“WE ATTACK AT DAWN,” EURYLOCHUS SAID, TRYING to sound like he was all in charge and stuff.
“We don’t attack,” Odysseus said.
“So you lead more men to their deaths?” Eurylochus said.
It got under my skin how he always challenged Odysseus. Not that Odysseus was always right. But Eurylochus grated on my nerves like two pieces of limestone rubbing against each other.
“Why does Odysseus keep that guy around?” Dory asked Polites. “He’s so annoying.”
Now that I knew Dory was a girl, she sounded more and more like one. Like every phrase she said and the tones she used in her voice. And I had to tell her about the hands on hips thing. Guys just didn’t do that.
“He’s related to King Odysseus,” Polites said. “A relative of the king’s wife.”
“Penelope,” I said. “Right?” After Polyphemus had fallen asleep, I’d worked on filling in some of the details. Things like that. Turns out the guy in the red shirt who’d been eaten did have a name besides Spitter. It was Pyrrhus. Moronios was really Myronius. Cupcake was Stephanos. Odysseus promised we’d have a ceremony for the fallen once we were back on the ship.
“If we don’t attack, then what do we do? Wait for it to eat all of us?” Eurylochus said.
“Of course not,” Odysseus said, and that’s when he told us the plan.
It was actually very clever. And took way more patience than I ever would have assumed Odysseus had. We waited until Polyphemus woke up, and then, like it was their morning ritual, the sheep all started making noise. They needed to go out to pasture. The first sheep wandered toward the front of the cave. Polyphemus pushed the giant stone out of the way, and then felt the top of the sheep, just to make sure it was a sheep and not one of us.
So, we all grabbed hold of a sheep, from underneath. Not a fun spot to be, but it fooled Polyphemus. He let every single sheep out, not realizing we all clung to their undersides. Once we were free of the cave, we ran, not looking back.
“To the boats!” Odysseus called.
What was it with this guy? Did he not learn the first time?
Of course, Polyphemus heard him. He erupted with terrible shouts and anger and started throwing rocks at us. We ran toward the ship, down the rocky hill. No one was worried about heading back to get any booty out of the cave. When we finally clambered aboard, the guys raised the anchors and we cast off, away from the rocky shore.
“Too bad, cyclops!” Odysseus shouted. “We’ve escaped your grasp. You’ll have to find your dinner with no eye!”
It was completely unnecessary taunting.
“Tell me its true name,” Polyphemus bellowed from the shore.
Odysseus laughed, bold and full of confidence. “I am Odysseus. King of Ithaca. Hero of the Trojan War. And you, blind cyclops, are no match for me.”
Dory put her head in her hand. “Seriously? Maybe he should just draw the cyclops a map.”
“I may be no match for it,” Polyphemus shouted. “But Father is. Father will take care of it. Father will make it pay.”
And the waves rose, making it abundantly clear who the cyclops’s dad was: none other than Poseidon, god of the sea. Polyphemus threw rocks at our ships, and the waves tossed us around. I was sure we were dead at least five times. But the guys were determined. They rowed and rowed, and we finally got a safe distance from the island.
Odysseus strode up. Somewhere in the commotion, his yellow shirt had been torn once again, showing off his chest. “Well, that was close. But the worst is definitely behind us.”
Good gods, this guy. I’d never seen someone so full of confidence, even in the eyes of a god’s vengeance.
“Yep. The worst is definitely behind us.” He flexed his muscles a few times for good measure.
I’d heard it before. I believed it less now than I had earlier. We were hosed. There was no getting around it. Making the gods mad was a really bad idea.