islands, the Sirens, those birds with women’s heads who lure men to their death with song. At last I could delay no more. “Your path takes you past Scylla as well. You know her?”
He knew. I watched the blow fall. Six men, or twelve.
“There must be some way to prevent her,” he said. “Some weapon I might use.”
It was one of my favorite things about him: how he always fought for his chance. I turned away, so I would not have to see his face when I said, “No. There is nothing. Not even for such a mortal as you. I faced her once, long ago, and escaped only through magic and godhead. But the Sirens, there you may use your tricks. Fill your men’s ears with wax, and leave your own free. If you tie yourself to the mast, you may be the first man to ever hear their song and tell the tale. Would that not make a good story for your wife and son?”
“It would.” But his voice was dull as a ruined blade. There was nothing I could do. He was passing from my hands.
We carried Elpenor to his pyre. We did the rites for him, sang his deeds of war, set his name in the record of men who lived. My nymphs wailed, and the men wept, but he and I stood dry and silent. After, we loaded his ship with all the stores of mine that it could hold. His men stood at the ropes and oars. They were eager now, darting glances at each other, scuffling at the deck with their feet. I felt hollowed, gouged like a beach beneath a keel.
Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.
He stepped onto his ship, and when he turned back to look for me, I was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
HOW WOULD THE SONGS frame the scene? The goddess on her lonely promontory, her lover dwindling in the distance. Her eyes wet but inscrutable, cast inward to private thoughts. Beasts gather at her hem. The lindens bloom. And at the last, just before he disappears over the horizon, she lifts one hand and touches it to her belly.
My guts began to boil the moment his anchor was up. I, who had never been sick in my life, now was sick every moment. I heaved until my throat was torn, my stomach rattling like an old nut, my mouth cracked at its corners. As if my body would cast up everything it had eaten for a hundred years.
My nymphs wrung their hands and clutched each other. They had never seen such a thing. In pregnancy, our kind glowed and swelled like buds. They thought I was poisoned, or else cursed with some unholy transformation, my body turning itself inside out. When they tried to help me, I pushed them away. The child I carried would be called demigod, but that word was deceiving. From my blood he would have a few special graces, beauty or speed, strength or charm. But all the rest would come from his father, for mortality always bred truer than godhead. His flesh would be subject to the same thousand pricks and fatalities that threaten every man. I trusted such frailty to no god, no family of mine, to none but myself alone.
“Leave now,” I said to them in my new, ragged voice. “I do not care how you do it—send to your fathers and go. This is for me.”
What they thought of such words, I never knew. I was seized again, my eyes blind and watering. By the time I found my way back to the house, they were gone. I suppose their fathers obliged because they feared pregnancy by a mortal might be catching. The house felt strange without them, but I had no time to think of it, and no time to mourn for Odysseus either. The sickness did not cease. Every hour it rode me. I could not understand why it took me so hard. I wondered if it was the mortal blood fighting with mine, or if I was cursed indeed, if some stray hex of Aeëtes’ had circled all this while and found me at last. But the affliction yielded to no counterspell, not even moly. It is no mystery, I said to myself. Have you not always insisted on being difficult in everything you