I AWOKE TO A mouthful of dog. Argos was standing directly over my head and barking furiously, so all I could see was the mottled fur of his stomach. Clearly, though, Diomedes and Ajax were upset as well. Above Argos’ howls and Dionysus’ yapping, I could hear their anxious shouts.
By the time I had climbed out from under Argos, things had calmed down considerably, but the situation was still tense. Three enormous men stood before us up to their waists in the water. They might have been brothers—or triplets even, they looked so much alike, from their sparkling gray eyes to their long red beards, to their broad and excessively hairy chests. On their left, two enormous hounds were swimming side by side toward the shore.
“So what’s all this, then?” the giants asked. “Three living mortals in the land of the dead. It is an unpleasant sort of riddle, and I don’t mind saying so. Nor do I.” They spoke in turn, though their voices were so similar and their mannerisms so complementary, it was hard to know who was speaking at any given moment. “And you. Where did you find that magnificent bow? I was just going to ask him that myself. It belongs in worthier hands, I’m sure. Yes, certainly. Did you rob someone of it? I’ll bet he did.”
I started to answer, but the two dogs had made it to shore, and the sight of them quite took my breath away. They were not, as I had supposed, two distinct animals but one animal with two heads.
Argos jumped forward, growling and baring his fangs, but the great beast seemed not to notice, pausing at the water’s edge only to shake itself dry.
“Orthos. Stay,” commanded the three giants. “Good boy. You’ll have your supper in a moment.” This did not sound like good news to me. “I am Geryon,” they said together, “Guardian of the Lower Realms. Who are you, and why did you stir the waters of my lagoon? What business have you calling me from my sleep?”
“Sir . . . um . . . sirs,” I answered with a deep bow, “it was quite by accident that I slipped into those waters, and quite by accident that you were summoned. My name is Odysseus, Son of Laertes. My two companions are Ajax, Son of Telemon, and Diomedes, Son of Tydeus. We serve the Parthenos, and we seek a passage to the lower realms.”
I would have continued, but Argos was making such a fuss over the two-headed dog that hardly anything could be heard above the barking.
“Argos,” I shouted, “that’s enough.”
But just then, the two-headed beast leapt forward and came down on Argos’ back, pinning him to the sand and gripping his neck in one of its two mouths. Argos yelped and wriggled free, springing up and under to drive the beast back on its haunches. It parried the attack with one head and went for Argos’ neck with other; then there was a cyclone of sand as the two wrestled back and forth along the shore.
There were a few tense moments as we looked on.
It was Ajax who broke the silence. “I’ll be damned,” he said, the irony of his expletive lost in the commotion. “Those two’re playing.”
It was true. They weren’t harming each other in the least, and seemed rather to be enjoying themselves, rolling in the sand and flinging one another into the water. Even little Dionysus had joined in, yapping and nipping at their heels.
“I’ll be damned,” repeated the three giants; and this time, I couldn’t resist pointing out that they already were.
“No,” they answered. “Strictly speaking, I am not damned. Nor I. Nor I. I could fly out of here whenever I like. Though not without my help—or mine.” The giant on the left shrugged, and a single webbed wing stretched out from between his shoulders. How he could fly anywhere with only one wing seemed to me the obvious question, but I checked myself as the giant on the right produced a wing of his own. “Yes,” they continued. “I am here because it is my job. You, on the other hand, are quite out of place.”
I had enough unanswered questions to keep us all in conversation for a week, but before I could voice them, the surface of the water broke behind the giants, and something like a scaly black serpent rose out of the lagoon, its eyeless head arching up till it hung suspended in the air just above the middle giant. He made as if to speak again, but I cut him short.
“Sir! Behind you! Look out!”
The giants all turned in unison, but the moment they did, the snake disappeared into the water. They turned back to me with a suspicious glare.
“Honestly. It was just there,” I explained, and my companions nodded. I had hardly finished protesting when the snake rose out of the water again, and this time Ajax, Diomedes, and I all shouted together, “There it is!”
This time, the giants saw it. “Oh,” they rumbled in unison, “don’t worry. That’s mine.”
“What . . . whose?” I asked, though by now I was so confused, I couldn’t be sure any answer he gave would help explain what I was seeing.
“Mine,” all three giants answered at once, and as though to complicate the picture even further, a pair of gigantic paws emerged from the water, one to our right and one to our left.
I like to think that I’m pretty good with riddles, and after all my long travels, I’d become rather accustomed to encountering the exotic and bizarre, but the current situation was so beyond anything I’d ever known that I found myself reduced to silence. In my head, I sifted through what I was seeing: three giants, two wings, one snake, a two-headed dog, and now a pair of disembodied paws stretching out of the water. It was a lot to take in, and there didn’t seem to be any logic linking one element to the next. But I was handling it better than Ajax, who had crumpled in on himself in a posture of complete befuddlement—his shoulders slumped forward, brow furrowed, with his lower lip sucked up so that it touched his nose. The poor oaf had enough trouble figuring out how to work the straps of his sandals. This was just too much for him. And Diomedes seemed equally confused, scratching his beard with his sword and burrowing one foot in the sand.
“Whose . . . snake . . . is that . . . exactly?” I asked, but now the giant solved the riddle for us by climbing ashore.
“Oh . . .” Ajax, Diomedes, and I gasped in unison as Geryon emerged from the water. It was immediately clear how the paws, wings, three giants, and “serpent” were connected; they were all part of the same creature. Geryon, we discovered, was a lion from the waist down, three separate men from the waist up, and a scorpion starting at the base of the tail. He was easily three times the size of Ajax, and hideous in every respect but his face—or faces, rather, which had a surprisingly open and gentle look about them.
Once he was on shore, Geryon gave himself a good shake, drenching us all, including the two (well, two and a half) dogs, who shook themselves in answer and drenched us all over again. Once all the shaking and drenching had ceased, we resumed our conversation.
“You understand, it is my responsibility to prevent you from getting to the lower realms,” said Geryon, scratching himself on the back (and by that I mean one of his selves was scratching the other self on the back while all three spoke simultaneously). “But even if I weren’t here to prevent you, I can’t see how you would ever make it down there. On the other side of this lagoon, there is a sheer drop to the level below. Without a pair of wings, you would smash to bits on the rocks.” His scorpion tail twitched in agreement.
“In that case,” I said, “we would be grateful if you would carry us.”
Geryon raised his eyebrows—all six—and the three of him looked at one another as though carrying on an unspoken conversation. “I’d love to help you,” he said. “And so would I. My dog seems to like yours, and any friend of Orthos is a friend of mine. And mine. In fact, to tell the truth, I haven’t seen him this happy since his brother left for the land of the gluttons.”
Talking to Geryon was like trying to sing three songs at once, but I was beginning to get the hang of it. If I just focused on one of him, I would eventually piece together what all three were trying to say.
“But in the end, it just isn’t my job,” he explained. “I’m a sentry, not a ferryman. And the same goes for us. But I’ll tell you what,” he said, leaning over to scratch Argos behind the ear. “I’ve always felt I was one dog short. Me too. You leave your dog with me, and I’ll take the three of you down.”
“No,” I said. “Not my dog. I lost him once already. I’m not losing him again. Can’t I give you something else?”
“Believe me, if I wanted something else of yours, I’d have taken it by now,” said Geryon with a friendly wink. “But the dog is yours to give. If I tried to take him by force, he’d hate me. Besides,” he added, “if I’m going to fly you somewhere, there’s only so much I can carry. A man has only six hands, you know, and that big fellow”—he nodded at Ajax—“is going to be a load all by himself. I figure there’s three of me and three of you. Leave out the dog, and I should be able to take you all down in one trip.”
I looked again at Argos, who had rolled onto his back in ecstasy. Geryon was petting him with all six hands.
“I’ll take good care of him. Honest.”
Diomedes leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “This is our chance to ditch Proteus.”
I wracked my brain for an alternative, but none presented itself. “Look here,” I said, swallowing back a lump in my throat, “once I’m done with this mission, I’ll be returning for my wife. When I do, you’re going to give me back my dog.”
“Son,” said Geryon, breaking into three wide grins, “if I ever see you again or your wife, I’ll not only return your dog, I’ll take the whole bunch of you anywhere you like. No one has ever made it back from where you’re going.”
By now, Argos had made his way back to Orthos, and the two were lying side by side in the sand, panting. From time to time, one of Orthos’ heads would lean over and give Argos an affectionate nip. “Well,” I thought to myself as I trudged over, “at least I won’t be leaving him alone.”
Argos wagged his tail as I walked up, and that little gesture made me miss him already. He had been a good dog, a loyal friend in an age of treachery. Yet I had abandoned him to an ignoble death. I crouched to look him in the eyes. He stretched out his wet tongue and gave my nose a swipe.
“That’s it,” I said. I stood up and wheeled about to face Geryon. “The deal is off. I’m not giving you my dog.”
Geryon shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Diomedes ran over to me. “Listen to what you’re saying. You don’t even know for sure this is Argos.”
“It’s Argos. I know him as well as I know my own right hand.”
“So you’re going to jeopardize this entire mission for a dog?”
“For Argos.”
“But still just a dog, Odysseus. A dumb animal.”
“That dumb animal saved my life more than once.”
“It’s a dog,” he cried. “It spends half its life licking itself and the other half sleeping. Are you really going to risk everything for a creature that eats its own feces?”
I looked hard at Diomedes. “I’m going to pretend that wasn’t clever and put it to you this way—I’ve said too many good-byes, Diomedes. I won’t say another. If you want to give that monster a new pet, give him Dionysus.”
Diomedes looked down at Dionysus and scowled. “Your dog means more to you than I do.”
“That’s not it at all,” I said.
Diomedes leaned closer. His face was pale and drawn. “That is it exactly,” he said, “and I won’t allow you to do this.”
“It’s not a question of you allowing me anything,” I answered. “He’s my dog. Besides that, I’m the leader here. I make the decisions for us both.”
“Not anymore, Odysseus. You’re giving Argos away, and I won’t argue over it. You’ll give him away for the sake of our friendship, or you’ll give him away at knifepoint.”
“Is that so?” I said, reaching for my sword. It wasn’t there.
“It is so,” he answered. He had my sword in his hand. I hadn’t even seen him take it. “And we’re not going to fight over it.”
“You took my sword,” I gasped.
Diomedes smiled. “You are the smart one.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I said. It seemed like ever since we’d left the walls of Dis, he just hadn’t been himself. Then a horrible suspicion crept over me. “You’re not Diomedes, are you?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“You . . . you’re Proteus!”
This time he laughed so hard, he nearly dropped my sword. I considered hitting him while his guard was down, but if this were Proteus . . .
“Enough bickering,” said a voice at our feet. I looked down, bewildered. It was Dionysus talking. He shook his head vigorously, then stood up on his hind legs. I heard a sound like snapping twigs, and a familiar odor of seaweed filled the air as the little dog stretched and yawned and pushed himself into the shape of a monkey, a child, an ape . . . a man—an old man with sea-blue hair.