Leo knew it would be rude to ask.
The only problem was that it was eating him inside for a long time now. Every time his gaze grazed upon Calypso's stomach, the question – pictured as humanoid, in his brain – would poke his thoughts until he could find something to fiddle with.
But her probable anger wasn't the only reason why he hadn't asked yet. He was afraid of the answer, to be completely honest. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know.
Seeing her enjoying her quesadilla, though, near the fire he had conjured, gave him a surge of courage to blurt out, "Can I ask you something?"
The cave they were in was small, but he would have been sitting close to her even if it weren't. Trying to get out of the Sea of Monsters was wearing on them, but her eyes still shone when she looked at him. She must have noticed his nerves, because her expression turned from calm to worried.
"Of course," Calypso answered, putting down her plate.
Leo fought the urge to grab something to occupy his hands with. "It's, uh, sort of an indelicate question."
She didn't say anything, just kept looking at him.
With a deep breath, he started, "I don't know if you know this, but this Homer guy wrote a bunch of poems back in the day… about Odysseus."
He heard her breath catch, slightly, but decided to keep going. "He talked about the Trojan War and his journey back home and everything he had to face. It's actually pretty boring to read. I was supposed to have read it at Camp Half-Blood, but I was busy building the Argo II and I didn't really want to –"
"Leo."
"Right." He couldn't meet her questioning eyes. "It's just that… it talks about you."
He risked a glance at her just in time to see her look away and into the fire. Her face was unreadable, even from so close.
"Not many good things, I assume?" Calypso asked.
With a grimace, Leo looked down again. "I haven't read it. Like I said – boring. But it describes you as this… this bitter sorceress who trapped Odysseus for seven years, trying to make him your – her – immortal husband."
When she remained quiet, Leo thought, This is it. I've ruined everything. And now she's gonna turn me into a pig or something. He knew she had lost her magic, at least for now, but she could still cut him into tiny pieces with any knife she got her hands on.
"So it was seven years?" Calypso asked, at last.
"I, um," Leo stammered, "it says so. But, like – I don't know how much of it is true. I just… thought I'd ask."
She pursed her lips, still staring at the flames. "Time is difficult on Ogygia. I wouldn't know how long he spent there. It…" She shook her head. "It was so long ago. He was the first man to show up on my beach and I was… desperate."
It was hard for Leo to wait patiently for the answer, but he did his best. If he started forcing information out of her, it would only make her uncomfortable, and that was the last thing he wanted. So he waited.
"I knew the gods had cursed me," she continued. "I guess I was in denial, I think? I enjoyed my island, but I felt trapped. I was used to being free, and it took me… Gods, Leo, it took me so long to adapt. When Odysseus came, I hadn't yet. I was still cursing the skies. I thought I'd show the gods that their plan wouldn't work, that I could make him stay."
She looked down at her own hands. "I-I would sing and weave and walk around the place, trying to keep him enchanted, but… he really loved his wife." She shrugged. "Eventually, he grew tired of it. Then Athena told Zeus to tell Hermes to tell me that I had to let him go. I was furious."
Calypso glanced at him, as if trying to gauge his reaction. "I don't want you to think badly of me. I'll admit I was bitter at the time. I didn't know how to deal with the situation."
"Hey," Leo tried for a smile, "if I'd just been sentenced to eternity on an isolated island, I'd be bitter too."
She didn't smile. "But I did give him food and wine, and something to build a raft of." She squinted into the distance, as if trying to see the past. "He'd told me Poseidon was mad at him for blinding Polyphemus, but I still let him go by sea."
"Yeah, about that." Leo scratched his neck. "Poseidon did wreck his raft, I guess, but some nymph helped him. He made it home."
That seemed to take a huge weight off Calypso's shoulders. "The gods refused to tell me what happened to him. They claimed I was being unsubordinated and didn't visit for hundreds of years."
All in all, it wasn't as bad as Leo had feared. So maybe she had trapped the guy for almost a decade, but she'd been alone and desperate. Leo didn't know if he wouldn't have done the same in her position. However, there was still a myth he remembered from a camper commenting.
Before he could gather up the courage to ask, Calypso noticed. "There's something else."
Leo exhaled, pushing down his nerves and trying not to catch fire. "Yeah, uh, some myths say you guys had, like, children."
He knew there was nothing he could do about it. Still, the thought of Calypso loving someone else was enough to make his heart burn (maybe literally, he wouldn't know for sure), let alone having kids with said man.
Calypso closed off her expression, and Leo prepared himself for a blow that never came. Instead, she deflated and curled a hand against her lower stomach, her eyes becoming unfocused. She looked so sad, Leo was about to say she didn't need to answer, when she spoke, "We would have had."
He didn't expect it to hurt so much to hear her say so. "Oh."
Calypso turned to him. "You know chronological time stops on Ogygia. You don't get any older. So that means –"
"A baby can't develop, yeah, I get it," he finished it for her, avoiding her eyes.
"I was pregnant, though," she spoke softly. "And I was – I was so happy."
The pain in her voice was what made Leo look up again. She still held a hand to her stomach, cradling it, and tears pooled her eyes. Leo almost asked her to stop it, because he never wanted to see her cry or be so upset. His curiosity was louder, though, and he kept quiet.
"I think it was one of the things that made him snap back to reality," Calypso confessed, "the fact that I could never give him children, and he was mad at me. But it wasn't my fault. I wanted it so much. But I would have to get out of the island, and the gods would never allow it. And when he left, I didn't know what to do."
On instinct, Leo took her free hand in his. "Um, I guess it's a bit of a jerk move for him to be mad at you for it. But does that mean…" He cleared his throat. "I mean, are you still…?"
"No," she said, firmly. "I worked some magic."
"Oh."
Putting aside his own feelings about the whole thing – which he hadn't even have time to process yet –, he felt sad for her. He imagined what that must have been like; being imprisoned, then meeting someone, then trying to keep the person you like with you there, then getting pregnant and wanting the child but not being able to develop it, then seeing the other person leave, and then seeing no alternative than to… end the pregnancy.
She still looked devastated next to him, so he bumped her shoulder with his. "Hey, but now you're out here. You can have children if you want." His mouth felt extremely dry as he said that. "Just, uh, I guess people usually have them later in life, nowadays."
Calypso frowned. "At twenty?"
"More like thirty."
"Thirty?!" she exclaimed. "But that's –"
"Look, Sunshine, people now live 'til they're seventy. I guess we just wanna enjoy our youth. Besides, it's hard to have a house and a job and everything at fourteen. It's not like the old days." He could see she still found it worrying, so he sighed. "Cal, you're what – fifteen in normal years? If you were human, you'd still have, like, thirty years until the factory closed, okay? No need to panic."
She narrowed her eyes. "The factory?"
With a wave, Leo said, "Until you couldn't have children anymore, I mean."
Now that he knew the truth, Leo wanted the conversation to end as soon as possible. It made him uncomfortable enough; he didn't want to think about the implications of her once being pregnant. He didn't want to think about the Odyssey at all, in fact.
"I have to wait until I'm thirty, though?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Wha – no! It's not a rule or anything."
"But at fifteen –"
"You could, if you wanted to, it's just – it's just hard to raise a kid at fifteen nowadays. You can't work, not for much anyway. You can't buy a house. You can't even drive – the thing with the cars that I told you about."
"Hm…" She seemed to be pondering it over, and Leo let himself relax a bit. It didn't last long, though. "Leo?"
"Yeah?"
"Would you not get yourself killed in the next fifteen years or so?"
They had to leave the island they were at shortly after that. Leo's hair went ablaze and he lost control of the bonfire, alerting monsters to their presence. Festus helped wipe them out pretty quickly, and Calypso didn't seem to think she'd said anything out of the ordinary, but it took Leo's heart two hours on top of the dragon, flying away, to calm down.