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When Telemachus was six, he’d attempted to climb one of the tallest trees in the palace gardens and had been rewarded with a broken ankle and unforgiving concussion. A year later, struck by a sudden moral panic, he’d opened all of the chicken coops the night before several apparently very important lords were meant to feast at the palace.

Neither of those incidents felt nearly as reckless as the stunt he was currently attempting. With a final check of the makeshift rope he’d created from three tied bed linens, Telemachus eased himself over the balcony balustrades and onto the narrow ledge.

The drop quite honestly wasn’t that far. He was reasonably confident he could make it down without issue, even if his white-knuckled grip on the banister behind him protested otherwise. The night was dark enough to amplify the abyss below him regardless, and the cold wind cut through his chiton mercilessly. He’d opted to dress simply as to avoid attracting any unwanted attention, leaving behind the extensive jewellery he usually favoured for fear of any pieces glinting in the moonlight. That also meant he’d forgotten to grab his chlamys, but if he turned back for it now he’d lose his nerve.

He'd intended to slowly work his way onto the rope, but his left foot lost its purchase on the ledge and he threw himself towards it, his momentum leaving him swinging forward and then, rather painfully, back into the banister. Telemachus pressed his forehead against his hands as he managed to wrap the sheet around his legs, heart pounding against his ribs. He took a moment to calm himself, breathing hard against the swoop of terror in his stomach.

By the time he’d finished his undignified shimmy to the ground, his palms were red and the pain in his shoulder from where he’d slammed it into the balcony had intensified into searing heat.

He had half a thought that getting back into his room would be worse, but dismissed it soon enough. If he was right, he could return through the palace’s front gates, with his father and any trouble he would have gotten in from sneaking out would be forgotten in the excitement of the king’s long awaited homecoming.

Telemachus scanned the coast until his eyes landed on the reason he’d ventured out in the first place.

A ship, dark against the night’s waves but a beacon all the same. His father’s ship, had to be. The messenger ships bringing news of victory in Troy had arrived a month ago, but Telemachus had dreamt the end of war weeks before. More accurately, he’d dreamt of giant horses and burning cities, but the certainty had settled over him with unrelenting weight regardless. The messengers had only confirmed what he’d already known.

And, just a few hours ago, he’d dreamt of a ship arriving on their shores, heard the whispers of the fates that in seeking it out he’d be seeking his father. Even now, as his sandals skidded across the rocky beach he could feel a tug in his chest guiding him closer.

He watched the ship drift into shallow waters with his heart in his throat. A looming figure cut into vision on the deck, and Telemachus ducked behind a nearby boulder before he realised he was moving.

Something was off. It could have been nerves, or the anticipation of meeting his father for the first time in over ten years, but he was having difficulty breathing. Unease settled over his bones like sand stirred by a gale. The tugging sensation was gone, replaced by cloying dread.

Telemachus risked a glance from his hiding place. More figures had appeared over the boat’s railing, imposing and muscular. The atmosphere was tense, their movements silent. It certainly didn’t feel like the behaviour of men who’d returned from battle victorious.

The clouds shifted, shards of moonlight falling onto the deck like Artemis herself was trying to reveal something to him. He noticed glints of light reflecting from the men’s waists, and his blood ran cold. Metal.

Swords.

There was no reason for men freshly home from war to still be carrying their weapons. There was no reason for them to arrive in the dead of night, silent as predators and moving with urgent secrecy. These were not his father’s men. He’d miscalculated.

Telemachus scanned the beach with renewed urgency. He had a few minutes, at most, before all the men disembarked, and another handful before someone noticed his form against the rocks. There was no way off the beach that didn’t involve abandoning secrecy and making a break for it across the dark sand. Even if he didn’t fall and crack his head open sprinting across the wet stones, he didn’t like his odds outrunning twenty, maybe twenty-five full grown men.

To make matters worse, his chosen cover was relatively isolated, with no other possible shelter within a few seconds’ sprint. He hadn’t thought to bring a weapon, but he could hardly image one making a difference if it came down to a fight anyway. His only real chance was hoping that they would pass by without noticing him, but the odds of that were uncomfortably slim.

Still, if it came down to it he needed some form of defence. A plan hastily assembled itself in his mind, fragmented and near hopeless, but a plan all the same. Telemachus worked his fingers into the dense sand, gathering a small handful even as his hand shook. It was growing increasingly difficult to breathe, the tightness in his chest harder to ignore as he tried helplessly to shove the panic down for later.

No one knew where he was. He hadn’t told his mother, or any of the palace guards, and when they found the evidence of his escape in the morning there would be no other trace of him on the island. He could only hope they wouldn’t assume he had run and abandoned his family before it could be whole. Maybe it never would be again.

But Telemachus had to try. He could wait them out, crouched in his hiding place until he was discovered. By then, hopefully most of the sailors would have started heading towards the villages, and he could use the sand to distract or blind whoever had happened upon him. He’d run towards the cliffs at the base of the palace, he’d explored them enough times in his childhood to know there were cave systems that could lead him closer to the palace. With some luck, the same couldn’t be said for them. From there he could signal the guards to warn the townspeople.

His mind returned to the question of who the men were in the first place. Bandits, most likely. Telemachus had grown up with enough horror stories of families slaughtered in their own homes during raids to doubt it. He could only hope they were more of the robbing kind than the murdering.

His heart dropped to his sandals when he noticed them moving. They’d split up mostly how he’d expected them to, with a significant proportion heading up the beach towards the town, but four had turned right to head along the cliffs. Towards the palace. Towards his mother. And, as more of an afterthought, towards him.

Telemachus couldn’t let that happen, but he was equally powerless to stop it. He couldn’t fend off four grown men, and they were nearing his hiding spot with every second that passed. He felt sick, terror-induced nausea suffocating every rational thought. He should have ran earlier. It was naïve to think they would pass by without noticing him, and he’d lost his only chance to run by allowing them to catch up.

They’ll see me any second now, he thought. Might as well use whatever’s left of my head start. Telemachus bolted before he could lose the last of his nerve. The sound of the bandits’ surprised cries were nearly drowned out by the roaring in his ears, but they spurred his legs to run even faster.

They got over their shock much too soon and gave chase, their footfalls heavy and violent. Telemachus had the advantage of home turf and raw desperation, but at ten years old and short even for his age he was losing ground fast.

The first thug grabbed his arm with nearly enough force to send Telemachus sprawling. He whirled around, throwing his handful of sand into the man’s eyes with a cry and ripping out of his grip when it went slack with pain.

It only bought him a few extra meters before the rest were on him. He was hauled into the air effortlessly despite his desperate thrashing. He caught something between his teeth, maybe a finger, but he only had a moment to feel vindicated by spilling the first blood before he felt the bite of cold metal at his throat.

Telemachus went perfectly still.

Someone was at his back, pressing him against his chest with an arm as thick as his head wrapped around his shoulders. A wickedly sharp, curved dagger was clutched in his fist, the edge digging painfully into the soft skin at the side of his throat.

“Fucking brat,” spat the man in front of him, voice slightly slurred by crooked teeth. He clutched his bleeding hand with a furious expression, glaring down at Telemachus with a twisted scowl. His face was covered in scars, ragged and raised in lines across his nose, eyes, cheeks .“Who do you think you are?”

When he didn’t answer, the man Telemachus now dubbed Scarface gripped his face with his good hand. “I asked you a damned question. Answer, and you might be of use to us after all. Who’s your father?”

Telemachus panicked. They were obviously trying to figure out if he was of any meaningful status. If he revealed his title, they were more likely to keep him alive. On the other hand, they would be doing so to hold leverage over the crown, either to rob them blind or hurt his mother. He couldn’t let that happen, no matter the cost and no matter the desperate fear in his ribs.

“Nobody,” he whispered, voice shaking as the anger in Scarface’s eyes reached dangerous levels. “Nobody important.” It hurt to speak of his father so cruelly, but Telemachus hoped he would forgive him given the circumstances. Maybe one day, his mother might forgive too for getting himself murdered so stupidly.

Scarface stared him down with narrowed eyes, but seemed to buy it without much thought. Telemachus doubted a man this brutish could be capable of much intelligent thought anyway.

“Figures,” he sighed. “Take him back to the ship. We might still be able to get something out of him at the slave markets.” Telemachus’ blood ran cold. He started squirming, fear clouding his vision and overruling any rational thought. Not even the blade at his throat could calm his desperation. Death would be preferrable to wherever they were bringing him, he wasn’t so sheltered as to be under any illusions in that regard.

“Ah, fuck’s sake,” the voice behind him rasped. He felt the dagger move away from his neck, and something hard and unyielding slammed into the back of his head a moment later. Unconsciousness pulled him under in a flash of short, vicious pain.

***

Telemachus woke up with a pounding headache, throbbing limbs and the uncomfortable sensation of splinters digging into his skin.

Splinters?

The memories come back in painful fragments. He’d been on a beach, searching for someone. His father. That didn’t explain his current situation, but the answer came to him easily. He’d been searching for his father his whole life.

He dragged his thoughts, slow and burdensome as they are, back to the task at hand. He was on a beach. And now, somehow, he was lying on rough wood.

The men. Telemachus sat bolt upright. He regretted it immediately when nausea rose, sickly and cruel. Darkness clouded his vision. For a terrifying moment, it didn’t clear, and he thought the blow to his head had left him fully blind. It took another embarrassingly long few seconds to realise that it was simply dark wherever he was being held.

Whatever relief the revelation brought him quickly dissipated as he realised the distinct swaying sensation he was feeling wasn’t just a result of his head injury. The floor itself was rocking. He was on a ship. Their ship.

The urge to cry rose unwelcome in his chest. Telemachus didn’t need to be able to see his hands to know how badly they were shaking. He didn’t want this. He wanted to go home, and, as childish as it was, he wanted his mother.

He knew the stories. He knew that children who were taken in the night were never found again, never returned to their home. The dream had lied to him. It was so cruel, to taunt him with the only thing he had ever wanted and then to rip it away so terribly. A sob forced its way out of his throat, quiet and pathetic in the darkness.

Telemachus tried to smother it, but the tears kept coming. His whole body was trembling, curling in on itself on its own. He barely registered lying back down, the lack of light making it impossible to make sense of directions anyway. He hugged his knees to his chest, and cried until he physically ran out of tears.

***

An undiscernible amount of time later, Telemachus was woken by harsh light spilling over his face. An intimidating figure was silhouetted in the doorway, a single torch clutched in his meaty hand. Telemachus squinted his eyes against the sudden brightness, trying to make out more of the man than a vague outline without luck.

He dropped a singular apple carelessly onto the floor and slammed the door again, leaving the prince to feel blindly for it in the dark. He spent longer than he would like to admit crawling on his knees to find the thing, too weak and nauseous to stand up. Miserably, he figured that was probably the intention.

The search revealed a few things, though. For one, his new quarters were rather small, no more than a few meters across each way. For two, there was nothing else there. Nothing he could use to escape or defend himself. Telemachus didn’t bother trying the door. On the off chance it wasn’t barricaded, he wouldn’t make it further than a few steps before someone caught him. And even if he could fight, there was nowhere to go.

The despair sat heavy in his stomach, and he was saved from more tears only by his dehydration.

He spent the next few days in a hazy cycle of misery, occasional water and rarer food. The darkness was growing a bigger problem than he’d originally thought. He was starting to wonder if he would be able to see again, even if he did eventually leave the ship. Surely this much time spent entirely blind would cause some damage.

Mentally, too, it was getting to him. Dreams blurred with reality, hours spent in the in between of waking and sleeping. He saw gentle visions of his home coast, of his mother, her voice and gentle hands.

He hoped they were proper dreams, prophetic in the ways he’d known others to be. That one day he would find his homeland again, be reunited with his family. Telemachus knew how cruel those dreams could be now, though. How misleading. More likely, they were the delirious product of wishful thinking.

The boredom was driving him insane as well. He could barely walk, let alone attempt any kind of meaningful activity in what he starting to strongly suspect was more a repurposed supply room than a proper holding cell. It would have been insulting if he hadn’t already proved himself to be too pathetic to pose much of a threat.

So Telemachus slept. He slept, and when he wasn’t sleeping he shook with dry sobs and tried to sink so deep into his misery it would swallow him whole.

On what he estimated to be the seventeenth day of his capture, but could easily have been as little as the eight for all he knew, Telemachus couldn’t take it anymore. He physically couldn’t spend another minute of his life lying on this floor feeling sorry for himself, or his soul would rot for good.

So, he started thinking. And when that only lead him in circles, he began to pray. He’d done so in frantic bursts to anyone he thought would listen ever since he’d first laid eyes on the men at the beach, but he’d known even then the gods would not help him.

Now, he began in earnest. Telemachus focussed on Athena, clinging to the stories his mother had told them of her goodwill to their family. He was too weak to form any cohesive praise or titles, but he thought her name over and over with fervour until the syllables started to lose meaning. Then he whispered it, forcing each sound out of his parched throat, the sound hoarse enough to grate at his ears.

Athena. Athena. Athena. Athena. Please.

It could have been his imagination, but Telemachus could have sworn he felt his skin grow warmer. His shaking diminished, his mouth felt less dry. Even his stomach felt fuller, and the fog in his mind began to clear.

When he opened his eyes again, the room itself seemed slightly brighter, as if his eyes had adjusted to the darkness past human capabilities. The relief of being able to make out even simple floorboards brought the first tears back into his eyes. It was a miracle he still had any left.

A warm, protective presence draped itself over his shoulders like a cloak. For the first time since he’d been ripped from his home, Telemachus felt safe. A moment before he slid back into unconsciousness, he felt a cool hand press against his forehead, soothing against the prickling heat of his skin.

***

He awoke feeling more refreshed than he had in weeks. The lingering exhaustion had disappeared from his shoulders, and his thoughts felt almost as sharp as they had been before he was taken.

It might have been Telemachus’s imagination, but the atmosphere itself felt charged with anticipation. The sounds of scuffling above deck had become more frenetic, a constant buzz paired with the back and forth shouts of the ship’s occupants. Only his chamber was untouched by the chaos, a silent eye in the storm raging around him.

A sudden lurch threw him off balance, and he realised its cause only a short delay later. The ship had run aground. They had reached shore.

Telemachus’s thoughts raced. If they’d reached a trading port, like the bandits had threatened to bring him too, they would have docked. He would be hearing the sounds of other sailors and locals from town as they unloaded.

Shakily,  Telemachus pushed himself up and stumbled towards the nearest wall, plastering his ear to it. Silence, or as close to it as he could get with the background of the crew’s preparations. He tried the rest of the walls, barring the one with the door, and found the same.

Not a dock, then. They were landing in secrecy once more. Another raid? It seemed ambitious, even for this troupe, but Telemachus knew better than to flatter them by assuming any intelligence.

Either way, anticipation burned in his limbs. Whatever their business here, the ship would likely be abandoned for the night. They were unlikely to leave many men behind to guard him, since they hardly considered him to pose a threat as he was. They might have forgotten he existed at all, the sudden twist of his stomach reminding him how long it had been since the last food delivery. A day ago, they might have been correct in such a low estimation of him, but now Telemachus was alight with newfound determination.

He refused to lie down and accept his fate any longer. He was his parents’ son, and tonight he would prove it.

***

A few hours later, the ship was finally, blissfully silent. Telemachus waited as long as he could stand to, wanting to make sure it was empty before he broke out. He considered the door in front of him. As far as he could figure, the men had blocked it with some wooden planks on the other side to prevent it from being opened without someone to slide them out of place. Crude, but admittedly effective.

He considered how each of his parents would have solved the problem. His father could have probably smooth-talked one of the guards into letting him free days ago, or found a clever mechanism to remove the barricade from the other side of the door. His mother would probably never have gotten herself into this situation in the first place.

Since Telemachus had neither his father’s silver tongue nor his mother’s knack for keeping away from danger, he opted to launch his body at the door instead. The low hum of Athena’s presence in the back of his mind flared in alarm, but the wood was weakened with age and disrepair.

His first attempt mostly just bruised his body further, but the door cracked and splintered down the middle encouragingly. Telemachus picked himself up, took a running start, and threw himself at it again. When he landed once again in an undignified pile, he did so surrounded by broken wood planks and, blissfully, on the other side.

His arm burned, but he didn’t have time to investigate the pain. The storage unit that had served as his cell led into a short, narrow corridor that turned and wound out of sight. He stumbled through it, half in a daze, as the air around him gradually got lighter. The thought that some people might have been left behind to guard the loot from their last raid was briefly entertained, but so far no one had stopped him. Telemachus walked until he found himself at the foot of a short staircase. The climb was agonising on his weak muscles, but freedom was so close he could taste it.

Telemachus half fell through the last door with exhaustion, and stood in fresh air for the first time in weeks.

The sky was darkening with the last drops of daylight, the setting sun just below the horizon. A handful of the night’s brightest stars had begun to make an appearance, a supporting choir to Artemis’ moon which shone round and full above him.

After endless darkness, it was the most beautiful thing Telemachus had ever seen. But he didn’t have time to stand and gawk. That he’d made it this far without being stopped already had alarm prickling at his skin. The deck was deserted, no sound disturbed the evening save the wind and distant birds.

It didn’t make sense. The raiders should have gone home with their spoils, or stopped at some major trading port. This ship should have been filled with captured Ithacans, should have been stockpiled with stolen gold and treasures. Most of all, there should still have been men left to guard it.

Telemachus eyed a stack of crates on the far side of the deck. He really didn’t have time for this, but a new suspicion was starting to burn in his mind. Before he could think better of it, he’d walked up to them, fingers wrapping around the first’s lid. The effort it took to remove was, quite frankly, embarrassing, but it eventually slid to the side with the uncomfortable scraping sound of wood on wood.

Empty. He tried the next, and the one after. All of them empty. Whatever the raiders had tried to accomplish in Ithaca, they had failed, and sailed away nearly empty handed. Nearly, Telemachus reminded himself, the thought souring his rising satisfaction.

Maybe the guards had spotted the dark sails not long after he had, and had been sent to defend the villages. Maybe, a traitorously naïve part of his mind whispered, they would even come for me. It was a comforting notion.

He finally stepped away from the abandoned crates, turning to face the island. Past the beach, luscious green forest as far as the eye could see, cut only by mountains and stark cliffsides. Birdsong filled the air with gentle music, the wind tasted sweet against his lips.

This island guaranteed no safety, but the prospect of freedom had Telemachus’s blood rushing in his ears.

He scrambled inelegantly off the boat, and sprinted for the treeline.

***

With the cover of darkness and the thickness of the trees, it was no surprise that he was lost practically immediately. Lost perhaps wasn’t the right term, he reasoned. It wasn’t like he’d had a set destination in mind. A town, perhaps, or anyone who could lead him to a different port where he could try to find a way home.

Instead, he’d been following the same stream for over an hour with increasing desperation. If he’d managed to escape raiders only to die of exposure in a strange forest, his soul would haunt the earth to avenge the injustice for centuries.

Telemachus had stopped to drink when he heard them. Loud, angry voices piercing the quiet night air, heading straight in his direction. He scrambled away from the river bank back into the cover of the trees, but it was too late.

“Ey! It’s the brat!” The shout came across as more startled than furious, but he figured it wouldn’t take long for them to make the jump.

He sprinted through the woods, dodging fallen trees and boulders, but it was only a matter of time before they caught up with him. Telemachus couldn’t outrun them at the beach and he couldn’t outrun them now.

The screech of an owl stole his attention from the top of the nearest tree, and raw desperation pushed him up it without a second thought. It was a stupid plan, even by his standards. What am I expecting to happen here, exactly? he thought to himself as he climbed. That I’ll be out of reach for too long and they’ll lose interest? They’re raiders, not bears!

He’d made it nearly to the top by the time they reached the tree, out of breath and jeering viciously up at him. One of them grinned, and Telemachus’s stomach dropped to his sandals. His teeth were filed into points, like he made it a hobby to rip out the throats of children.

The man moved forwards, pulling himself up to the first branches with bony hands while the rest of them cheered. Even Athena’s presence in the back of his mind couldn’t sooth him when Teeth started climbing, agile in a way that felt grotesque for a man with such long limbs. Telemachus was unhelpfully remined of the wild spiders that sometimes snuck into the palace, crawling between corners and ripping apart insects.

Teeth grabbed another branch, grinning maliciously up at him with his deformed mouth. His canines glinted gruesomely in the moonlight, and Telemachus was struck by the horrible thought they might be the last thing he sees.

The thinner branches were starting to bend under the man’s weight, but the distance between them was steadily closing. If he got any closer, Telemachus resolved to kick him in the face and deal with the consequences later.

Teeth was spared a sandal to the nose when the branch he stood on snapped beneath him, leaving him flailing with only one hand keeping him from falling. He cried out, scrambling for purchase, and Telemachus couldn’t help but laugh, the sound strangled out of him by hysteria. Teeth glared back up at him, snarling like it was his fault the man was an awful climber.

“I’ll fucking kill you, you-“

He never got to finish his sentence. Instead of words, a thorned vine burst from his mouth, black with blood. It wasn’t until his expression went slack and body limp that Telemachus realised it had pierced through the back of his skull. The vine ripped back out as violently as it had entered, and the raider’s corpse fell with a crash through the tree branches.

He’d never seen anyone die before. Somehow, more than the blood and gore, the stillness terrified him. The man didn’t flail when he fell, his arms didn’t shoot out to slow his fall. He simply dropped, limp as a doll to the unforgiving forest floor.

The rest of the crew started screaming then, too. Maybe they had before his body hit the ground. Telemachus didn’t see what fates they met, couldn’t watch, his eyes stuck on the crumpled form below his. Glassy, half closed eyes stared up at him accusingly, limbs broken underneath him at terrible angles.

The screaming stopped as suddenly as it began. He held his breath, praying fervently that whatever monster had come across them wouldn’t notice him in the tree, would keep moving.

A new figure stepped into his line of sight, blocking the view of the corpse beneath him. Instead, Telemachus locked eyes with a woman, bathed in golden light. Flowing robes draped across her limbs, moving unnaturally against the wind. Glowing bands hugged the length of her forearms, matching chains weaving in and out of her dark hair.

Her painted lips curved into a smile as she tilted her face up towards him.

“Hello, little one. Are you lost?”

***

It took Circe the better part of an hour to coax him down. She likened him to frightened cat later, to the maids’ endless amusement and Telemachus’s personal exasperation.

Now, he found himself sat cross-legged on the plushest couch he’d ever seen, countless blankets draped over his shoulders and a miscellaneous warm drink pushed into his hands. Some exotic tea, if he had to guess from the strange leaves that floated in it. Still, the heat of the ceramic cup was comforting, and he cradled it close to his chest as if it could thaw the chill in his bones.

The room itself belonged to the strangest palace Telemachus had ever been in. Magic hung in the air like incense, lingering anywhere he looked. Candles burned without melting wax. Doors closed and opened on their own. The room itself was unnaturally warm, despite being half open to the night air with a large, curving balcony. And, of course, he’d watched its mistress kill five men with nothing but plants.

Said mistress was sat across from him, watching his movements with cat-like attention. Her eyes were lined with kohl, and at present narrowed themselves at him.

“Why were you on that beach, Telys?”

He’d chosen the name in a moment of panic, but it was working so far. Its sonority was close enough to his own he could trust himself to respond to it. Telys, son of a nameless merchant from Cephalonia, the sole victim of a raid in the Western Isles. A plausible story, and if the Fates were on his side (and wouldn’t that be novel), one that would protect him and his family with anonymity.

Circe might yet hold him ransom if she found out his true identity, or use him as leverage against Ithaca for… some other scheme. Or she might simply decide he couldn’t be trusted and strangle him with orchids. Telemachus shifted away from the potted flowers to his left with newfound wariness.

Names have power, my son, his mother whispered to him from the faded echoes of memory. Reveal your own with care.

He looked down at his hands, picking at his cuticles with a frown. The cover of a frightened child had bought him time to piece his story together, and he intended to make as much use of it as he could before Circe lost patience. He’d refused to speak until they’d walked back to the palace from the forest, answering her questions with nothing but wide, terrified eyes until she relented.

The rest of his story had come out in a show of stuttering, trembling and fidgeting to complete the image of a small lost child who was very harmless and very much did not need to be stabbed with a pointy branch, thank you.

“I had… this dream.” Telemachus stuck as close to the truth as possible, minus the reckless escape from the palace. “I knew a boat would arrive that night, but I thought…” His voice cracked with unshed tears. “I thought it meant something else. I thought the Fates were calling me there.”

He glanced up from his tea, watching Circe through his eyelashes. To his surprise, her expression had softened.

“The Fates can be cruel.” Her voice was gentle with sympathy, but sparked with interest as she leaned forward, sleeves moving with her like water. “The dream, however, is peculiar. Do you experience such things often?”

Telemachus chewed his lip, considering.

“I cannot control them in any way. Most of the time they don’t make sense.” His ears rang with the sound of screams and scraping metal, and he looked back at his hands. “They scare me, sometimes,” he rambled. He hadn’t properly spoken to anyone about them before, and now he found he couldn’t stop.

Absently, he realised he hadn’t actually answered her question. “Sometimes I have them for what feels like endless nights in a row, and other times I go months without anything.”

Circe still seemed impressed.

“A child prophet,” she mused, leaning back to sink into the red cushions at her back. “I suppose it’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard.” She was silent for a long moment, a painted nail twisting through her golden hair in consideration.

She turned back towards him eventually, eyes narrowed despite her relaxed frame. “Tell me. What can you see here?”

Telemachus could only stare at her, uncomprehending.

“In the palace, I mean, and around me. Any strange lights, shimmering auras?”

In truth, he had no idea what she talking about. Both the palace and Circe herself were practically dripping with magic, but not in the way she was describing. He couldn’t see it that way, and as far as he was aware, it wasn’t something that could be seen. Was this some sort of test? Was he failing? Either way, he couldn’t help but feel that she would be able to see through any lie in this regard. He could cover his own backstory just fine, but Telemachus was far out of his depth when it came to the supernatural.

“No,” he said at last. “No auras. There is a sort of… I mean, I can’t be sure, but there’s almost a kind of buzz in the air. A ringing in my ears that won’t go away.” He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eyes, his heart in his throat. This was it, then. He’d lost her interest, and the consequences were already starting to weigh in the air.

“Well,” Circe said at length, and he braced himself. “I suppose I’d better ask the girls to make up a room for you.”

His eyes snapped back towards her, wide as they could go. She was letting him stay?

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. A lost child, gifted with prophetic dreams and practically delivered to my doorstep? I’d be a fool to turn you away. I might just make a sorcerer of you yet.”

***

Hours later, Telemachus was freshly bathed, bandaged (as it turned out, his arm had been bleeding for hours without him having the presence of mind to notice) and clothed in soft orange-pink robes only slightly too big on him. They were an undeniable upgrade from the filthy, tattered chiton he’d been stuck in for the last weeks, but he still couldn’t bring himself to feel fully comfortable in them. He missed his clothes back home, with small owls and olive trees his mother had stitched for him at the sleeves. Miserably, he knew it would likely be years until he saw her again.

Circe would probably let him leave, if he asked with some tears and light grovelling, but how would he get home? She’d mentioned on their tense first walk to the palace that there were no other settlements on the island. That meant no ports, no ships, and no one to take him home. Some of the raiders had undoubtedly escaped their fates and fled with the only available boat while he’d been recovering at the palace.

At best, he’d have to wait until some Ithacan ships tracked him to the island and took him back. His mother had to be looking for him, but she’d spend months, if not years, sending their men to all nearby servant markets before anyone thought to check the tiny deserted islands surrounding them.

More likely than not, he’d had to find his own way home. It was a desperately lonely feeling, and a stinging sensation behind his eyes threatened to make Telemachus cry again. He swallowed them down painfully. For now, Circe had taken him in, and Athena’s presence hummed at the back of his mind, briefly making itself known whenever he was in immediate danger or on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He was as safe as he could get so long as he could keep his identity hidden.

He would lie low, learn as much as he could from Circe, and when the first opportunity presented himself, he would go home. Despite himself, Telemachus couldn’t deny that some part of him was excited. He’d learned to smother his dreams over the years as they served only to unnerve strangers and worry his mother, but now he was surrounded by actual magic, and an actual sorceress was going to help him make sense of his gift.

It was a childish hope, but he clung onto it as the sound of the wind rustling the courtyard’s trees lulled him into a blissfully dark sleep.

***

Telemachus’s training, as Circe called it, officially began the following morning. He was woken by an overly chipper palace girl, who handed him a fresh set of robes and enough golden jewellery he couldn’t help but wonder if it was a ploy to track his movements through the copious clinking sounds he produced with each gesture. Half his forearms were covered with intricate gold bands that matched his new rings and ankle bracelets. He physically didn’t have enough ear piercings for all of the earrings he’d been supplied with, much to the frustration of the servants.

Once they were satisfied that he could reflect enough of the sun’s light to fill a dark hall, they sent him to what he assumed was the aptly named Potions Room, where Telemachus discovered he may just be the least talented person in apothecary sciences and related magical fields to walk the earth.

Three exploded cauldrons and a contained Greek fire outbreak later (why a supposed healing potion even had Greek fire capabilities was beyond him), they moved on to clairvoyance.

One would think that, having prophetic dreams and all, Telemachus would be similarly inclined to other fields of divination. One would be wrong. He stared into crystal balls, water basins, incense smoke patterns, even tea leaf residues without success.

At the very least, his failure in this respect resulted in no collateral damage, barring the fine porcelain he’d accidentally shattered through purely natural means.

Finally, Circe had made him drink some strange tasting tea before lying down on a reclining couch with his eyes closed. The air was thick with incense smoke, and warm enough his robes clung to his skin uncomfortably. Her fingertips burned where they rested at his temples, soft incantations spilling from her lips.

When drowsiness began to pull Telemachus under, he hadn’t the strength to fight it.

He was standing in a dimly lit cave, torches burning a malicious red on the dark cavern walls. Telemachus knew instantly he was reliving some past memory, rather than catching a glimpse of the future. His dreams of the past had a more solid, predetermined feel to them. Every action had already been taken, Telemachus was only an observer of a tale that could not and never would be changed.

When he dreamt of the future, he was far less lucid. Details were not set in stone, he could see dozens of slight alternations of the same event overlapping each other, playing through at the same time until only the essence of their message was predictable. It was what he’d felt when he’d seen Troy fall. A burning city and a wooden horse, these were the constants. But all around them, small, insignificant battles were waged. This soldier would at once fall under an enemy’s blade and be saved by a brother in arms, this house would at once be burned and pillaged. The possibilities blurred in their mundanity.

The cave before him was concrete, each soldier at his side fixed in history and singular. One with a red headband wrapped around his brown curls stood to his right, shifting back and forth anxiously. Telemachus couldn’t bring himself to look at him for long, distracted by the sense of foreboding that lingered around him.

What was new was Circe’s presence, crowding next to him in the body of the man Telemachus often saw through.

His (their? This sharing body business was confusing) dream-self bowed, arms sweeping to either side.

“My name is Nobody, dear friend. I offer you this gift in goodwill.”

Only then did Telemachus see what was in front of him. A tall, grotesque figure as tall as the cave itself lumbered before them, limbs twisted in a crouch to observe them better. In a clutched hand lay an empty wine barrel, splintered from its unforgiving grip. Most disconcertingly, a single eye the size of a small boulder bulged from the centre of its forehead. A Cyclops.

The creature’s mouth contorted into a smile, revealing a row of sharp yellow teeth. Telemachus’s consciousness lurched with fear, and the dream dissipated in a sudden burst.

He sat up with a gasp, choking on his own breath. The room swam in and out of focus, Circe’s blurry figure swaying before him. When he could suck down enough air to remain conscious, she pulled away, eyes narrowed at him in consideration.

“Who was that? The man we were seeing through?” she demanded, like she honestly expected him to be able to make sense of anything they had just witnessed.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged helplessly. “But it’s usually him in the dreams, I think. Or at least it usually feels like him. Do people usually have, like, an assigned dream person?”

Circe looked decidedly unimpressed, one manicured eyebrow raised sceptically at him. “No. They do not. Whoever it is, you’re obviously linked. Did you have any extended family? Any distant cousins who might have been called to Troy? He’s clearly a soldier, and a Greek one at that.”

She said it casually, but the air in Telemachus’s lungs left as surely as if he’d been punched. He barely had the sense left to shake his head numbly. It was impossible, it should have been impossible but everything pointed to the same, in hindsight rather obvious, conclusion.

The fall of Troy. A leader of soldiers, journeying home. This entire time, Telemachus had been seeing his father’s memories and future without realising.

He shot to his feet, entire body trembling. “I-“ he choked on his words. “I have to go.” He ran out of the room, barely conscious of Circe calling out after him.

***

Weeks passed without note.

It was nearing a full month since he’d arrived on the island, and he was growing restless. With Circe’s help, the stability of his dreams improved with greater clarity and lucidity. Mercifully, she didn’t push when he grew so panicked for his father’s safety he pulled out of dreams prematurely, and gave him space without asking too many questions. He was getting better at it though, and their frequency increased even without her presence coaxing them forward.

That night, Telemachus had been violently torn from sleep by flashes of giant waves breaking over fragile ships, dragging wood and unfortunate sailor alike into their wine-dark depths. Screams still rang in his ears, driving him out to the surrounding forests to clear his mind. His father was not dead. He could not be dead, because Telemachus would have sensed it. If he repeated it to himself enough, he might actually believe it.

The sun was high and unforgivingly bright in the sky, the leafy canopy overhead a meagre relief. He’d spent many days exploring these woods when the ache of homesickness in his chest grew too heavy, but they were large enough to remain unfamiliar.

At present, he’d found himself walking in circles in the only area he knew well enough to ensure he wouldn’t lose his way. His lessons with Circe were typically held in the early afternoon, and he wasn’t overly eager to discover how she would react to tardiness. Telemachus was quite confident he’d passed the same boulder four separate times when he heard the tell-tale sound of twigs breaking under large footsteps.

He ducked behind a tree in time to see a group of men, ten strong, emerging from the underbrush and onto the beaten path to the palace. Each was clad in dented, well-worn armour that did nothing to obscure intimidating masses of muscle. Telemachus’s heart dropped to his sandals when he saw the swords hanging at their waists.

 He didn’t wait around to get a good look at any of their faces. Blood turned to ice with fear in his veins, he crept away as silently as possible, sprinting down a shortcut to the palace the moment he was out of earshot.

It should have been an hour’s walk. He was there in twenty minutes.

Telemachus raced down the halls as fast as his burning legs could carry him, barrelling past nymphs and servant girls alike until he was through Circe’s chamber doors. He was too out of breath to form any coherent sentence, and wasted a good minute doubled over in her doorway, heaving. When he found the strength to look up, the sorceress was in front of him, a silent demand in her eyes.

“There are men in the forest,” he gasped. “Ten of them, I think. They’re headed this way. I don’t know if they were with the raiders, or-“ Telemachus couldn’t finish. Or what? Who else would come all the way to such a remote island with a single palace and no towns to boast? What could be found in such a place but debts to settle?

Her mouth set in a grim line as she considered his words. Her gaze turned out the balcony, towards the woods like she could strike them down with it alone.

“Lady Circe?” he asked after a moment, unable to bear the silence any longer. His bottom lip trembled. They’d had the cover of darkness and the element of surprise on their side last time, and without them the odds were considerably less in their favour for an all out attack. “What are we going to do?”

She turned to him at last, expression suddenly much lighter. A humourless smile crossed her face.

“We will welcome them. Tell the girls to prepare… our most lavish feast.”

***

Nine. Telemachus counted three separate times without the number changing. He’d seen ten men in the forest, he was sure of it, and only nine were strewn across the room in front of them, gorging themselves on laced food and wine. Circe had sent the girls away lest the men turned violent or improper with any of them, but kept Telemachus back with her. To learn, she had said.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was meant to be learning, watching Circe twirl between the intruders and bat her eyelashes. Somehow, he felt many of the tricks at play were out of his realm.

Still, his job for the meal was to keep the men’s goblets full of laced wine, and he was determined to do at least that right. He gripped his pitcher tighter to hide how his hands were shaking and stepped towards the table, noticing the cup nearest to him was by now mostly empty.

A calloused hand wrapped itself around his wrist. Telemachus nearly jumped out of his skin in shock, eyes snapping to glare at the offender in a way he knew a servant shouldn’t. If the man in front of him noticed the rudeness, he didn’t seem to care.

“Say, Perimedes,” he slurred, eyes squinted at the exposed half of Telemachus’s face. “Don’t this one look familiar?”

His heart rate tripled. With the veil covering his face from just underneath his eyes, he shouldn’t have been recognisable, especially not to someone Telemachus couldn’t remember interacting with on the ship. The man’s grip was tight without being painful, like he’d forgotten his strength without any real intentions to cause harm.

“He kinda looks like our captain, don’t he?” It was probably the last thing he expected him to say. Telemachus had few memories of the ship’s captain, and most of them boiled down to menacing silhouettes in doorframes. He hadn’t taken the time to note any resemblance.

Another man leaned over the table to scrutinise him, nodding in assent.

“Yeah, s’pose I see it. Even has the same glare!” They laughed. Telemachus started to squirm away before he realised they’d stopped. The hold on his arm disappeared, and when he looked back up the men were doubled over, seemingly choking. Many fell to the floor, others spasmed in their seats, their flesh twisting and bulging.

He watched in muted horror as they began to transform, faces deforming and shrinking, eyes gruesomely sliding to the sides of their head. Eventually, the only sound in the room was the squealing of terrified swine.

From the head of the table, Circe watched on with silent satisfaction. She turned a sharp look in his direction and made her way to him from across the room, eyes fixed on his arm.

“Telys? Are you hurt?” The genuine concern in her voice surprised him, but he couldn’t manage more than a mute shake of his head, too overwhelmed to put any thought into words. All around him, pigs ran in maddened circles, knocking over furniture and colliding with walls.

She turned to survey the carnage with a perfectly arched eyebrow. “I suppose they’ll need to be moved to the pens,” she sighed. “What a mess.”

***

Circe didn’t appear surprised in the slightest when a palace girl ran in to announce the arrival of yet another strange man, though Telemachus himself nearly fell out of his chair. He supposed there was only so much surprise and horror a grown person could muster in a single day. Following her composed example, he squared his shoulders in his best imitation of her dignified posture and trailed after her, hurriedly fixing his veil back onto his face.

They arrived far sooner than he would have liked, heart beating an uncomfortable rhythm behind his ribs. He wondered if it might not give out soon at the rate things were going.

Circe paused with a delicate hand on the door, turning to fix her sight on where he stood at her elbow. Her expression was sympathetic, if resigned.

“Last chance to back out, little one,” she whispered. “I will not hold it against you.”

Telemachus met her gaze as steadily as he could manage, and shook his head. The words were stuck in his throat, but he couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her behind. She’d done so much to protect him since he’d crashed into her forests, and all he’d done in return was invite more trouble. He made a note apologize, if they both survived the day.

Circe inhaled once, sharply, and pushed the door open. He followed, shamefully keeping himself as obscured as possible behind her skirts. He caught the outline of a man in his peripheral vision and immediately turned away, making a direct path to the most shadowed corner of the room as quickly as possible. He might not be able to help, but he would stay out of the way while Circe, quite literally, worked her magic.

Only once he was settled on a cushioned chair by the wall did he dare to properly look at the man before him. As soon as his eyes locked on his frame, an indecipherable shiver shot through Telemachus’s spine.

He was shorter than most men he’d come across, and his build more resembled the lean muscle of one who prioritised speed and agility than the raw power of the rest of his crew. Dark brown hair fell in waves across his tanned face, weathered by wind and sea. Notably, he sported no armour past arm guards and a simple chiton, and a second glance revealed no obvious weaponry.

Telemachus knew better than to feel at ease. The worst weapons were often the most hidden, and this man had the relaxed posture of one who felt completely unthreatened despite the hostile tension in the air. He was equally disconcerted by the dead silence that surrounded him.

Magic thrived in this place. It hung in the air, it kept the torches burning unnaturally bright for unnaturally long. Its presence was unavoidable and all-consuming, and it fizzled to a dead stop near this man. All around him, in an indecipherable shadowed aura, the buzzing of sorcery disappeared. With a jolt of fear, Telemachus noticed the candles he stood nearest to had gone out.

His eyes shone with intelligence as they swept the room, and stopped dead on Telemachus. For a long, agonising moment their sights remained locked on each other, neither so much as breathing. This wasn’t the raiders’ captain. This wasn’t any man on the raiders’ ship, Telemachus wouldn’t have forgotten him. Who, then, had come to their door?

The hope that his mother had sent guards after him flared sharp and painful before he smothered it. Ithaca had a measly number of adult men left behind after war-drafts, and he would recognise any of their faces.

They scrutinised each other for a beat longer before the man, with visible effort, redirected his attention to Circe. He seemed disconcerted, unbalanced for a fraction of an instant before a mask of perfect ease settled itself on his face. He smiled, the picture of politeness.

“Lady of the palace,” the words spill from his lips like wine, and Telemachus couldn’t help but be fascinated. He leaned forward, almost unconsciously. “You keep a truly beautiful home, and your generosity as a hostess is remarkable. I cannot express enough how much your kindness is appreciated for a weary traveller such as myself.”

The flattery was maybe slightly overdone, but Telemachus didn’t miss the way Circe’s expression shifted from hostility to curiosity all the same. She raised a slender eyebrow.

“It is not often that we receive travellers in these parts. Where do you hail from, stranger?” Suspicion sat heavy on her words, but she seemed less inclined to set her vines after him. Perhaps she’d realised what Telemachus had, that these men, though dangerous, likely didn’t belong to the original group of raiders that had terrorised their shores a full moon ago.

“My crew and I have been turned around from Troy, I’m afraid. We were waylaid by a storm.” Something flickered behind his eyes then, some smothered grief. “I desire only to bring myself and my men home to Mycenae.”

Now that caught his attention. Last Telemachus had heard, Agamemnon had safely returned to Mycenae with his surviving troops without incident. There had been no mention of waylaid or lost men on the journey.

He must have made some sound or expression at the statement, because the captain’s eyes snapped back towards him with interest. They only slid away once Circe sighed sympathetically.

“We’ve heard reports of terrible storms off our coasts for some time now. I am sorry to hear you were caught in it.” Her lips parted, about to say something else on the matter when a servant shuffled in nervously.

The girl stopped at Circe’s shoulder, glancing between her mistress and the strange man in the room with anxiety. She stretched onto the balls of her feet to whisper something hurriedly into her ear, her hand coming up to cup her mouth and shield her words from the rest of the room. Vaguely, he picked up pigs and broken fence. Silence fell. Eventually, Circe stood from her place on the couch, brushing off her robes with an apologetic expression.

“I’m afraid I have to attend to some matters. Please, make yourself at home until I return. Telys, would you refill his goblet?” She looked back towards Telemachus as she left, nodding reassuringly. I won’t be far, she mouthed.

And then they were alone.

Telemachus stood, rising from his seat and walking towards the table, eyes fixed on the floor before him. The atmosphere had changed, somehow, now that it was just the two of them in the room. He could feel the captain’s eyes on him as he moved, almost burning in their intensity.

Willing his hands to be still, Telemachus reached for the pitcher and began to pour. His skin prickled under the force of the man’s attention.

They were barely an arm’s length apart. He hadn’t been this close to an adult man since the raiders, and that familiar fear made itself known as it crept up his spine.

“You do not strike me as a servant.”

The words were spoken softly, an observation without tangible threat, but Telemachus’s breath caught in his throat anyway. Was his cover already blown? An irrational, unexplainable anger shot through him. He had not avoided revealing his identity for so long just for some man to see through him in minutes. Two could play at this game.

A courage he couldn’t quite understand made him meet the captain’s eyes, staring him down in turn.

“You do not strike me as one of Agamemnon’s men.” Telemachus savoured the surprise on his face. His eyebrow raised in interest, eyes sparking with fascination as he replied.

“No? And why’s that?” Well. He hadn’t entirely thought this through. Still, waiting too long would be suspicious, and his next words were already forcing their way out of his throat.

“I’ve met most of them,”, he said hurriedly. By which he meant he’d seen exactly fifteen, in passing when they’d stopped in Ithaca for more supplies. He scrambled for any obvious differences, and with the distinct feeling he’d regret it for the rest of his undoubtedly very short life, settled on:

“They were taller.”

A beat of silence ensued as they stared at each other. Athena’s presence lingered in the back of his mind, and he could have sworn she was laughing. At his oncoming demise, no doubt.

Telemachus was saved from certain death only by Circe swooping back into the room in a flurry of robes and golden hair. She raised an eyebrow at him, a silent “Everything okay?” as she passed. He managed a shrug, head still spinning, as she turned back to assess the man once more, flicking her wrist to dismiss him.

***

Telemachus walked out of the room with his heart hammering. Despite the obvious danger the man posed, he couldn’t bring himself to feel threatened by him. Even the blatant lie about his identity didn’t spur all that much suspicion within Telemachus. Wasn’t he doing the same, after all?

No, what Telemachus couldn’t get past was the way the stranger looked at him. Even while conversing with Circe, his gaze without fail snapped back to where Telemachus was trying to be inconspicuous in the corner, his eyes so piercing they might see into his soul. He couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, if he hadn’t been wearing the veil, the man would have known who he was. It shouldn’t be possible, he was quite confident they’d never met, and yet there was an unnerving but undeniable familiarity between them.

Telemachus had made it all the way to his room before realising he was still holding the stupid pitcher. He’d been so distracted by the conversation he hadn’t thought to set it back onto the table.

You do not strike me as a servant. What had he meant by that? How had he known? The thought of being so easily seen through chilled Telemachus’ bones, but also caused in him an unexpected thrill. He’d mastered his poker face early and well enough that he could fool his mother on a good day. To be so easily read and understood was both terrifying and strangely addictive.

He abandoned the pitcher on his nightstand and sat on his bed, knees drawn to his chest. The neighbouring window revealed a perfect view of the palace gardens, and he stared out of them until his racing thoughts faded.

***

Telemachus was summoned hours later for a feast, of all things. Inexplicably, Circe had had a change of heart upon concluding they were not raiders and decided to let the pig-men go after all. To make matters even stranger, these men were all to spend the night celebrating at their palace before they set sail again the following dawn.

He spent the night flitting between tables and dodging stares from practically everyone. After over a month of relative solitude with the nymphs and palace girls, the sudden company of over forty men in a single room was overwhelming enough to make him want to scream.

For these reasons, Telemachus took no accountability when he found himself in the palace kitchens aggressively salting the wine he was about to serve to a particularly rude soldier who kept grabbing him to get his attention. His stint on the raider’s ship aside, Telemachus was not used to being manhandled. He made a note to be especially nice to the staff when he got home.

“I sure hope you aren’t planning on poisoning my men again, kid.”

He whirled around with an undignified squeak. The captain stood leaning in the kitchen doorway, sounding gratingly amused. Telemachus tried to smother a glare with limited success, if his resulting smile was anything to go off of.

“Not poison. Just…” he trailed off, searching for a believable lie and coming up empty. “Salt. Its salt.” He held the clay pot out as proof, holding his breath as the man leaned in. After a few seconds he looked up, eyebrow raised.

“Any particular reason, or is this the latest trend with the youths these days?” His tone was one of exaggerated sarcasm, but there was an unexpected hint of grief flickering behind his eyes that was gone as soon as it appeared.

Telemachus chewed his bottom lip. It was probably a bad idea to insult the men to their captain’s face, but he was frustrated and exhausted and mostly sure they wouldn’t risk Circe’s wrath by killing him.

“Some of your men don’t know how to keep their hands to themselves,” he muttered, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor by his feet.

“Keep their hands to themselves.” he repeated tightly. The captain’s voice had gone hard enough to have Telemachus’s gaze snapping back to him, where he was met with furrowed brows and a set jaw. Panic started sinking in again. He was alone, in a mostly secluded room with a man who he’d finally angered and no one within earshot.

As if sensing his fear, the man took a step back, visibly smoothing his expression and softening his voice. “I am not angry with you, but I need you to explain what you mean by that.” Despite his words, there was a tense, hostile lining to his frame, and his hand twitched like it ached for one of the swords they had been made to surrender at the entrance.

“I just… they keep grabbing me,” he stuttered over his words, eyeing the exit like he even stood a chance if he tried to make a break for it. “Like, my arms, when they want something. It’s rude,” he added, though it sounded childish even to his own ears.

He scrutinised Telemachus’s face like he was searching for a lie, brows furrowed. Gradually, the tension left his muscles.

“I apologise on their behalf. I will have a word with them after the feast about treating their hosts with more respect,” he said, with surprising sincerity.

Telemachus nodded once, then twice, jerkily. The captain still hadn’t moved from the doorway.

“Did you, um. Did you need anything?” He blinked at the words, seemingly remembering himself.

“I meant to speak with you, earlier, but you’ve been hard to catch.” Telemachus bristled. It sounded almost like a compliment, but he’d been caught more than enough for his liking recently.

“I do not speak with strange men who follow me into empty rooms,” he forced through his teeth, trying to channel the authority his mother wielded when dealing with particularly pushing ambassadors. It came out strained and slightly scared instead.

The man had the decency to look sheepish, at least. “I suppose that’s fair,” he acquiesced, and stepped to the side to let him through.

Telemachus walked as fast as he could without outright running, abandoning the ruined wine and making a beeline for his quarters. Hopefully Circe would forgive him for shirking his duties, current situation considered.

He changed clumsily out of his robes and into sleeping clothes, collapsing into bed in a pile of limbs. The stress drained him in a sudden rush, and he was out moments after he hit the pillow.

***

Telemachus was dreaming again. This time, he found himself at a beach, surrounded by what was left of a weary crew. He remembered the destruction of the rest of the ships with a pang he knew wasn’t entirely his own, staring out at the open ocean with eyes that didn’t belong to him.

His dream-self turned at the muted sound of someone crashing through foliage, a tall muscular figure appearing from the cover of trees. The man was panicked, face beaded with sweat and eyes wild.

“Eurylochus, what has happened?  Where is the rest of your crew?” Telemachus heard the words as if from deep underwater, echoing through the strange disconnect of his consciousness and his father’s voice. It was laced with its own notable amount of distress, but far more controlled than that of the man’s before him.

“Sir! We came across this palace in the middle of the forest,” he panted, out of breath, “The rest of the men were lured inside by this woman, promising food and comfort. Only I stayed back.”

Telemachus felt himself move forward, reach for the man’s shoulder with a hand that was not his own to stabilise him.

“What happened to them?” Eurylochus stared back with wide, horrified eyes.

“She turned them into pigs.”

Telemachus woke with a start. He was covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, heart pounding. His mind raced with the implications of what he had just seen. His father was on this island. His father was the man he’d spoken to just yesterday.

He threw himself out of bed with such haste his legs tangled in his bed linens and immediately sent him crashing to the floor. Only adrenaline-fuelled reflexes allowed him to throw his hands out in front of his face, saving himself from meeting his father with a broken nose. He was back on his feet in a heartbeat, and racing down the palace hallway in the next.

If the light streaming from the windows were anything to go by, it was already dawn. His father might have already left, and the thought was too terrible for Telemachus to bear. He’d waited his entire life for this reunion. He would swim to catch up to those boats if he had to. Telemachus flew past the stunned exclamations of the palace girls, only dimly aware of how unstable he must look sprinting through the palace in his nightclothes at the break of dawn.

He finally reached the open terrace, grabbing a pillar with one hand to spin faster around the corner, and collided head on with a solid frame. For a delirious moment, he thought he’d managed to swing himself directly into a second pillar. It would have tracked, with his luck. This theory fell apart when the hypothesised pillar scrambled to its feet and rushed to his side.

His vision swam, but Telemachus could just about make out the form of a man leaning over him, expression twisted in a mix of awe and concern. The world snapped back into focus in a dizzying rush.

“-lemachus? Telemachus are you alright?” His father was saying his name. He recognised him, and the sheer volume of care in his words would have taken his breath away if he’d had any left. All he could manage was a choked cry, relief and longing and desperation all blurring into one before he launched himself off the ground and against his father.

He could make out a ragged, sharp inhale before strong arms wrapped themselves around him, clutching him tightly liked he feared Telemachus would be taken from him if he let go. One hand reached upwards to thread through his hair as he whispered Telemachus’ named reverently against it, over and over. He hadn’t heard it said since he’d been taken from his mother, and now the affection in it made his throat constrict.

He curled even closer into him, burying his face in his shoulder as sobs wracked his frame. The pain of the past months caught up to him all once. He’d been kidnapped, ripped from his home and everything he’d ever known by cruel men. He’d been hurt worse than ever before, trapped in a ship’s hull for weeks surrounded by monsters. Even the island hadn’t been that much of a reprieve, too terrified of being hunted down or worse, letting his identity slip and putting his entire family in harm’s way.

But now his father was here, he was here and Telemachus was finally safe. He could go home.

He reluctantly pulled back, torn by his father’s sound of loss even as he loosened his grip to allow him space. He blinked away the last of his tears to look at him properly. Odysseus, the sacker of cities and hero of legend, was scanning his face with so much wonder it threatened to reduce him back to tears.

“I want to-“ his voice failed him, his throat constricting once more. “I really want to go home now, Father.” A new sense of panic made itself known at the base of Telemachus’ skull. He gripped his father’s chiton with a desperate urgency. “Please take me with you, please. I can be useful, I promise I really can-“

He was interrupted by calloused hands cradling his face. His father looked stricken, pain written in each line of his face.

“I will never leave you. Never again, my son I swear it.”  He said the word son like a lifeline. “And you do not need to be useful, or –“ his expression twisted with something indecipherable, and all Telemachus could do was stare up at him in awe, “ – earn your place by my side. It is your birthright. Oh, Telemachus. Everything I have done has been for you and your mother, I would have burned the world to the ground if it would have gotten me home to you sooner.” He pressed his lips against his son’s temple, pulling him back against his chest.

Relief sang in Telemachus’s bones, bringing a fresh wave of tears to his eyes. He curled one hand in the back of his father’s chiton, gripping it like an infant. “I missed you,” he whispered hoarsely, muffled from how tightly he pressed himself against him.

“Oh, kid,” Odysseus’s shoulders shook with his voice, “you have no idea.”

“I’ve wanted to meet you for so long but now-“ Telemachus’s words failed him, the pain of all his weaknesses coming back to him. “I don’t think I’m the son you expected.” I don’t think I’m worthy of it went unsaid.

His father was shaking his head before he’d finished talking. “You’re perfect. You are my son and you’re perfect. Even before I knew who you were I thought you were brilliant, kid, how could you think such a thing?” He sounded so heartbroken Telemachus couldn’t have managed words even if he knew what to say.

Odysseus pulled back, holding his face with shining eyes. “I have not been around to tell you how much I adore you, but I swear I will not leave your side, and I will do whatever it takes to show you how desperately you are loved. My son,” he finished, voice breaking.

They sat intertwined together for what felt both much too short a time and hours before Telemachus extracted himself from the embrace, still sniffling. “We should, uh, we should tell Circe I’m leaving. She’ll probably curse you or something if she thinks you’ve stolen me.”

Odysseus nodded without making a move to get up, furrowing his eyebrows at him. “How was it you came here? I did not see any other ships on the-“ he stopped dead in his sentence, eyes locked on Telemachus’s upper arm. He knew the place. His brazen escape from the raiders had gone considerably well, but his door-breaking stunt had left him with a slightly raised pink scar across his bicep even Circe’s nymphs hadn’t been able to fade entirely.

His father reached out, tracing its outline with concern. He glanced back up at Telemachus, questions in his eyes. “I, ah, I got that throwing myself through a door. For a good reason, though!” he added at Odysseus’s alarmed expression. “It’s kind of a long story, but these raiders came to Ithaca a month-ish ago and grabbed me. They stopped at this island for like, supplies or something, and I escaped from the ship. There was a whole thing in the forest afterwards but Circe saved me and let me stay in her palace for a while.”

The excitement of their reunion temporarily washed away the terror of the ordeal and replaced it with breathless giddiness. He must have been doing a terrible job of explaining though, because his father looked nothing short of horrified.

“Oh, no, don’t worry!” he rushed to explain. “They didn’t get anyone else! I think mother must have, managed to stop them from reaching the town with the guards or something, because there was definitely no one else on the ship.” Odysseus didn’t look reassured. If anything, his words only served to worry him more.

“Raiders,” he repeated with breathless horror. “You were taken by raiders?” Telemachus nodded hesitantly as his father immediately began scanning him, fussing protectively over every piece of exposed skin for potential injuries. He couldn’t help the slight thrill that went through him at being handled like he was something so precious.

“It’s really okay, though,” he tried, though his comfort seemed to fall on deaf ears. “Besides, you found me!” Odysseus didn’t seem to agree, but he pressed a kiss to the top of his head and took a shaky breath in anyway, steadiness returning to his limbs after making sure Telemachus didn’t have some mystery stab wound left unattended.

“Right. Right, okay, let’s talk to Circe and then let’s go home. Your mother will be missing you too.” His father still sounded like he was struggling to get enough air in his lungs, his thumbs tracing circles on Telemachus’s shoulders to ground them both.

They were so tangled that standing took a fair bit of manoeuvring on both their parts, but eventually they were upright and moving. Their progress was considerably slowed by Odysseus’s insistence to press Telemachus against his side as they walked, tucking him under his chlamys like an owl shielding its young with its wings. He couldn’t find it in himself to complain when his father was so warm.

He guided them to Circe’s quarters, stopped before opening the door by his father going still.

“Do you want to wait outside while I talk to her?” he whispered, expression impossibly soft as he ran his hand through Telemachus’s curls. He leaned into the touch, trying to nuzzle his face against his father’s palm.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me behind. I am holding you to it literally.” His father huffed a laugh, drawing fond circles against his cheek with his thumb.

“Together then.” He leaned in conspiratorially, eyes crinkling as he smiled down at him. “For good, this time.”