Aeaea

An island that rises out of the sea on the third morning after the Laestrygonian slaughter. The men land on a black sand beach broken past speaking, sleep beneath the hull for two days, and then begin to climb. Above the beach is a thick still oak forest that smells of thyme as it crushes underfoot. Above that, a tidy clearing with a stone house, and around it wolves and mountain lions that come up and press their heads into your thigh like dogs. Inside the house lives a goddess who turns men to swine for sport and to lovers from loneliness. Odysseus stays a year. The men heal. The hollows leave their faces. He builds extensions to the house and she works the herbs and the woods, and they become something neither of them have words for. [SPOILER: This is also where he is sent on the detour to the dead. Circe gives him the spell, the route, the sacrifices. He returns to Aeaea after the underworld, builds Elpenor’s pyre on the western headland, drives the oar into it. He and Circe sit through one last night in her kitchen. She knows he is leaving. She gives him a wind, the warnings about the Sirens, the warning about Scylla, and the smile that cuts. Aeaea is the only place on the journey that is both a sanctuary and a school. He leaves it warned and prepared. The men still mostly die anyway.]