AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, THE WHOLE “SAIL TO THE Underworld” thing didn’t go over so well. The guys questioned and argued and disagreed and even tried reasoning with Odysseus, but—and here’s where Odysseus as king really stood out—he had this way of pulling the men toward him. Not of bending their wills, but of convincing them of the beauty of his plan. And by the end of the day, all the guys—well, all except Eurylochus—had the ship ready to sail. They were willing to follow Odysseus, their king, anywhere, even—as Fate would have it—to the Underworld.
“What do you think the Underworld is like?” Dory asked. I sat on my normal bench in the galley and wrote while she made yet another vat of soup. She’d started tucking her hair behind her ears while she worked in the galley, making it even more obvious that she was a girl. But since the guys didn’t expect her to be a girl, they still hadn’t figured it out. They farted around her and burped so loudly it shook the sails of the ship.
“Dark. Fiery. Depressing,” I said. I’d heard stories about the Underworld all my life. Stories that others had told me. Looked like I was the one who’d be telling those stories now.
“That’s what I’ve heard, too,” Dory said. “But it can’t all be that way? I mean, all the good people go there, too. The guys from the other ships. Your dad. They can’t all be burning, can they?”
“My dad’s not dead,” I said.
“Yeah, okay,” Dory replied, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“No really,” I said. “He’s not. He’s just taking a long time to get home. Just like Odysseus.” This was a good point I made. If Odysseus had been away from his family for years, then there was a really great chance Dad was on his way home also, trying to reach Mom and me. Maybe he’d just run into some Laestrygonians of his own.
“Fine. What about the other guys?” Dory said. “You think it’s all fire and brimstone?”
I didn’t want to think about Dad dead, and I also didn’t want to think about the guys from the ships in some fiery wasteland.
“Probably not,” I said.
“But what if it is?” Dory said. “It could be dangerous. We should stay onboard.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No way, Homer,” Dory said. “You know that anyone who goes to the Underworld can never leave again.”
“That’s just something parents say to scare their kids,” I said. “It’s not real.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Dory said, and she got real quiet.
I hated that. Dory had no idea who her parents were. They could be ax murderers for all she knew. My dad may be missing, but at least I’d known him. I’d spent the better part of my life with him.
And I missed him.
I wondered if that made it worse, knowing someone and then losing them or not knowing them at all.
“I’m going to the Underworld,” I said, holding up the scroll. “It’s my job. If I don’t write about it then …”
“Then what?” she said.
“Then no one will ever know about it,” I said.
“Who cares?” Dory said. “You already have enough. You’ll stick with Odysseus for the next couple months until he gets home, and that’ll be all you need. You’ll pass no problem.”
I ran my finger down the smooth scroll. “There’s still so much room. So much empty space.” Which was actually kind of weird. It seemed like the scroll always made room for more words.
“Some empty space is okay,” Dory said. “It helps balance the words.”
She was probably right. But I also think that she was scared to go to the Underworld, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
WE SAILED FOR A MONTH. THE SEA NEVER ENDED. IT didn’t seem possible, unless I went with the possibility that we had sailed off the edge of the world and on to some other place. I didn’t like this possibility. The idea of leaving the world that I knew behind made my stomach feel all kinds of queasy, like I’d eaten way too much cheese. But unlike eating cheese, which would eventually digest and get better, the tremors in my stomach never stopped. They stayed there as a permanent part of me.
Days blended into nights and then nights blended into days, and then the entire sky went gray and remained that way. Even though I couldn’t see it, I had to believe that the sun was still up there somewhere. The guys turned sullen; their moods matched the sky and the water. I wasn’t doing much better. I stopped writing when the sky clouded over, and I couldn’t bring myself to start again. Dory continued making soup, but it was as bland as everything else.
We didn’t speak. None of us had any words we wanted to share.
After the month, a gray harbor appeared before us. The ship drifted up to it, without the guys steering or rowing or anything. Odysseus grabbed from the deck where he’d stored it a jar that Circe had given him and climbed down from the ship onto the long wooden dock that extended into the water.
“Who’s with me?” he said. These were the first words anyone had spoken in weeks.
Polites and Eurylochus immediately stepped forward along with five other guys.
I grabbed my scroll from where I’d tucked it away in an oilcloth to keep it safe from the damp air.
“Don’t go, Homer,” Dory said.
She hadn’t forgotten.
“Come with me,” I said.
Dory shook her head, and real fear crept into her eyes.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked, grabbing her hand.
“I don’t know,” she said, and her gaze drifted past me, down the long dock. “I feel like there are secrets out there. Secrets that should maybe remain hidden.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’ll stay with you the whole time. We’ll be together. Everything will be okay.”
Dory seemed to consider my words, tossing them back and forth in her mind like coins on a scale.
“But what if it’s not okay?” Dory said. “What if …?”
“What if what?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just what if?”
“Then we’ll face that what if together,” I said. “Now come on. Odysseus is leaving.”
Dory finally let me pull her forward, and we hurried down the ladder and caught up with Odysseus and the guys.
He nodded at us. “Bard and Cook. Stay close. There is danger ahead.”
Great. His words weren’t going to do anything to make Dory feel better.
We walked along the wooden planks into the gray mist until we came to a crack in the world where light seeped through. Odysseus stood tall and sauntered forward, into the crack. The entire world split in half.
The gray mist vanished. We stood on the top of a mountain with brilliant sun shining in the sky above, warming our skin for the first time in a month. A single doorway stood in front of us, surrounded by two columns.
“I go first,” Odysseus said, striding forward with the jar in his hands. “Bard, you’ll come with me.”
Dory stepped forward. “I’ll come along, too.”
But Odysseus shook his head. “Just the bard.” And he shoved me through.
We were no longer on the mountain. The ship and the sea were nowhere to be found. A hard ball formed in my stomach, and I broke out in sweaty chills.
We were in the Underworld.
