Penelope dreams of twenty geese feeding on grain in her courtyard. Then an eagle comes down. Not swooping. Falling, as if something had torn the world open to let him through. He takes them one by one. Their necks break like reed stems. Feathers drift across the stone like snow. She is screaming and no sound comes. She wakes with her heart pounding against her ribs. She tells the dream to the beggar by the lamp. She knows what it means. The eagle is a man with a sword who has been gone twenty years. [SPOILER: She tells him so, and then she takes it back. Or it means nothing, she says. Dreams are the mind’s noise. She has lived this long by not believing in dreams. She watches his face for a sign and he gives her none. The eagle is already in the room. She just refuses to know it yet.]
The Eagle
An eagle falling from the sky as if something had torn the world open to let him through. He breaks the geese's necks like reed stems.