Odysseus in the Serpent Maze

by Robert J. Harris

  “Someone has to be down there working the oars,” said Mentor.

  “Or some thing,” Helen said. She shivered.

  “Slaves?” asked Penelope.

  Odysseus shrugged. “Why aren’t there any voices? How are they fed? Who brings them water? Who guards them?” Odysseus ran out of questions.

  “Maybe it’s not slaves,” said Helen. “Maybe it’s monsters.” She shivered. “Or ghosts.”

  “Whatever it is—we need to find out,” Odysseus said.

  “Why?” Helen asked again.

  “Because we need to know who’s rowing. And where we’re going,” Penelope told her.

  “We searched the ship,” Mentor pointed out. “The only thing we found was the signal rod.”

  “We searched the sides of the ship,” Penelope pointed out. “We didn’t search the floor.”

  “Deck,” said Odysseus, but he nodded. Without waiting for the others, he dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling along the deck, checking out every crack and line in the boards.

  Penelope joined him and, a bit more reluctantly, so did Mentor. Helen turned away from them to stare again out to sea.

  It took a long time for them to crawl the entire deck, but at last Mentor cried out, “Here!”

  He straddled a barely visible square near the ship’s bow.

  The others ran over to see what he had found.

  “Is it a hatch?” Mentor asked.

  “What’s a hatch?” asked Penelope.

  “A door into the ship’s hold,” Odysseus said.

  “What’s a hold?” she asked.

  “There’s no handle,” Helen pointed out. “How can you open it without a handle?”

  Odysseus drew his dagger and knelt down. “With this.” He forced the point into the right side of the thin crack.

  “Don’t!” Helen cried, putting her hands on his shoulders. “You don’t know what’s down there. You might be freeing the souls of dead sailors. You might set a monster loose. You might—”

  “Isn’t it better to know than to sit here and tremble?” asked Odysseus, shrugging off her hands.

  “Trembling is better than dying,” Helen whispered, clasping her hands to her breast.

  Odysseus didn’t answer her. Instead he began to prise up the hatch, just enough so that Mentor could catch the edge. Then together the boys hauled the heavy door open, grunting as they worked.

  The metallic noise grew louder, and an oily smell wafted up from below.

  Odysseus stuck his head down through the opening.

  “Is it a hold?” Penelope called. When he didn’t answer, she added, “What do you see?”

  There were small points of illumination coming from the oar holes. That light was enough to see that the hold was full of wheels.

  Metal wheels with notches.

  Notches fitting into other notches.

  Long bronze rods moving between the wheels.

  Odysseus sat up. “It’s as though the metal itself is alive.”

  “Or some invisible monster is at work,” cried Helen.

  “Or spirits of the air moving the wheels,” Mentor added.

  Penelope folded her arms and bit her upper lip. “Perhaps it’s some intricate toy built by Daedalus himself.” She looked cautious. “We’d better not tinker with it.”

  Reluctantly Odysseus agreed. “Whatever it is—monster-run or spirit-driven or master toy, if we go down there and stop it, we might not get it started again. And then we could be becalmed here forever.” With Mentor’s help, he set the hatch cover back down.

  “So now what?” Mentor asked.

  “We eat,” said Odysseus.

  “We drink,” said Helen.

  “We wait,” Penelope added. “But not, I hope, too long.”

  CHAPTER 15: THE LONG ISLAND

  ALL THAT DAY THE boat continued moving, and the four took turns watching the water, hoping for ships, for gulls, for land, for anything to break the monotony of sea and sky.

  Odysseus took the longest watches. The food and water had filled him with energy, and there was nowhere else to expend it. Awake, he gave a lot of thought to the mystery ship. Wherever it was taking them, he’d no doubt the destination would be just as strange and intriguing as the vessel itself.

  Leaning against the prow, scanning the sea, Odysseus was riveted on the horizon when Penelope came to stand beside him.

  “My turn,” she said, touching him lightly on the arm.

  “I’d rather watch here than look after your cousin.”

  She smiled wryly. “Mentor is doing that ably. He’s telling her all about Ithaca, and she’s just bored enough to listen.”

  Odysseus gave a short bark of a laugh. “How do you put up with her? I’d have thrown her over the side of the ship by now if you weren’t here.”

  “And how brave would that make you then?”

  Odysseus sighed. “I’m not trying to start an argument.”

  “Neither am I,” Penelope said. Her face softened. “But I’m trying to make a point. You were raised a warrior. Adventure has been bred into you. Helen was raised to be beautiful and pampered and spoiled. It’s not her fault that she can’t face danger with a hero’s heart.”

  “But you,” Odysseus said carefully, rubbing a hand through his thick red hair, “you’re not like that. And as a princess of Sparta yourself, surely you were raised the same way.”

  “My looks never invited such a spoiling.”

  “You’re handsome enough,” Odysseus said. Then he looked away, embarrassed about delivering a compliment.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to his back, not caring if he heard. “But no one is in Helen’s class.”

  Odysseus turned to face her again. “So who pampered and spoiled her then?”

  “Everyone,” said Penelope. “Her father most of all. If she’s desired by every king and noble in Achaea, she becomes worth more to him than gold or jewels. He can use her beauty and desirability to make any king his ally.”

  Odysseus turned back to gaze at the endless length of the dark sea. Suddenly he leaned forward, squinting his eyes. “Look!” he cried.

  Penelope turned around and stared. “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Land!” Odysseus shouted. Then to be sure that Mentor and Helen had heard as well, he cried out again. “There’s land ahead!”

  They raced over to see.

  “What land is it?” Mentor asked.

  “Egypt?” hazarded Penelope.

  “Too mountainous for Egypt,” Mentor said.

  “We’ve been sailing west, not south,” said Odysseus. “My guess is it’s the Long Island.” There was an eager gleam in his eye.

  “I hope not,” Mentor said. He stared straight ahead.

  “Why do you say that?” Helen asked. Now she too leaned over the ship’s side and stared ahead.

  “Well, because … because it’s a long way from home.”

  “But at least it’s land,” Helen said. Then she turned and went back to the shelter of the canopy, where she began running her fingers through her hair like a comb.

  As soon as Helen was too far away to hear, Penelope rounded on the boys. “What is really wrong with this Long Island?”

  “The Long Island is what we Ithacans call Crete,” Odysseus said.

  “King Minos’ island? Where the monster was in the maze?” Penelope nodded. “That makes a kind of sense. Daedalus made a ship that takes us straight to Crete, where once upon a long time ago he made a maze to hold a monster. But …” She thought a minute. “You said the monster in the maze is dead.”

  The boys looked quickly at each other.

  “It is dead—isn’t it?” Penelope asked.

  “Very dead,” said Mentor. “But …”

  “But what?” Penelope asked, hands on her hips.

  “Sailors’ tales,” Odysseus said. “That’s all. Men who are too long at sea like to make up stories.”

  Penelope was not to be fobbed off with that answ
er. She’d already noticed that when Odysseus told a lie, a vertical line grew between his eyes. The line was there now. “What stories?”

  “Other … kinds of monsters,” Mentor said at last. “But none that are to be believed.”

  She was unable to tell whether they were speaking the truth or cushioning her from fear, so she looked instead at the land that was coming nearer with every stroke of the oars.

  It was clearly a very, very long island, and as the ship drew closer, a great cliff face reared before them. The four now stood shoulder to shoulder, watching.

  “The oars don’t seem to be slowing down,” Mentor noted with a worried expression.

  “We’ll all be dashed to pieces on the rocks,” Helen cried.

  “I don’t understand,” Penelope said thoughtfully. “Is the ship trying to destroy itself?”

  “Us,” Helen screamed. “It’s trying to destroy us!”

  Grabbing her cousin’s shoulders, Penelope said very clearly, “Listen, Helen—if the ship had wanted to kill us, it need never have picked us up in the first place.”

  Helen’s beautiful blue eyes widened. “But it didn’t pick us up. We found it!” The eyes began to pool.

  Penelope’s face scrunched up, and she stared down at her feet.

  “Maybe we should jump off and swim to shore,” Mentor said.

  Odysseus had been silent through this frantic conversation, trying to gauge wind and water, trying to make sense of the oars’ tireless drive through the sea. At last he turned to the others.

  “There’s one thing we can do,” he said. He went back to the canopy and returned with the satyr’s club. “Help me open the hatch again, Mentor. I’ll go down there and smash the ship’s innards. That should kill it.”

  “No!” Penelope cried, grabbing his arm. “Who knows what could happen to you down there.”

  “Nothing worse than what will happen to all of us up here if the ship rams those cliffs,” he said.

  Shrugging off her grip, Odysseus once again pried open the hatch with his knife. Mentor helped him lift the door, which seemed even heavier this time. They gazed down into the ship’s fearsome belly, where rods and wheels pounded and creaked relentlessly.

  Then they both sat back on their heels.

  Odysseus spoke first. “If this doesn’t work, make sure you all jump before the ship hits the cliffs. Grab some wreckage to keep you afloat till you find a safe stretch of shore.”

  Mentor glanced quickly at Helen, who was staring mutely at the fast-approaching rock face. “Let me go down into the hold,” he said. “You’re a prince. She’s not interested in me.”

  Odysseus smiled. “I’d rather die down there than have to swim your princess to shore. She’s all yours.”

  He took hold of the edge of the hatch and was just preparing to lower himself down when Penelope cried out. “Wait! There’s a gap in the rock!”

  Odysseus leaped up, and he and Mentor ran to where Penelope stood, pointing. Helen came too.

  “There! There!”

  A dark sliver, a narrow canyon, was barely visible in the grey rock wall.

  Mentor squinted and shook his head. “It’s too narrow. The ship will never make it through.”

  “The ship seems to think it can,” Penelope said.

  Instinctively, they all retreated to the stern, linking arms.

  Just then there was a loud clanking, and the oars suddenly tipped upward till they were pointing towards the sky. Catapulted by a large wave, the ship sped forward through the gap, and into a darkness blacker than any night.

  Helen screamed.

  And then the others—even Odysseus—screamed with her.

  CHAPTER 16: THE BRONZE GUARDIAN

  “I KNEW THIS WAS a death ship,” Helen moaned. “Knew it the minute I saw it. Surely we’ve found the Underworld, and this is the River Styx.” In the pitch black her voice seemed much too loud.

  Odysseus wanted to dismiss her fear, but any words of comfort stuck in his throat.

  “Perhaps it was Hades himself who made the ship. To steal me away as he stole Persephone,” Helen continued. Her voice was strangely calm, as if such a fate were almost appealing.

  “Not everything that happens in the world hinges on you, Helen,” Penelope said with sudden anger.

  Just then the ship made a deep turn, and they emerged back out into the light. They could see they’d just travelled through a narrow cave that opened into a small bay. Ahead the shoreline was studded with jagged rocks rearing up like monstrous fangs. Thrusting from the midst of the fangs, like a giant tongue, was a stone jetty.

  “Not the Underworld, then,” Penelope said dryly.

  “Not yet,” Odysseus said.

  The ship showed no sign of slowing down, and they were heading so fast towards the rocks that none of them doubted that the ship would be dashed to pieces. Wordlessly, they each grabbed on to the ship’s sides, ready for the fatal impact.

  At the last possible moment, the oars snapped down, back-paddling, the flat of the blades set firmly against the wave. A huge spume cast up on either side, filling the ship with spray. In an instant, the momentum of the ship was stopped so suddenly that the four passengers were thrown forward.

  Penelope’s head cracked painfully on the deck, and Helen became so tangled in her skirts, she looked bound. Odysseus did a rolling flip. Mentor was flung into the air, landing on the boards like a fresh-caught fish.

  For a long moment none of them moved.

  Then Helen moaned.

  Raising his head, Odysseus was the first to realise that the ship had stopped. He pulled himself up and looked over the side. They were only a few yards from the rock pier.

  Glancing up at the sky, he said aloud, “I hope you gods are enjoying the joke.” He gave Penelope a hand, then Helen. At last he started over to Mentor.

  “I’m all right,” Mentor said, though a large bruise was already purpling the side of his knee. He stood without help.

  “Can you walk?” Odysseus asked.

  “If I have to, I can even run,” Mentor answered.

  “I suggest running, then,” Penelope said. “Before the boat changes its mind and carries us back out to sea.”

  Odysseus went first, dropping over the side into thigh-high water. He held his arms out, and Mentor helped first Penelope, then Helen down, and Odysseus caught them.

  At last Mentor jumped too, a grimace on his face when he landed on his bruised leg.

  They waded to the stone pier and looked back at the ship, still riding high in the water.

  “I wish …” Odysseus began. For a moment he was silent.

  “What do you wish?” Penelope asked.

  “I wish …” He couldn’t say it aloud for fear that Penelope would laugh, but what he wished for was more time on the ship, to learn its controls. Such a ship might carry him tirelessly to the ends of the earth. Instead, he turned to Penelope and said, “I wish we could get somewhere dry and warm.”

  “Yes, Prince Odysseus! Yes!” Helen cried. “What about that tunnel over there?” She waved dramatically at a sea cave to their left.

  “There’s water in that,” Mentor pointed out. “Hardly dry and probably not warm either.”

  Penelope stared at Odysseus oddly, head cocked to one side, as if able to read the real wish on his face. Then she turned away, stared up at the cliff, and suddenly shouted, “Look! Up there.”

  A door of polished bronze with great incised pictures across the lintel was set right into the cliff face.

  Odysseus wasted no time in wonder. He scrambled up a narrow pebble path towards the doorway, the others following right behind.

  Closer up, the door was even stranger. The picture over the lintel showed a monster—half bull and half man—standing over a dozen dead children.

  “The Minotaur,” Mentor said.

  Odysseus controlled a shudder. Some of the children in the picture looked to be his age.

  “There’s no keyhole,” Penelope said.

&nb
sp; Odysseus placed his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his might, but the door didn’t budge. Mentor came over to help, but still the door didn’t move.

  “I don’t think this door’s meant to be broken through,” Mentor said. “At least not by us.”

  “Maybe we should go back to the ship,” Helen suggested. “We have food there and water and—”

  “Wait!” Penelope had found a small hole in the rock next to the door and poked her little finger in. “Do you think the key goes here?”

  Odysseus pulled the key and spearhead from his tunic. He touched the script on the key with his fingers. “Dae-da-lus,” he whispered, as if reading it. Then he inserted the long nose of the key into the hole.

  It fit exactly.

  “Turn it!” Helen shouted, clapping her hands. “Turn it!”

  Odysseus turned the key. Something shifted noisily inside the rock, like the sound in the hold when the oars first began working.

  “Daedalus,” he said aloud. “Old toy maker. What kind of toy is this?”

  The door sprang inward, and Mentor, who was still leaning against it, fell backwards into the rock.

  Odysseus picked him up and, going first, walked into the shadowy passageway. Twenty steps along, where the light from the doorway did not penetrate, he came to a stop.

  The others caught up.

  “What is it?” Mentor asked.

  “Door. Wooden by the feel of it,” said Odysseus.

  “Will it open?” Helen asked.

  “Should we open it?” Penelope asked.

  Odysseus felt along the door until his hands came to a metal ring. He twisted it to the left, then to the right. At the second twist, the door made a noise somewhere between a click and a sigh, and opened forward, flooding the tunnel with light.

  None of them stepped through. They just gathered at the door’s edge and stared in.

  There was an enormous room spread out before them. Oil lamps atop tripods in each corner flickered with warm light.

  Odysseus was impressed. “This room’s as large as my father’s banqueting hall.”

  “A banqueting hall without couches or chairs?” Helen’s voice was full of disdain.

  The room contained a dozen long benches and wooden tables on which rested an assortment of hammers, hasps, pincers and other instruments, as if the user had just stepped away for a moment.