Chapter 43
Zeus was angry.
I didn’t know what had summoned his temper, but it split open the night with sharp threads of brilliant white, rain hammering like fists upon the earth.
I had been asleep when the storm began, but the rageful thunder had shaken me from my dreams. It felt as if the cottage itself trembled in fear of the god’s fury.
From within the house, I heard banging. With a groan, I reluctantly left the warmth of my bed and ventured into the adjoining room.
Here, the winds howled through the open front door, rain lashing inside.
The door was swinging on its hinges, and as I ran to fasten the latch, a terrible question choked me—Where is Laertes?
I dashed to his room, letting out a sigh when I found the old man safe and asleep in his bed. Thank the gods.
As I wandered back to my room, the banging came again. At first, I assumed it was just the wind hammering against the cottage, but as I listened, I realized this sound was different, sharp and incessant on the front door.
Unease slithered through me. We never had visitors, save for my brother and friends. It was rare for anyone to venture out this far, especially in the middle of a night like this. Still, I knew the gods would surely punish me if I left a visitor outside in this weather.
Carefully, I unlatched the door, bracing myself against the wind as I wrenched it open.
A tall, drenched figure stood before me. They were wrapped in a dark cloak with their hood pulled low so I could not see their face. The stranger did not move, and their stillness seemed at odds with the stormy darkness swirling wildly around them.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, the words stolen immediately by the storm as icy rain struck my face. “Get in!”
I stepped aside, and the figure hesitated for a moment before entering.
After battling to shut the door again, I turned to the stranger. They stood in the center of the room, water pooling beneath their sopping cloak.
“I suppose you want somewhere to stay tonight?” I asked, too tired to curb the irritation in my voice.
The stranger said nothing. They had their back to me, and I watched their hood tilt as they regarded the space.
“You should get out of those clothes. You’re going to freeze to death or flood the house,” I grumbled. “My master will need to greet you. I will go and wake him.”
“Wait.”
That voice. It pierced me like an arrow, sharp and true, pinning me to the spot.
“What…” I trailed off as the figure turned, pulling back their hood to reveal their face.
Her face.
I stared at Penelope, and it felt as if time itself had taken a breath. I could not hear the storm anymore, could not see the clay-bricked cottage around me or feel the chill of the tiled floor beneath my feet. There was only her and the hammering of my heart against my ribs.
There was nothing in the world I knew better than Penelope’s face, so my focus was immediately drawn to all the ways it had changed. Her eyes were shadowed, and she looked thinner, her skin pale and cheekbones more pronounced, emphasizing the unfamiliar hollowness of her cheeks.
The silence thickened, punctuated only by a faint tapping noise. I realized, too slowly, that the sound was her teeth chattering.
She was freezing.
Had she walked here in this storm? It would have taken her all day.
Concern bridled every other emotion eddying inside me, pulling my thoughts into focus.
“You need to get warm,” I said, moving toward the hearth. “Come here.”
Penelope obeyed, trailing behind me like a lost, shivering child. I threw more logs on the fire before running to my room.
“You need to change out of your wet clothes,” I instructed when I returned, handing her one of my tunics. “You can use my chamber.”
She nodded, her eyes landing heavily on mine. There was so much unsaid between us, so many questions begging to be asked, but I could not think on that now. Not until I had made sure Penelope was warm and safe.
“Go,” I urged softly.
She took the tunic from me and then disappeared into my room.
I tended to the fire while I waited, and within those few moments when Penelope was gone, doubts seized my mind.
Had I just imagined her? Was this all some cruel hallucination?
Had I finally gone as mad as Laertes? But then she appeared in the doorway, and a deep sigh of relief escaped me.
Penelope padded silently over to the revived fire, reaching out her trembling hands toward it. Wordlessly, I handed her the fur pelt I retrieved from Laertes’s favorite chair.
“Thank you,” she said as she wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She was not looking at me but rather at the flames, their amber fingers dancing in her eyes. Her hair was still wet, sticking to her cheeks in dark spirals.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice painfully small. “I just…I had to see you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
She glanced around us. “Laertes…”
“In bed, asleep.” I motioned to his chamber. “He won’t bother us.”
She stared at the door to his room, and I watched as a raindrop gathered on the end of her lashes, sparkling in the firelight. She blinked it away before it could fall.
“Penelope, what’s happened?”
She pulled the pelt tighter around herself. Despite her height, she looked so small wrapped within it. How I longed to reach out and hold her. My entire body ached for her touch, as if she were the air and I a drowning woman.
“Odysseus is not coming home,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“They say he has settled on an island with a goddess. He wishes to stay with her, to start a new life. Apparently, she will make him immortal.”
“Are…are you certain?”
“I sent scouts to confirm it.”
“What of his army?”
She shook her head. “I do not know.”
“He can’t… He wouldn’t abandon Ithaca like that,” I insisted, though the words felt flimsy between my teeth. What did I know of Odysseus or what kind of man the war had turned him into? What could ten summers of bloodshed make someone capable of?
Penelope kept very still, unnaturally so, as if she were balancing a great weight and feared a single wrong move would make it all come crashing down.
“When people learn of this…”
She did not need to say it. It was clear what risk an empty throne posed. Once the news spread, ambitious men would come from all over to battle for Odysseus’s abandoned title.
“What if Telemachus took his father’s place?” I suggested.
“He is only fourteen. I would be slipping a noose around his throat if I announced him as king now.”
Has Odysseus not already done that? I thought bitterly. Telemachus was Odysseus’s only heir; he would be seen as blocking another man’s path to the throne whether he sat upon it or not.
“I will not let Telemachus ascend the throne until he is ready,” Penelope continued, the words hardened with resolution.
“Then who will sit upon it?”
“I do not know,” she said. “I do not know what to do.”
“Penelope.” It felt strange to speak her name again after all this time. “We will find a way through this.”
She looked at me, gaze locking on mine with sharp desperation, like a hand flinging out in a storm, begging to be saved. Then she did the most remarkable thing.
Penelope began to cry.
Never, in all my time of knowing her, had I seen Penelope cry. I often wondered if she even knew how to. Yet now, it was as if all those unshed tears had finally broken free, a lifetime’s worth of them streaming down her cheeks.
I moved instinctively, placing my hands on her shoulders and drawing her into me.
As I cradled her in my arms, it was as if my embrace undid something inside her, and those silent tears broke into desperate sobs that ripped through her entire body, until every inch of her was trembling with the force of them.
After a time, Penelope’s tears began to lessen, and I could feel the weight of her exhaustion seeping through her body. That was when I led her to my room, my hand laced firmly in hers.
“Lie down. You need to rest.”
She obeyed, climbing into my bed with heavy limbs. I watched her for a moment, hovering at the side of the pallet.
“I will leave you to sleep. Tomorrow, we can talk—”
“Stay,” she whispered, voice small and frayed like a thread pulled taut.
I turned away, and Penelope watched wordlessly as I pushed my wooden chest in front of the door, blocking anyone from entering. Laertes never stepped foot in my room, but even so, I could not risk it.
My bed was narrow, so we had to huddle close together to both fit.
Penelope’s body was still cold, the water from her hair seeping into the pillow.
She smelled of storms and damp earth and everything I held dear in this world.
She rested her cheek on my chest, and her tears came again, softer this time.
I did not try to offer her words of comfort, to say, Everything will be all right, because I knew that was not what she wanted. What Penelope wanted, what she needed, was a place to let it out, all those emotions she never allowed herself to feel.
I would be that place for her, always.
Perhaps that was what it meant to truly love someone—not fighting to hold them together but making them feel safe enough to fall apart.
And that was what I would do for Penelope.
I would let her lie, broken, in my arms for as long as she needed, keeping every sacred piece of her safe until she felt ready to put them back together again.
At some point, her breathing slowed to steady, soft sighs, rolling like the waves I used to listen to when I imagined this moment.
As Penelope melted into the gentle release of sleep, I held her a little tighter, wondering how I would ever be strong enough to lose her again.
***
I awoke to empty arms and the sudden, crushing thought—It was just a dream.
But then something tickled my cheek, and I turned to find Penelope lying beside me, her hair spilling like dark, swirling waves between us.