Page 23 of Elysium
WHEN SHE NEXT OPENED HER EYES, she was under the water. She clamped her mouth shut, kicking her feet, forcing herself upwards. She pushed away her fear, focusing on breaking out of the ocean.
Penelope surfaced, gasping for air as the evening breeze surrounded her. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, terror seizing her. She was deeper in the water than she had been moments before. With an attempt to calm her breathing, she closed her eyes, centering herself.
“Penelope!” The shout came before she had time to breathe. Her eyes shot open, her husband rushing through the water to get to her. In an effort to appear calm, she choked down her anxieties, and swam to where he was wading out.
It wasn’t long before her feet touched the sandy sea floor, and she could feel her pulse bottoming out. Odysseus was still a ways away from her, but she could see the panic in his eyes.
He reached her with a furious tide of strength and desperation. His arms enveloped her, clinging to her amidst the ocean waves. “Penelope…” He muttered into her salt-kissed hair, “I thought-”
“I’m here, king.” She assured him, pulling back to cup his cheek. “Do you think I would let the gods steal you from me again?” The words hung between them, echoing a sentiment neither one had dared utter. “Come, let’s get out of this awful cove and find a warm hearth to speak, husband.”
Penelope’s emotions threatened to reach a boiling point when she looked into her husband’s eyes.
The galaxies of grief and fear that swirled in his gaze tore her heart in two.
“Ody, we are safe.” She said to him, taking his hand and pressing it against her heart, against her racing pulse. “We are alive, together, and whole.”
His breath quickened, chest heaving as if the waves were drowning him. “Look at me, Odysseus,” she whispered, clinging to his arm, “Feel me.” She held him close as the waves crashed around them, willing him to steady, to let her heartbeat anchor him where the sea could not.
His gaze remained unfocused, eyes filled with too many ghosts. “You are not on the sea, husband. You are home .”
He released a sharp breath, fingers clutching at her as if she was the last fragment in a broken world. The tremors that racked his body ceased, His breaths came deeper, steadier, in time with her own.
Odysseus pressed his forehead against her own, breath mingling with the settling storm. “I hate the sea.” He whispered, tears mixing with the salt of the ocean.
“I know,” Penelope smiled, her own unshed tears burning. “We can burn the ships, if you like.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, easing the ache between them. “The ships are half my kingdom, wife.” Penelope reached up, brushing away a tear. “You’d burn up my kingdom?”
“For you, Odysseus… I’d burn the world.”
“That’s my line, queen.”
The waves retreated behind them, carrying away the last echoes of his trembling breaths. By the time they reached the soft glow of their bedroom hearth, the chill of the sea was a distant memory, replaced by the warmth of shared quiet and steady hearts.
Penelope absentmindedly twisted her hair into plaits, banishing the chill of the sea from her skin. Stepping into the private warmth of their bedroom. Odysseus sat on the rug before the fire, arm propped up on one knee, mesmerized by the flames licking at the wood.
She grabbed a hide blanket, deliberately clambering about so she didn’t startle him. Their eyes met, unspoken tension sizzling between them. He held out his hand, reaching for her. She willingly took it, once again closing the gap between them.
Odysseus gently tugged her down on the rug, settling with her back to his chest. One of his hands snaked around her front, cementing her against him. Wrapping the warm furs around them both, he pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
“It was Hades,” Penelope whispered, shivering despite the warmth that enveloped her. It wasn’t a question. His bare chest radiated heat, threatening to scorch her through her dressing gown. “What did he say?”
“Penelope, I-” His hand trembled against her stomach, a ripple of unspoken fear. She covered it with her own, lacing her fingers through his as though she could hold him together. His arm tightened, pressing her against the unsteady rhythm of his heart. “Yes, it was.”
“What do the gods demand from us now?” She asked, swallowing the knot forming in her throat. The moments passed without a response, his silence filling the space between her breaths. The pressure of the unanswered weighing against her spine.
“Payment,” he finally choked out. She could feel the rigidity in the word. “One life for all of Ithaca. For your safety. Telemachus’.”
“No.” She answered quickly, the word a dagger. “No. Not yours. Not ours. I will not pay the gods with your life.”
“What choice do we have, queen?” The question broke from him, a man frayed at the edges, unraveling where no one but her could see. His grip on her was firm, yet it continued to tremble with years of burden, a weariness older than his mortal bones.
Penelope shifted, turning to face her husband. Shadows from the hearth danced across his face, and in the dim light, she swore she could glimpse the shadows from the underworld dancing, too.
She placed her hand on his heart, lifting on her knees to look into his clouded eyes. “We make our own fate, King of Ithaca.” She whispered fiercely. “We have been defying the gods since Sparta, my love. Why would we stop now?”
She pressed her forehead against his, hands moving to tangle in his damp, wild hair. “I will fight them alone, husband. I will carry this yoke for you, if I must.”
His hand clasped the back of her neck, anchoring them in the warmth of the night, where shadows and fate could not reach them. “I cannot do it again, Penelope,” he whispered, voice raw with confession. “I don’t have the strength.”
“The gods might not fear any mortal man,” her breath ragged, a challenge to the heavens, “but if they dare lay a finger on you, mad king, they will kneel to me. You are mine, Odysseus. And I will not yield.”
His eyes fluttered closed, only the sound of their tandem breaths in the room around them. “Penelope,” he started, grip on her neck tightening. “You are…” his voice faltered, giving way to the tightness in his voice. “You are stronger than any warrior I have known, wife.”
“Only for you, husband.” She echoed the sentiment, relinquishing her grip on his hair to brush a tear from his cheek. “For you and your son.”
“I’ve told no one this,” he murmured, voice trembling like the waves outside.
“But you deserve the truth, Penelope…” He paused.
“There were times on Ogygia that it would have been so easy to…” His voice faltered, the words shaking Penelope to her core.
Never once had she considered that he could have taken him away from her.
The notion that he was so deeply tormented and haunted by the things that he had seen, things that drove him to the brink, tore her heart into pieces.
“Odysseus…” she whispered, voice barely louder than the fire crackling behind them.
“It was a year or so into my time on her island.” His words trembled as he bared his heart. “I spent each day staring at the waters, willing myself away. To you, to the hells, anywhere but the circumstances I found myself in.” He drew in a deep, weary breath of air before continuing.
“I was at the headland, the water was sparkling and the sun beat down on my brow and I thought ‘I don’t think I can do this. I cannot spend my years in Calypso’s bed, alone, on this island’.” She felt him pull back from her, loosening his steadfast grip on her.
She did not budge.
She refused to let him carry this alone.
“It would have been so easy, too. To make the suffering cease. Gone with the tide, washed away like the years I had spent apart from my family. But Penelope you…” his voice broke, “You deserve a man that would fight for your hand, race against a hundred suitors, a man who would carry the weight of his kingdom just to steal another moment with you.
“That man was still inside of me, I think. Even after the war and the journey, I knew your Odysseus still lived somewhere in this broken man’s heart.”
Penelope felt tears dampen her cheeks.
“That man wasn’t with me though, queen. You held him in your heart, waiting for these weary bones to bring me home. You are the strength that kept me going. You are the reason I walked away from Ogygia.
“And…I wasn’t just walking toward you , Penelope. I was walking toward the life we were meant to share. Even then, even there, I knew you were still waiting for me.”