Pylos

A coastal kingdom on the mainland where the wise old king Nestor came home from Troy and prospered. Telemachus and his small crew land there at dawn into the middle of a great ceremony: eighty-eight black bulls burning on the shore for Poseidon, Nestor at the center with his sons around him. It is the image of a homecoming that worked. A father who returned, a household intact, sons who carry on the name. Everything Telemachus does not have. Nestor takes the boy in, feeds him before any questions, tells him what he knows about the ugly aftermath of Troy and the deaths that followed. Of Odysseus, nothing. The fleet split and was heard of no more. He sends Telemachus on to Sparta in his son Pisistratus’s chariot. The dust settles behind them as they go. Pylos is the first kindness on the boy’s journey, and the first reminder that other men’s fathers came back.