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The tree bark was rough against the king’s skin, but that was the least of his worries at the moment.
He stood precariously on a semi-thick tree branch, around maybe thirty-five feet up in the air.
“Circe!” He called, clinging to the trunk of the tree desperately, “Help!”
Almost immediately, Circe’s form materialized thirty-five feet below him. “What is it, Odysseus? I was…” Her voice trailed off and she spun, searching for Ody. “in the middle of something—where are you?”
“I’m stuck…”
Circe’s head whipped upwards to Ody as he gripped the trunk harder and looked down at her, his limbs starting to shake slightly. His cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. Circe put her hands on her hips, lips twitching upwards ever-so-slightly as she spoke jokingly,
“You idiot mortal! How did you get up there?! Why did you get up there?!”
Odysseus flushed deeper. “I saw a pretty fruit…”
Circe raised an eyebrow. “You realize you could’ve asked me to get it?”
“…oh yeah!”
“What was the fruit anyways?”
Odysseus risked removing one arm from its spot around the tree trunk to point up to a green and red fruit partially concealed in leaves, but still beautiful anyhow.
“Odysseus, that’s a mango… we have them at the palace…”
“Oh…” He looked back up at the mango, then back down at Circe. His pupils shrank in fear and he retreated deeper into the tree. “I’m still stuck, you know!”
She giggled. “I know, and it’s entertaining.”
He kept his eyes trained on the bark of the tree, refusing to look down again. He still shook slightly. “Just help me!” He wailed.
She tilted her head. “Don’t you want to get the mango first? That is the reason you’re up there, is it not?”
“Forget the stupid mango!” He shouted. “I..” His voice caught. “I don’t like heights!”
“You don’t like heights?!” Circe’s tone made it clear that she was personally offended by his confession. “That’s insane! Being up high is so fun!”
“It’s really not!” Ody retorted, only to nearly lose his footing when Circe suddenly appeared beside him, suspended in the air.
“It is!” She insisted, zipping around him as he clung to the tree.
“You can fly! Of course you don’t mind heights!” He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his body close to the trunk, his legs shaking more violently now.
“Ody, if you don’t loosen up I’m going to pull a Hermes and start flying you around.”
Odysseus’ voice rose to a comically high pitch. “Please don’t! That was horrible!”
She paused next to him and started laughing.
“Stop laughing at me!” He risked opening one eye to glare at her.
She sighed, exasperated. “Loosen up, Odysseus! Have fun!” She stepped onto the branch he was cowering on and held her arms out to the side for balance. Then, gracefully like she’d done it many times before, she flipped backwards and landed back on the rough bark of the tree, which shook and bent under her weight.
Odysseus let out a sound of pure fear as his feet slipped, sliding towards the edge of the branch. “STOP!”
Circe stood on the edge of the ledge, held her arms out, and fell backwards, spinning in the air and grabbing the branch with her hands. She hung on, laughing.
Odysseus didn’t know what happened, but sometime during her fall, things had changed.
Morning dew shone on the grass around them as he stood in the tree of a familiar clearing in the forests of Ithaca, though this time he wasn’t afraid.
He was laughing.
Along with Polites, who Circe’s voice had melted into. His feet dangled from the tree he was sitting in, his small nine-year-old kid-legs swinging back and forth.
“Ody! Look at this!” Polites’ voice filtered in through the leaves from the branch below him. Then he stood, jumping from his tree limb and grabbing Ody’s, hanging there.
The bough shook dangerously from the added weight, and before he knew it, Odysseus slipped.
He tumbled back, his arm hitting the trunk of the tree painfully as he started to fall down thirty feet to the floor below.
Polites shrieked Ody’s name, reaching out. He grabbed Ody’s arm, halting his fall.
Odysseus almost immediately scrambled for something to grab onto, crying out when he tried to move his broken arm.
“Pull me up.” He whispered brokenly to Polites, eyes wild with fear and glassy with unshed tears.
He did, heaving and using as much nine-year-old strength as he could to pull Ody up onto the branch with him.
Once Odysseus was steady, Polites sobbed, wrapping his arms around Ody. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. You almost— You would’ve died if I hadn’t—” He took a shaky breath. “Your arm… We need to go get a medic.”
Ody tried to say something, but with his throbbing arm, shaking body, and the nausea that came over him when he looked down, he couldn’t. Instead, the panic started to consume him. His breaths came fast, but he didn’t feel like he was getting any air at all.
“I-I c-can’t breathe—” He gasped.
Polites tightened the hug, shielding Ody from the view of how high up they still were by allowing him to bury his face into his chest. “Hey, hey, trust me… you’re not going to fall. I’ve got you.”
He nodded and closed his eyes.
…
..
.
When Odysseus opened them again, he was back on Circe’s island, hugging that same trunk, the goddess’ laughter rippling through the air as she hung on the branch.
When Ody looked down at her, the familiar paralyzing fear that came with heights rose once more, created after his near-death.
He dug his fingers into the trunk, closing his eyes again, wishing he were there to save him. To catch him if he fell, like last time.
Circe pulled herself up onto his branch and sat, voice softer, as if she could sense what happened. “Come on, Ody.”
“N-no.”
“Just sit down. You’ll be fine.”
The memory of falling backwards, the feeling of the air rushing past him returned once more. He shook his head vigorously.
“You can still hug the trunk of the tree, just sit.”
That time, he tried, but his body wouldn’t budge. “I-I c-can’t move…”
“Okay, that’s it.” Suddenly, Ody felt her behind him, her hands wrapping around his torso, and then, they were in the air. Odysseus’ arms and legs dangled, and his body faced the ground as Circe tightened her hold around him.
He shrieked, squeezing his eyes shut. “CIRCE!”
She laughed. “Trust me!” She flew higher until she was just barely above the trees. “You’re not going to fall. I’ve got you.”
I’ve got you.
Her words seemed to echo with Polites’ voice, and Ody instinctively believed it.
You’re not going to fall.
Slowly, he stopped struggling, stopped reaching for anything when he knew all he could grasp was air. Then he opened his eyes.
Below him was a mass of green, forest on his right and plains on his left. In the distance, a large lioness lay splayed across the grass of the fields, soaking in the sun. A white and gray wolf dashed in between the dense trees of the forest.
And in front of him, was the sun.
It was only just starting to set, a bright ball of orange fire dipping below the horizon. The sky around it was a mix of yellows and reds, and the clouds were a light shade of pink. The ocean, spanning around the island as far as he could see, reflected the vibrant colors.
Odysseus stared in silent awe as Circe halted to a stop, leaving them suspended in the air.
After a moment, she spoke softly. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
The only thing that Ody could think of at the moment was how much he would’ve loved seeing that sunset.
The goddess of sorcery continued, taking his silence as permission to go on. “That’s why I love going up. I’m close to the sky and I can see the view of my island. It’s the best at night, though. The light from the palace illuminates the island in this way I can’t describe; no words will do it justice. The stars and night sky are really peaceful and pretty and when you lay on a tree branch and watch it you feel connected to everything. It’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Ody’s voice was barely a whisper. “Go higher…”
She flew up until they were high enough that they could see the whole island. “Good?”
“Yeah,” he said, breathless.
“No one notices the beauty of heights, just that they are scary. No one notices the small things, the things that can change your perspective.” She whispered softly.
A breeze blew past them as they stayed stationary, and Ody let out a small laugh, spreading his arms wide as the wind whipped at his hair and traveled in between his fingers.
“Are you finally enjoying yourself?” Circe asked.
“Yeah,” Ody sighed, the tension that had been there since… since Polites’s death, leaving his body.
“Oh my gods! Finally!” Circe exclaimed.
Odysseus rolled his eyes. “Can you blame me for being uptight? My crew members are morons.”
Even though what he said was true, it wasn’t the real reason for Ody’s tense demeanor. He wasn’t always that way, and people like Eurylochus, who’d known him almost as long as Polites had, took notice of the change.
There was an emptiness in his heart, a place that used to be filled with laughter, with joy.
He didn’t even realize it was there until it wasn’t.
But now the light to Odysseus’ darkness was gone, and there was nothing keeping him from being consumed by his ambition.
The ambition and drive he was enslaved to.
A long time ago, Odysseus decided he couldn’t afford to “let loose”.
He decided that the main goal now was to get home. And he realized that the only way they could do that was if Odysseus focused on his goal.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to be consumed by ambition…
“That, I can’t deny.” Circe’s voice pulled Ody out of his thoughts, and it took him a moment to remember what they were talking about and where they were.
The sunset still shone. Unyielding. A reminder that though Polites was gone, it didn’t mean the Ody he knew had to disappear as well.
The emptiness lifted, and Odysseus grinned.
“Can I flip now?” Circe pleaded.
Odysseus’ voice didn’t sound like his own to his ears. It sounded… happy. Content. “Please do!”
“Yay!” Circe celebrated, spinning them both before shooting up higher with a burst of air.
Odysseus didn’t say it out loud, but as Circe laughed and spun him through the sky, a quiet truth settled in his chest like ash after a fire:
This was borrowed joy.
Don’t get used to this, he warned himself as the wind threaded through his fingers and the sky swallowed him whole.
Because happiness had teeth.
He knew that now.
Up here, the world looked small. Manageable. The island curled beneath him like a map he could fold and tuck away. From this height, nothing screamed. Nothing begged. Nothing died. Pain flattened itself into color and distance, and for a dangerous, fragile moment, Odysseus understood why gods never stayed down for too long.
If you stay high enough, you don’t have to hear the sound of bodies hitting the ground.
He closed his eyes.
For a heartbeat, Polites was there again—not as a ghost, not as blood on stone, but as laughter in his ears and weight on his shoulder. As before. Before the thud. Before the scream tore itself out of Ody’s throat and changed him into someone who measured the world in risks and losses.
I should’ve been hit instead, he thought, the way he always did. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It was just… factual. Like gravity.
Circe’s magic held them aloft, but there was nothing magical about the hollow that opened in his chest when he remembered that no one had pushed Polites out of the way. No hands had reached fast enough.
Polites had trusted him.
And Odysseus had failed.
The wind brushed his face, gentle, almost apologetic. It felt like the world was trying to comfort him, the way people did when they didn’t know what to say. He wondered how many sunsets Polites would never get to see. How many small, stupid joys—fruit plucked from trees, laughter over nothing—had been quietly erased the moment he hit the ground.
Ambition had filled the space Polites left behind. It kept Odysseus moving when grief threatened to rot him from the inside out. It gave him direction when love had become too dangerous to hold onto.
But ambition is a poor replacement for a heart.
It doesn’t warm you.
It doesn’t laugh with you.
It just drives you forward until you forget why you started grieving in the first place.
Up here, wrapped in Circe’s magic and the illusion of safety, Odysseus felt the ache of it all—the unbearable weight of continuing when the best part of him had been left behind in a cave, broken and bleeding and calling his title.
If I let myself enjoy this, he thought, I’ll have to lose it too.
So he memorized the sunset instead.
He carved it into his brain—the gold bleeding into red, the sky burning softly at the edges, the ocean swallowing the light without complaint. He locked the moment away where it couldn’t betray him, where it could sit beside Polites’ smile and the sound of his laugh and the way he’d said I’ve got you like it was a promise that could never break.
Odysseus smiled, because that was easier than crying.
High above the island, held by a goddess, he felt very small. Very mortal. Very alone.
And as he judged the distance between him and the ground miles below him, he understood with quiet certainty:
If she’d dropped him now, everything would end.
But some part of him would always be falling anyway.