Circe

When I returned, Penelope was at the loom again. She looked over her shoulder. “It seems we have a break in the weather. The seas should be calm enough now. Telegonus, would you learn to swim?”

Of all the things I had expected after our conversation, that was not one. But I had no time to think of objecting. Telegonus nearly knocked over his cup in his eagerness. As they left through the garden, I heard him explaining my plants. Since when did he know what hornbeam was, or hemlock? But he pointed to them both and named their properties.

Telemachus had come up silent beside me. “They look like mother and son,” he said.

It had been my thought exactly, but I felt a spurt of anger to hear him voice it. I went out to the garden without answering. I knelt in my beds and yanked up weeds.

He surprised me by following. “I do not mind helping your son, but let us be honest, that sty you told us to fix has not been used in years. Will you give me something to do that is actually useful?”

I sat back on my heels, regarding him. “Royalty does not usually beg for chores.”

“My subjects seem to have left me with some spare time. Your island is very beautiful, but I will go mad if I have to keep idle on it day after day.”

“What can you do then?”

“The usual. Fish and shoot. Tend the goats you do not have. Carve and build. I could fix your son’s boat.”

“Is something wrong with it?”

“The rudder is slow and unreliable, the sail too short and the mast too long. It wallows like a cow in any surge.”

“It did not look so bad to me.”

“I do not mean it was not impressive for a first try. Just that I am shocked we did not sink on the way over.”

“It is charmed against sinking,” I said. “How did you become such a shipwright?”

“I am from Ithaca,” he said simply.

“And? Is there anything else I should know about?”

His face was serious, as if giving a diagnosis. “The sheep are matted enough to ruin the spring shearing. Three tables in your hall are unbalanced, and the garden path flagstones wobble. There are at least two birds’ nests in your eaves.”

I was half amused, half offended. “Is that all?”

“I have not made a complete survey.”

“In the morning you may fix the boat with Telegonus. As for now, we will start with the sheep.”

He was right, they were matted and, after the wet winter, muddied past their shoulders. I brought out the brush and a large bowl filled with one of my draughts.

He examined it. “What does it do?”

“It cleans the mud without stripping the fleece.”

He knew his business and went to it efficiently. My sheep were tame, but he had his own tricks of coaxing and soothing. His hand on their backs guided them effortlessly here and there.

I said, “You have done this before.”

“Of course. This wash is excellent, what is it?”

“Thistle, artemisia, celery, sulfur. Magic.”

“Ah.”

I had the trimming knife by then and set to cutting out burrs. He asked about the animals’ pedigree and my breeding methods. He wanted to know if it was a spell that kept them tame or my influence. When his hands were occupied he lost his awkward stiffness. Soon enough he was telling me stories of his follies at goat herding and I was laughing. I did not notice the sun drop into the sea, and I startled when Penelope and Telegonus appeared beside us. I could feel Penelope’s gaze on us as we rose and wiped the mud from our hands.

“Come,” I said. “You must be hungry.”

That night Penelope left dinner early again. I wondered if she meant to make a point, but her weariness seemed real enough. She was still grieving, I reminded myself. We all were. But the swimming had done my son good, or maybe it was Penelope’s attention. He was red-cheeked from wind and wanted to talk. Not about his father, which was still too much a wound, but his old, first love: heroic stories. There had apparently been a bard on Ithaca who was skilled at such tales, and he wanted to hear from Telemachus the versions that he’d told. Telemachus began: Bellerophon and Perseus, Tantalus, Atalanta. He had taken the wooden chair again, and I the silver. Telegonus leaned against a wolf on the floor. Looking between them I felt a strange, almost drunken sense of unreality. Had it really only been two days since they had come? It felt much longer. I was not used to so much company, so many conversations. My son begged for another story, and another, and Telemachus obliged. His hair was windblown from our work outside, and the firelight lay along his cheek. So much of him looked older than he was, but there was a sweetly made curve there that might almost be called boyish. He was no storyteller, as he had said, but that made it more enjoyable somehow, watching his serious face as he described flying horses and golden apples. The room was warm and the vintage good. My skin had begun to feel soft as wax. I leaned forward.

“Tell me, did that bard ever speak of Pasiphaë, queen of Crete?”

“The mother of the Minotaur,” Telemachus said. “Of course. She is always in the tale of Theseus.”