The Raft

He worked for days. The axe bit clean into alder and poplar and fir, and the trunks came down heavy, bark still wet. He stripped them, squared them, bored holes and drove pegs through the joints, lashing the frame with cord until the wood creaked under its own weight. His father, Laertes, taught him to work wood as a boy on Ithaca. The knowledge was still in his hands.

He set a mast of pine into the deck and rigged a yard across it. Calypso brought cloth for the sail, ropes, and provisions without being asked, and he took them without looking up.

The raft was crude. A flat deck over bound logs, open to the sky, no rail worth trusting. He fitted a rudder and lashed it in place and tested the steering with his palm on the tiller.

On the fifth morning he loaded it with bread, dark wine, water in skins, a cloak for the cold. He dragged the heavy raft down the sand into the shallows and felt the wood lift and move with the water. He pulled himself onboard and was away.

Calypso stood at the waterline, the wind pulling her hair across her face. He looked at her. He knew that look. He had worn it every day on her shore. He turned to the horizon. That barrier that had hidden his home was now an invitation.

The angry waves of the open sea reminded him that his prison had also been a sanctuary. The sea was Poseidon’s realm and the god had not forgotten him. Gripping the rudder too tight, Odysseus set the sail and soon the island had slipped away.

He sailed for seventeen days. The stars held their positions and Calypso had told him which ones to follow. He did not sleep deeply, always a wary eye on the deep water and skies above.

On the eighteenth day, the mountains of Phaeacia rose from the sea.