Page 34 of Odette's Vow

She looked at me with a tender smile. “Do not grieve for me, my son. My time has passed, but yours is still unfolding. You must return to the living world. There are dangers that await you on your return home.”

I nodded, listening intently as she continued.

“In Ithaca, suitors plague your house, seeking to take your place. They consume your wealth and dishonour your home, believing you are dead. Penelope, your faithful wife, holds them at bay with her cleverness, but she cannot do so forever.”

The thought of Penelope, steadfast and enduring, filled me with both hope and dread. “How do I get home, Mother?”

“You have always been resourceful and wise, my boy. The gods have not finished testing you, but remember that thoseyou love remain ever hopeful of your return. Let that be your fuel.”

I nodded at her words even as a gnawing doubt took hold, and my mind flickered back to the last time Penelope saw me, a horrible nightmare come to life …

She had been standing at the window of our home, a modest estate in Ithaca, watching me plough one of the fields. How strange; I had never considered the event from her perspective before. Perhaps because this was a place of pasts and futures, where I could consider something I should never have done. Something for which the gods would likely never forgive me.

I wondered if Penelope did.

As if thinking of her could conjure her form in this realm, she appeared, speaking the oracle’s words at me: if I went to war, I would be away for twenty years and return a beggar. I wasn’t sure how this could come to pass if the war was only to last for nine, but my wife seemed certain. Now she watched me as, like a madman, I sowed the field with salt instead of seeds. I knew she wasn’t the only one watching me; there were other eyes on me out there. I could feel them. Men who were angry that it was my cunning that originally bound them to this war.

But I did not want to be away from my family for twenty years. My son had just turned one. Please, gods, don’t take me away from him.

My mind was now, somehow, in Penelope’s body, glued to watching myself out the window. I could tell there were men behind me. I heard them gathering my son into their arms. He was crying out for his mother, but she – I – remained glued to watching myself.

They placed my son in the field. I was driving the plough straight toward him. If I truly were a madman, I would not think. I would run him over without a moment’s hesitation. There would be other children between us, I reasoned to myself.I knew what happened in this memory, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself away. In case this time it ended differently. In case this time it ended with his cry as the wheel began to crush his skull …

“You must wake before it is too late,” Penelope told me.

“You must wake.”

“You must WAKE!”

12

Odette

“You must wake!” I said, louder this time, trying to shake Odysseus from his nightmare.

He continued muttering incomprehensible words, caught in the grip of his terror, his hands clenching and unclenching, grappling with unseen adversaries.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, wild with confusion and fear as he jerked upright. His movement almost knocked me off the side of the narrow bed, but I grabbed the edge just in time to steady myself. His strong, calloused hand instinctively reached out, grasping my wrist tightly, as if anchoring himself to reality. For a moment, his grip was almost too tight, but then he blinked again, recognition dawning in his eyes as he realised who I was and where we found ourselves.

“You’re awake, you’re okay.” I rested my now released hand on his arm, stroking it gently, hoping to calm him.

His wild panic, near-silent though it was, slowly faded and he nodded, his body falling back on the bed and his breath coming in ragged gasps. When they eventually evened out, I asked the question on my mind, my eyes searching his for the truth.

“Who were you screaming for?”

“I was screaming?” His voice was so hoarse that he answered his own question. He swallowed, as if trying to reconcile reality with whatever had happened in his head. I held a cup of water up to his lips, and waited.

After taking several small sips, he answered me. “My son, Telemachus,” he rasped.

I paused, considering my response, the rapid beat of my heart against my ribs. “How did he die?”

Odysseus struggled back up into a sitting position, removing my hand from his arm, which, for some reason, made me feel less than.

“He didn’t.”

I didn’t press, though I wanted to know, and somehow he must have sensed that. Or he needed to get it off his chest, which I could understand. So he continued.

“The men came to fetch me for the war, and I didn’t want to go. I pretended to be a madman, but they saw my ruse for what it was. They placed my son in front of my plough, where I’d been sowing salt instead of seed, forcing me to choose between killing my son or going to war.”

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