At the blood-pit, the prophet drinks and speaks in pieces. A god’s hatred that will follow him home. Sacred cows that must not be touched. A house full of uninvited guests whose lives he will end without hesitation. And then, last, the strangest instruction of all. Once he has cleaned all the blood from his home, he must lift an oar and walk inland with it, walk and walk, until he meets a stranger who looks at the thing on his shoulder and asks why he is carrying a winnowing-fan. There he must plant the oar in the earth and make peace with Poseidon. [SPOILER: Then, the prophet says, he will be free. The oar is the unfinished business of the whole story. The slaughter in the hall is not the end. The bed-test is not the end. The peace with Poseidon, the god whose son Odysseus blinded, is the only end. The oar is the future the retelling does not show. The story ends with him home but not quite done.]
The Oar to be Planted Inland
Tiresias's strange last instruction. Carry an oar so far inland that a stranger cannot name it. Plant it. Make peace with Poseidon. Then be free.