Disclaimer: Yeah, I wrote the Odyssey. I just happen to have exceeded ancient Greece's life expectancy by a few years. Come on, people.
Penelope gazed at the feast that was taking place in her house. How she had loved this house when she had come here as a bride! Now living there was a blur of pain. All she could do was rage at Aphrodite, the devious goddess who had made a Trojan seduce a Greek man's wife, and had thereby started the great war that had swallowed so many virtuous men.
Odysseus, Penelope's husband and the king of Ithaka, the island on which they lived, had been one of those men. Since he had left, the house had had no master but their son Telemakhos. When Odysseus had failed to return with the survivors of the war, Penelope's troubles had begun.
She turned her eyes then from the men who were eating Odysseus's food and drinking his wine. It was too painful to watch their obnoxious behavior or to think about why they were here. She could have endured her uninvited guests if only Telemakhos had been there, but he had gone to seek information about his father Odysseus, leaving his old nurse to tell his mother about his departure.
Amid all the laughter and carousing, Penelope suddenly heard two of the men in the hall talking quite seriously. Feeling their eyes upon her, she stood back behind a column to listen.
"She'll have to marry one of us sometime. It's nearly twenty years Odysseus has been gone."
"She is far too faithful to remarry so easily. You see how she clings to the thought of his being alive still."
"What she thinks does not matter to us. Odysseus is dead, and she must choose between us or return to her father."
"But Telemakhos is on her side."
"And what does that signify? Have you forgotten our plan?"
Their words made Penelope shiver: not only because the thought of marrying one of the men sickened her, or because they spoke with conviction of Odysseus's being dead, but also because she knew of what plan they were speaking. She had heard of their plot to murder Telemakhos only the previous night. In a dream that she was sure the gods had sent, she had been told that Athena was with him, but still she feared for her son.
Sighing, she went upstairs to prepare for bed. She was grateful that at least she still had that one excuse to stop thinking about her suitors and their wicked conspiracies. But she stood for a moment, leaning against the wall outside her bedroom, and found herself thinking about Telemakhos. Her eyes began to sting, and finally she could hold her tears at bay no longer.
"Penelope."
Penelope didn't answer. She felt too empty to speak, and only Odysseus's voice could have filled her up again. But she stood up straight and looked at the man facing her. It was one of the suitors – Eurymakhos.
"Come, sweet Penelope," he said, smiling and extending his arms toward her. "You know you must choose one of us. What difference will it make to you if it is me you marry?"
Still she was silent. Pain and shock seared through her mind, paralyzing her. She couldn't think – she couldn't speak.
"I cannot marry," she finally managed to say, "until I have finished my weaving."
"Ah, sorrow has addled your memory, good woman," said Eurymakhos. "We caught you in that trick a long time ago." He stepped closer. She was frozen, powerless to resist him.
But as Eurymakhos made to embrace her, Penelope suddenly felt strength and life return to her body. Optimism filled her, like a warm fluid rising in her chest. She felt, somehow, that Odysseus was going to return. Words formed themselves in her mind.
"No, Eurymakhos!" she said. "Give me some more time to choose between you. You are all different men, and would all make different husbands. Odysseus would not have wanted me to be hasty."
"No, you are right," said Eurymakhos, putting his arms around her. "He would have wanted you to be happy."
Penelope pushed away from him. "So!" she said. "You come up here to lure me into your arms when all the others are downstairs making merry. You would win me by cheating, would you? You would mention Odysseus to get what you want from me. You would trespass on my privacy even more than you have already done, to give yourself an advantage over those men you compete with. Go back down and guzzle our food with your parasitic rivals, and leave me in peace for the night."
"This is not the end, Penelope," said Eurymakhos, turning to go back downstairs. "And if anyone else hears of this, you will not live to see your son return, let alone your husband."
Penelope dreamed vividly that night, but all she could remember the next morning was the image of an eagle, whose eyes, instead of the usual golden brown, were a piercing gray.
A/N: Yes, I know that this could never have happened. I know I am probably contradicting the Odyssey and the mythology behind it in a billion places. I know I probably even got the structure of Odysseus's house wrong, although I purposely had the Penelope-Eurymakhos stuff happen outside the bedroom so Eurymakhos wouldn't see the olive-tree bed. If you see any fatal errors, feel free to point them out to me NICELY. No, I did not spell Telemakhos, Eurymakhos, and Ithaka wrong. I happen to prefer the spelling that's closer to the way the names would have been written in Greek.
Anyway, now that I've finished sounding grouchy, the stuff I really wanted to say: I didn't really use the Penelope-Eurymakhos-ness for the sake of romance. I just wanted to demonstrate what kind of person Penelope was, because I really like her. And I apologize if my using Eurymakhos as the seducer doesn't work plot-wise. I just picked a random suitor who seemed audacious enough and used him. Oh, and I know the eagle was Zeus's sign, not Athena's, but please give me some poetic license. After all, Athena was Zeus's daughter. And I'm sure I remember Athena sending down an eagle somewhere. I'm just too lazy to look it up.
And ... please review.