Odysseus

This retelling of the ancient Greek myth follows Odysseus, King of Ithaca, on his perilous voyage home after the 10-year Trojan War. His queen, Penelope, watches the ocean from their palace, reassuring their young son, Telemachus, that his father will return. Telemachus cannot remember Odysseus's face, having been a baby when his father left. Meanwhile, a storm has driven Odysseus's fleet of 12 ships into unknown waters.

The fleet reaches a coastline where men sent ashore to forage fail to return. Odysseus investigates and finds them gorging on lotus fruit alongside locals called the Lotus Eaters. The fruit erases memory, and the soldiers have forgotten their homes. Odysseus refuses to eat any, has his men seize their enchanted comrades, and keeps them restrained until the madness fades.

Short of food, Odysseus takes 12 men into a massive cave, carrying wine as a gift and expecting hospitality. The owner is Polyphemus, a Cyclops, a one-eyed giant and son of the sea god Poseidon. Polyphemus seals the cave with an immovable boulder and devours two Greeks. Odysseus gives his name as "No Wun." Rather than kill the sleeping giant, whose boulder they cannot move, the men sharpen his wooden crook into a stake. After more men are eaten, Odysseus plies Polyphemus with wine until he passes out, then drives the heated stake into his eye. Neighboring Cyclopes hear the giant scream that "No Wun" blinded him and leave. At dawn, Odysseus ties sheep in threes with men clinging beneath and escapes under the giant's favorite ram. As they row away, he taunts Polyphemus, shouting his true name. The Cyclops prays to Poseidon to forbid Odysseus from ever reaching home, establishing the sea god's enmity as the voyage's driving force.

The fleet reaches Aeolia, a floating island ruled by King Aeolus, whom Zeus, chief of the gods, has appointed keeper of the winds. Aeolus gives Odysseus a cowhide bag containing every wind except a favorable breeze to carry the fleet home. For 10 days Odysseus holds the tiller without sleeping, until Ithaca comes into view. Overcome by exhaustion, he dozes. His crewman Eurylochus, convinced the bag holds treasure, unties it. All the winds blast free, hurling the fleet back to Aeolia. Aeolus refuses further help, declaring Odysseus has angered one of the gods.

The fleet enters a harbor where the Laestrygonians, enormous cannibals, destroy 11 ships and spear the trapped men. Only 52 survivors escape aboard Odysseus's vessel, which he wisely moored outside.

On a wooded island, Odysseus's friend Polites leads a scouting party, but only Eurylochus returns, reporting that a sorceress named Circe transformed the men into pigs. Odysseus heads for Circe's house, tucking a white moli flower, which protects against enchantment, into his cheek along the way. He threatens her with his sword, and she submits, restoring his men. Odysseus stays, hoping Poseidon's anger will cool.

After a year, Polites confronts Odysseus about leaving. Circe says she cannot give him the route home; he must descend to Hades, the realm of the dead, to consult the prophet Tiresias of Thebes. In the Underworld, Odysseus encounters the ghost of Elpenor, a crewman who died unnoticed on Circe's island and begs for burial, and his mother, Anticleia, who died of grief believing him dead. Tiresias reveals the route home, warning of the Sirens, deadly singing sea nymphs; the Wandering Rocks, towers of grinding stone; the six-headed monster Scylla; and the whirlpool Charybdis. He warns that the crew must not slaughter the sacred cattle on the Island of Helios, god of the sun, or death will follow. Tiresias adds that suitors are swarming Penelope, pressuring her to remarry.

After burying Elpenor, Odysseus sails past the Sirens with his crew's ears sealed in beeswax while Polites binds him to the mast. The Sirens sing to Odysseus by name, and he rages to be freed, but the deafened crew rows on. He then steers through a strait between the Wandering Rocks and a cliff hiding Scylla's cave. Scylla snatches six men from their oars. They pass Charybdis by rowing at desperate speed during a pause between its surges.

The exhausted men beg to rest on Helios's island, and Eurylochus leads a near-mutiny. Odysseus relents, but storms trap them for weeks and food runs out. While Odysseus prays alone, Eurylochus persuades the men to slaughter a sacred cow. The roasting carcass bellows, a supernatural warning. The sun god calls on Poseidon, and a catastrophic storm strikes. Polites embraces Odysseus and calls his own name three times across the ocean. The crew perishes as the wreckage spirals toward Charybdis. Odysseus leaps and catches the branches of a fig tree overhanging the abyss, clinging through the night before dropping onto the broken keel. He drifts alone for nine days.

He washes ashore on Ogygia, where the nymph Calypso nurses him, declares her love, and offers immortality. Over seven years, her devotion contrasts with Odysseus's memories of Penelope's intelligence and companionship. He begs to leave, but Calypso has no boat. On Ithaca, Penelope is besieged by suitors demanding she remarry. Telemachus searches the mainland for news of his father from veterans of Troy but finds none. Penelope promises to marry when she finishes weaving a wedding veil, then secretly unpicks each day's work at night.

On Mount Olympus, the goddess Athene argues to her father Zeus that seven years of captivity is enough. Zeus sends the messenger god Hermes to order Calypso to release Odysseus, stipulating he must build a raft himself. Hermes also flies to Telemachus's ship and, disguised as a sailor, steers him past an island where suitors have laid an ambush. Odysseus builds his raft, but Poseidon unleashes a storm that shatters it. With a sea nymph's aid, Odysseus reaches the island kingdom of Scheria, where Princess Nausicaa brings him to her father, King Alcinous. The king gives him treasure and a ship for the journey to Ithaca.

After the Scherians beach the sleeping Odysseus on Ithaca, Poseidon turns their returning ship to stone. On Ithaca, the suitors catch Penelope unpicking her weaving and demand she choose a husband.

Odysseus wakes, recognizes his homeland, and hides his gifts. At the hilltop cave of a loyal swineherd, he finds Telemachus and reveals his identity. Telemachus weeps on his father's shoulder. Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus enters Pelicata Palace. Only the ancient hound Argos recognizes her master by scent, wags her tail, and dies content in his lap. The suitors abuse the beggar. Telemachus urges his mother to set a contest: whoever strings Odysseus's bow and shoots an arrow through the handle-loops of a row of axes may claim Penelope as wife. Meanwhile, he has the suitors' weapons carried away.

The suitors fail to string the bow. The beggar strings it effortlessly, throws off his disguise, and shoots the leading suitor, Antinous, dead. A treacherous servant throws weapons to some suitors, but Athene aids Odysseus with smoke and wind. Odysseus and Telemachus kill every suitor, sparing only a young bard who comforted Penelope.

Penelope remains guarded, suggesting the stranger sleep in a guest chamber. When Odysseus asks for the bed he carved himself, Penelope suggests having it moved. Odysseus objects: The bed is carved from a living olive tree rooted in the palace and cannot be moved, a secret only the true king would know. Penelope leaps into his arms, her test complete.

In an epilogue, the spared bard sails to Scheria and joins his blind father, who recorded Odysseus's story at Alcinous's court. Together they perform the tale at Nausicaa's wedding, revealing that Odysseus has already left Ithaca. He and Telemachus carry an oar inland to a place so remote no one has heard Poseidon's name. There Odysseus will plant the oar and sacrifice to the sea god, hoping to make peace at last. Nausicaa stands at the window watching the waves, always traveling, the story left open-ended.