I SING OF ARMS and the man
Made fugitive by sin,
From native soil to sweat and toil
By Wisdom’s glittering grin.
I was making up the song as I went, imitating the melodies of my native land—the songs sung by wandering bards with ringing voices, who slung silver lyres from their shoulders and sang for their bread in the halls of kings.
Sing, heavenly Muse.
Clarify. Cry. Confess.
Which the god whose staff and rod
Refused the heroes rest?
Following Ignatius’ departure, a certain bleakness had settled over the beach, held off only by the bleaker light of the burning city, its gates flung open like a set of yawning jaws between which the frozen Medusa twisted like a forked tongue.
One realm lies behind them,
Four realms yet uncrossed.
Two realms more and arrows four—
One left, one loaned, one lost . . .
I leaned against a rock, singing and fiddling with the buckles of my armor while Diomedes paced to and fro, chewing his helmet strap to a pulp while he waited for me to come out of my gloom. It was the same gloom for both of us, but Diomedes had always reacted to anxiety by finding something to do. I, on the other hand, have a tendency to do nothing when I’m feeling down. I like to enjoy my moods—even the bad ones.
“You know what I miss most about the living world?” I said.
“For the love of the gods!” said Diomedes. “We have a job to finish, you know.”
“I miss the stars.”
Diomedes shook his head.
“On hot nights during the summer, Penelope and I used to gather a pile of fleeces and go up on the roof to sleep. Up there, you could feel the breeze off the water. We’d lie for hours watching the stars, and I’d give them new names and invent stories to go with them. She would laugh and laugh, and I’d get so wrapped up in my inventions, I’d forget I was making them up.”
Diomedes looked into the starless sky. “Since there isn’t anything up there now, it should be easy to get up and move on.”
“Do you remember my father’s hall?” I said, raking the sand now with my fingertips.
“Of course I do.” I could actually hear his teeth grinding. No doubt, he had his own sorrows to dwell on. The episode with “Helen” had to be hitting him rather hard. Still, it wouldn’t kill him to wait a little longer.
“It was a friendly place,” he said at last. He knew I had something to say and wouldn’t budge till it was said.
“Demodocus sang there once.”
“Demodocus. The blind bard?”
“Yes.”
“Heard of him. Never heard him sing.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. But that bard we met in Limbo reminded me of him.”
Diomedes nodded.
“Reminded me of the week he spent in my father’s hall.”
Diomedes raised his eyebrows. “A whole week. Imagine that.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Diomedes. You have nothing of the mystic in you. Your heart is just a muscle.”
“Show me a heart that isn’t muscle,” he said, “and I’ll show you a pair of stone feet.” We’d had this argument before. “Your heart is as much muscle as mine,” he added.
“No,” I said, “my heart is half fire. Circe herself told me.”
“Hmm. Circe,” he said. “If there ever was a Circe.”
“You’re just pouting because your girlfriend turned out to be an old man.”
“You’re the one pouting,” he said. “I’d be halfway out of Hades by now if it weren’t for your dawdling and dreaming.”
“You’d be halfway insane if it weren’t for my dawdling and dreaming.”
“Why do I even talk to you?”
“Because you know that if you ever stopped talking to me, you’d stop thinking altogether. Then you’d march through your life like one of Hephaestus’ golden slaves—all hinges and wheels inside. I’m the only thing keeping you human.”
“You’re the only thing keeping me on this godforsaken beach,” replied Diomedes. He sighed. “You were saying something about a bard?”
“Not just a bard, the bard—Demodocus, the Beloved of the People. My father held banquets every night for seven nights. We just about ate our way through the entire winter stock. Father had to start a war just to replenish his supplies.”
“Your father did know how to treat a guest.”
“He did.”
“Good man. Good prince. A man of honor.”
“I think so. But that week with Demodocus was something different. The bard’s song lifted everything to the clouds.”
Diomedes nodded and tapped the rim of his shield, grinding his helmet strap between his teeth.
I closed my eyes and tried to be there again. “It was as though the room were filled with light . . . as though another, better world had stooped to touch our own. A world where beggars are princes in disguise, and monsters were made to play with. I think that was the happiest I have ever been.”
I opened my eyes. Diomedes had stopped tapping his shield. He was standing perfectly still, studying me.
“We were as if in a dream,” I continued, closing my eyes again, “and somehow every meal after that was like salt fish in comparison.”
Diomedes was still staring at me and frowning.
“What?” I said at last.
“Miserable man,” he said in a whisper. He shook his head.
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, shaken from my daydream. Diomedes had always been blunt, but he rarely criticized me. “It wasn’t at all miserable,” I continued, a little hurt. “It was the finest night of my life.”
“And there’s your proof.”
“Proof of what? You’re just jealous because you never slowed down long enough to be happy.”
“It’s proof that you don’t know happiness any better than I do,” he said, stabbing his shield into the sand. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the rim. I looked at him more closely. He was troubled. His face had a tight, desperate look. “Think, Odysseus,” he said, his voice trembling, “of all that you and I have been through—of all our meals, our battles, our feasts, our travels. Tell me truthfully, was that night—that one night from your childhood—the most memorable?”
“Not the most memorable, perhaps. But the most pleasant.”
Diomedes cast his shield aside and crouched in front of me so that we were face-to-face. “That particular night,” he said. “You can’t think of a more memorable night than that.” There was real grief in his face. It was a look I’d seen only once or twice. “Think now.”
“What?” I said, startled by his sudden gravity. “What? What’s wrong with that? It was a wonderful night. I was so happy that night.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Oh! I understand now,” I said. “You’re right. There are other memories too.”
His face brightened a little. A softness came over his features like sunlight in the midst of a storm.
“The night I came home to Penelope. The birth of my son. The night of my marriage. You’re right, Diomedes. This time, you are absolutely right. There are other memories. More important memories. I understand what you mean now.”
Diomedes stood up and laughed. A short, bitter cough. “No, I don’t think you do.”
“You’re wrong, my friend. I do understand. I understand exactly what you mean. There have been—there must be—more important nights than that . . . nights more worth remembering.”
He shook his head again.
“It’s just that . . . those other nights weren’t quite so . . . perfect.”
“Perfect.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Diomedes, because you’re not an artist. You don’t like music or dance or poetry. You don’t have a fiery heart. The happiness I experienced on those other nights . . . well . . . the happiness wasn’t as pure. That night with Demodocus . . . it was . . . I was . . . there were no tears.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?” I said, growing really frustrated. Usually Diomedes would give in by this point in an argument, if only to get me to shut up. But he was being stiff-necked, and I’d already conceded to him twice.
“Exactly what makes it all so miserable,” he said. “Look at you. You wasted your whole life trying to recapture that ‘perfect’ night of your childhood. And now you’re prepared to waste your afterlife as well. All this wandering about —it’s just a desperate search for that perfect, painless, magical world that really existed only in someone’s imagination—not even your own.”
I looked up at Diomedes. There were actual tears in his eyes. “Fine, then, Diomedes,” I said, stunned, “you’re right.” He turned his back to me and coughed. Spit in the sand. “I should have stayed at home,” I said. “I should have built that perfect world myself. I could have turned our beggars into princes with all the wealth I collected. I could have built the world of Demodocus’ songs.”
“No you couldn’t.”
“But—”
“Even now, you’re so full of your fantasies, you think it was all about you.”
“But I could have tried,” I said, looking from his back to the sand at my feet. “Instead, I went running to search for another world. I just could not be happy with my own. I’ve always had a restless heart, Diomedes, but the bard gave that restlessness a focus. His dreams gave me an excuse. Aiki! I spent my life searching for a world that didn’t even exist.”
“And abandoned your friends in search of it,” he added.
“Do you think that’s why the gods are punishing me?” I asked. “For deserting my family?”
“By the river Styx,” Diomedes said, his voice cracking, “you really don’t understand.”
I shrugged and stood up. “I understand you want to get moving.”
He turned and looked at me, his face like a strained flag. “I guess you have a plan for how to get us through those gates, then,” he said.
As a matter of fact, I did.