“Put me down!” I shouted.
In Thratta’s large arms, I was a child again, being restrained against a table as the princess of Sparta readied the whip. I was a young girl held back as her mother was ripped from her life forever. I was a woman pressed against a bed as a man had his way with her.
The starved memories consumed me, and I began to scream, thrashing wildly, that vicious panic stuffing itself into my lungs, choking every breath.
“Let go of her! Let go, Thratta!” a voice came.
I felt the grip around me slacken and the sudden softness of a bed.
Whose bed am I on?
I flung myself off, hurtling to the farthest corner of the room. But the walls started to warp around me, the world spinning out of control.
I wanted it to stop.
Make it stop.
“Melantho?” That voice again. “Melantho? Can you hear me?”
I opened my mouth to say, “Yes, Penelope,” but the words did not come; instead, the entire contents of my stomach emptied onto thefloor. The smell burned into my nostrils, my stomach roiling.
I’m sorry, Penelope.The words clogged in my throat as my consciousness bled away.I’m sorry…
39
I woke to Penelope’s scent.
It took me a moment to realize I was in a bed.Herbed. What was I doing here? I squinted against the harsh morning light, a headache splitting open behind my eyes.
The room was empty, but there was a blanket crumpled on the chair beside the bed, as if someone had sat there for a long while. Perhaps all night.
I winced, sitting upright and tasting the acrid remnants of vomit in my mouth. The memories came in faded bursts like a flame sputtering to life.
I had been a fool, a drunken, embarrassing fool.
I groaned and buried my face in the pillows. I wanted to stay there, to rot quietly in my shame, but the pillows smelled too strongly ofher.
I had to get away.
Once I had managed to drag myself from Penelope’s bed, I slipped out of the palace, grateful it was too early for anyone to witness my escape.
I wandered over the hills of Ithaca as the world awoke, the waves below playfully mimicking my restlessness. I felt untethered, like a ship without a crew, left to the mercy of Poseidon’s currents, its destination hopelessly unknown.
Normally, when I was in a mood such as this, I would have soughtout Eumaeus, finding refuge in the reassuring security of his love, a place to hide from my own self.
If only I could have loved him back. It would have made everything so much simpler.
I should have gone to find the others: Hippodamia’s soothing warmth, Autonoë’s calming quietness, Thratta’s and Actoris’s distracting banter, or Eurynome’s motherly affection.
But I was too afraid.
What if they wanted answers? What if I told them? A deep shame had grown within these emotions I battled. Penelope was a wife, a mother.And she was awoman. I had never known anyone ever to speak of such a thing, of feelings like this between two women. Was that because such a thing did not exist? Did it mean something was wrong with me?
I realized that for the first time in a long while, I felt truly alone.
Somehow, I found my way to a familiar olive tree, one that grew just outside the palace grounds, overlooking the sea beyond. I sat down and watched the clouds roll by, fat and heavy with the promise of rain, their wispy bellies hanging low enough to brush the waves.
It was here that Odysseus and I had made our deal so many moons ago.
