Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)

by Claire North

“Ah,” mutters Penelope. “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 sit in a corner, and find the whole affair fantastically boring. Where is Eris, goddess of discord, when I need her? Where are the fights, the schemes, the knives in the back? By my name, I miss Medea’s filthy jokes, and that thing Thalia can do with a bendy stick.

It also occurs to Telemachus that Elektra is, in a strange way, the most sexual woman he has ever seen, and yet oddly, and at the same time, about as attractive as a nosebleed. He is a young man who finds this dichotomy very confusing, though perhaps in time he will learn.

“And where should I be, goddess of war? Up on Olympus wheedling with Zeus to send your Odysseus a favourable wind? Or are you done debasing yourself for a man?”

“You have a soft spot for needy young men, don’t you?

On Ithaca that’s what you do – you just get on.

Telemachus has all sorts of funny ideas about parental wisdom. My old man ate me as soon as I was born; our fathers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Heroism, if you believe the bards, is an innate quality gifted at birth, and the idea that prior to your manly adventures there is a fifteen-year training period replete with pulled muscles and using the baby bow just doesn’t fit the valiant milieu.

This is it, boy, I whisper in his ear. This is your chance to not be an absolute bloody moron.

She understands, of course, that this is society and how society works. She is smart; she has learnt these lessons. What she doesn’t understand is why, being the way it is, society is so insufferably stupid, run by flaming idiots. On that point again, we are inclined to agree.

Athena loves it when a hunky warrior clad in bronze kneels before her inner sanctum, and when a man violated a woman upon her altar, it was the woman whose hair she turned to snakes in retribution for this sacrilege. So much for the wisdom of Athena.

But Eos held her hand and Ourania her feet when Penelope screamed and Telemachus was born, and when a woman has spent that much time staring into another woman’s dilated vagina, you can either shut that other woman out for ever and pretend it never happened, or you can get over yourself and admit to a bond that runs deeper than blood.

“Take it from a queen – the greatest power we women can own is that we take in secret.”

So instead they became beasts, performing sacrilege upon the living and the dead, for their fathers had taught them no other way to be a man than to howl at the crimson sun.

“Andraemon wouldn’t do that. He is a good man.” “Do you believe that?” “I do.” She believes. She does not. The hearts of mortals are fickle things, fluttering their way to death with the irregular beat of the butterfly’s wings.

It occurs to Penelope that she does not know if she likes her son. She loves him, of course, and will stand before spears to save his life. But does she like him? She is not sure there is enough of the man who will be Telemachus for her to know.

Are you… conspiring, little duck?” “When one has neither gold, soldiers, name nor honour, what else is a woman to do?”

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.

However the gods move in our lives, good sister, let us not imagine they move for any whims save their own.”

It seems to Anaitis that the world is full of people trying their best, and that rarely means anything. Yet perhaps trying their best is all she can really ask.

In the clouded night, I squint down from the heavens and I think I see… … yes, look again, and there she is. Athena sits and hoots like an absolute bloody idiot, an owl upon the blackened branch of an ancient withered tree. Hoot bloody hoot she goes, blinking reflective darkness, as if I wouldn’t see her, as if I can’t always see through her pitiful disguises.

Clytemnestra has mighty eyebrows, most suited for arching. “Maybe the little duck isn’t so stupid after all.

“Gifts from a trickster? That doesn’t sound like a sound basis for an economy.”

For many, the performance of thinking oftentimes exceeds the actual energy being expended on the thought itself.

I’ll say this for Athena – she is not afraid to simply stand and think.

But for tonight, to avoid bloodshed I am giving you a chance – call your men off. You have nothing to gain here. Your plan will not work, and if you continue down this path, I will destroy you.”

Even a man who knows how to look good thinking is sometimes caught looking stupid.

lmao

Penelope, when she first came to Ithaca, learnt a lot about what it was to be a queen from Anticlea. She learnt that when the south wind is dull and heavy, you do not sweat; nor when the north howls in the harshest of winters must you shiver. The storm may bend your back, but only you can straighten it again.

“This is the world we live in. We are not heroes. We do not choose to be great; we have no power over our destinies. The scraps of freedom that we have are to pick between two poisons, to make the least bad decision we can, knowing that there is no outcome that will not leave us bruised, bloody on the floor.

“The gods are foolish and blind – they think the greatest poems are the ones of death in battle and the ravishing of queens. But the stories that will live for ever are of the lost ones, the fearful ones, who through bitter hardship and despair find hope, find strength – find their way home.

How strange it seems that to make men of these boys, Athena first makes them children, driving from their minds all thoughts of mortality, all notion of blood as they run, run, run for Laertes’ farm.

Donning his tatty, faded grey cloak, he nods once and, with the dignity of the centaur, proudly runs away.

There are those who are beginning to realise that honour has nothing over a still-beating heart.

But perhaps one day, he will remember that she was there, that she wept for him, that her love surpasses all others. Perhaps one day yet to come.

“How do you hide an army?” “Medon,” Penelope tuts, “what a foolish question. You hide them in precisely the same way you hide your success as a merchant, your skill with agriculture, your wisdom at politics and your innate cutting wit. You hide them as women.”

Artemis’s lips thin. I wait. If there is one thing the huntress dislikes more than not getting her share of a kill, it is weddings.

“I don’t like talking. But I do like Athena looking stupid.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting. I was praying.” She was not praying.

Elektra gives a scream, an animal howl of fury and rage, a little too loud, a little too dramatic for my taste, but it gets the job done.

“You come into my home and sully my honour in front of my guests? By all the gods, if I were a man I would strike you down, whoever you were. It is only my womanly modesty that restrains me.”

“Nevertheless, that war and blood would likely have been mine, and that of my child.” “Ah yes, Telemachus. He’s a mess, isn’t he?”

There is a woman still living inside Penelope full of hope and fear and dreams and despair. But she has been a queen far longer than she was ever anything else, and the queens of Greece are not given many choices that are their own.

Her eyes run past Elektra to Penelope, and again, a smile, sadder now, another nod. “Little duck,” she breathes. “Learnt to be a queen after all.”

It seems that there is a great deal that has been left unsaid, and that unsaid things, in her experience, often grow upon a silent tongue into a deluge of words that should have been screamed.

“Stepdaughter, one day you will learn how to give me thanks.”

Friendship will not stop the battle. Friendship does not unite the kingdom. Friendship is as much subject to the great sweep of politics, to the richness of the harvest and the motion of the skies, as any fluttering butterfly. Mortals create friendship to give themselves the illusion of safety and a sense of self-worth. We are gods. We should be above such trivialities.”

And so the moon rises and the moon sets, and though things are much the same, some things are most definitely different.