One Spring Day Beside the Sea

It was a warm afternoon, and pleasant. A grove of trees stood, lifting up their branches, pale green with new spring growth. The groves' nymphs, unseen by mortal eyes, sighed softly in the pleasant light beside their bubbling waterfall and in the branches of the trees. They had guarded this place for untold years, and smiled as the old man stopped by the spring and made a prayer and offering. His clothing was well made and his cloak was woven with a fine border, but showed wear and a lack of care, like his graying red hair, too long uncombed. He leaned against his staff, as if standing had become wearisome. The nymphs had seen him many times, ever since he had been a small child, and his current condition of body and soul troubled them.

One spoke to the other in a breath of wind. "It won't be long now." The breath was tinged with a touch of regret.

Her sister nodded. "I wonder how she will react?" Her voice was whispers in the waterfall.

"The birds have sung to her often lately," breathed the wind. "She has hovered nearby all winter. But she never stops to visit us."

"No," the waters whispered sadly. "But his son and grandson have visited us many times. Perhaps this is just the way it should be. Time goes on, and waters flow into the sea."

"You are right," the breeze answered. "Still, I will miss him."

Unaware of the conversation around him, the old man finished his prayer, and shifting his staff carefully, moved slowly beyond the grove to a spit of shoreline he had once landed at years earlier.

Laying aside his walking staff, he sat down on a rock and stared out over the water. Light played on the waves near to shore, and the white foam danced around the rocks jutting out. A little to his left there was a stretch of white sand. Once a crew of strangers had returned him home, landing him there, leaving him and his treasures there to whatever Fate had in store. No one then had expected his return. Time since then had driven him back to the same spit of land when his heart felt troubled or the ghosts of his past haunted him, as if demanding that he search once again to see if he had left anything else behind. This day he felt both, and the need to be here, watching the sea was an urge he could not resist.

A ship was rowing into harbor. He recognized it as the one his son had sailed out with earlier in the month. He doubted they would even notice him as they pulled through the water, anxious to make port; he was too small, and the beach too insignificant. Watching the oars dip in rhythm, his mind wandered back to days when he too pulled the oar. Staring down at his hands, rough from a life's use and gnarled by time, he remembered the feel of the wood beneath his hands, and the pull on his muscles. It had been a long time since he was last at sea. Too long maybe. Time had taken that, like so many other things from him.

He had been luckier than most, had tasted more of what the world had to offer and had delved deeper into the mysteries of gods and men than most. Singers had begun to weave tales of his exploits. He ought to feel gratitude, but at this moment, as he pulled his cloak closer against the breeze, all he felt was tired and empty.

"Ah Fate," he murmured. "Is this what you had in mind for Odysseus when it was prophesied that death would come to me mildly from the sea, soft as a woman's hand? Maybe Achilles had the right idea. Maybe it's better to die young."

He thought then about Achilles in his prime, and the war and what followed. His thoughts drifted on to Circe, the fiery sorceress who had started out as an enemy, but became a passionate lover and a friend. And then he remembered Calypso. She had promised him youth and eternity, but no matter how much he tried, the world he longed for, the home that mattered was here, in the world of men, with all its death and loss and mere mortal human joys.

For a long time, he had thought it had been worth it, returning to the life he had left behind. That life had been sweet until the last few years, when first his father passed on, and one by one, his friends and contemporaries began their final journey. Then this last winter, when he had awoken to find Penelope had left him in the night, her cold body resting next to his. Suddenly, the joy of life in the world seemed outweighed by its loss, and he sometimes regretted his decision.

His son was busy with his own life; it brought to mind the wistfulness he sometimes found in his own father's eyes. He didn't understand it then, why Laertes, bereft of wife and most of his own age mates, preferred the countryside to the town, rather than to stand in his son's shadow, dealing with the reality of how time had passed him by and moved on to the next generation. Experience, Odysseus had learned, sometimes teaches her lessons too late.

He leaned back on the rock, letting the sunlight try to chase away the cold that wrapped around him. For a moment, he watched a seabird circle overhead in the endless blue sky, but after a moment, even that was too hard, and he closed them.

The sun was low in the sky when suddenly he was awoken by a staff tapping against his shoulder.

"Are you going to sleep forever, Odysseus son of Laertes?" said a voice, a woman's voice, soft, but filled with amusement.

Recognition dawned on him as he regained consciousness. "I know that voice," he said, mostly to himself. "I know that voice, but it's been a long, long time since I heard it last."

"I was never far away, my clever man," she said. " I have watched over you and yours ever since I brought you back to Ithaca. But I had to wait until the time was right. Now open your eyes, and sit up. It's time for your next adventure."

He blinked open his eyes, and saw gray eyes looking down into his. She was more beautiful than he remembered. The corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile. "Lady?"

"It is time, Odysseus." She held out a hand to him. "Come with me."

He lifted up his hand to take her offered one. The hand he lifted up was strong and young, ungnarled and pain-free. He slowly stood up, feeling all the pain and fatigue and sorrow he had carried all winter fall away from him as he stood.

"My goddess," he whispered, "Athena of the gray eyes."

She brought his hand to her cheek. "My Odysseus. Fate has finished with you and has given me this one moment. But we don't have long to dawdle. Hermes is fast behind me. Will you come?"

He looked behind him, saw the pale, worn out shell he had been in, and the servant who cared for him walking down the path. For a brief moment, he thought of his son and his grandchildren and felt the touch of his wife upon his shoulder.

Turning back, he looked into those calm gray eyes, expectant, waiting, and he could see all eternity in them. "Have I ever been able to refuse my goddess anything?"

She took his hand, still clasped in hers, and kissed it. With a flash of light, they were gone.

The nymphs in the grove sighed in the wind, and the spring mourned. Soon they were joined by the wail of the servant, but the ghost of Penelope, content at his choice, sank happily back into the ground.

A/N: Hermes was the traditional guide for dead souls to the afterlife. Circe was a sorceress and minor goddess who, finding out that she could not trick Odysseus by her magic, became instead his lover, and gave him directions on how to return home. He only left because his men were becoming restless. Later, all those men, disobeying the guidance they received, all died, and Odysseus would spend seven years with Calypso who loved him and wanted to make him an immortal. It was only Athena's prompting that freed him to return home at last.

Achilles was one of the heroes of the Trojan war. It had been foretold that he could either live a long life at home, or go to war and die a hero's death, young. He chose the hero's death.