Hermes

Hermes is the god who shows up. He is the courier between Olympus and earth, the one Zeus sends when an order has to be delivered. He skims the wave tops on golden sandals and lands soundlessly on Calypso’s shore to tell her, gently and without negotiation, that her seven years of holding Odysseus are over. Calypso feeds him because she has to. He says nothing extra. The order stands. He is also, by way of Odysseus’s grandfather Autolycus, blood. He pulls a black-rooted, white-flowered plant from the ground on Aeaea and hands it over the way you hand a man a weapon. This is moly. It will keep Circe’s wand from working. Without this herb and this visit, Odysseus walks into a pig sty with the rest of his crew. Hermes is brisk, knowing, faintly amused. He delivers what he came to deliver and goes.