A Thousand Ships(69)

37


Gaia


Gaia – the Great Mother, born from Chaos, the first of the gods – stretched her aching limbs and the earth moved. The mountains shook, but so faintly that the only evidence was the quivering of leaves on branches. She heard the distant sound of men fighting men, and she knew a larger conflict was coming. Zeus had heard her pleas, had consulted with her daughter, Themis, and the decision was made. There would be an almighty war, the like of which men had never seen.

Gaia had seen a more ruinous war, but long ago. She had been witness to the Titanomachy, when the Titans waged war on the Olympian gods, and the destruction had been impossible, endless, deafening. She had never believed, as the Titans were locked away from the light, behind bronze doors which could never be broken, that she would yearn for another war. But now she yearned.

Mankind was just so impossibly heavy. There were so many of them and they showed no sign of halting their endless reproduction. Stop, she wanted to cry out, please stop. You cannot all fit on the space between the oceans, you cannot grow enough food on the land beneath the mountains. You cannot graze enough livestock on the grasses around your cities, you cannot build enough homes on the peaks of your hills. You must stop, so that I can rest beneath your ever-increasing weight. She wept fat tears as she heard the cries of newborn children. No more, she said to herself. No more.

They made offerings to her, sacrifices of meat and grain and wine. But they were still too many and she ached from carrying them. She sent her message to Zeus, son of Cronos, son of Ouranos, husband of Gaia. Zeus would not let her pain go unanswered. She had supported him too well in the past. And he knew the truth of her complaint. He knew the increasing population could not be sustained. She would not tell him how to diminish their numbers, she would leave that to him. He would speak to Themis, and the two of them would come up with a plan. The divine order of things would be restored once the mortal problem had been corrected. Gaia thought back to the last time mankind had become too heavy, and remembered that Zeus had not left her to suffer for long. The Theban Wars, when seven warriors had marched against the city of Thebes, and a civil war had spilled over into the rest of Greece, had served his purpose then. But this time the problem had grown weightier. A larger war was needed.

She felt sorrow course through her: her purpose was to nurture and provide for men. But they kept taking more from her than she had to give. She looked out across the expanse and saw trees denuded of their fruits, fields ploughed until they could give up no more crops. Why could men not just be less greedy, she wondered. Her sorrow morphed into irritation. And why could they not heed the lessons given to them by Zeus? They spent enough time in his temples, after all. Why did they not look at the wars which had ravaged Thebes, and understand that these were necessary because they would not stop consuming everything? That if they carried on as they were, the seas would be empty of fish and the land would be empty of grain?

When there were fewer men, fewer women, fewer children, she would grieve for those who had gone, but she would know it was the only answer. She was so tired, she could feel herself sinking beneath them. Forgive me, she murmured into the breeze. Forgive me, but I cannot hold you any longer.





38


Penelope


Odysseus,

I honestly don’t know where to begin. But since you are surely dead by now, I don’t suppose it can matter very much. I might as well be howling these words into an abyss as trying to send them to you. Perhaps that is what I am doing. In which case, there must be an echo, because I would swear an oath that I can hear the words howling back at me sometimes.

This just gets better and better. Ten years waging war against one city with all the forces Greece could muster alongside you. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? And that is the most defensible part of your absence. Ten years of war, followed by three solid years wandering about the high seas, failing to come home with one excuse after another. You met a monster. You met a witch. Cannibals broke your ships. A whirlpool ate your friends. Telemachus himself would never have come up with such excuses and he was a boy. Not any more, of course. Now he is twenty. A grown man, in need of his own wife and child. In need of his own father, too, of course. But that rarely seems to occur to you.

And now seven more years – seven! Odysseus, can you even remember what that means? Twenty-eight more seasons, seven more harvests, boys grown to men, mothers dead, fathers ailing – with no word from you. But rest assured (and I am sure you are having a very long rest), the bard has you covered. You are held captive, so he sings, on the island of Ogygia. Captive, I asked him, the first time he sang this part of your story. Who holds him captive? What cruel jailer locks my husband away from the light and deprives him of a free man’s liberty? What vicious tyrant, with what forces at his command, could imprison my poor Odysseus?

To be fair to him, he did at least have the decency to look ashamed. It was no tyrant, he said. No man held you (this is starting to sound like one of your alibis, Odysseus: who has blinded the Cyclops? No one. Who holds you captive? No one). Eventually, under sustained questioning, he admitted that it is a woman who has taken you prisoner. A horrible old crone, I asked? Who lives in a tumbledown old house in the woods and has adopted you as her son to chop firewood and hunt wild boar on which she can feast? No, came his shamefaced reply. A nymph. Of course it is.

Calypso is her name, so I am told. No wonder he was trying to cover that up. She has – if the bard can be trusted on this – a delightful singing voice. Well, you always did like a tune, didn’t you? Perhaps she reminds you of those bird-women you were so desperate to hear.