Page 70 of Odette's Vow

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I started making out their shapes. There were wolves, lions, even cows. “That’s strange …”

No one answered me. Why would a cow be so close to something that could kill it? Why weren’t the predators attacking it? If anything, the creatures all seemed wary of us, and yet seemingly wanted to get closer to us, to the fire. I continued to watch them stalk around the perimeter, edging closer, only to scurry back into the shadows when they thought one of the guards would spot them.

Did they want warmth? Is that what they were seeking?

They moved strangely, with a grace and unnatural intelligence that said they knew exactly who we were and how they would be treated. They treated each other with care, too, which was more unsettling than anything else I had seen.

Suddenly, there came a rustling from the jungle surrounding us, and I was sure the creatures had finally come to some sort of consensus, that they were now ready to act, to attack us, when Odysseus emerged from the trees.

“What happened?” I asked as he strode past me and directly up to one of the guards. They murmured together for a moment before the guard nodded and went off to share whatever necessary information with the other men. The women, as always, were ignored.

I stood, resettling my chiton around my legs and following after Odysseus who was now scrambling through the chest of supplies. He pulled out a small knife, then turned towards me. I saw the wildness in his eyes, the tension drawn across his face.

“Odysseus?”

Within two strides he was in front of me, firmly grabbing one of my bare shoulders and forcing me to kneel on the ground.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” I tried, gods knew I tried, to keep the terror out of my voice.

But when his answer came, it did nothing to assuage the fear in me.

“This is the island of Aeaea, home to the witch Circe. She does not fear men, nor will she tolerate your presence. I have to protect you,” he murmured, as he began cutting my hair, the sharp blades slicing through the strands.

I tried to shake my head, but he held me firmly as he continued cutting, until it felt like he wasn’t cutting hair but parts of my very being, any last source of the woman I once was dying as the strands fell into my hands.

Only when I saw splashes of water appear beside them did I realise I was crying. “Why?” I whispered.

“She has turned the men to pigs. The creatures you might have spied around here are no creatures, but humans she has tamed to her hand. I can only imagine what she might do to a woman she would see as a threat.”

I was quiet for a moment. The only sounds were those of the other women crying around us, as the men did the same to them. “Perhaps she just sought to protect herself from the men. Perhaps this is an unnecessary measure …”

“You did not see what I saw, Odette. I am doing this to keep you safe.” He paused, his eyes locking with mine. “I can’t lose you.”

His confession hung in the space between us, and I searched his eyes, half expecting him to elaborate, when a voice interrupted, dripping with curiosity and amusement.

“Well, well, well. Who do we have here?”

I turned to see a woman standing at the edge of the forest clearing where we had gathered, her presence an unmistakable otherworldly power.

Circe.

24

Οdysseus

Ayear had passed since we’d arrived on the island of Aeaea.

Circe had seen to it that the rest of my men were also turned into pigs. The women, she turned into birds. “Freed from the slavery they were so clearly in,” she claimed. No matter that they were now forced to dig worms from the dirt with beaks that were once their mouths.

All the women, that was, except for Odette.

Odette, Circe had decided in front of all the remaining animals in the clearing that night, was to be her maid, someone to braid her hair and provide companionship, comfort, conversation. While I, under threat of transfiguration, was expected to warm her bed at night. I knew then that she had seen me cutting off Odette’s hair, that she knew I cared for her. That she would keep Odette as a woman if only to keep me on a leash, and it grated me that it worked.

For twelve months I had warmed that witch’s bed. Whatever she had laced into the wine that first night had worked as she’d intended, and I’d been compliant, if unwilling, while my cock remained hard enough for her to ride. It made me think of Odette, and the other Trojan women in the war. But I clenched my jaw and got through it.

Circe must have also given herself a fertility tonic of some kind that night, for she immediately fell pregnant with my son, Telegonus. He now lay in a crib beside me, slobbering on a wooden horse the size of my palm that I had carved for him one evening in the clearing where we had first landed on Aeaea. I had hoped Odette would meet me that night, in the clearing under the full moon, while Circe was busy with her spells – and whatever else she did at the witch’s hour that she felt absolved her of her behaviour – but Odette never showed.

We had only been able to meet half a dozen times at best over the last year, clandestine meetings with whispered words in code, on our guard, alert to the tiniest movement.

---