Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)

by Claire North

Listen to my voice: I who have been stripped of honour, of power and of that fire that should be mine, I who have nothing to lose that the poets have not already taken from me, only I will tell you the truth. I, who part the veil of time, will tell those stories that only the women tell. So follow me to the western isles, to the halls of Odysseus, and listen.

We regard them as one might regard a rash – hopeful that it does not spread further – and then move on.

The silence of men is a novel experience, and she is prepared to thoroughly enjoy it.

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.” That was when I knew I loved Penelope. Of all the queens in Greece, I had not thought I could love one who seemed so meek and who bowed so deep to the inclinations of men. I was wrong.

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.

He barely knows anything any more; from so many years of not saying anything, the words in his heart have tumbled together into a terrible sorry mess, a tempest of unspoken things so jumbled that now he cannot tell the difference between sea and sky.

I learnt a long time ago to keep my voice to a whisper.

He seeks to perform his duty, to be a loving son, a noble king, and one day perhaps to be a generous husband and a father who dotes upon his offspring. He has sworn that he will lift his children to the sun and cry, “Your father loves you! Yes he does, yes he does…” and he will speak honestly to his wife of his fears and his doubts, and confess when he is ignorant, and listen to her desires, and do honour by his people and his kin.

How is it that we can know the most intelligent way to act, yet choose not to do it?”