Chapter XI
The Phaeacians

As you know, mortal readers, I always have my shaker of ambro-salts in my K.H.R.O.T.U. wallet. And while hanging with Athena, I discovered that she always carries a little flask of nectar in her helmet. So the next morning, the two of us were ready to turn a Phaeacian breakfast into an immortal feast.

We made our way invisibly into the royal dining hall. Athena’s gray eyes lit up when she saw the spread on the buffet table. It looked scrumptious! I couldn’t wait to try the Huevos Phaeacios. We made our way through the line and as we picked up our plates and utensils, they vanished, too. Unseen, we sat down to eat at an empty two-top next to the royal family.

“How did you sleep, stranger?” King Alcinous asked as Odysseus joined the royals at their table.

“Very well,” said Odysseus. “It’s been a long time since I went to sleep with a full tummy.”

“And have you thought about staying with us and marrying Princess Nausicaa?” the king asked.

“Daddy, stop!” cried the princess, her face turning red.

“I wish I could,” said Odysseus.

“This is so embarrassing,” muttered the princess.

“But I have a wife and son in Ithaca,” Odysseus went on, “and I long to go home to them.”

“Ah,” said the king. “How old is your son? Perhaps he will sail our way one day and marry our princess.”

Princess Nausicaa rolled her eyes.

“You never know what may happen,” said Odysseus, and that was the truth.

The king ordered his men to ready a ship to sail Odysseus back to Ithaca.

I smiled invisibly. The Phaeacians were skilled seamen. Odysseus was as good as home!

Next, the king clapped for his bard. The bard strummed his lyre and began singing a song about the great Greek heroes of the Trojan War. He sang of Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Achilles and Hector, and of Odysseus.

As he listened, Odysseus grew sad. I knew he must be thinking of all of his comrades who’d been slain in the war, and of all his men who’d been lost at sea. At last he pushed his plate away and put his head down on his arms.

The king looked at him anxiously as the bard sang on. Athena and I ignored the singing and ate our fill. All the good things we’d heard about the eats in Phaeacia were turning out to be deliciously true. When the song ended, Odysseus lifted his head.

“Come, stranger,” said the king. “Now we shall play some games and dance and cheer you up.”

Odysseus followed the king outside to a field.

“Let’s go see what happens,” whispered Athena. When she wasn’t guarding her temple, waging war, or seeking revenge, Athena could be a fun goddess. Who knew?

Athena and I slipped outside, where young Phaeacian men were taking turns holding a heavy metal disc in one hand, spinning around, and throwing it. The idea was to see who could throw it the farthest.

One of the king’s sons approached Odysseus. “Come join us in our game, wanderer,” he said.

But Odysseus shook his head. “My heart is too heavy for games right now.”

A young man standing nearby laughed. “I’ll bet you’re a trader who fell off your ship, and not an athlete at all,” he said.

“Yalus!” cried the king’s son. “Do not speak so to the stranger!”

Odysseus glared at Yalus, and I saw the gleam come back into his eye.

“I was an athlete once,” said Odysseus. “Maybe I still am.” He picked up the biggest, heaviest disc. Holding it firmly in hand, he began to spin. He spun faster and faster and let the disc fly.

The Phaeacians gasped as the disc soared over all the markers for discs that had been thrown that day. It landed far ahead of the others.

Odysseus turned to Yalus. “You wanna wrestle?” he said.

“N-n-n-no, thanks,” stammered Yalus, backing away.

Down, Odysseus! I thought.

Athena shook her head. “If he shows off too much,” she whispered, “the king might take back the offer of a ship to sail him home.”

“Come, stranger!” the king was saying. “Watch how we dance here in Phaeacia!”

The dancers formed a circle. As the bard sang, they began to throw a silvery ball back and forth. Dancers leaped up to catch the ball and leaped again as they threw it, all with amazing speed and grace. Odysseus smiled as he watched.

“What a fine show!” he exclaimed when the music stopped. “I’ve seen just about everything in this wide world, but never anything like your dance.”

The king seemed pleased. “My people!” he called out. “Go to your homes and find gifts for this stranger, who has not yet told us his name.”

He eyed the stranger, clearly hoping that he’d reveal who he was.

But Odysseus only smiled.

“Let us give him the best that Phaeacia has to offer,” the king went on at last, “so he can take it home to show everyone in Ithaca.”

“All right!” cried Odysseus.

Later that afternoon, the Phaeacians lined up to give Odysseus their gifts. They held casks of wine and chests overflowing with bronze coins and gold. Seeing so much loot, Odysseus’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

The king started things off by presenting Odysseus with a large golden cup. The queen gave him a fine purple tunic that she had woven herself.

Everyone gave him something. The last man to approach him with a gift was Yalus. “Please accept this from me,” he said, handing Odysseus a sword with a carved ivory handle.

“What a fine sword!” exclaimed Odysseus, taking the gift.

“I hope it will help you forgive my rash words,” Yalus said. “May the gods bring you safely home.”

The king’s men carried all the gifts down the hill and stowed them in the ship. “After supper tonight, stranger,” the king said, “my sailors will take you home.”

“I should get home myself,” I whispered to Athena. I’d been gone so long I hated to think how Cerbie would turn up his noses at me when I finally got back to Villa Pluto. “But I’m sticking around until I see Odysseus step onto the shore of Ithaca.”

We watched as the Phaeacian servants began laying out another magnificent feast. “Definitely sticking around,” I muttered.

* * *

During supper that night, the king’s bard strummed his lute and sang a song about cunning Odysseus and the Trojan Horse.

Oh, the Trojans built a city surrounded by a wall,
Then came the Greeks who tried to make it fall!
That wall they’d pound and pound,
But that wall would not come down!
So the Trojan War went on and on and on.

Odysseus, a warrior with hair of flaming red,
He spoke up and this is what he said:
“I know what to do, of course,
We must build a giant horse!
That is how we Greeks will win the Trojan War!”

So they built a wooden horsey as hollow as a cave
Inside they hid twelve heroes, bold and brave!
Then they left the horse outside,
In their ships they took a ride!
All the night that horsey stood outside of Troy.

In the morning came the Trojans
And they saw the mighty steed.
“A sign from the gods!” they cried,
“That the war is done indeed!”
Oh, their hearts were filled with joy
As they rolled it into Troy
With those sneaky Greeks inside the wooden horse.

Oh, the Trojans threw a party
But at last they fell asleep.
Then out from the horse
Greek heroes they did creep.
The city gates they opened wide!
The Greek army came inside!
That is how the Greeks did win the Trojan war!

The Greeks sailed back to Greece then,
They didn’t take the bus.
They’d won the Trojan War,
Thanks to ODYSSEUS!
What a wily, clever man!
To have thought up such a plan!
Thanks, Odysseus, our hero with a brain!

“How do you like that song, stranger?” asked the king.

“It’s excellent!” exclaimed Odysseus. “That Odysseus! He was so clever!”

“Odysseus is such a bragger!” whispered Athena.

“I’ll bet he’s not finished, either,” I whispered back.

“Odysseus was brave, too,” Odysseus went on. “He was one of the twelve heroes hiding inside the horse, you know.”

“It doesn’t say so in the song,” said the bard.

“Maybe not,” said Odysseus. “But he was there. It was really crowded and uncomfortable in that tight space. Got to smelling pretty bad, too. It took forever for those Trojans to build wheels and roll that horse into their city, and then they partied for hours.”

“Stranger!” cried the king. “How can you know such things?”

“Because,” said the stranger, “I am Odysseus.”

The Phaeacians gasped.

“After the war, I left Troy with twelve black ships and many hundreds of men, all bound for Ithaca,” Odysseus went on. “But here I am, a stranger in your hall, without a ship, the lone survivor of my many men.”

“Hold it!” said the king. “The Trojan War has been over for nearly ten years. If you really are Odysseus, tell us what’s happened to you since you left Troy.”

“It’s a long story,” said Odysseus. He grinned. “But I tell it well.”

Odysseus told the Phaecians what had happened inside the Cyclops’s cave. He told of the giant man-eating Laestrygonians, who smashed eleven of his ships. And of Circe, who turned his men into pigs. He told of traveling down to the Underworld to ask advice from the ghost of the blind prophet, Tiresias; of passing Charybdis’s whirlpool, only to lose six fine men to Scylla. He told of stopping on the island of the sun god and how his starving men killed Helios’s cattle. He told how Zeus punished them by smashing their ship with thunderbolts. And how he alone survived the shipwreck, only to be washed up on Calypso’s island, where he spent seven years as her prisoner. He told how she let him go, sending steady winds to blow him to Ithaca, and how a raging storm had sunk his ship and washed him up onto the sands of Phaeacia.

I have to admit, he told a fine tale. By the time he finished, it was late.

“I thank all of you Phaeacians for your hospitality,” Odysseus said. “Now I am ready to go home.”

In the dark of night, Odysseus boarded the Phaeacian ship loaded with his treasures. Again he thanked King Alcinous, Queen Arete, and Princess Nausicaa for helping him.

The Phaeacian sailors laid soft rugs on the floor of their ship. Odysseus wrapped himself in his warm purple cloak and lay down on the rugs. Before the oarsmen had rowed the ship out of the harbor, Athena and I could hear Odysseus snoring.