“There’s so much to tell but so much of it doesn’t seem to matter. Should I begin when I was first touched by the goddess and deemed such a clever boy? In time, some would think me mad for this until I showed them what could be gained, what could be won, by listening to the voice of my goddess. Or shall I begin when I left my wife and son—” His voice caught. Closing his eyes, he took in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled it in a rapid stream from his mouth until his lungs emptied entirely.
He turned to her with hard eyes. “Do you long to hear of battle and glory and the playthings the gods made of us outside those walls where men were slaughtered by the hundreds for ten long years? Shall I tell you of rage and honor, of horror and rape, of a tiny child I held in my hands—” He looked away, down to the earth.
“I cannot. I can tell no one. All who would understand are dead.”
He sat there no longer trembling or brimming with anger and hurt. A heavy resignation weighed him down. He looked out to the moontouched sea, to the star speckled skies.
Fearful of pushing or pulling him, she remained silent. Small. Shrouded in the dark. Space was what he demanded and she gave it though it hurt to not touch him, to not offer comfort. Her lungs longed to take in air and turn it into music, a soothing song where he could forget himself and his horrors in her body.
But she gave him his silence and peace and waited.
Her attention, all her focus, narrowed to him, to his body, to every twitching muscle. The ways his lungs expanded to suck in air and the way they deflated to push it out. The thrum of his heart pumping life through his body became the tempo of her evening, had been the tempo of her life for three brief years already, and she knew that his heartbeat would never leave her body.
And in time, as the years rolled past and she looked back upon those days, she saw how true it was, how her body swallowed his heartbeat as a memorial to all that he gave her, all the love he shared even when he didn’t know it.
“I lied to you.” His voice thick and quiet.
He snorted. “I lied to you that first day. The name I gave was not my own. A habit.” He snorted again. It was almost a laugh or stood in the place of laughter he did not feel. “Ever since leaving my home, I have given false name after false name, and when I finally did give my true name, in arrogance and exuberance, I paid for it dearly.”
“How?”
“I’m here.” He did not raise his voice or show any emotion but she took it like a blade in the chest. “I’m here because of my pride and need for renown. Such a clever boy, young prince. That’s what they said to me. And when I became king before leaving home, they honored me for my wit and intelligence, my farsightedness.
“I brought them all glory. Gave them riches and honor. Those kings who survived the walls of Troy will be remembered forever. And what of me? Lost on this island. Lost to the sea. Hated and forsaken by gods. For my pride. Who will remember me but the many widows of Ithaca who will curse my name for generations for leaving their sons without fathers, for taking their sons far away. Their bodies broken on those walls or lost to the depths of the winedark seas.”
He raised his face to the skies but did not look at her. “Calamity. That is what they’ll call me. A man who did not need to break down walls but instead broke bodies to pieces. Broke his own kingdom.”
The wind whistled through the trees and the nightbirds sang and her man sat there as if waiting for them to finish, to give him his turn.
“You were a hero.”
He barked a laugh. “So I thought. So I was told. So did we feast under such an assumption, my ships weighed down by riches.” He spread his big hands before him and turned them over and over, examining the backs of them and the palms. “Would a hero throw an infant from a wall?
“When I held that baby in my hands, my first thought was of my own son. I held him the same way the night before I left home. Held him in my big hands believing I’d be back in no time. Perhaps we’d wage war for a few months and hurry back home in time for harvest. Despite everything, we believed so, or told ourselves as much. We had to. It was the only way to leave at all.
“I held him just like that, my son. When I looked down at the baby I would kill, I saw my own son’s face and wondered if he still lived. Wondered what he must think, having lived a decade without a father. He would know nothing of me but what people told him. He would not know my face or my voice or my hands. These same hands that held that sweet child, that miserable baby. The son of a hero, the heir to a kingdom. For that, he had to die.”
He did not weep or cry out or show any emotion. Only stared at his hands.
How she longed to comfort him, to tell him anything that would wash these memories away.
He took in another long breath through his nose, exhaling loudly through his mouth. “It was then that I cursed myself. What man deserves to see his son again after doing that? The gods made me a monster and I was honored for it. They sang songs for my cleverness that finally got us through the walls. They drank to my health, to my wealth, to my heirs, may they be many.” He barked another bitter laugh. “Such fools are we.
“I left that bloody field, that desecrated city, with six hundred men. Men I’d known for years. Some since childhood. It took only weeks to get to the shores of Troy yet it took me three long years to land on your shore, without a ship, without anything but my clothes. Alone. Utterly alone. None of them abandoned me, though I wish they had. Wish they had tossed me to the seas when the Earthshaker first rose in vengeance. But their loyalty—I killed them all. Not with my own hands but with the curse I dragged after me. My pride. The curse I’ve carried since childhood, believing I—”
She waited.
He closed his eyes.
The moon rolled along the rim of the sky. Morning came. She felt it but said nothing. Did nothing. Afraid even to move or breathe.
“How can you love me? You do not know me. You know nothing of me or my cruelties. You cannot imagine the horrors I’ve lived through or that I’ve forced upon my enemies. I had a friend, once. I spoke to him in the afterlife.” He shook his head with that heartbreaking smile. “The gods feared him in life. They trembled at his rage and power. He was the greatest of heroes. The greatest of men.”
He snapped his head towards her. “He was insane. A brutal madman. He killed by the dozen and we lauded him. We garlanded him with gifts while he wore gallons of blood.” He turned away and spat.
“We men are beasts. Monsters. Worse than the harpies and chimeras. When I saw him in death, he was no longer a great hero. The gods had not honored him. Or they had, but their honor was poisoned. He was a great king in the lands of the dead and you know what he told me?” He did not wait for her to respond. “He said he would rather be a slave than a king of the dead.
“He was a monster. I was a monster. He is trapped in the underworld surrounded by dead, leashed to them, and I am here, far from home. Trapped.”
With me, she wanted to say but feared he would say it with the same bitterness.
Those unspoken words hung between them as the night slowly bled away and the sun kissed the sky with gold and red.
“I never wanted to leave home. I only want to return there.” He took a breath and let it out and turned to her. “My love, will you let me go?”
She feared to speak. Feared moving or breathing at all, feared the thrum of her own heart and what he’d learn from its beat. For it clanged away from the rhythm and tempo of his. But she felt how his raced along with hers, though in opposite directions, in countermelody.
Her love for him rose and threatened to drown her.
She could let him go to love another, to love again.
She could give him back.
She could choose eternal solitude, sacrifice her own happiness and hopes, to give him back his life.
To fulfil his desires, she would give up her own.
“No.”