Chapter Text
So close.
Odysseus had been so close.
He could see each tree on the soaring cliffs, the flags that topped each ship at port, even the vague outlines of sailors as they walked the decks.
Poseidon's storm had whipped up the winds and waves into a frothy fervor, and when it had died, the shore was gone.
Maybe he was still there, and the earth-shaker had recanted on his promise, had lifted the ocean over Ithaca's shoreline and drowned her, maybe Odysseus had killed his family as much as if he had lifted the executioner's sword.
What a fool he was.
Poisonous hatred spilled over from Odysseus' heart. A damnable fool.
Why had he not taken the deal, died to save Penelope, Telemachus, his kingdom? Either he had traded his own worthless life for theirs, or he had tortured a god with his own instrument only to die of starvation in the open ocean, floundering in a mess of splintered wood and debris. He should just succumb, let the gods have what they so clearly wanted, what they would not stop taking and taking and taking until they had.
Saltwater would taste like sweet wine if it meant escape from the agony of the endless chase, the hope and the betrayal and the hope yet again. It would fill his lungs and pull him with its weight to the Styx and its flow under the waters of the earth, drift him to where his mother waited, waited...
He released his hold on the debris beneath him, let the watery fingers of placid waves pull him into their arms, but then his wife appeared before him, as she so often did, imprinted inside the lids of his eyes.
She was dripping with pearls, silver, the crown of Ithaca and the arm band he had given her at their wedding—the regalia of a queen whose king was leaving for war.
"No one will kill you but Time or me," she had said.
"No one else has the right," she had said, and the dark warmth of her eyes was cold like iron, and the callouses of her lithe fingers had pushed themselves like brands into the skin on either side of his face, where she held his lips to hers and reminded him where he belonged.
Odysseus kicked for the surface and clawed back out of the water, draping over splintered beams and coughing brine onto the mess of wood and rope.
He clung to the debris and wept to think of the gods' genius, picking him for their torture when he would not, could not die.
Telemachus greeted rosy-fingered Dawn as she emerged from the water and crept across the horizon.
He could feel Elatus' long-suffering gaze on the back of his neck, but the salty morning breeze was intoxicating. Telemachus breathed it in and leaned further over the side of the ship, one arm thrust into the open air to feel the wind's mighty pull, the other clinging to the rope of the port brace—the only thing holding him back from tumbling into the sea.
The old captain sighed, and Telemachus smiled. "You have something to say, Elatus," he called over his shoulder. It was not a question.
"Only that if you drown, your mother will have my head, my prince," Elatus said. Telemachus often accused the captain of his guard of being more of a worrier than his own mother. "And the helmsman is getting nervous."
Telemachus shook his head and swung himself off of the rail and onto the topdeck. The helmsman stared blankly ahead, and his hands tightened around the steering oars. "I meant no offense, my lord."
"My prince," Telemachus corrected him lightly. "And none taken, Bartolome. Though I would not be much of an island prince if I could not swim, would I?"
"Let us risk it with a neck less valuable than your own." Elatus clasped Telemachus across the shoulder and led him from the stern and onto the cover deck, over the benches of oarsmen.
The bireme was not kitted for warfare, with only a third of its usual oarsmen and ten deck hands. Elatus had objected strongly, thought that they should arrive in one of the triremes to project Ithaca's strength, but Telemachus would not see a single trireme leave Ithaca's waters while his mothers halls remained infested with the vermin that called themselves her suitors. It had taken his mother's convincing to bring his own guardsmen.
And besides, the winds were strong from Sparta this time of year.
The oarsmen sat on their benches belowdecks with their oars rested across their laps, and both mainsail and foremast sail were tight with wind.
Sailing always left Telemachus double-minded.
His heart flew when the salt mist brushed through his hair, when the brace ropes bit into his palms—too soft for any respectable prince. Even now, he leaned against the rail and marveled at the feeling of stone-shining waves breaking across the bow, and the rush of water beneath them. It was the closest mortals could come to flight.
But then his mind wandered to his mother, tireless at her loom, and her days spent pacifying scores of hungry men to protect Ithaca from their wrath.
What right did he have to this feeling, when each journey left her alone with them? Was he not his mother's protector?
"You haven't yet told me how the council went," Elatus said, jarring Telemachus from his thoughts. He leaned next to him at the rail, both looking out to the sea.
The council.
"It was useless," Telemachus said, and he put his guilt from his mind with a laugh. "Pointless posturing about trade routes with no decision made except that we needed another council. But Ithaca was represented."
If Telemachus were to give up his father's seat at these councils, Ithaca's sovereignty would be called into question, and she would fall to invasion within a fortnight. No matter how many friends his father had, his island's future balanced on a knife's edge while he was missing.
Telemachus leaned on his forearms and his smile warmed. "And my grandfather was pleased to see me."
Elatus snorted. "I wouldn't be surprised if a statue of you were erected at the docks before your next visit. The king thinks the world of you."
Icarius of Sparta was a hulking man—a trait Telemachus had not inherited—with a thundering voice that echoed when it sang your praises, and thundered with his judgement.
"No, he does not," Telemachus said, "I'm still my father's son."
Elatus had nothing to say to that.
No one did, at the mention of his father. Only his mother.
Even the few guards left who had known him, remaining on light duty at the palace, hesitated to speak of him, as though Telemachus were a sea shell that would shatter at the mere mention of the man.
Elatus said something else, then, about deck crew rotations or where to dock for the night, but a lean shadow flickered over the surface of the water, just off the port side, and when it caught Telemachus' eye and he looked up to find its origin, he found an owl flying, even faster than the wind carried them.
Athena.
Telemachus knew it was her.
He stood straight and bolted down the cover deck.
"My prince?" Elatus called after him.
He followed the goddess to the bow and watched her speed ahead of them, tilt delicately and veer sharp to the port side until she was angled toward the open sea, far from the shore that the bireme traced its path alongside.
"Hard to port!" Telemachus called.
The bow master balked and straightened from his place against the foremast. "Sir?"
Elatus caught up, cursing under his breath, and he said, "Are you deaf, man? The prince said hard to port! Call it."
The bow master called the order down the deck, and the ship slowly began to turn, and Telemachus did not take his eyes off of the owl ahead of them.
"Would you mind telling me where this sudden fancy comes from, my prince?" Elatus said under his breath. He stood close to Telemachus and talked into his ear so the deck hands wouldn't hear him questioning the order as they scrambled with the ropes, adjusted to catch the wind for the new heading.
"The bird," Telemachus said, amused that he was the only one to notice such an obvious omen. A nation of sailors, Ithacans were a superstitious people—the land of augurs, some called them. How had they missed it?
"The bird?" Elatus followed Telemachus' gaze, but his voice didn't change. His questions remained quiet and steady. "What bird do you see, my prince?"
Telemachus could not lose her, he could not look away, but his shoulders tensed with the urge to look at the captain. "You can't see her?"
"Her?"
Telemachus nodded. "The Lady Athena." The owl shifted its trajectory again. "Harder!" Telemachus called. "Port!"
Elatus kissed his knuckles and raised them to the sky, and muttered a blessing to Pallas.
Finally, the ship followed her guide, off into the boundless sea.
The bow master returned, breathing heavily. "I don't mean to question the prince—" he said.
"Then don't," said Elatus.
"But why—"
Telemachus could not turn to look, but he heard the ringing scrape of metal pulled from a scabbard, and he knew that much more insubordination would get this man killed. "What is your name, bow master?" Telemachus said.
The cover deck creaked with footfalls, and Telemachus did not have to turn to know that his royal guard had been alerted by their captain and were closing in about them.
"My name? My name is— is Baton, my prince," said the bow master.
"I am having a vision, Baton," Telemachus said. "Tell the crew. I see my Lady before me, flying ahead. She points me somewhere, and I must follow, or her wrath will come down on us all."
"Oh," Baton said, breathless. "Forgive me, my prince, I did not—"
"You heard him," Elatus said flatly. "Tell the crew. Or you'll be visiting Alídoupos."
Footsteps scampered away, and Elatus fell in to Telemachus' left, his sword sliding back into the scabbard.
"Was that necessary?" Telemachus sighed. "This is foolish. This ship isn't equipped to leave sight of shore."
"Can you still see her?" Elatus asked.
"I can." The swiftly-climbing sun caught her feathers at the tips of her wings and made them shine like burnished gold. She was not speaking to him, he could not feel her as he usually did, but the bird's size and beauty were unmistakable.
"Then we are going the right way."
Telemachus' hands gripped the rail tighter. "I envy you your faith in me, friend." He laughed and shook his head. "You are almost as bad as my mother."
"And you are bad at insults." Elatus chuckled, and clapped him on the shoulder before walking off—no doubt to check that Baton was fulfilling his task to satisfaction.
When he was alone, Telemachus whispered, "My Lady?"
She was silent, still.
Why was she silent?
Still, Telemachus trusted, and so the ship followed her flight into the empty ocean, and did not waver.
The sun had fallen past mid-day when the Lady changed her flight. She began to circle, in ever-tightening loops as she descended. "We are almost there," Telemachus said—Baton had since taken a place at his side to send Telemachus' directions sternward.
"Praise Athena," the bow master said, and he leaned over the rail. "Do you see where she is leading us?"
Telemachus could not. They were yet too far. It was only Telemachus' faith in his patron that pushed him forward. The owl finished her descent, having vanished to almost a speck in the distance, and she remained there, shining in the sun.
It was only as Telemachus began to see what approached that the bird melted from view, the vision ending in a shimmer of godly light.
She had led them to some small wreckage.
Shattered boards and flayed rope bobbed in the choppy sea, scattered about like pieces of a fragmented amphora. No storm lingered on the horizon, no other vessel had been spotted that would have destroyed whatever this small craft had once been.
"Maybe it carried treasure," a deck hand whispered.
Telemachus walked the length of the starboard side of the ship, where they were pulling up alongside the wreckage. He helped the men pull up the sails, untied ropes and slung them to crew mates further up in the rigging. All the while he scanned the debris.
Finally, Telemachus spotted it. Hidden under a knot of splintered boards, a lump shifted, out of time with the rocking waves. "Someone is down there," he breathed.
The deck hand closest to him--Kleion, Telemachus had sailed with him before--cursed and shouted "Man overboard!"
And the cover deck erupted.
Telemachus was over the rail and climbing down the rungs tacked into the outer hull before Elatus could shout "Telemachus, no."
He gripped the thin iron loops and climbed down until his shins were submerged and the waves lapped up to his waist. The shock and sting of ocean water bit at his sandaled feet, climbed up his dampened chiton.
The wreckage was shifting closer, now, and the clump of debris was breaking apart.
Telemachus was right. It was a man.
He was held afloat by one arm draped over a heavy beam--his wrist tangled in thick rope, the skin shredded and watery blood clouding the water around him.
"My prince," Elatus called down to him, "come back!"
When Telemachus looked up, two men were following him along parallel rungs down the hull.
"No!" Telemachus shouted. "Don't follow." He could see it now--one falling into the water, the other diving in after him... Better for Telemachus to be the only one at risk. "Throw me a rope!"
Elatus cursed, but the men retreated, and a rope slithered down the hull and into the water. Telemachus knotted it loosely around the one of his forearms so he did not lose it, and jumped into the water and debris.
No amount of training stopped the dizziness of sinking into frigid water.
Gasping through the cold-shock, Telemachus pushed wreckage aside until he reached the castaway.
The man's head was held above water because of the unnatural twist of his shoulder around the beam, but only just, and it was impossible to tell whether his chest rose and fell, because of the rocking waves. Telemachus steadied himself with the same beam and treaded water. He jabbed his other hand under the man's jaw, where the life blood flowed, and pressed an ear to the frayed chiton over his breast.
Faint, fluttering. Telemachus felt it, the pulse of blood, and he heard raspy pulls for breath.
The man was alive.
Telemachus would keep him that way.
He lolled the man's dark head against the beam, a less unnatural angle that would ease strain on the neck and keep him breathing air, not water.
A high wave broke—was the sky beginning to darken?—and Telemachus pinned the man to the beam as it rolled over the both of them. He drew in a deep breath when he surfaced, and ignored the increasing cries of his men on the ship.
Long and water-heavy hair had flowed over the man's face. Telemachus pushed it back and looked the man over.
To pull him from the water, the rope would either have to be untangled from its tight knotting around his wrist, or cut away, and the sky was darkening, and the waves were increasing in pitch. They were running out of time.
"You have to leave him!" Elatus' cry cut through the chaos above.
Telemachus felt about underwater until his fingers brushed the thin scabbard at his calf—a dagger, his father's, supposedly, given by his mother to mark his first deer hunt. He held the man's head above water with one hand, and rolled the beam with the other until he had a clear view of the tangled rope and the man's shredded wrist. Then he pulled the dagger from the water, and sawed at the rope.
It was thick, of excellent make, and it frayed slowly as he worked at it.
In the distance, Zeus stirred up the clouds, threw a lightning bolt, and the crack of it traveled fast and deafening across the choppy water.
One coil of the rope snapped. Two were left.
The waves had risen to the height of a man. They were not cresting yet, just rising and falling, but with each plummet Telemachus nearly lost his grip on the man.
"Telemachus, please!"
The rain hit as a wall. It fell in stinging sheets, whipped by the sudden fierce winds. Telemachus blinked water from his eyes as the second coil snapped. He was so close. Another wave rose beneath them.
He shook sodden hair from his face, and when he looked up, Elatus had climbed to the other side of the rail, a rope tied around his waist.
The icy water had not struck him breathless the way that sight did.
"You fool!" he shouted over the wrath of the storm, "Get back!"
But Telemachus already knew that Elatus would not leave him. He hastened with the last length of rope, cursed the blade's dullness.
The wave fell.
This time, a crest of white foam broke at its edge—it pulled the two of them into the swell. Telemachus slammed the point of the dagger into the beam and pulled the man against his chest and was nearly braced before the wave crashed over them.
The beam rolled.
The salt burned his eyes when he pried them open, and there was little to see—the water was nearly black as the roiling skies blotted out the afternoon sun. Telemachus let himself ride the swirling current as it seemed to pull him down, further down, and he pulled the man with him with an iron grip under his free shoulder and at the back of his neck.
All children of Ithaca knew that to resist the wave was to break your own neck.
A slender shape slithered before Telemachus' blurry vision, slapped against his throat and coiled around it. A snake?
Telemachus thrashed against it, but he could not spare a hand to claw at the tightening cord.
The rolling ceased, the beam began bobbing in place, floating upward at last.
When they surfaced, the man coughed, drew in gasping breaths, but Telemachus could not breathe. He let go of the man to unwind the cord from his neck as his lungs burned and his vision spotted. It was not easily torn away. The man began slipping into the water, and as Telemachus finally pried his fingers between the rough fibers and the raw skin at his neck, he knew what it was.
In the wave, the last coil of the rope had snapped.
The man was sinking into the water, and this time, there would be nothing holding him in place.
Telemachus forced a wheezing breath, and dove.
The man had not sunk very deep, yet, but another wave was growing, Telemachus could feel its pull, even stronger than the last.
He gripped the man under his arms and pulled, kicked to the surface and ignored the fire raging through his muscles, until he forced the man upward with as much force as his arms had, draped yet again across the beam.
Telemachus had not broken the surface before he scrambled to unknot the rope around his forearm, the one from the ship. He tied it in a loop under the man's arms, scrabbled for the iron bars along the hull, and gripped them tight.
Praise the gods, Elatus had not been wrenched from his place at the rail. Telemachus cried, "Pull him," around the burn of saltwater in his throat and his lungs. He would not be able to carry the man up the side of the hull himself.
The weight in his arms grew lighter as the rope was pulled by the men on deck, and Telemachus reached for the next handhold, when a glimmer caught his eye.
A lightning bolt rippled across the clouds above them, and the light danced off of a silver shape in the debris below.
His father's dagger.
"No," Telemachus moaned, and he reached for it, letting the rope bear the brunt of the man's weight. Shouts fell from above, and the man began to sink.
Telemachus caught him, and schemed frantically. If he could reach the rope that was still tied around the beam, attach it to the hull, he could pull the man up and then come back down, retrieve the—
"What are you waiting for?!" Elatus called. His voice was harsh, panicked. "Highness, the storm is too powerful. You must abandon him!"
Hot tears mixed with the icy, pelting rain. The beam rolled, and the dagger slipped underwater.
One more piece of his father, lost to him forever.
Telemachus hefted the man's full weight once more, and lifted himself another step up the side of the hull. He would let himself feel the loss later. Elatus was right—if they did not make it to the deck soon, both of them would be lost to the water.
Waves slapped the hull, bashed Telemachus and the man against it, and one hit left the already-undulating world spinning before Telemachus' eyes, but he pulled them up, rung by rung, until Elatus took the man's weight from him up and onto the deck, and Telemachus could crawl between the slats of the rail onto solid wood.
He rolled onto his back, felt the deck heave and fall, watched storm clouds skip and swirl.
Elatus knelt next to him and offered him a hand. "We've secured your castaway in the cargo hold, you mad boy," he said, hoarse over the raging wind and deck hands' shouted orders. "Let's get you down there with him."
Telemachus hummed and pushed his hand away, stumbled to his feet and knocked a hand against his head until the world's swimming was at least at a predictable pattern. "No," he mumbled. "Need my help."
"They don't need your help," Elatus said. He grabbed Telemachus' wrist. Anger that had been building since Telemachus decided to climb overboard was spilling over.
Telemachus wrenched away. He said, "I'm their prince," because it was as simple as that. And he climbed into the rigging.