King of Ithaca (Adventures of Odysseus)

Already Eperitus had seen tantalizing glimpses of this mysterious entity in the great body of water that was visible from the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Last night it had shone like silver in the moonlight, and this morning it was a dark mass upon whose surface the sunlight had shattered itself into a thousand pieces. But he knew that even this was only a channel that led to the sea, little more than the least twig on a great tree.

He lost sight of the shimmering waters as the party reached the plain below Pythia. As they followed the course of a boulder-strewn river that grew steadily wider and noisier they passed several pilgrims on their way to the oracle, escorted by local peasants acting as guides. The first sign that they were approaching a town was a group of girls washing clothing on the other side of the river. Shortly afterwards they began to pass huts and a few larger dwellings. Gradually the path became a road, populated by water-carrying women and their grubby-faced children, who looked blankly at the strangers as they filed past. A goatherd called a cheery greeting as he took his flock to drink at the river, but nobody else spoke to them.

Before long they were in the town itself, and followed the river, to the harbour. The great spread of water that Eperitus had seen at a distance now lay hammered out before him, a dark, shining mass that heaved quietly beneath the shore wind. This was not the sea – he could see land on all sides – but Antiphus told him it was an entrance to the gulf that split northern Greece from the Peloponnese, and which ultimately led out to the oceans of the world.

Flocks of seagulls screeched and cawed as they wheeled in wide circles over the town. Crowds of them were focused above a boat moored beside a wooden platform that had been built to reach out into the water. Eperitus watched in fascination as the crew passed wooden crates down to people on the platform, who then took them back to the shore.

‘What’s the matter, Eperitus? Never seen fishermen before?’

Antiphus joined him where he had lagged behind the group. The Ithacan was in a carefree mood now that he was homeward-bound, and gave the young warrior a dig in the ribs with his elbow. Eperitus looked back at the fishermen as they passed more crates out of their boat, watching keenly as they tossed shining objects into the water, where gulls darted into the waves and plucked them out again.

‘No,’ he confessed. ‘Not in Alybas. My home is many days’ march from the sea.’

‘Then you’ve never even seen the sea?’ Antiphus asked, shaking his head and trying to imagine a life without sight of the ocean waves every day.

Before now Eperitus’s only experience of the sea had come through the fantastic stories of bards, or the tales of the grizzled adventurers who now and then passed through Alybas. They told tales of a great bottomless lake with no end, filled with gold and silver fish that the people who lived by the sea ate. They described oceans as blue as the sky, or at other times as dark as wine, where the restless surface moved like the wind over a field of barley. Sometimes, they said, Poseidon would make the waters rise up in great walls to smash the ships that rode upon them, and because of this the sea people built their ships of such strength and size that they could withstand the anger of the god. There were small boats in Alybas, of course, but the few natives who had ever seen the sea declared authoritatively that ships were as large as two or three houses put together, and some could hold over a hundred men.

‘Are the creatures of the sea really made of silver and gold?’

‘Silver and gold?’ Antiphus laughed. ‘If they were, Ithaca would be the richest country in the world. Well, country boy, what are you waiting for? Come and find out for yourself

With that he strolled towards the fishermen. Eperitus, keen to see a fish of silver, followed close behind.

They made camp by the shore that evening, Odysseus having decided to wait until the next morning to make the voyage back to Ithaca. His ship was not as big as Eperitus’s imagination had hoped – just as he had learned that sea fish were not made of silver or gold – but she was a beautiful craft and he could barely wait to board her. He helped make a fire on the beach while others prepared the food or fetched fresh water (to his surprise, they informed him that sea water could not be drunk), and as he collected wood his mind and eyes were on the vessel. It was sunset and the calm waters were ablaze, glowing orange-red like new bronze as the black silhouette of the ship lay at anchor amidst the gentle, fiery waves. Her hull was low and wide, with great wooden barbs rising at each end and a prow that would cut through waves like a spear point. The tall mast stood forward of the centre of the boat, carrying a furled sail on its cross-spar and strung about by a web of ropes.