Chapter Text
Telemachus was five years old when his father was taken from him.
Their family was running for their lives. Trying, like so many others, to flee the city before the outbreak claimed them all. Before the city was walled off for good. Car alarms blared, mingling with the strangled shrieks of the dying and the should-be-dead. Telemachus was held tight in his father’s strong arms (and that is what he remembers most about his father: his firm hold, heart thudding and voice rumbling in his chest; the way that Telemachus had not felt fear even for second while those arms held him) and his face was pressed against his father’s chest and his father was whispering to him over the pounding of his feet on pavement: breathe through your mouth, keep your eyes closed, it's okay, it's going to be okay, don't open your eyes–
Someone ran into them, desperate hands grabbing at his father’s arms, and Telemachus was on the pavement. It cut a hash in his chin and knocked his jaw off kilter in a way that still hasn't healed quite right. He scrambled to his knees, breaths a heaving force inside of him, and looked for his father. They were so close to the rapidly closing city gates, so close to freedom, so–
Go, Telemachus, I'll be right behind you! Go!
Then his mother's hands were under his arms, hauling him to his feet, and he was running again. They made it through the gate with barely inches to spare before it slammed closed, condemning all that still stood within to a slow death of rot and infection and teeth and blood, blood, blood. He could still remember their pleas, hands reaching through bars and begging to be let out. How his mother had put her hands over his ears and cradled him in her arms.
Among the escapees, his father was nowhere to be found.
Telemachus is fifteen years old now, in a farmhouse a hundred miles away from that city, and his father is dead.
He does not know how his father died–whether he drowns at sea or in glorious battle like the heroes from storybooks or is torn apart by hordes of groaning, rotting undead. The first two seem unlikely considering that city’s limited access to the coast and his father, in his memories, was nothing if not resourceful, but sometimes the stories are kinder to think about than the realities.
He likes to imagine, as he wiles away hours chopping firewood in the backyard while his mother attempts to stretch meager rations as long as they'll go, that his father stole a fishing boat from the harbor and tried to sail around the boundaries of the city to get to them. That he would have sailed around the whole country to find them. He imagines there was a storm, maybe, or pirates. Perhaps his father is still sailing in search of them. Perhaps he's joined a pirate crew, and every day is an adventure, and the stink of tainted blood never touches him again. Perhaps he's forgotten all about little Telemachus and powerful Penelope, perhaps he's in another world entirely. Perhaps wherever he is, there is no infection at all.
Or, perhaps, he is dead and rotting in an alley somewhere.
Telemachus brings down the ax, and the wood falls in halves. It's a jagged cut, and a poor one, but he's had to teach himself these things. The ax is too blunt, anyway. He'll need to sharpen it, or make himself a new one.
He leaves it propped up in the dirt and hauls what he's chopped up to the back porch where he can stack it by the door. It's cold, and by the time he's finished his fingers are raw and red and every exhale is visible. Soon it will snow and the barren forest in which they live will be blanketed in white. When he was little, he loved snow; it meant a day off of school, it meant cuddling up with his father under a blanket on the sofa and watching movies until his mother came home from work, it meant cocoa and watching fat snowflakes drift past their apartment’s windows to the ground a hundred feet below. Now, it just means food will be even harder to come by.
He shakes his boots clean of mud, takes a few logs in his arms, and steps inside, letting the backdoor creak closed behind him.
His mother is sewing something at the table. Telemachus strides past her to the fireplace to replace the logs that have all but burnt out. This house has very little left in terms of insulation. If they don't keep a fire going, the cold will bite through their flimsy coats and kill faster than hunger or infection would. A shelter, however flawed, is much better than nothing, though.
“It’s going to snow soon.” He says to his mother as he kneels in front of the hearth. The wood floor scrapes at his knee through a tear in his jeans. “We should go hunting, before everything hides away for the winter. And I'll need to go around and reset the traps.”
“Doesn’t your bow still need to be fixed?” She asks, looking over the cloth she's working on to focus on him.
He winces and nods; he forgot about that. Clumsiness on his part–he had tripped in his haste to get home last time and snapped the upper limb on a rock. Granted, it was a flimsy thing to begin with. Most things he makes tend to be, no matter how much time he puts into them. Not like his mother–everything she makes seems to last an eternity. Most of the clothes he wears are of her hands, or mended by them, and all have seen him through plenty.
“I can fix it tonight, after supper.” He says. “I'll collect from the traps once the fire’s going.”
“I'll help you.” Penelope says. With the bow, of course, not the traps. Though she is undoubtedly more gifted than him at hunting, too, he also knows certain tasks are his to learn. He is grateful regardless. She holds up what she is working on to show him, and he smiles. It's a jacket made from thick fabric and furs. Brownish green, warm. There's a boar sewn into the breast pocket. “What do you think?”
He stands up and walks over to stand beside her. The fabric is coarse between his fingers–heavy–and the fur is soft. He runs his hand over the sewn boar. “It’s great.” He says truthfully. Penelope smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. It never does. He takes her hand in his own and squeezes it the way she used to when he was small. “I can't believe you can make this stuff. I can hardly keep a bow strung up.”
“Oh, it's practice.” She laughs quietly. “Only practice. I have had much longer to learn these things than you.” She speaks as though she's lived centuries, though Telemachus knows well she is still young enough herself. Hardly into her thirties. She had him young, he knows, because she's told him the story before. How her and his father met at one of her cousin's parties, how clever and charming he was. How soon enough they were married, and soon enough after that little Telemachus came along.
He smiles at her. “You should teach me. Maybe I could make something for you.”
“Maybe.” She hands him the coat and he pulls it over his shoulders.
“It's warm.” He says.
“It'll be good for the snow. Your father had one just like it for when he took me camping.”
“Thank you, mom.”
She pulls him into a hug. Her hand rubs a circle into his back, though he suspects she's comforting herself as much as she means to comfort him. Not that Telemachus needs the comfort, really. His father has been gone a long time–more a warm voice and a solid, comfortable feeling in his mind than anything else–and these thoughts weigh his mother down far more than they do him. Still, he hugs her, and when she pulls back, he gives her a kiss on the cheek.
“Really.” He says, clasping her hands between his own. Hers are cold compared to his. “Thank you.”
She nods and fastens the clasps of the coat closed over his chest. “Go on and check those traps, now. I'll get supper started.”
His rounds checking the traps are as normal as ever. They're laid predictably in a wide circle through the woods around the house–traps of all kinds, all made from his mother’s careful hands and his own clumsy ones. His are deft enough to empty the contents of each, though, and reset them. Today, there is not much to take. A single rabbit–a scrawny thing, hardly enough meat on its bones to eat and pathetically matted. There's something black and rotted growing at the corner of one of its eyes. It twitches. He knows it is dead, but it moves still, head cocking this way and that and back legs jerking erratically as he approaches.
He puts it out of its misery with a swift stomp. Better to end things the rot has touched than risk the infected. The meat wouldn't be safe to eat, anyway.
Telemachus returns empty-handed aside from a fistful of herbs he'd grabbed on his walk back. He pretends not to notice the worried frown that weaves it's way into his mother’s face as she works on tonight’s soup, nor the rumbling in his stomach when said soup ends up more broth than substance. There are no complaints–there never are–but neither are full by the time they're finished.
As they two of them sit in front of the fireplace that night mending his bow, Telemachus can't help but wonder how much longer this can last.
The snow comes soon after, as he thought it would. Days or weeks, he hardly keeps track. It falls heavily one night–thick white flakes that chill the house to its bones, that make him sleep bundled in his new coat and half their blankets just to keep from shivering too violently. They both fall asleep in front of the fire, Telemachus on the rug and Penelope on the hole-ridden sofa, at his insistence. Her back wouldn't take well to the hard floor, and he worries over her as much as he does himself.
Maybe that's why he wakes. At first, he thinks it's because the fire has gone out. He is shivering, after all. But as he stumbles to the door to fetch more wood, he pauses.
There is someone standing outside.
A man on the porch. A woman, tall and still with eyes like a storm, stands behind him. But the man is all Telemachus sees. His beard is wild and ragged, his hair curls over his ears. The whites of his eyes stand out a stark contrast against the darkness of the night. They lock eyes for only a moment, and Telemachus’s veins flood with ice. A reflection in the eyes of a dead man.
He stumbles back and trips, landing hard on the ground. His wrist explodes in pain where he'd tried to catch himself, but he's so quick to scramble back to his feet to bar the door that he hardly notices the pain.
By the time he's on his up again, the man is gone, as is the woman. There are no signs of them, no footprints in the snow, no glinting white eyes. The porch is empty and snow swirls eternally through the air.
His mother wakes from the commotion. He tells her he'd simply tripped fetching wood to restart the fire. The man must have been a figment of a cold and overtired imagination. Still, his voice shakes as he delivers the lousy excuse. She draws him into her arms on the sofa to examine his wrist, and the fire is left to die.
The cold seeps into his bones that night–into everything–and it does not leave.
The snow falls thick and heavy. The traps are all but buried, and Telemachus will need to go dig them up and reset them all. He knows that the effort is fruitless–they will catch few, and fewer still that are safe to actually be consumed. The rot has spread everywhere, from the dense population of the city to the smallest woodland creatures. Festering, splitting, black and chalky and foul.
He's taken to wearing his facemask every time he ventures out into the forest, just in case. A facemask and a wrap around his injured wrist–still sore and not quite moving right.
As the days pass, this lack of food becomes clearer and clearer. Supper is first more broth than substance, then more water than broth. It takes a toll on them both. Penelope begins joining him when he hunts–he prowls the woods with bow drawn, searching for anything big enough to sink their teeth into, and she treads the treeline and the patches of greenery that remain for herbs or wild vegetables. Sometimes, they trade places–she is a better shot and a steadier hand. Anything for something to eat.
In those days before , Telemachus cannot remember ever going hungry. His father had a good job, he thinks, though he can't for the life of them recall what exactly it was–only that it made enough to keep them fed, and every night they would eat. Roasts or potatoes or corn, cups of fresh water or juice. The thought of it makes his stomach growl.
Still, his mother’s careful explanations in the after –how to be quiet, how to follow tracks, how to aim and where to hit for a clean kill–linger in his mind.
He shoots a squirrel now. The hunger is a gnawing presence inside of him, tangible and heavy. The arrow pierces too clumsily, and most of the meat is rendered useless by it. When he cuts into the creature, he finds the muscles rotted and black. Useless anyway. He buries the thing in the snow and tries not to cry.
Another night empty-handed. They sip warmed water with chickweed leaves, and when the time comes to sleep Telemachus bundles himself up in front of the fire. He'll need to chop more wood soon, he thinks, but his arms feel leaden and he has not the energy to brave the nighttime weather now. The cold flows right through him; his ribs jut out and, should he reach back, he could feel each bump of his spine. He leans back against the sofa and lets his eyes slip closed.
“We can't go on like this.” He hears his mother murmur from the sofa. He's half asleep by then, but he hears her anyway. “We’ll starve before the snow melts.”
“I'll check the traps again tomorrow.” He mumbles. His words slur with sleep. “I’ll cut a hole in the ice at the river’s edge–see if I can snag a fish or something.”
He won't. He knows that, even half asleep–there are no fish, not ones that are safe to eat, anyway. The infection spread fast in the water.
She laughs softly and runs a hand through his hair. “Your father used to take you fishing, you know. On the weekends, when we could get away.” Telemachus perks up at this. Fifteen years old and he still lights up like the sun at stories about his father, no matter how many times he's heard them. “He would take us to his family’s home, on the coast. A grand place. Not far from here, actually–maybe a week east, as the crow flies.”
“‘As the crow flies’?” Telemachus wrinkles his nose. “What does that mean?”
“Straight, my love. If we headed there in a line straight as one of your arrows–through the woods and the rivers and anything else.”
“Oh.” His aim is far too lousy for that comparison, but he doesn't correct her on it. Only nods and commits the phrase to memory, like he does all scraps of the world he never truly got to know.
“Can I go on?”
“Mhm. Sorry.”
She smiles patiently. “Your father took us there for weekends. Usually during the spring and the summer, when the weather was best. He would bring us out to the shore. We'd spread out sandwiches and have a picnic, and he would sit on the dock’s edge with you in his lap.” Fondness seeps into her voice. “He'd show you every part of that fishing rod, then put his hands over yours so you could pretend you were fishing. The first time you caught something–oh, I thought I'd have to dive into the lake to rescue you, the two of you were so excited. You made him toss everything back, though. You were so scared that the fish couldn't breathe.”
Telemachus smiles. He can't remember this, but it sounds like him. Even when his mother was teaching him to hunt, he was soft about it. “I’m probably much better now than I was then.” He says. “He never got to see me hunt properly. With the bow.”
“Yes.” Penelope says. Her tone is as wistful as it is fond. “Yes, he would be proud. He would be very, very proud.”
Telemachus is quiet for a moment. He leans into his mother’s hand and lets his eyes drift closed again. He can never tell what she's thinking, not really. Her mind moves on a level all it's own. He knows that she wishes his father was with them–of course she does. Some part of him deep down wishes for it just as much. But he did not know his father half as long as his mother did, and there is nothing but stories and vague memories for him to miss.
Still, she kisses the top of his head. “Your father is a clever man. A clever man, and a stubborn one.” She says, as she has every time they have these conversations, “He will find his way back to us eventually.”
Telemachus does not correct her on that, either.
When the world fell apart, people did, too. That is what Telemachus has gathered, at least. First there was mistrust–glares sent at those who began to cough, news reports sowing resentment, she brought the infection here, he passed it here, they coughed there and so on. Schools closed, though back then Telemachus couldn't have minded less. No school meant more time at home with his parents, and to a five-year-old that was a dream come true. Then his parents’ jobs were shut down. Then the panic set in–doors locked, windows boarded, everyone closed and hushed. Then the looting–windows on stores and homes alike were smashed, raided, burned. News reports like wildfire and then the power shut off and there was nothing at all.
And then the infection. Rot and blood and bones. Telemachus watched neighbors swan dive from higher floors, heard gunshots through the walls. Screams from outside. Fires. Burning rubber, burning flesh. Those days–before they ran–are all something of a blur, flashes of horror and hands over his eyes and his mother’s voice in his ear, whispering soothing words that meant nothing. His father, always antsy then, always fidgeting, fingering a pistol’s trigger when the banging got too close to their own door. Holding him close in the night, but never sleeping.
Then came the evacuation. The news, the rumors, the military vehicles rolling in and the booming voices over megaphones. Helicopters swarming like flies. Telemachus was too young then to understand the severity of sealing off the city for good. His mother told him years later that it was something of a purge–a death sentence. To let those stuck inside rot and tear each other to pieces to slow the spread. She spoke of it with bitter malice, and he understands why now. Logical as such a call might have been, thousands would die. Hundreds of thousands. Innocent people whose only crime was living there.
So, they ran.
There were groups, at first. Camps. Faces Telemachus can’t match names to anymore. A woman who lost her daughter. A young couple who rarely dropped one another's hands. A pair of brothers and a dog as tall as Telemachus who slobbered everywhere. An elderly man who seemed unphased by it all. A boy driven mad who tried to plunge a screwdriver through Penelope’s throat while they slept, once. People came, shared food or stories for a short while, then died or split ways, and he and his mother went on. They were better on their own, they would come to find. Mother and son against the whole rancid world. They walked old interstates, scavenged old maps from places they passed, and worked their way east.
Always, always, they left a sign. Maybe foolish. It had started an attempt to comfort a young Telemachus over the loss of his father, to bring forth the notion that Odysseus would one day track them, but it developed in a tradition. A boar–his father’s favorite animal and the subject of many a far-fetched bedtime story–carved with rock into floorboards or walls or sign posts. We were here once , it said to him and him alone, his ghost or his memory or whatever else the poets might say. Keep going. Find us.
While hunting off one road when Telemachus was thirteen, they found this house. And here they have been, safe and alone, ever since.
Truthfully, Telemachus doesn't think he'll ever see another face besides his mother's again. He isn't sure which way to feel about that–sometimes he thinks they could take on the whole world together, and other times he feels so lonely he might lose his mind.
That woman–the one from the porch, from his dream, except it wasn't a dream because his wrist is injured and he feels it deep down–throws that assumption on its head. Could someone else be here? Watching them? Venturing as close as their porch, no less?
It’s dangerous. It’s exciting. It’s something he cannot, under any circumstances, tell his mother. Not until he's had a chance to investigate himself, that is.
Days pass before he catches sight of the man again. When he does, it's nearly half a mile into the woods, on the bank of a pond already frozen over. The woman kneels in the snow, clothed in what looks like a blanket fastened like a gown and sandals. How she isn't frozen to death, Telemachus doesn't know, but as he approaches he watches the woman still.
“You came looking for me.” The woman says. It is not a question, but Telemachus answers it like one.
“Yes.” He says. “You came to my home. I thought I dreamt it.”
The woman makes a clicking sound between her teeth, like some kind of bird. “There is no such thing anymore.”
Telemachus should feel afraid; it’s been a very long time since he last spoke with anyone but his mother. But he doesn't. There is something about this man. Maybe it is the odd dress, or the stillness of her chest, or the strange grey of her eyes, nearly white as the snow around them. Whatever it is, Telemachus feels no fear–only a quiet, stirring curiosity. He walks to the woman’s side and peers into the pond, frozen solid. His reflection alone stares back at him.
“Who are you?” He asks. What are you , he means.
The woman hesitates. There's a flicker of something behind those eyes. Something sharp, calculating. “I have no name anymore.”
“Anymore?” Telemachus echoes. It tastes wrong on his tongue. He clears his throat and tries to assume a guarded stance, remembering suddenly the danger that groups could pose in a world like this. “Do you travel with others?”
“Once.” She says. She stands, sandaled feet sinking into snow, and meets Telemachus’s eye. The sharpness lingers in her gaze. “These days, I'm afraid there is rarely safety in numbers. The most clever survive alone. I'm sure you and your mother know that perfectly well. It is why you've taken refuge so far in the woods, is it not? So far away from any commune?”
Telemachus gives a barely perceptible nod.
“It is a wonder, then, that you haven't fled further south. To the coast, perhaps, or past the border. Don't you wonder if there are places the sickness hasn't touched?”
“I could ask you the same.” He says, shivering through his coat. In truth, they couldn't leave. His father can't track carved boars across the border, nor can he track them across the shore. The tides will wash it away. His gaze drifts again to the strange dress. “Aren't you cold?”
She only chuckles. “Go home, Telemachus. Your mother is waiting.”
A branch cracks somewhere behind them. Telemachus turns sharply, but the woods are as empty as they have ever been. When he turns back to the woman, she is gone. The snow isn't disturbed by any footsteps but his own. He steps back, brow furrowed, and watches with dreamy confusion as a grey owl overhead leaps from a branch and flies away.
It's been a long time since he's seen a bird of prey like that. He swallows, wondering if this whole encounter was nothing but the product of an underfed mind, and turns to begin the empty-handed trek home.
It's not until he reaches the steps of the porch that he realizes he never told the woman his name.
There's a bag of fruit sitting in front of the door. Pure, untouched, and fresh.
They eat well that night. Better than they have in weeks. With every mouthful, Telemachus understands less and less.
What he is sure of, though, is the dread that builds like ice in his gut the day he first sees footprints in the snow. They are going on a week with hardly anything to eat by that point. A few meager meals of scavenged herbs and tubers, but little else. Telemachus is making his daily rounds checking the traps around their home’s perimeter when he sees them: boot prints, a few sizes bigger than his own, in a criss-crossing pattern moving from trap to trap. Each trap is open and empty. Whoever this was was poaching their catches.
His stomach growls. He thinks of the man on the porch. Thinks of the woman in the woods. The fruit. He'd written it off as tricks played on a hungry, sleep-deprived mind, but maybe, maybe –
His mother looks at him with steely eyes when he comes home with only that news to give.
“Did you see them?” She asks once the door is locked behind him.
He shakes his head. “No. Just the footprints and the traps. But they were close–maybe a hundred feet past the treeline.”
“Blood? Weapons? Tents? Anything?”
“No, ma'am. Just the footprints.”
She takes a breath and turns to the window, looking out at the snow covered woods. Her mind is moving a mile a minute, he can see it in the firmness of her gaze, and he can do nothing but wring his hands nervously and wait for her to voice her thoughts. He could never keep up with her clever mind. He shrugs off his jacket and hangs it up by the door to dry.
She sighs, and pulls the curtains closed. They are moth-chewed enough that the holes still allow them to see the snow beyond. She turns back to face him. “It's too cold to travel now, even if we want to, and we don't have the food. We'll have to stay until the snow melts, but–”
“I don't want to leave.” He says quickly. He thinks back to days spent on the road, exhausted and holding tight to his mom’s hand. Wandering with nothing but a need to keep moving on their minds. More survival than humanity. These days, this place is as close to normalcy as they will ever get. “Whoever this is–we can fight them off, can't we? This is our home.”
Penelope's gaze softens, torn between the need to protect her son and the harsh reality outside. She places a hand on Telemachus's shoulder, her voice steady but pained, "I know. But we're weak, hungry, and if what you saw is true, outnumbered. If we stay, we might not have a home left to defend."
Telemachus clenches his fists. "I can set more traps, fortify the house. We can make it through this. We can't let them take it."
I won't let them take anything else. Won't let this world take anything else from us.
She studies his determined face. There is pride in her eyes, but there is also pity, and that makes something sickly twist in his gut. To know she has so little faith in his promises. "You've grown into a strong young man,” she says, her hand on his shoulder, “but strength alone won't get us through this winter. We need a plan. We'll ration what little food we have left, and I'll keep watch during the night. When the snow melts, we leave, and we find a safer place.”
“But–”
“That's final.”
He pulls away from her. He knows he's being stubborn, he knows it, but the thought of letting anyone take this stability away from them makes something in him burn.
It's not fair , he thinks furiously. Maybe he says it out loud; it's hard to tell when it's just the two of them. Penelope has already retreated to the back bedroom–she’s digging out the shotgun, he knows. The boxes of ammunition. Guns are too loud for these woods, that's why they don't use them, but arrows won't be enough to defend themselves here. It's not fair.
Then again, a voice chimes in his ears, what is?
Twelve men–that’s how many he counts. Telemachus spends the next few days scouting around the woods near the house, quiet as a mouse with minimal footprints as he can. With the near constant snowfall, it isn't hard to cover his own tracks. The others, the group clearly stalking them, are not so smart. They never had the great Penelope teaching them how to survive, at least.
He sees them during the day sometimes, usually prowling around the traps he sets or scrounging for food near the riverbank. They're all hungry. He can see it in the way their clothes–all probably stolen–hang off of them. Some are bearded, some look younger. They are all dangerous, he reminds himself, even as he sits crouched behind a rock to watch them talk and laugh and break the ice of the river in search of fish that are not there. Even as he whispers the unfamiliar words they say to himself, committing fragments of a world he has never known to mind. Towns, maybe. Or names.
Antinous , he whispers when he hears one man shout it, waving some kind of harvested root. Euryades is the response. They speak freely; they do not think they're being watched. He trails them around as they scoff at his traps and litter the snow with their heavy footprints. They have no care for stealth. They rip limbs from trees without care and pile them high to make fires after nightfall, the flames of which burn bright enough for them to see through the windows of their cabin. Some nights he wonders if they intend to burn the whole forest down. As soon as the snow melts that kind of recklessness will be fatal.
He tells all of this to Penelope, who only nods. She's begun dragging out all of their belongings and sectioning them in the living room–necessities, comforts, disposables. How much they could carry if they needed to make a run for it. They've acquired quite the stash over the years of being here. They won't be able to take it all.
Telemachus ventures closer one night–enough to see their stores illuminated by firelight. There isn't much. A few boxes of canned goods between the twelve of them? It'll be gone in a week. Maybe less. No wonder they've been raiding his traps.
When he relays this, Penelope tells him not to do that again. Too risky, she says. She kisses his forehead and makes him promise he won't get so close.
He treks back to the pond where he met the woman time and time again. Sometimes she is there, strange dress and all. Sometimes she is not, and Telemachus sits at the frozen pond with only an owl for company. It has made its nest there, and he sees it frequently enough–flying near their house, scrounging mice out of snowed-in burrows. The company is nice, even if it's only a bird.
He does not tell his mother about these visits.
When the woman is there, they talk. They talk about a great many things, but the most common topic is the world before. Telemachus does not recall much, but the woman does. She has seen so much that it makes Telemachus’ head spin to hear it all. Cars and trains and airplanes. Wars. Plays and books and movies and religion. Telemachus was not as interested in the last as the woman seemed to hope he would be, but the rest held his attention like dangling candy over a baby. Countries and conflict and comedies and tragedies. Giant machines that fly in the sky and drop bombs or people strapped to cloth big enough to let them survive a fall that high.
(He tries this late that night, tying a strip of cloth to one of his old wooden soldiers to see if it would lessen the harshness of a landing from standing height. It did not.)
But the greatest stories of all, the grandest and the ones he craves to hear, are of his father.
She knew Odysseus. The how changes each time Telemachus asks–family friends, distant relatives (“So you and I are related? Do you know my mother?” “Hush, boy, be quiet and listen.”), old coworkers. The list goes on. Telemachus does not care much for the how; he only cares for the fragments the woman gives him. Shards of memory, precarious in his hands, to be gently pressed into the shape of the man who'd once held him tight and told him to be brave.
His father was in the military, she says. A soldier or a general. Sometimes a lieutenant. Always a leader. The cleverest of them all. Always had some trick or some scheme up his sleeve to get himself ahead. Telemachus wonders if his father would think him clever. If he's taken after him in any way but the curl in his hair and the brown of his skin.
He asks, once. They're sitting side by side at the pond’s edge, Telemachus shivering in his coat and the woman wearing her strange clothes and sitting still as the water before them. He looks down at his reflection in the water, the absence of hers beside it, and then looks at her.
“My father,” he says quietly. “Am I like him?”
“In what ways?”
“I don't know. Anything.”
She hums. “Your soul is different. Very, very different. He was once as you are, I suspect, but no longer.”
Telemachus frowns. “What does that mean?”
“Very little.” She does not look at him, but then again she rarely does. “But you are like him in the ways that matter. He would not be disappointed.”
Telemachus frowns, picking at blades of grass that poke through melting snow. “I don't understand.”
She simply hums.
“My mother wants to leave soon.” He says. “Because of the men further in the woods, towards our home. They're raiding our traps and our things. Do you know of them?”
She nods. “I do.”
“Are they with you? Can you tell them to stop?”
“They are not with me.” She says. “And I cannot control them. It is naivete to expect others to solve your problems for you, Telemachus.”
He looks down. His face burns. “I do not expect that.” He says. “But I do not want to leave. We have no food, no supplies. We don't have many weapons, either. If they get any closer, they might kill us.” She says nothing, so he continues. “I'm afraid. I don't know if I can protect her–my mother, I mean. And if we leave, then my father will never find us.”
“How do you know?”
Telemachus rests his chin in his hands. “If we leave, we'll have to head towards the coast. How will he track us so far? And what if he's coming, and we doom him by leading him to this place surrounded by those men?”
She hums thoughtfully. A moment passes, and then she says, “A wise man does not sit and wait for fortune to happen by, boy. A wise man does what he must to bring opportunity to him. There are no rewards for those who never strike.”
Telemachus rocks back to sit on his knees. He thinks. “Would my father wait?” He asks.
“No. Not unless it would serve him to do so.”
“Would it serve me to do so?”
She does not answer. He stares down at the water, watching his own reflection. This is one of those questions with no answer, he knows. Or, there is an answer, but not one that she will share with him. Like a riddle, or a game, except much less fun because getting it wrong means tangible consequences, not just his mother's hand ruffling his hair and her voice chiding him for his impatience. He does not need to look beside him to know that she is gone; he feels the brush of the breeze, the ripples in the water. He is alone with his thoughts.
Too risky, his mother had said. Promise me you won't get so close again.
Would my father wait?
He stands, boots crunching in the snow, and marches in the direction of the house. He knows the answer.
Of course he doesn't listen. He is his father’s son.
He gets too confident. Hubris–it’s a deadly thing. Just a taste of it can kill. After so many days spent listening to the men squabble and laugh and scrounge for food, he’d begun to think himself better than them for his ability to watch. Smarter. The wise man does not wait, that is what the woman by the pond had told him, wasn't it? This is an opportunity. He can make it into one. If they are to stay here, then he must find some way to get rid of these men. It is as simple as that. And he is clever, he tells himself as he crouches low in the brush, the snow camp and cold against his shins. He is clever and quick and knows these woods better than they do, better than anyone.
Perhaps that is true, but it doesn't take away the advantage of twelve men against a boy. All it takes is one slip up, one step too far on a day too bright, and he's caught. There's the click of a gun cocking and laughter from the one who's holding it.
“Look here,” the man calls. Antinous, his mind supplies. He remembers this one. Twelve pairs of eyes on him in an instant. Cool metal against his back. Breath frozen in his chest.
“You think he's the one who sets the traps?” Another man asks. There's something sinewy hanging from his mouth, caught in his teeth.
“Makes sense.” Another calls. “Scrawny thing. Traps aren't any good. Barely a rabbit off ‘em in days.”
Telemachus doesn't know what to do. Panic rises in him, tangled with anger, with fear. This is what he was supposed to do, isn't it? This is what she wanted? He wants to shout that the traps are theirs , those rabbits are theirs ; he wants to turn and run; he wants the gun away.
“Asked you a question, lad.” Antinous says slowly. The gun digs into his back. “You're the one who makes the traps?”
“Yes.” Telemachus manages.
“You got food?”
“No.” You've seen to that already.
“Think he's lying?” Someone else asks.
Antinous presses the gun further. “Clothes?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.” The gun is gone, replaced with a hand tugging at the jacket he wears. Telemachus stiffens and doesn't let the man pull it off. “Where'd you get this, then?”
“I made it.” He says through gritted teeth. Better they think he's alone than follow him home. Better they rob or beat him than threaten his mother, or their home.
Antinous narrows his eyes, sizing Telemachus up. The others exchange glances, clearly skeptical. The sinewy man spits out the remnants of whatever was caught in his teeth and grins. “Crafty little shit, ain't he?”
Antinous smirks. “Alright. We'll let you keep your jacket. But we're taking something else.”
Before Telemachus can react, one of the men grabs his backpack and rips it off of him hard enough that his shoulders ache and he has no time to counter. The man steps to the side, rifling through it with a cruel disregard. “You got anything good in here, boy?” He jeers, pulling out nothing but the small pouch of dried herbs.
Those were for supper. Telemachus clenches his fists, anger and fear bubbling inside him. “That's mine. Put it back.”
“Why don't you make me?” He mutters. He empties the bag of herbs into his palm and looks them over, brow furrowed, nose wrinkled. “What even is this? Weeds? Your traps are so bad you've got to eat weeds ?” He laughs, and a few other men join in. One man, tall and lithe with eyes dark as the pine bark around them, watches without joining the jeers.
“They're herbs.” The dark eyed man says, a charmer’s smile on his lips. “For flavor, or for medicine. You can eat some.”
He stands and approaches. His eyes rake over Telemachus, up and down his lanky frame, considering. His gaze is not violent or condescending like the others around them, but contemplative. Thoughtful. There is a glint of something foul in his eyes, though, something that sends a shiver up Telemachus’s spine. He looks at Telemachus as if he is a tool, while the others only think how best to tear him apart. Telemachus flinches away from his gaze, his heart hammering in his chest.
“You can tell these things apart?” The man asks. Telemachus hesitates, but nods. “And you make the traps?” The man asks. Telemachus nods again.
“Should we chain him up?” Antinous asks, an edge in his voice. “Make him work for us?”
“We could use food.” Another man says. “He could do the hunting for us.”
A skinny man with a mop of black hair sneers. “With those pathetic traps?”
“Better than you’re doing, Ctesippus.” Another, this one much younger, snaps.
“Please, like you–”
The dark-eyed man held up a hand, and the rowdy men around them quieted. Was this one the leader? Could men like this have a leader? As they crowded around him, Telemachus was reminded very suddenly of wild dogs: hungry, limber, all teeth and claws and a maw made to tear. He thinks that, were this man to give a smile and nod, the rest of them would rip him to pieces without a second thought. He wants to run, but Antinous has him held tight. A wrong move would mean a broken wrist, or worse, if that gun was still in play. In drew the dark-eyed man.
“Come on, Eurymachus, spit it out already.” Antinous snaps.
He– Eurymachus –smiles. “Boys, listen here. You think a kid like this is just running around the woods with no place to sleep at night?” The men around them are quiet. “Do you?” He repeats. Shakes of their heads, a few tentative smiles as they start to catch on. Eurymachus shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. And that means he comes from somewhere–somewhere with food, probably, and more supplies than we’ve got. I say we just found our meal ticket, eh?”
There are hoots and hollers, rising. Excitement. Energy buzzing in the air, in their voices, in their jerky movements and teeth glinting against cheeks hollowed from hunger. Sickness rips through Telemachus as they grab him by the arms, hoist him to his feet, jab the cool metal of a gun into his back, then another. A hand digs into his hair, tugs on too-long curls.
Eurymachus is still smiling. Telemachus thinks it is his hand in his hair, pulling, forcing his head up to face forward. “Go on, kid. Lead the way.”
The sun glints off the snow, blinding, and he wonders what his blood will look like painted across it were he to refuse. Would it be the noble thing to do? I don't want to die, he thinks desperately. A hero would have gladly taken death if it meant shielding his mother from these men, if it meant protecting his home from their scavenging hands. But he is no hero; he is afraid. Selfish, maybe. And, deep down, he knows his mother would not survive the loss of her only child. If he dies today, he might as well be killing her, too.
So he stands, takes a deep breath through his nose, and walks.
It's hard to walk on his own the way that they manhandle him. His feet drag through the snow, some breaching the threshold of his worn boots and chilling him further. They would have found the house anyway, sooner or later, he tries to think when the guilt of what he is doing begins to choke him the nearer they draw to the cabin. It isn’t my fault. Please, mom, it isn't my fault.
But he still feels that choking, terrible weight constrict the second the house comes into view. The men around him start cheering again, laughing, hollering, like mad animals slobbering at the prospect of a shelter in which to sleep, food to eat. Telemachus trembles. They drag him up the front yard to the steps, shouting all the way. Of course Penelope hears.
The front door spams open and she is there, pale-faced, shotgun in hand. But there are too many of them, and too many guns on their side. She locks eyes with Telemachus, and he sees her expression crumble for only a second. The smallest, briefest flash of weakness before the strength of her resolve seals up the cracks in the facade, and she is stone again.
Still, he hears it. Clear as day in his head.
Telemachus, what have you done?