Lytham St Annes CA

~ by Lorna Lee

Even the island weeps when you leave.

Misty droplets fall from above, cling to my muzzle, pool in my fur, rippling across the mass of briny water heaving itself to shore and oozing from the sand as I strain towards where you stand stiffly in your mother and father’s embrace, like a pebble seeking shelter between two weather beaten rocks. Anticlea’s eyes roam over your face, while Laërtes presses his lips to your forehead, shoulders shaking with sobs when you peel yourself from his arms.

A fierce gust spatters me with another volley of watery arrows. Beside me, your queen hugs the squirming baby in her arms closer. A sharp tug on the other end of my leash forces me back as you pluck up her free wrist and clasp it between your hands, words flowing so fast I only catch the familiar notes of their names, Penelope, Telemachus, and something else. You have said it before. Whenever you go away and do not want me to follow or fret because you will come back. Penelope shakes her head at the rest of your speech, strands of dark hair coming loose around her face, but you tighten your grip and stare into her eyes. A small nod and you press your lips together, tears streaming down both of your cheeks. You do not seem to hear the cough from the stranger standing by the shore as you plant what must be a very salty kiss on Telemachus’ head and smooth back his wispy curls. Then you are turning away.

I can no longer hold back my bark.

‘Ah, how could I forget about you?’ A ripple of laughter from the others as you squat down and pat my head. Another gust fills my nose with the scent of ox hide, those sharp, glimmering objects you packed this morning and another scent I cannot place: charred wool, sour olives and something syrupy that reminds me of honey but burns my nose.

I let out a small whimper.

‘Now, don’t be fretting, Argos!’ Your voice turns steely. ‘The gods will be keeping an eye on me.’

I do not know who these gods are but who could look after you better than me?

The strange scent gets stronger. Over your shoulder, I glimpse a female figure peering down at me with unblinking, bird-like eyes. The twisted face on her shield snarls as she jerks her head from side to side.

A shiver runs over my fur. You feel it and chuckle softly.

Another cough, louder this time. ‘Lord Odysseus…’

You whip your head in the direction of the stranger, who swallows the rest of his interruption as your fingers find the backs of my ears and a warm feeling spreads through me. Then it is gone and you are walking towards the timber clad creature rocking on the waves.

Telemachus starts to cry, stretching out his baby fists and grasping for empty air. I reach up and lick one of the tiny feet dangling from his mother’s hip and am rewarded with a watery smile, his sadness sliding away like the tide pulling you further and further from me.

***

Shells and pebbles blur past as my paws pound against sun baked sand, salty air filling my nose when I launch myself across the shallow pool of seawater.

‘ARGOS! WAIIIIIIT!’

The command sounds more like the bleat of a baby goat than the deep thrum of the huntsmen I have spent my days with since you went away, flying between trees and returning with furry beasts still trembling between my teeth. But I obey, thudding down on the other side and spinning to face the two children chasing each-other across the sand. Telemachus is a tangle of gangly limbs as he puffs after a little girl trailing a tattered old shawl, arms flung wide like a sparrow that spreads its wings to coast on the breeze.

‘Melantho, watch me!’ Telemachus looses a shrill whistle and I hurl myself back down the beach in a spray of sand. Melantho squeals when she realises where I am heading, but he plants himself like a statue. We have played this game before. At the last moment I swing to the side, curving my body around his and passing so close the fibres of his garments brush my fur. A pair of delighted cheers erupt behind me as I spin on the spot, chest heaving, to soak in their praise, disappointment prickling when I take in the unmoving outlines smeared on the horizon.

We visit our beach whenever we can. Telemachus comes for me when the shadows still sprawl across the hallways and the only sounds are first rustles of the servants starting their day, usually towing Melantho if she can get out of morning chores, and I spend the day racing across the sand or watching them splash around in the shallows.

But there is something wrong today. When we arrive, he plants himself on the sand and refuses to join in, or even speak, no matter how much we nudge him. Yet when he finally calls ‘Argos, come!’ I find myself circling back to his spot on the sand, his deep voice now so like yours I am unable to resist the pull.

Melantho’s light footfalls are not far behind me. ‘Why did you call him back?’ She skids to a stop on a patch of pebbles, puffing and clutching her side ‘I almost caught him up!’

She wishes.

Telemachus shrugs, fidgeting with a shell in the sand. A warm breeze plays with his curls, dripping with some oily substance that smells like spices and wet wood but also has a bitter, medicinal tang. ‘I want you to sit with me.’

‘Is that an order?’

His eyes flash like she has struck him. ‘You know it is not!’ He turns the shell over and over in his hands, sunlight glittering on the surface. ‘I just never get to see you since they gave you extra duties.’

With a small sigh, Melantho sits, reaching out to stroke me while I paw at a half buried sea snail, one of those creatures she and the other servants crush up to dye wool. ‘He’s tired!’ My eyes grow heavy as she smooths the fur between my eyes. ‘Is that a grey hair on his snout?’

‘He’s getting on’ Telemachus watches us, his eyes following each sweep of Melantho’s hand over my fur. ‘He’s been around since my f… since I was a baby.’

‘You were going to say since he left.’

Telemachus does not answer her, slipping the shell into the folds of his tunic and picking up a piece of waterlogged wood that has been peeling in the sun. Melantho opens her mouth and closes it again a few times before any words come out, ‘Telemachus, what do you think…’

‘He is coming back!’ He says through gritted teeth. ‘He is! Their war is over. He is just delayed or something. Anyway I don’t want to talk about it.’ Telemachus waves the hunk of rotting wood in front of my face. ‘What do you reckon, boy? Still got it in you?’ He throws it so far it is still sailing through the air when I take off across the beach. By the time I return the children are chattering like a couple of fledglings and Melantho is holding the shell. I give Telemachus a nudge and without looking away from her he throws it again, but it does not go so far this time, splashing down onto a soggy patch of sand and quickly gobbled up by the tide. I attempt to wade out, but the rush of chilly water around my paws soon has me springing back to the safety of dry sand and the oddly silent children further up the beach. I snap my head up. They are exactly where I left them. But both are now staring out to sea, mouths open, and when I follow their gaze all thoughts of my freezing paws and grumbling stomach tumble away. One of the outlines is sailing closer.

It is just one timber creature at first, two, three, the men they disgorge staying for several days before leaving, like most of our visitors. But soon they are returning in swarms. Penelope barricades herself in the room that smells like wool and those fishy snails I sometimes nose out of the sand, steering a small wooden boat between a sea of rippling threads, while they laze about on the hides of your oxen, mouths full of your food and abuse for your son. I try to send them flapping and squeaking away like winged rodents that emerge from dark caves at night, but I cannot do much with only one set of teeth. Telemachus bears it all head hung like a poppy braced against a gale and on the rare days Anticlea shows her face I spy a youth with wings flapping on his ankles hovering close beside her and my nose burns with that sickly scent again. I bare my teeth at the stranger, but he just catches my eye and presses a finger to his lips with a wink. As for the other hounds, you would not think they remember you at all, wagging up to our besiegers nosing for scraps of meat, or the crumbs of cheese and bread that shower the floor as their raucous laughter bounces off the walls. They say that you are hidden somewhere in the endless swells, or have been gobbled by one of those slippery sea creatures and their gasping mouths. I know you will return to us. But how much longer? I am getting old and you will need the heart growling in my chest to break this siege. The rest of us just have to survive until you do.

The smiling youth takes your mother while we sleep and your father stops visiting when she is gone, his absence only making our guests more confident. I watch them tear apart olives and figs with noisy slurps from where I lay stretched out on the hard stone beneath your chair, waiting for an opportunity. The maids have forgotten to feed me again, but I can usually scavenge a decent enough meal from what they drop.

The scent of roasting meat hangs in a dizzying fog around the room. My eyes grow heavy, lulled by the warmth of the fire and scrape of jugs as maids circle pouring cup after cup of the sickly sweet liquid sloshing within. Telemachus is holding out. He sits as far on the edge of one of the benches as he can without falling onto the flagstones, frowning down the table at the one they call Eurymachus, who has one of the serving girls penned so tight in his embrace she can barely free her arms to pour. Her eyes flicker to mine and with a stab I recognise them as the same pair that watched me between her fingers as I hurtled towards her friend on the beach.

Her captor’s eyes track her gaze and suddenly he is looking right at me.

Go ahead. I glower back. Have a go. But he only smirks and, wiping fig juice off his chin, twists around to holler to one of the others while I investigate a platter of something sweet that has just been carried in.

There is barely time to hear the missile whooshing towards me.

I dodge it. Just. Curving my body around the plate as easily as Telemachus.

That is when the jug Eurymachus has snatched from Melantho connects with my side.

They are still roaring with laughter and slapping Eurymachus on the back when I tremble onto four legs and, foul liquid dripping off my coat, limp to a stop in front of him, stare into his eyes and shake myself so hard my legs lift off the floor, spraying his garment with blood dark droplets.

I am bounding across the courtyard before the first notes of his bellow echo across the hall.

The sun is sinking beneath the sea when I finally curl up on one of the rocky arms that hug the harbour and tuck my muzzle between my paws, eyes fixed on the horizon. A strong breeze tickles the grass growing between the crags, drying off my coat and filling my nose with the scent of wool and sand snails. Not long after I hear light footfalls. Someone used to walking on the uneven earth.

My muscles relax as the queen of Ithaca sinks to the ground beside me, rips away the dark veil fluttering around her face and gazes at the ocean in silence. Below us the waves slap against the rocks and distant thunder growls in my ears.

‘Would you please stop that!’

I swallow the whine that had been building in my throat. But moments later I feel her fingers sink into my fur and, when I risk a peek, salty tears are streaming down her cheeks, her breaths coming in ragged sobs. Gingerly, I rest my head on her knee and listen to her hammering pulse turn to a gentle thrum as the air cools and tendrils of inky darkness begin to creep across the sky.

I do not go back. I take to nosing around the rows of rickety homes in town, joining the others who beg outside doors or hauling my stiff bones after hares on the pine covered slopes that border the palace. I am on my way back from one of these trips, washing down the gristly meat at a freshwater spring just outside town, when I catch a familiar scent of rotten olives, burnt wool and that syrupy scent I still cannot place drifting under the thyme and woodsmoke.

I spring into a run, skidding to a stop outside the palace gates in time to see a young man emerge into the dappled moonlight, face set, sinewy muscles straining under the weight of leather bags bulging with barley and, I wrinkle my nose, wine. He is flanked by two of my pups, along with the source of the smell. A human stranger? No, not human. My nose burns when they pass the spot where I crouch, taking the path down to the harbour.

I bark and Telemachus spins around, bewilderment turning to a tentative smile.

‘Argos?‘

I whine softly.

‘You’ve had enough of this too, huh?’

He lets me lick his fingers and ruffles my ears. ‘It won’t be much longer!’ I nuzzle into his face, fascinated by the way the unfamiliar covering of prickles catch my fur. ‘I will bring my father home.’

The warmth trickling through my body runs cold. He cannot leave me too! I pant and wheeze in his wake, but we are long past the days when I could outrun him. An owl is hooting somewhere up in the canopy when I finally pause on a finger of rock that juts out over the glistening waves and watch as their ship slips away, cleaving the waves so fast the swiftest bird could not overtake it.

***

The days take to moving in leaps.

I spy Telemachus bouncing back up the path in the hazy dawn light barely holding back a grin. But his gaze travels over me, nose wrinkling when he passes the warm pile of dung I finally collapsed onto after dragging myself back up the path. A glimmer in the fringes of my vision tells me that the sweet smelling youth is back too, leaning against his staff a few paces away.

When I open my eyes again it is to the crazed buzzing of a fly circling my ear. I have long lost the strength to snap at them or scratch at the other tiny beasts that roam over my fur. It takes everything to fight against the darkness lapping at my vision as I gaze out at the empty road. Waiting. It is all I have left.

A crunch of gravel rises above the clatter of plates and plucks of a lyre drifting out of the double doors. The boy shifts and the wings on his ankles flap restlessly as a bitter wind gusts up the path, carrying the scent of fresh acorns and pigs, that old farmer I see carting his pigs up to the palace every other sunrise, and another scent that twists free before I can pin it down.

The trees suck in a breath as the stranger murmurs something to the swineherd and I am suddenly straining to lift my head until I am staring into the eyes of a withered old man. His garments are tatty and his skin is covered in a layer of wrinkles and grime. Wisps of white wave on top of his head and his strange scent still dances out of reach. But somewhere beneath I hear your voice, see your eyes and the tear you brush away when you see me. I sense the baying of a dog’s heart beneath your ribs, and, as a heavy hand strokes my fur and darkness drenches my eyes, I know some of me will live. So I follow the high noted whistle ringing in my ears and chase after the smiling youth with wings fluttering on his ankles through fields of star-shaped flowers towards an endless beach.

©LornaLee