Telemachus nodded again, fingers stilling in the grass. He looked so young then, just a boy longing for his father. It was strange to think Odysseus knew nothing of him, had no idea how smart and kind and wonderful his son was, how proud he would be of the young man he was becoming.
“Do you…think he thinks about me?” Telemachus whispered, glancing at me and quickly away again.
I reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Every single day.”
A smile hinted at his lips, eyes brightening, and in that moment, I had never wanted Odysseus to return more. If only to see that smile always grace Telemachus’s face.
We sat quietly for a little while longer, Telemachus’s hand soft and small in mine.
“You should reconcile with Mother,” he said after a while, rising to his feet.
My smile faltered as I squinted up at him, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun. “You make it sound simple, Telemachus. I thought you did not like simple?”
He did not laugh at my words; instead, he spoke to me in a firmtone, as if he were the adult and I the child. “Whatever has come between you, I cannot believe it is more important than what you share. Your love is the kind the poets would write about.”
In Greek, we have many different words for “love.” Telemachus used the wordphilia, denoting the truest form of friendship, a soul-to-soul bond. I had once believed my love for Penelope was like this, intimate yet platonic. But over time, I had realized that was just a hopeful lie.
Eroswas love built on desire and longing, named after the god who presided over such torture, andpragmawas an everlasting romantic bond rooted in a committed relationship. Both of these words, I knew, would have suited better.
And therein lay the very problem Telemachus wished me to solve.
“Nobody writes poems about slaves,” I said.
Telemachus mulled that over as if he had never considered it before. “Well, maybe I will write one about you one day.”
My smile widened. “You will be a poetanda king?”
“Mother says I can be anything I wish to be because I was born a man. And that is a gift I should not squander.”
“She’s right, you know.”
He nodded. “I know. Mother is always right.”
40
I waited until nightfall before returning to the palace.
Perhaps it was cowardly, but after my embarrassing display the previous night, I wanted to avoid the others as best I could. Especially Penelope.
Mercifully, our quarters were empty. I padded over to the hearth and began prodding the embers with an iron rod. Veins of gold and crimson pulsed to life, a few flames finally catching. As I fetched more logs for the fire, Telemachus’s words lingered in my mind.Whatever has come between you, I cannot believe it is more important than what you share.
How could I have explained to him that it was exactly what we shared that had come between us? Or rather, what we did not and could never share.
“Melantho.”
I knew her voice too well for it to catch me off guard. It was as familiar to me as my own breath, my own heartbeat. Still, I stiffened at the sound of it, a thick, creeping tension closing around my muscles as I turned to her.
She was standing in the doorway to her bedchamber, gray eyes glinting in the shadows, just as they had that first time we met.
We kept our distance, she draped in the silver of the moon and I in the gold of the fire. Between us, the darkness stretched, a deep anddangerous unknown. Neither of us dared step into it.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night,” I said carefully.
“You do not have to apologize.” She was calm as ever, yet there was something in her eyes that unsettled me, something sharp and bright.
“I want to. I was foul to you.”
