The Lost Books of the Odyssey - By Zachary Mason Page 0,49

greenery sprouting from oak trees and withering away, through all of which Athena’s grin was immovable) and asked to be young again, or at least not old, and to spend eternity making his way from a war indefinitely far in the past to an island indefinitely far in the future. He would remember that the war had been painful, but that he had won it. The details of the island would be vague—splintered images would come from time to time—but he would be certain that it represented the consummation of every desire. He did not want to know that he was a ghost. Let trials and cruel kings and monsters come, he said, and let them all be overcome at the last second. Above all, he said, stay with me this time.* She would, she said, and she had.

Athena granted his request. Moreover, as she knew full well that the age of heroes was fading like an ember, she turned her back on Mount Olympus and went with him.

Much as she dotes on him her mind sometimes wanders and she looks back in on Earth. When this happens a certain comet passes through the constellation Orion for the space of seven days before slipping back out into the great night. My grandfather was privileged to observe this rare celestial phenomenon and averred that his grandfather before him had seen it in his youth.*

*In the standard Odyssey, Athena did not speak to Odysseus between his departure from Troy and his arrival back on Ithaca.

*This idiosyncratic and oddly personal interjection is the only one of its kind in the Lost Books. Otherwise, the narrator does not offer direct commentary in those stories told in the third person.

STONE GARDEN

When Odysseus was in the land of the dead the veiled ghost of a woman sought him out, the murmuring shades making way for her. The beauty of her eyes, whose green was just visible through her cloth, was such that Odysseus suffered her to approach and drink from his sacrifice’s blood. She said:

There was a time before I became a gardener when my life was full of noise, children, cousins and most of all suitors, of whom I had many and spurned most. I had a rival, powerful and jealous, and things came to a crisis. Afterwards I retired to tend my island, taking delight only in form, making every tree on the hill, every stone on the beach reflect the harmony of my design. I rejoiced in my garden and had no visitors and was very lonely. Sometimes I thought I heard the footsteps of tentative guests, unsure of their welcome, and my heart quickened. But when I went to meet them the footsteps stopped, leaving only their echo among the multiplying statues of the garden. I hissed and cried my frustration and the days were long for me.

One day I thought I saw someone walking along my well-tended paths. I went to meet him and found not a visitor or a statue but a silver disc hanging in the air, reflecting the brilliant sun. I stared into it as it floated toward me, unearthly, the moon come down to haunt me. A flash of bronze in my peripheral vision and my mind is full of the distinctive lineaments of a sword.

Suddenly it is twilight. A shadow with a blade and shield stands beside me in the half darkness, insubstantial as smoke. But there is someone else—I turn and see a beardless young man with blond oiled hair. I am delighted—it is my lover from so long ago, so slender and fleet. I reach for his hand, which he gives me willingly. Hermes* says, “I had hoped not to see you again, Medusa.”

*Lord of snakes and god of ghosts, Hermes was the psychopompos, the god who conducted newly dead souls to the underworld.

CASSANDRA’S RULE

Running from her brother through the old city in the early morning when the shadows were sharp and her skin iridescent in the sun she found a refuge in the temple of Apollo. Within, it was dark and cool and the silence was a comfort—she lay down and put her head on her arms, watching the statue of the god, who seemed lost in thought. She fell into that middle sleep where everything is grey stillness and stayed there until the grey coalesced into a beautiful man speaking softly of an island full of cattle whose death would be many men’s undoing, of a mother wading in the River Styx