Odysseus in the Serpent Maze (11 page)

Even stranger.

He touched the shaft tentatively. It was solid. He tried to pull it up, but it remained as firmly rooted as an oak. When he leaned against it, to his surprise it moved stiffly from one end of the slit to the other.

Strangest of all!

The shaft locked into place with a loud
click
. After that, no amount of pushing or pulling on his part could shift it again.

He grunted in disgust and had just turned his back on the useless thing when a great tremor ran through the ship.

Helen screamed.

“What’s happening?” cried Mentor.

“What did you do, Odysseus?” Penelope called.

“Nothing,” he said, a small line beginning between his eyes. “Except …” He was just thinking that he’d better tell them about the lack of steering oar and the strange shaft and the stiff movement, when his voice was suddenly drowned by a noise that shook the deck beneath their feet.

Helen and Penelope clapped their hands to their ears. Mentor tried to shout over the noise.

But Odysseus stood still, head to one side, puzzling out the sound. He’d heard a noise like that once before, when his father had ordered an inventory of his armoury. Spears, swords, shields, breastplates had been stacked into heaps. The clang of metal on metal had resounded throughout the palace for three days.

It’s almost as if we’re standing on top of the god Hephaestus’ workshop
, Odysseus thought.

As suddenly as it had begun, the clanging and crashing ceased. There was a moment of stillness so intense, the four of them didn’t dare to breathe.

And then, without warning, the ship lurched into motion as the great oars began to cleave the water with powerful strokes.

The four scrambled to the right side of the ship.

“Starboard,” Penelope whispered, looking down as the oars moved in perfect unison.

Slowly the vessel turned, swinging about in a great half circle. Then it set off across the endless expanse of sea.

“What could have started the ship?” Helen asked, still staring at the perfect precision of the oars.

Odysseus sighed so loudly, they all turned to him. “I pulled a rod in the back of the boat.”

“The stern,” Penelope said.

He ignored her. “It went from one side to the other and then something gave a loud click. That’s when the ship began to move. Perhaps the rod was some sort of signal.”

“A signal to whom?” Mentor asked uneasily.

“About what?” asked Penelope.

“And why?” Helen’s voice was unusually quiet.

They could feel the gentle vibrations beneath their feet. At the same time there was a regular, metallic beat below the deck, like a smith hammering a blade into shape.

“Someone has to be down there working the oars,” said Mentor.

“Or some
thing
,” Helen said. She shivered.

“Slaves?” asked Penelope.

Odysseus shrugged. “Why aren’t there any voices? How are they fed? Who brings them water? Who guards them?” Odysseus ran out of questions.

“Maybe it’s not slaves,” said Helen. “Maybe it’s monsters.” She shivered. “Or ghosts.”

“
Whatever
it is—we need to find out,” Odysseus said.

“Why?” Helen asked again.

“Because we need to know who’s rowing. And where we’re going,” Penelope told her.

“We searched the ship,” Mentor pointed out. “The only thing we found was the signal rod.”

“We searched the
sides
of the ship,” Penelope pointed out. “We didn’t search the floor.”

“Deck,” said Odysseus, but he nodded. Without waiting for the others, he dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling along the deck, checking out every crack and line in the boards.

Penelope joined him and, a bit more reluctantly, so did Mentor. Helen turned away from them to stare again out to sea.

It took a long time for them to crawl the entire deck, but at last Mentor cried out, “Here!”

He straddled a barely visible square near the ship’s bow.

The others ran over to see what he had found.

“Is it a hatch?” Mentor asked.

“What’s a hatch?” asked Penelope.

“A door into the ship’s hold,” Odysseus said.

“What’s a hold?” she asked.

“There’s no handle,” Helen pointed out. “How can you open it without a handle?”

Odysseus drew his dagger and knelt down. “With this.” He forced the point into the right side of the thin crack.

“Don’t!” Helen cried, putting her hands on his shoulders. “You don’t know what’s down there. You might be freeing the souls of dead sailors. You might set a monster loose. You might—”

“Isn’t it better to know than to sit here and tremble?” asked Odysseus, shrugging off her hands.

“Trembling is better than dying,” Helen whispered, clasping her hands to her breast.

Odysseus didn’t answer her. Instead he began to prise up the hatch, just enough so that Mentor could catch the edge. Then together the boys hauled the heavy door open, grunting as they worked.

The metallic noise grew louder, and an oily smell wafted up from below.

Odysseus stuck his head down through the opening.

“Is it a hold?” Penelope called. When he didn’t answer, she added, “What do you see?”

There were small points of illumination coming from the oar holes. That light was enough to see that the hold was full of wheels.

Metal wheels with notches.

Notches fitting into other notches.

Long bronze rods moving between the wheels.

Odysseus sat up. “It’s as though the metal itself is alive.”

“Or some invisible monster is at work,” cried Helen.

“Or spirits of the air moving the wheels,” Mentor added.

Penelope folded her arms and bit her upper lip. “Perhaps it’s some intricate toy built by Daedalus himself.” She looked cautious. “We’d better not tinker with it.”

Reluctantly Odysseus agreed. “Whatever it is—monster-run or spirit-driven or master toy, if we go down there and stop it, we might not get it started again. And then we could be becalmed here forever.” With Mentor’s help, he set the hatch cover back down.

“So now what?” Mentor asked.

“We eat,” said Odysseus.

“We drink,” said Helen.

“We wait,” Penelope added. “But not, I hope, too long.”

A
LL THAT DAY THE
boat continued moving, and the four took turns watching the water, hoping for ships, for gulls, for land, for anything to break the monotony of sea and sky.

Odysseus took the longest watches. The food and water had filled him with energy, and there was nowhere else to expend it. Awake, he gave a lot of thought to the mystery ship. Wherever it was taking them, he’d no doubt the destination would be just as strange and intriguing as the vessel itself.

Leaning against the prow, scanning the sea, Odysseus was riveted on the horizon when Penelope came to stand beside him.

“My turn,” she said, touching him lightly on the arm.

“I’d rather watch here than look after your cousin.”

She smiled wryly. “Mentor is doing that ably. He’s telling her all about Ithaca, and she’s just bored enough to listen.”

Odysseus gave a short bark of a laugh. “How do you put up with her? I’d have thrown her over the side of the ship by now if you weren’t here.”

“And how brave would that make you then?”

Odysseus sighed. “I’m not trying to start an argument.”

“Neither am I,” Penelope said. Her face softened. “But I’m trying to make a point.
You
were raised a warrior. Adventure has been bred into you. Helen was raised to be beautiful and pampered and spoiled. It’s not her fault that she can’t face danger with a hero’s heart.”

“But you,” Odysseus said carefully, rubbing a hand through his thick red hair, “you’re not like that. And as a princess of Sparta yourself, surely you were raised the same way.”

“My looks never invited such a spoiling.”

“You’re handsome enough,” Odysseus said. Then he looked away, embarrassed about delivering a compliment.

“Thank you,” she whispered to his back, not caring if he heard. “But no one is in Helen’s class.”

Odysseus turned to face her again. “So who pampered and spoiled her then?”

“Everyone,” said Penelope. “Her father most of all. If she’s desired by every king and noble in Achaea, she becomes worth more to him than gold or jewels. He can use her beauty and desirability to make any king his ally.”

Odysseus turned back to gaze at the endless length of the dark sea. Suddenly he leaned forward, squinting his eyes. “Look!” he cried.

Penelope turned around and stared. “What am I supposed to see?”

“Land!” Odysseus shouted. Then to be sure that Mentor and Helen had heard as well, he cried out again. “There’s land ahead!”

They raced over to see.

“What land is it?” Mentor asked.

“Egypt?” hazarded Penelope.

“Too mountainous for Egypt,” Mentor said.

“We’ve been sailing west, not south,” said Odysseus. “My guess is it’s the Long Island.” There was an eager gleam in his eye.

“I hope not,” Mentor said. He stared straight ahead.

“Why do you say that?” Helen asked. Now she too leaned over the ship’s side and stared ahead.

“Well, because … because it’s a long way from home.”

“But at least it’s land,” Helen said. Then she turned and went back to the shelter of the canopy, where she began running her fingers through her hair like a comb.

As soon as Helen was too far away to hear, Penelope rounded on the boys. “What is
really
wrong with this Long Island?”

“The Long Island is what we Ithacans call Crete,” Odysseus said.

“King Minos’ island? Where the monster was in the maze?” Penelope nodded. “That makes a kind of sense. Daedalus made a ship that takes us straight to Crete, where once upon a long time ago he made a maze to hold a monster. But …” She thought a minute. “You said the monster in the maze is dead.”

The boys looked quickly at each other.

“It
is
dead—isn’t it?” Penelope asked.

“Very dead,” said Mentor. “But …”

“But what?” Penelope asked, hands on her hips.

“Sailors’ tales,” Odysseus said. “That’s all. Men who are too long at sea like to make up stories.”

Penelope was not to be fobbed off with that answer. She’d already noticed that when Odysseus told a lie, a vertical line grew between his eyes. The line was there now. “
What
stories?”

“Other … kinds of monsters,” Mentor said at last. “But none that are to be believed.”

She was unable to tell whether they were speaking the truth or cushioning her from fear, so she looked instead at the land that was coming nearer with every stroke of the oars.

It was clearly a very, very long island, and as the ship drew closer, a great cliff face reared before them. The four now stood shoulder to shoulder, watching.

“The oars don’t seem to be slowing down,” Mentor noted with a worried expression.

“We’ll all be dashed to pieces on the rocks,” Helen cried.

“I don’t understand,” Penelope said thoughtfully. “Is the ship trying to destroy itself?”

“Us,” Helen screamed. “It’s trying to destroy
us
!”

Grabbing her cousin’s shoulders, Penelope said very clearly, “Listen, Helen—if the ship had wanted to kill us, it need never have picked us up in the first place.”

Helen’s beautiful blue eyes widened. “But it didn’t pick us up. We found it!” The eyes began to pool.

Penelope’s face scrunched up, and she stared down at her feet.

“Maybe we should jump off and swim to shore,” Mentor said.

Odysseus had been silent through this frantic conversation, trying to gauge wind and water, trying to make sense of the oars’ tireless drive through the sea. At last he turned to the others.

“There’s one thing we
can
do,” he said. He went back to the canopy and returned with the satyr’s club. “Help me open the hatch again, Mentor. I’ll go down there and smash the ship’s innards. That should kill it.”

“No!” Penelope cried, grabbing his arm. “Who knows what could happen to you down there.”

“Nothing worse than what will happen to all of us up here if the ship rams those cliffs,” he said.

Shrugging off her grip, Odysseus once again pried open the hatch with his knife. Mentor helped him lift the door, which seemed even heavier this time. They gazed down into the ship’s fearsome belly, where rods and wheels pounded and creaked relentlessly.

Then they both sat back on their heels.

Odysseus spoke first. “If this doesn’t work, make sure you all jump
before
the ship hits the cliffs. Grab some wreckage to keep you afloat till you find a safe stretch of shore.”

Mentor glanced quickly at Helen, who was staring mutely at the fast-approaching rock face. “Let
me
go down into the hold,” he said. “You’re a prince. She’s not interested in me.”

Odysseus smiled. “I’d rather die down there than have to swim your princess to shore. She’s all yours.”

He took hold of the edge of the hatch and was just preparing to lower himself down when Penelope cried out. “Wait! There’s a gap in the rock!”

Odysseus leaped up, and he and Mentor ran to where Penelope stood, pointing. Helen came too.

“There! There!”

A dark sliver, a narrow canyon, was barely visible in the grey rock wall.

Mentor squinted and shook his head. “It’s too narrow. The ship will never make it through.”

“The ship seems to think it can,” Penelope said.

Instinctively, they all retreated to the stern, linking arms.

Just then there was a loud clanking, and the oars suddenly tipped upward till they were pointing towards the sky. Catapulted by a large wave, the ship sped forward through the gap, and into a darkness blacker than any night.

Helen screamed.

And then the others—even Odysseus—screamed with her.

“I
KNEW THIS WAS
a death ship,” Helen moaned. “Knew it the minute I saw it. Surely we’ve found the Underworld, and this is the River Styx.” In the pitch black her voice seemed much too loud.