost toppling over again.
“Well of course, my lady! I only—”
“No need to explain yourself.”
“No! I mean, yes, I must, my lady. I disregarded your independence, your knowledge—“
“You give me too much praise, Eumaeus,” she stifles a chuckle behind her hand.
“Oh, Zeus above! I’m sorry, I’ll watch my words next time—“
Penelope bursts out laughing, and it’s resoundingly loud, booming across the fields that even the pigs flinch and pause at their ministrations (fattening up their bellies).
She wheezes like she’s on her last breath, and it might just be, when she sees his scrunched-up look of utter confusion.
“Eumaeus, I know that isn’t what you intended. I accept your kind invitation to supper.” The corner of her mouth ticks up as his swoops down.
“Our queen is infuriatingly witty,” he mutters under his breath. He doesn’t wait as he waddles through the rickety door.
Inside the cramped space, a narrow candle is squeezed for its dying light. The flame wavers and flickers in the ripples of air, unsteady like a baby’s first steps.
Eumaeus sets two teacups upon the wobbling table. A gale of howling wind bursts through a hole in the wall— window?— and hurls the cups to their doom with a resounding crack and shatter.
“This is certainly… a place of shelter.”
“I cannot call it even that. Perhaps… a shack.”
Penelope purses her lips and nods.
“Well, without tea, there is no teatime, and so…”
“We sit in silence?”
“No, actually. I do have something to share with you. Insignificant, but something to share.”
She raises an eyebrow, “Go on.”
Eumaeus stalls and grabs a broom, sweeping up the porcelain shards with strained difficulty. “A beggar passed by my house yesterday. Matted, shaggy, a little worse for wear, but I invited him in nonetheless— it was something about him. And my premonition was right—he had many great tales to share, some I could hardly believe. But the one I could not believe at all, was when he claimed…”
“He claimed…?”
An awkward silence follows, heavy in the air like clouds before a storm. She stares at him. He stares at her. While gripping the broom. Ring catching the light just so.
“Queen Penelope,” Eumaeus begins.
“…Yes?”
“May I tell you my story?”
She sighs and feels a pounding headache wash upon her. “You have told me a thousand times, Eumaeus.”
“Yes, you say?” she scoffs but doesn’t interrupt, “As you’re most likely unaware of—“
“I most likely am.”
“—my wife back home is waiting for my return. She’s the heart of the house— she can calm the mightiest pigs, cook the most delightful meals, loves even the feistiest of children, oooh I could go on! I will say this many times: she is Dionysus’ smile upon the world. “
Despite her exasperation, Penelope wryly smiles at his love and devotion— one that reminds her of her own.
“But I was taken away from her. I remember it like it was yesterday— clanging metal, lashing whips, ropes wrung round my wrists. I could hear her cries from miles away on the open sea.
“I was fortunate for a master like Odysseus; he did not whip, did not beat, but cared like a friend, not a master. I know I am privileged, but–”
His voice cracks and his grip on the broom tightens. The floor is now spotless, yet he continues to sweep at nothing.
“But—my wife. She’s been waiting for so, so long, and I do not doubt it.” Penelope gently tugs the broom out of his white-knuckled grip—he lets go easily.
“Do I return to her loving embrace, or do I stay to continue Odysseus’ legacy? Every day I wonder: when another day passes for me, does another for her? Is she yet alive? I cannot know.
“And so when I tell you this, I imagine a villager telling my wife of my return. I imagine her excitement, but as days pass and the nights grow long, I imagine her joy turn to misery, her cheers, sobs, her bright, wondrous eyes: apathetic.”
There’s a long, weighty pause. Penelope is ready to wait days for him to finally reveal the information, for she’s already waited twenty years herself.
“…so do not believe as I did when the beggar told me…”
The hearth flickers and dies.
“That Odysseus will return.”
Darkness disguises the glittering shine that brightens up her eyes.
Oh, could it be?
She can’t believe it so easily. Where’s her logic? Her rationality? But this thread of hope, she hangs onto it dearly unlike the shroud’s.
The palace halls are unusually empty as Penelope briskly sweeps through, regal, poised and chin up. She senses no feasting gazes or salacious whispers in dark corners, no undressing eyes, hears no lecherous catcalls as she passes through, only the wind’s kind caress.
Along the walls, torches crackle and fill the frigid cold halls with overflowing warmth, hugging her loosely like a familiar embrace; the ghost of encompassing shoulders and muscular arms. For once in twenty years, she feels safe.
Could it really be?
Penelope runs to bed without changing robes or untying her hair. She tosses and turns and runs cogs in her brain. What was that storm yesterday? Is what the beggar says true? Why are the halls empty? Where are the suitors?
It has to be.
She’s too restless to sleep, and stays up all night watching the twinkling stars and constellations, praying and praying with hands clasped closed perhaps in the hopes of a prophecy from the gods. She does not receive one.
As the world spins round, the sun rises, and morning dew slides from the leaves outside her window. The bitter cold air bites at her pale cheeks, all rosy colour sucked from a night’s bad rest.
In the light of a new day, she finds her eyelids slipping blissfully closed, body diving under feather-soft blankets, dust mots tickling her nose, deep slumber capturing her-
The door creaks open.
An ugly beggar limps through. His shaggy mane of hair gathers in knotted and matted clumps, the curls snarling at his neck. Fresh blood stains his tattered rags in long, dragging trails, big splatters or dripping at the loose ends. His face is lowered; in shame or insanity, she does not know yet.
Without a word, Penelope swiftly grasps the dagger at her bedside and rises, strutting towards him with hands tucked behind her back and a demanding authority in the precise tap, tap, tap of heels against polished stone.
“Stranger,” she says.
He doesn’t look up or speak, despite the flinch racking his whole body.
Shallow breaths and quiet pitter patters of blood amplify the loud silence. Finally, Penelope speaks.
“What is your name?”
A whisper stirs from his lips, breath reeking of brine and rotten flesh.
“…Odysseus.”
She freezes.
The beggar exactly matches Eumaeus’ description— the voice, the look. But her face doesn’t betray her brewing emotions.
Quickly, Penelope composes herself; she straightens. Her dagger trembles—only once— before stilling in her sure grip.
Her gaze sharpens into distrust, hardened by age.
“Do not,” she begins, low voice cutting through air, “take my husband’s name in these halls. Had you been in another palace, death would be mercy.”
A beat. Penelope steps forward.
“Now. State your true name.”
He stays silent once again. Gradually, the rags dissipate, the wrinkles fade away, replaced by a tired warrior with hooded eyes and a scar below his knee— the mark of a boar’s claws.
She recalls Odysseus animatedly retelling the slither of the tall grass as he raced past, the adrenaline coursing through his veins and how incredibly brave he was on that fateful day while Penelope absently hummed along to his exaggerations. In his words, it was “EPIC!”
He had cupped his knee, called it his precious while she was right there, and wallowed and wept over the first wound he was dealt in his life. Now, face stoic, he wields his hundreds of scars like weapons, each one bearing a heavy story to it.
On the surface, Penelope raises a suspicious eyebrow, but beneath layers and layers of stone walls, excitement boils within her.
The disguise finally peels off. His oiled skin glistens like a stream of gorgeous gold, and his royal locks cascade down broad shoulders.
Under the disguise reveals a man. A man who has witnessed unspeakable horrors, is the terror, the devil of sin himself.
A man who is undoubtedly her husband.
“I’m back,” he rasps, “dear Penelope.”
“Is it you?”
Penelope steps towards Odysseus. She has always been the self-assured woman in a room full of slaves to men’s desires— but as she steps towards her husband, whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years, she’s doubtful, wavering.
Her heart pounds in her chest.
Races.
Bounds.
Badum.
Badum.
Even so, the knife remains resolute in her hand.
“Have my prayers been answered? Is it really you standing there?”
She reaches out her hand, outstretches it, as far as she can, but a distance spanning Ithaca’s oceans stretches out between them.
“Or am I dreaming once more?”
She pauses her hand.
“You look different. Your eyes look tired,”
She wipes tears from his soulless eyes— lost of their youthful naivety and innocence. Her own soften, looking straight into his avoidant ones, glancing at everything and everywhere except her.
“Your frame is lighter,”
Her hand slides behind his emaciated neck, deprived of their nightly royal feasts that went beyond midnight, the laughter that drained their throats dry; sweet elation that ambrosia could not even compare to.
“Your smile torn.”
She traces his frown, tugs downwards at his chapped lips, caresses the littered cuts and tears with impossible care.
“Is it really you, my love?”
Odysseus clasps her wrist. His hand is calloused, torments of past and future running along its rough creases, blood-stained, splintered and speared with wooden chips, grimy and sharply reeking of sea salt— but his grasp is gentle like rosy-fingered dawn as he lowers her hand.
“I am not the man you fell in love with,” she notices the eyebags deeper than the lair of Scylla, “I am not the man you once adored. I am not your kind and gentle husband, and I am not the love you knew before.”
Pain echoes in the rasp of his voice, trauma seeping in the grit and solemnity permeating his every being. An air of wisdom—at what cost—wisps around him.
Odysseus reaches to cup her cheek, but his hand drops to his side, stiff.
“Would you fall in love with me again if you knew all I’ve done? The things I cannot change,” he chokes out, “Would you love me all the same? I know that you’ve been waiting, waiting for love.” He raises his gaze to hers— empty yet bottling tumultuous emotions— and immediately breaks eye contact.
Penelope leans down to his height and asks, “What kinds of things did you do?”
“Left a trail of red on every island,” he smudges the gore beneath his feet, “as I traded friends like objects I could use.”
“Hurt more lives than I can count on my hands!” His shout carries the helpless begging of comrades slain, the hypnotic swirls of broken siren song, a Cyclops’ boiling hatred and grief, a nymph’s delicate weeps and a god’s booming bellows.
Still, Penelope doesn’t flinch or back away.
Though she cannot justify his wrongdoings, she listens intently to their agony and suffering laced in Odysseus' being, his soul heavy with the weight of a thousand lives.
“...but all of that was to bring me back to you,” he whispers, yet Penelope notices, and everything logical leaves her.
“So tell me, would you fall in love with me again, if you knew all I’ve done? The things I can’t undo,” he exhales forcefully, “I am not the man you knew. I know that you’ve been waiting, waiting for love.”
Frowning, Penelope rises and lifts her chin indignantly. She opens her mouth, wanting to reply, Your mistakes do not make you any less my husband. But is her love truly this dull? Could it be another fake? Immediately, she sobers up and realises her recklessness and mortal desperation. Far too long she has gone without the warmth of another, and it has turned her into a mindless bull not dissimilar to the suitors— ready to charge at any sign of human connection.
She steadies the dagger. It’s time for a test.
“If that’s true,” she starts, “could you do me a favour? Just a moment of labour that would bring me some peace.”
Immediately, Odysseus perks his head up and eagerly awaits to fulfil her every request.
“You see that wedding bed?” His head whips over and nods.
“Could you carry it over,
“Lift it high up your shoulders,
“And take it far away from here?”
Odysseus stops breathing.
Anger flickers past his eyes but dissipates in an instant when he meets her gaze, instead replaced with immeasurable hurt. Her heart aches.
“…How could you say this? I had built that wedding bed with my blood and sweat,”
Him, a young boy under an olive tree, sunlight dappled on his dirt-speckled cheeks, dazzling grin and a hand wiping away dribbles of sweat.
“Carved it into the olive tree where we first met,”
Him, caressing a lyre’s strings and coaxing its soft hums and lulls and her, leaning against the trunk, sharpening an axe with a ripe apple core ground between her teeth.
“A symbol of our love everlasting!”
Them, dazed in each other’s gazes, their bare arms draped round each other and rustling leaves covering their purest forms.
“Do you realise what you have asked of me?” he yells, tears in his eyes, yet inches closer and closer to the bed, “The only way to move it— is to cut it from its roots!”
“Only my husband knew that, so I guess that makes him you!”
The world goes quiet.
An owl silently swoops away, ants pause their rhythmic march and the swirls of fog rolling at the mountain’s foot clear for crisp morning air and a brimming blue sky.
Her slender fingers gradually let go of the dagger’s handle, one by one, until—
A shattering clang resounds as metal hits the floor.
Penelope walks up to Odysseus, unarmed and her expression unguarded— fond with love in her crinkled eyes, impatience in her stride, overflowing faith in her smile.
“I will fall in love with you over and over again. I don’t care how, where or when, no matter how long it’s been you’re mine.
“So, don’t tell me you’re not the same person!” Punches weak with love and stray tears land in flurries on Odysseus’ chest as she pins him to the wall.
“You’re always my husband and I’ve been waiting,”
Her, coddling Telemachus in baby blue blankets, listening to his heartbeat and the absence of another.
“Waiting,”
Her, gazing out from the port at flocks of seagulls alighting the shores with faraway squalls.
“Penelope—“
“Waiting,”
Her, waking her bleary eyes to an empty spot.
“Waiting,”
Her, shrouded in a loom’s darkness.
“Waiting, oh,”
Her, silently crying.
“For… you.”
Her, finally holding her husband.
She grabs tightly, afraid he’ll suddenly disappear, that his weathered umber skin is just another illusion. She buries her head in his scarred neck and breathes in his scent—damp soil after rain, burning sandalwood incense and all life on Earth.
Odysseus’ hands rest not on his sword, the faces of his enemies or to hopelessly push probing hands away, but home at her waist, where they were always meant to be.
Frigid cold water meets her scorching skin. Muffled wet sniffles below her, stains on her chiton’s bosom. Penelope smiles and brings his head closer, tenderly carding through his hair.
His sniffles gradually fade out as she continues to brush through his hair. Eternities pass like that with Odysseus pressed to her chest and her chin resting on his head—making up for the time they had lost. When Penelope finally musters her voice, it’s embarrassingly small and cowardly, worried to be answered with aching silence and the echoes of her true loneliness.
“…How long has it been?” Penelope asks.
A beat.
“Twenty years,” Odysseus answers.
To hear his voice is bliss. She gazes into his ocean eyes, and he doesn’t dart away.
“I love you.”
He presses their foreheads together, and they merge into one. It was always meant to be— the sun hung in the sky, the wind blown across meadows, the tides kissing the shore and Odysseus in her arms.
That evening, Penelope relearns her husband’s charms and woes—though the night feels longer than usual. Hopefully, their precious son Telemachus has wax in his ears.
—————-
“our people are not so bright.”
“then we’ll just have to make more, right?” he winks.
she rolls her eyes. how did she doubt this silly man was her husband?