Disbelief shone naked on her cold, beautiful face. How many times in her eternity had she been told no? She could not parse it. She looked like an eagle who had been diving upon a rabbit, and the next moment found itself in the mud.
“You are a fool,” she spat. “You are lucky I do not kill you where you stand. I spare you out of love for your father, but I am patron to you no more.”
The glory that had shone upon him vanished. He looked shriveled without it, gray and gnarled as olive bark. I was as shocked as Athena. What had he done? And so wrapped was I in these thoughts that I could not see the path we walked until it was too late.
“Telegonus,” Athena said. Her silver gaze darted to him. Her voice changed again; its iron grew filigree. “You have heard what I offered your brother. I offer it now to you. Will you sail and be my bulwark in Italy?”
I felt as though I had slipped from a cliff. I was in the air, falling, with nothing to hold me.
“Son,” I cried. “Say nothing.”
Fast as arrow-shot, she turned on me. “You dare to obstruct me again? What more do you want from me, witch? I have sworn an oath I will not harm him. I offer him a gift that men would trade their souls for. Will you keep him hobbled all his life, like a broken horse?”
“You do not want him,” I said. “He killed Odysseus.”
“Odysseus killed himself,” she said. The words hissed through the room like a scythe’s blade. “He lost his way.”
“It was you who made him lose it.”
Anger smoked in her eyes. I saw the thought in them, how her spearhead would look tearing the blood from my throat.
“I would have made him a god,” she said. “An equal. But in the end, he was too weak.”
It was all the apology you would ever get from a god. I bared my teeth and slashed the spear-tip through the air. “You will not have my son. I will fight you before I let you take him.”
“Mother.” The voice was soft at my side. “May I speak?”
I was breaking to pieces. I knew what I would see when I looked at him, his eager, pleading hope. He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms. I had let Penelope stay on my island so she would not lose her son. I would lose mine instead.
“I have dreamed of this,” he said. “Of golden fields that stretch out, unbroken, to the horizon. Orchards, gleaming rivers, thriving flocks. I used to think it was Ithaca I saw.”
He was trying to speak gently, to rein in the excitement that rose in him like a flood. I thought of Icarus, who had died when he was free. Telegonus would die if he were not. Not in flesh and years. But all that was sweet in him would wither and fall away.
He took my hand. The gesture was like a bard’s. But were we not in a sort of song? This was the refrain we had practiced so often.
“There is risk, I know it, but you have taught me to be careful. I can do this, Mother. I want to.”
I was a gray space filled up with nothing. What could I say? One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.
“My son,” I said, “it is yours to decide.”
Joy broke from him like a wave. I turned away so I would not have to see it. Athena would be glad, I thought. Here was her vengeance at last.
“Be ready for the ship,” she said. “It comes this afternoon. I do not send another.”
The light faded back to simple sun. Penelope and Telemachus eased away. Telegonus embraced me as he had not since he was a child. As maybe he never had. Remember this, I told myself. His wide shoulders, the curve of the bones in his back, the warmth of his breath. But my mind felt parched and windswept.
“Mother? Can you not be happy for me?”
No, I wanted to shout at him. No, I cannot. Why must I be happy? Is it not enough that I let you go? But I did not want for that to be the last he saw of me, his mother shrieking and keening as if he were dead, though he was still filled