On the riverbank where Odysseus crawls ashore, two olive trees have grown together, their branches so thick and tangled that no wind or rain reaches the ground beneath them. He scrapes dead leaves into a heap with his torn hands and buries himself within. The trees are an accidental shelter, the first dry quiet thing he has had in days, and they hide him completely. He sleeps so deeply that he does not wake until Nausicaa and her maids come to wash clothes at the pools nearby and a stray ball lands in the river and they begin to shout. The trees are his private cave on a strange shore, given by the land without anyone giving it. They also start the pattern: olive wood is what hides him, what holds his marriage bed, what survives him. The same wood, in different shapes, is the spine of his whole homecoming.
The Two Olive Trees
A thicket of two olive trees grown together. Odysseus's first bed on Phaeacia, leaves heaped with bloodied hands.