Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)

by Claire North

Her name is Leaneira, and in her heart and in her eyes beats a drumbeat that has pulsed against her flesh since the day she was torn from Troy: death to all the Greeks. We will have much more to say of her before our tale is done.

see – we must not be afraid, you and I, to see the future in its full.

Love is vengeance, of course.

Kenamon, you gorgeous little mortal, if I could squeeze your beautiful face; if the touch of my fingers wasn’t instant death to your naked flesh, I’d be all over you, yes I would.

There is a world in which she once had charming dimples, a smile that made her whole face change like the breaking waves of the ocean. That world burnt, eight years ago.

compensated for her size by biting the ear off a boy who mocked her when she was seven and he was nine; and again by gouging out the eyes of one who tried to touch her inappropriately when she was fourteen,

she goes to the window, and climbs out through it as if it were the most natural and civilised thing in the world.

As a child, she wore armbands of gold, given to her by her mother, who would hold her so tight she thought she would break from squeezing, and whisper in her ear: “You will live, my daughter. You will live and no one will ever harm you.”

Elektra was five when her sister, Iphigenia, was sacrificed on the altar of Artemis by her father’s bloody hand. She doesn’t remember much about her sister; only the occasional flash of pain.

Ithaca is nothing if not sufficient. It’s practically the island’s motto.

Being permitted to grieve profoundly for an absent husband has been something of a social blessing these last eighteen years, an acceptable shroud for quiet.

It would be kind now for Elektra to speak her mind, to lay it out fully. But she is not kind. She has sworn never to be kind ever again.

Elektra smiles, and it is the smile of the skinless skull that laughs at jokes only Hades enjoys.

Elektra has not been held by another’s arms for eleven years, when she last pushed her mother away and screamed: “I am NOT Iphigenia!” and ran from the room and was never loved by her mother again.

“Perhaps because that hand was so far up a poet’s arse it’s a wonder he could speak without the fingers showing.”

“I see. Medon, forgive me. I find myself overcome with womanly weakness and must retire.” “I have always admired the exquisite timing of your weaknesses, my lady.” “I am glad someone appreciates it.”

“Queen of Ithaca.” Priene’s smile is the same smile she wore the day she bested the strongest man in her tribe, and she remembers the power of it now. “You will find no better butcher than me.”

By my name, I miss Medea’s filthy jokes, and that thing Thalia can do with a bendy stick.

My husband swallowed Athena’s mother whole to try and prevent his daughter’s birth, but she crawled out of his skull anyway, sticky with his brain fluids and clad in blood. Zeus, for reasons that evade me, took to the girl at once, and for her part Athena hasn’t mentioned the whole maternal cannibalism business once, just to keep matters civil.

If I were to eat Athena, I’d want her served on a bed of dates. Legs slow-cooked, belly fried fast in oil. The thought sometimes amuses me, but on reflection, she’d probably give me indigestion.

is there a limit to what a mother can give? We gods applaud those who give all, all, more than all and more than could ever be enough. Any woman who gives merely all she has to give, and then has no more left in her, we condemn to Tartarus’s burning fields, and simply say: it is for the children.

To be patient is to feel burning rage, impotent fury, to rage and rock against the injustice of the world and yet – and yet – to hold one’s tongue.

“Artemis bid Agamemnon kill her daughter. However the gods move in our lives, good sister, let us not imagine they move for any whims save their own.” If I were Apollo, master of stories and weaver of ballads, I might end my tale right here on that most pithy of points.

so I shall let the story roll on even though I doubt a wiser, more appropriate point shall e’er be made.