THE DREAMER'S LOOM

by Michelle L. Levigne

  Penelope thought of the sly looks Thoosa always gave her. She remembered Melantho and Thoosa watching her with delighted malice in their eyes. She knew, even though Melantho liked Antikleia, by now the two laughed together at this tragedy fallen on Odysseus' household.

  * * * *

  The next morning, they lit Antikleia's funeral pyre. By evening, the ashes were cool enough to put into an urn she had made. Laertes brought it with him when he came to live in his son's house. Penelope helped him bury the urn in her private garden, where she and Antikleia had spent many contented hours, working together in silent, peaceful accord.

  Laertes traded his house for land adjoining his son's fields and orchards in another part of the island. Before witnesses, he had a scribe make out a deed putting the new land into Telemachos' name. If grandfather and grandson spent more hours than necessary planting vines and seedling trees, Penelope didn't complain. It was good to have her husband's father in her home, to talk to in the evening, to teach Telemachos what father taught son. The boy's presence was all that kept Laertes from falling to the same depression that had devoured his wife.

  Some of the household staff was sent away, either freed or given into the keeping of other noble households. The rest were divided between the new land, to tend it, or added to Penelope's household. Melantho returned to take her old place as Eurynome's assistant.

  Penelope soon wondered if that had been wise, even if done out of common sense. Melantho had been with her from the beginning. Eurynome was growing older, slower, and needed help. Still, Penelope considered sending Melantho to the estate where Dolios had become overseer, his wife and sons joining him. It was no insult for the woman to care for her aging parents. In two days, Penelope glimpsed enough scornful looks, overheard enough bitter whispers, to know Melantho still nursed anger. Penelope remembered Odysseus saying it was better to keep an enemy in sight, and set herself to endure.

  * * * *

  Penelope dreamed of Odysseus in a gray place of rocks and shadows. He stood gazing into the shadows, as she had seen him do in other dreams, bracing himself for battle at dawn. Things moved in the churning mist. Part of her did not want to know what her husband faced.

  She watched as he marked out a square with the tip of his sword and then cut the dry ground and dug a pit. The chore could have taken mere moments or days. Then, when the pit was as deep as it was wide, he vanished, to return with three large jugs of fired clay. He filled the pit from the jugs, like offering a drink sacrifice--milk, wine and water. She watched him sprinkle white grains of barley over the liquid in the pit. Odysseus made an offering in this gray, muddled place, and the idea frightened her. Who did he propitiate? What kept him from returning home?

  Then he vanished again. He returned with four sheep, killed them and spilled their blood into the pit. As he dragged the last carcass aside, the shapes at the edge of the dream grew solid. Pale faces, hollow eyes, bony limbs became visible, stepping from the mist. Penelope sensed the apparitions in the shadows could see her. If they could see her, then so could Odysseus, but she couldn't make a sound to get him to turn and look at her.

  Odysseus crouched at the edge of the pit and waved his bright sword over the hole filled with blood, wine, milk and water. Light from an unseen source flashed off the blade. The light kept the shadow people away from the pit. Penelope watched her husband search the faces of the growing crowd.

  She studied the faces, wondering who he sought. Faces took on character and color. Some people wore armor, others dressed like queens, with garlands of wilted flowers in their hair.

  Penelope woke with a shriek choking her. Though she stared into the bright moonlight on her blankets, she couldn't wipe the scene away. Memory burned it bright and fast into her mind.

  Agamemnon stepped from the faceless crowd. Elpenor, a young oarsman from Ithaka. Achilleus, the young hero who had visited Ithaka on his way to Ilion. Antikleia stepped from the shadows last of all.

  Penelope didn't share this dream with Telemachos. How could she tell her son she had seen his father walk living into the land of the dead? Ktimene, however, came to her mother and said she had dreamed of her grandmother. After they compared dreams, the pain that had haunted the child's eyes faded a little. That night, they walked together under a full moon to the cave, to make offerings to the Goddess.

  * * * *

  On a festival day, when the boys competed in wrestling and foot races, Penelope gave the household the afternoon to do as they wished. Laertes persuaded her to come to the beach to see the contests of speed, strength and skill. In the groves, young girls danced. This year, Ktimene asked to go without her mother's attendance, to dress her hair and arms with garlands of flowers. Penelope agreed, though she felt a pang at this rare sign of independence. It was good for her daughter to take up her heritage, to lead in the festivals praising the Goddess. Penelope contented herself with watching her son excel, joining her voice in the shouts of encouragement and praise.

  Telemachos raced with the boys his age, meeting them shoulder to shoulder, giving as good as he took. She saw Odysseus in him, though the boy had her slenderness rather than his father's stocky build. Memories returned of that summer she and Odysseus met, when she waited in Tyndareos' palace for a prince to notice her, and he waited for his chance to win her. Odysseus had excelled in the games, hoarding his strength until his competitors wasted theirs. When his opponents thought him tired, weak, at a disadvantage, he knocked them off balance. Penelope fought tears when she saw Telemachos struggle to do the same. Did he act and move and think like his father because it was in his blood, or because she had told him so many stories of Odysseus that he tried to imitate his father?

  "He is too much like his father," Laertes murmured, giving her a cup filled from a skin of wine he had brought. Penelope nodded her thanks and agreement. She sipped to keep from speaking, knowing her voice would break. "I am grateful to you, Penelope," he said, touching her arm.

  "I?" Her voice did crack, the word startled out of her. Laertes watched the wrestlers in the sand several paces away. "You made my son happy. You raise his son so any man would be proud to claim him. You raise his daughter so that every young man of good blood will soon clamor to make her his bride. And you give me reason to remain in the land of the living." Now he met her gaze. "The gods blessed our household, the day my son saw and desired you."

  "Father--" She looked away, the words sticking in her throat. "This is my home. What else would I have done?"

  The roar of the crowd around them kept Laertes from replying. The wrestlers finished their tussle, a blond, thin boy somehow managing to throw down a black-haired boy nearly a head taller. Penelope shivered, thinking for a moment she saw a young Menelaos and young Aias getting up from the sand. The two wrestlers laughed, clasped hands and left the informal arena. Telemachos stepped forward to meet his next opponent. Penelope added her voice to the shouts of encouragement. Her son heard. He bowed to her, then turned to meet the larger boy, tanned and whipped thin by wind and sun, who came to meet him.

  "A fisherman's son," Laertes said, gesturing at the other boy. "He grew up on his father's ship. That gives him a balance Telemachos will find hard to defeat." He chuckled. "Not that he will give up until he finds a way."

  "Sometimes I wish Telemachos had never been born," Penelope said, under cover of the shouting people around them. She felt no surprise at the words that slipped between her teeth almost before the thought entered her mind.

  "Nor Ktimene," she continued. "They remind me, growing and changing every day, how quickly time slips by. Telemachos was barely walking and talking when his father left. In a few years, he will be a grown man, ready to take his father's place. Ktimene will have suitors. I don't want her to marry without her father's consent, but how can I make her wait? I hate being reminded of the years we lost."

  "Would you rather have been alone, with only memories?" he asked. From the softness of his voice, Penelope knew he understood and sympathized.
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  "My memories are alive because Telemachos and Ktimene keep them alive. They still ask me about their father, even though I have given the same answers a hundred times. In Telemachos, I can see his father as a boy. Without him or Ktimene, I might have followed their grandmother. They are a living source of hurt to me, and the fountain of my strength to live and endure."

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  It happened late spring the next year. Penelope remembered the day well, every detail carved into her memory. She sat at her loom that morning to begin cloth for a new cloak for Telemachos. He had grown quickly that winter and all his clothes were too short. It took her most of the morning to set the threads, between answering questions about late planting and helping Ktimene with a new pattern. After a short noon meal with Eurynome and Eurykleia, discussing the state of the household stores, she returned to her weaving.

  Laertes came to the door before she finished ten passes. Penelope saw his shadow before she heard his approach. She looked up to greet him and felt her heart miss a beat.

  "Father? Are you ill?" She reached for him, alarmed. Laertes stared, eyes wide, skin pale.

  "There is a man in our hall," he said, his voice strained and quiet. "Scarred from battles, abused by rough journeys."

  "What does he want?" Something inside Penelope shrank from asking. A fragment of a dream gave her warning with no details.

  "He says he is Odysseus."

  "He says," she echoed. The two words put a cold hand on the hot leap of joy from the last three words. Penelope fought for another breath. "You doubt?"

  She turned to see Ktimene watching, face unreadable and solemn. The girl came to her mother and stood by her chair, a hand on her shoulder. Penelope's mind raced, trying to remember where Telemachos was that day.

  She felt her heart ease a little, remembering he had taken Argus to go hunting. The aging dog couldn't keep up with the other hunting dogs. Telemachos treasured Argus as a last gift from his father and worked to keep him active.

  "Father?" she prompted, when Laertes said nothing. "Why did no one tell us the ship had arrived?"

  "They came in last night at the northern tip of the island. The man who accompanied him says they were not sure what island they had reached until this morning."

  "Then he lost his companions after all." Penelope felt no reassurance in knowing another dream had spoken truth. No dream had warned her about the man sitting in the hall below, waiting to be greeted as her husband. "You doubt?"

  "He has lived through horrible hardships. No man would be recognizable to his own. His companion says he has no memory of his past, his home and heritage." Laertes gestured toward the door. "Will you test him with me?"

  Penelope nodded and stood. She clutched at the frame of her loom a moment when she nearly lost her balance.

  "He's not my father," Ktimene said, her voice sharp and bright. "Father would play tricks on us and test us and make us laugh." She wrapped her arms around her mother's waist. "Make him go away."

  "We must be sure, child," Laertes said. "Maybe you should stay here, and wait."

  Penelope expected a protest, but her daughter only nodded and went back to her loom. She and Laertes supported each other, taking the stairs slowly. Her thoughts spun.

  Why did Laertes doubt the man's claims? Because of his beaten and battered condition? Or did something not lie straight? She knew with a little questioning, her husband's father could have examined the stranger and his claims. He needed her help. Why? To prove he was right to doubt, or to prove him wrong?

  Two men waited by the hearth in the feasting hall. Eurynome finished serving them bread, meat and wine as Penelope and Laertes arrived. One was tall, perhaps a few years older than Penelope. He had the tanned skin and windblown looks of a man who lived on the deck of a ship. His eyes were as black as his hair and sparkled when he saw her. She shuddered at the measuring look he gave her, as if she were a piece of property.

  His companion hunched over on the hearth, holding his cup of wine with one gnarled hand and the stump of his other wrist. Penelope halted when she saw that loss. She had grown used to the sight of lost hands and limbs on the men who had come to tell her about the war. The thought of Odysseus so maimed sent cold weakness through her. She pushed that aside to study the man who claimed to be her husband.

  His hair might have been red and thick once, but was bleached by wind and sun and the salt seas, thinned and graying from a hard life. His stooped shoulders might have been wide, strong, set on a stocky body. His tanned arms and legs were laced with scars. Burns scarred the flesh on his stump, where someone had crudely cauterized the wound. The left side of his face was a mass of scars and burns, the tissue still pink from healing. Gray eyes looked from the worn wreckage of his face, but they held no brightness she recognized.

  Penelope stepped before the man, wondering at the lack of awareness in his eyes. They regarded each other until some spark came to his face and he smiled, revealing broken, yellowed teeth. He looked her up and down and licked his lips in a sloppy, animal gesture that revolted her.

  She knew this man was not Odysseus. Despite all the justified ills spoken against him, her husband had never looked at a woman in that way. She backed up a step, her arm still caught in Laertes'.

  "Daughter?" His voice held hope, despite his doubts. In desperation, she studied the man again. That was when her eye caught the lack.

  "His scars. Father, look at his scars." She pointed at the man's legs.

  "I've plenty of scars to prove my troubles, dear wife," the imposter said. His voice was harsh, as if someone had tried to strangle him. "Do you think I would have willingly stayed away from a woman as lovely as you, if enemies had not slowed me?"

  "Yes, scars in plenty." She found strength in cold anger. Penelope gestured at the smooth skin around his knees. "Where is the scar the boar gave Odysseus when he was a boy?"

  "That is a proof no one could create without risking losing his leg." Laertes' voice took on a strength that threatened to build into a shout to bring down the roof. "How do you explain gaining so many scars, and losing that one identifying mark?"

  "Noble lord, gracious royal lady," the young man broke in. His voice was placating, with a touch of metal like a sword's edge. "As we told you when we entered your doors, my poor companion has long wandered without memory of birthplace or kindred. He said his name was Odysseus. There must be many other warriors with the same name."

  "But only one who is king in Ithaka," Penelope said. "Only one who brought me here as his bride, father of my son and daughter, who killed the boar that nearly took his leg."

  "It was a mistake! We meant no harm."

  "Harm was done." She was glad for the momentary loss of control that made her voice wobble. She felt Laertes stiffen at her side. "Father, I will leave you to finish with our guests. I ask you, even for hospitality's sake, do not let them stay an hour longer in this house." She slipped her arm free of Laertes' grip and hurried to the stairs.

  Penelope silently called down plagues and lightning on the two men. It was no mistake, she was sure, but an attempt to use misfortune to slip a thief into another man's long-empty place.

  Honesty made her ask: what if her husband had returned to her, maimed by misfortune and accident and the capricious anger of the gods? Would she have willingly held him in her arms, kissed his lips, joined him in his bed when he called her?

  Odysseus, she knew, might return home in disguise to test her. She wouldn't blame him after the betrayals that met other warriors. But he would not hide the signs and secrets they held between them.

  Slow tears fell on the threads when she returned to her loom. Penelope listened for voices in the hall as Laertes handled their unwelcome guests. Perhaps it was cowardly to run away and leave him with them. At the moment, Penelope didn't care. She knew Laertes would forgive her.

  "Mother?" Ktimene got up from her loom. She stood by her mother and touched her shoulder. "Didn't your dreams tell you?
"

  "No. Dreams are not always trustworthy." Penelope put her head in her hands and wept.

  * * * *

  By evening, men from the household escorted the imposter and his companion back to their ship and forbade them to return. Penelope let Laertes tell Telemachos what had happened. She didn't have the strength for the task. Telemachos' anger comforted her. She lost that comfort to fear when the boy wanted to take his new spear and hunt out the man who tried to steal his father's place.

  "No." She grasped his arm, stopping his words and his path to the door. For a moment mother and son fought a silent battle of wills. "If this is anyone's battle, it is your father's, to win by returning home. You will not help him by going against evil men and endangering yourself."

  "But my friends--"

  "I will not answer to their fathers if you lead them into danger," Laertes interrupted. A smile broke his stern expression. "You make me proud, you make your mother proud, that you want to defend us. But this is not the way. You're still a boy, despite your strength and skill. Take the time to grow up before you grasp a man's duty." He glanced to Penelope, apology in his eyes. "Think of your mother, boy. If any harm comes to you, she loses what little joy the gods have left in her life."

  Penelope forgave his cruel tactic when Telemachos hugged her and promised he wouldn't sneak away to wreak vengeance on impostors.

  * * * *

  "Why does Antinoos wish to speak to me?" Penelope murmured, expecting no answer.

  Mentor ruled Ithaka with Laertes' tacit support. The womenfolk of the island appealed to Penelope to intervene on their families' behalf. Though many on the island considered her a power, her influence had faded in the years since Ktimene's birth, and others regarded Penelope as a foreigner, tolerated only as the mother of the heir. Antinoos was one. His request for an audience made her suspicious.

  "He wouldn't say, but he has brought presents for us all," Telemachos said.