The Lost Books of the Odyssey - By Zachary Mason Page 0,35

open the kingdom of shadows to the sun. He went to Death’s palace to get Helen but found only sticky red hand-prints and an overturned stool.

When all Paris’s soldiers had been turned to ash, Menelaus did as he had sworn and took Death’s throne. His commands rang through the onyx halls of Ilium and though the soldiers could have gone home then, every man chose to stay, except Agamemnon, who made a short trip back to Greece to see his wife.*

Menelaus passed his days in the citadel, reading Death’s book and walking his halls. When the moon shone just so on his great black throne there sometimes came a clattering from below and a white, pure light would shine up through a grating in the floor. In a bubbling voice with just the barest trace of her old music Helen would then speak to him, telling him the gossip of the underworld that was now her home, of the basements and dungeons stretching down below the city, the extremities of whose depths were even for her just a rumor. So Menelaus had his wife, though he never set eyes on her, and his revenge, though not by his own hand, and his enemy’s throne, though it was a terrible one. In due course he set out to add to his kingdom.

As for Odysseus, he slipped out of the city during the sack and took ship for Ithaca alone. He had hoped for a quick passage home but found himself opposed by strong winds and thick fogs. He found many islands but all were abandoned.

He was walking through still cold water toward a grey beach when Quickness appeared to him for the last time. She floated in the air, naked now and taller (he had never seen her naked before—she was as well made as he had imagined but seemed to have somehow moved beyond beauty or its absence), and sparks glowed in her hair. She touched his face (somehow he could not imagine her talking now). She looked viciously happy. Her eyes met his and then she disappeared and he was left wondering.

*In the eighteenth century B.C. there was a thriving cult of the goddess Quickness, known for virginity, quick thinking, harsh laughter and an association with owls. Her particular enemy was Death, with whom she had fought a number of inconclusive wars, her object in which seems to have been eradicating his kingdom and ushering in an era of immortality. Her cult was immensely popular but such was the ruggedness of montane Greece that it soon speciated into a dozen subgenera. By the twelfth century B.C. her incarnation as Pallas Athena had displaced all others and is now remembered to the exclusion of her sisters. Quickness was a more lively goddess than Athena, open to human sacrifice and, in contrast with her sister, as much a user and a predator as a lover of heroes.

*At the time, Achaean men would marry around fifteen and Achaean women around twelve, so this would be well into his married life.

*Upon returning from the Trojan War, Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra.

HELEN’S IMAGE

Years before the Trojan War, King Tyndareus decided it was time to marry off his daughter Helen and, as she was the same age, her cousin Penelope. Penelope was fair but Helen, who was actually the daughter of Zeus, though no mortal but her mother knew it, had beauty that broke men’s wills. Upon hearing of Helen’s impending introduction to society, the flower of Achaea’s bachelorhood descended on Tyndareus’s palace to court his favor and (since he was an indulgent father) his daughter’s. Odysseus, young and ambitious, came all the stormy way from Ithaca to win her, but when he arrived and saw the throng of suitors surrounding the girls he knew that for all his skill in war and presence of mind, his kingdom was small and poor, and more eligible princes abounded. Pensive, he haunted the periphery of the hall where Helen suffered gentlemen to wait on her and racked his mind for a stratagem. He was distracted by the braying laughter of Menelaus, a thick-headed bully whose ill breeding was evident in the offhand contempt with which he treated Penelope, who hovered near him, her eyes fixed on his face, filling his wine cup and laughing at jokes intended for Helen.

“I must have Helen or die,” Odysseus thought, “though she does not seem like the sort of thing that can be had. More like a raptor, bright-eyed,