Homophrosýne

“I didn’t want to be a myth. I wanted to be me.” 

Jessie Burton, Medusa 

Messing with the machinations of mortals was fun, until it got you stuck with them in a stolen fishing boat in the middle of the Ionian Sea.  

‘Stolen’ was an extravagant word, but those were thrown around frequently on Olympus, and Hera, like her godly relatives, had never been good at holding her tongue. She was also violently seasick. Such a small boat  required a human form, unlike the towering, divine one she favoured. And with a human form came human nausea. Crammed into the bow, the Queen of Olympus leaned over the balustrade and retched, while the captain  – if she could be so named – behaved like the intelligent woman she was and bit back a laugh. 

“You know, you’d feel better if you took the prow.” She noted, hands expertly tying knots to keep the sail steady, “It’s easier on the motion sickness.” 

Hera shot her a filthy look. The woman who sailed like a man handled the vessel like she did her loom, with military precision but enough casual flair to delude any onlooker into thinking it was easy. Most indecently she had abandoned her veil, but her hair, a mousy, plain brown, was coiled back, out of her face, the likes of which had adopted a sensible, stoic frown that wouldn’t have been out of place on any battle strategiser worth his salt.  

“And how do you know that?” The goddess retorted, pretending she hadn’t been about to empty her stomach into the wine-dark sea as she shuffled to the front of the boat – entirely of her own volition, of course,  “I’m surprised you didn’t sink us before we left the harbour.” 

“I live on an island. It’s in my best interest to know how to sail.” 

“But you’re from Sparta.” 

“As is Helen, but I doubt her spear arm is anything to write home about.” 

At the mere mention of the name, Hera rolled her eyes and, groaning, trailed one hand through the water as the sail caught the wind. For someone who, being immortal, had less of a concept of time than most, she  had certainly wasted enough of it on that bloody woman, and that bloody war. The gods were more than capable of fighting one another without the gory interactive chess board that had been Troy. If it wasn’t Apollo obliterating the Greek camp with a plague for badmouthing one of his priests, it was Aphrodite mucking about  where she didn’t belong to protect that Trojan son of hers. Or Ares doing … Well, whatever Ares did. Hera loved  her son more than some of the others, granted, but she was sure at one point he had taken too great of a smash to the head during a tussle with a Titan. She had even teamed up with Athena at one point, and she loathed the brash, too-intelligent-for-her-own-good Daddy’s girl! The nature of Helen’s parentage, she contemplated darkly now it came to mind, hadn’t endeared her to her anyway. 

Perceptive as ever, the captain noticed her seething disquiet – as opposed to her usual brooding – and after ensuring the sails were secured, she perched beside her. Like a cat, the roll of the waves hardly bothered her, and she moved with the same smoothness she might have had she been walking the corridors of her palace. Now that Hera pondered it, she could see something feline in the woman – not that someone so plain would ever have a transformative gift. There was a steady, measured calculation to her movements even before she opened her mouth and the goddess didn’t doubt that, even as she spoke, other thoughts whirred in her mind like chariot wheels. 

“I’ve as much reason to dislike her as you do,” she started, as lightly as if she had commented on the weather, or the state of a recently-started tapestry, “And just because Menelaus forgives her doesn’t mean I will.” 

“I thought you’d have some kinship loyalty. Isn’t she your cousin?” 

“Isn’t Hephaestus your son?” 

Hera scowled. Though deities are as capable of making mistakes as those they govern, they are far less accepting of being reminded of them. 

“I ought to blast you out of this boat for that insolence, Penelope of Ithaca.” 

Because the Queen of Olympus was ostensibly human – and still a bit green around the gills – Penelope merely laughed. She could call herself an Ithacan until she was blue in the face, Hera grumbled in the security of her own head, but there was still a touch of the Spartan to her, except the sort that manifested through boisterous tongue-lashing instead of resorting to fists. 

“Though I doubt you would do that, Lady Hera, I’ll also remind you that I can swim.” She teased,  “Besides, I know you favour me.” 

“That can change.” 

“I’m sailing this boat to find my husband, not steal someone else’s. You and I are on the same side.” 

Morals and pride were infrequent companions on the Olympian Venn diagram, something Penelope had irritatingly gleaned. As much as Hera might have liked to blacken both her eyes, swearing like the sailor she pretended to be, she was, after all, the goddess of marriage. While she hated to admit it, before Paris had thrown a torch into the proverbial oil pit of Grecian life, the marriage of Penelope and Odysseus had been a model one.  Neither of the two fought: both were as likely to exchange punches as they were harsh words, the likelihood  being a perfect, round zero. Uncommonly for a royal couple, neither sought to avoid the other, despite living in  a palace with enough rooms to make it easy. And, most vexingly, Hera clenched her fists, those fragile, pathetic human fists so hard the tendons nearly snapped, they were loyal. The King of Ithaca’s eyes, his weak, easily-tempted, male eyes, never lifted from his boring, domestic Penelope. Penelope, who hardly held a candle to her  beautiful, divine – well, half-divine – cousin, Helen, yet it was she Odysseus had courted. While it made her blood boil, so much that jealousy crackled in her veins like the fires of Tartarus, sabotage would ultimately be a betrayal of her position. She had answered Penelope’s prayer and, though the thought made her almost as nauseous as the waves, she would have to handle the consequences. 

“Why bother?” 

The interjection was sudden, so only the bitterness made Hera realise she had blurted it out. Penelope had adopted an ungainly slouch, like a guardsman on watch, but the slight quirk of her eyebrow gave her an intensity that signified that she was considering every word. 

“It’s been ten years. He’s probably dead for all you know, and this escapade of yours will have scared away every one of your suitors. It’s a good thing you’re a talented weaver – I hope you’ll enjoy spinsterhood.” 

“If Odysseus were dead, I would know.” 

“Oh, so now you’re from Delphi, are you? Fascinating. Do you also know what the weather’s going to  be like next Tuesday?” 

Leaned against the balustrade, a strategic move to ignore Hera’s goading glare, Penelope directed her gaze upwards, to watch the ivory seabirds wheel across the cerulean midday sky. Uninterested in seabirds unless there was a slim chance of one of them was her husband in disguise, Hera rolled her eyes. 

“We all know Achilles and Patroclus didn’t make it home – news travels slow, but not that slow. Though I’m surprised he didn’t throttle Helen first, Menelaus did, and he’s comfortably stationed back in Sparta  – he saw Odysseus embark. If he’d died at Troy, I of all people would know by now.” 

“So? Menelaus, who was already distracted with having his wife back, saw Odysseus get on a ship.”  Hera snorted, feigning disinterest by intently picking her fingernails, “Since you live on an island and have boat sense, you should know ships have a habit of sinking.” 

“And when ships sink, there are shipwrecks.” Penelope’s interruption was pointed, a practised verbal spear to the breastplate, “Troy was a combined effort - if I can recognise a Mycenaean or Athenian ship from miles away, any idiot with eyes would know if it was an Ithacan ship that sank. My Odysseus sailed from Troy on an Ithacan ship, and neither he nor the ship made it home.” 

It wasn’t a flinch that overcame Hera, but an icy, fierce pang of envy. ‘Her Odysseus’. King Odysseus of  Ithaca, Odysseus of the Quick Wits – Odysseus, Husband of Penelope. She wondered whether she had ever used the phrase ‘My Zeus’ but immediately knew it was a stupid question, that she never had. 

Because she couldn’t.

It was no longer a shock to see children in the world below with her husband’s eyes, his smile, his laugh; instead it just filled her with dull rage, the twist of a blunt knife in her heart. Every time she believed it to be the last, there was another; more gentle, more beautiful, more charismatic, and she was left to throw the curses and pick up the pieces. It was a curse itself, wasn’t it? Uniquely Olympian. You love yourself too much, so your  reflection will hold you in thrall, you boast that you weave better than Athena, so you become the Mother of Spiders, you think you can fly the Chariot of the Sun, but Apollo’s horses will throw you to your death for your ineptitude.  

You are the Queen of Marriage, so your husband will always seek comfort in arms that aren’t yours. You’ll cry, you’ll scream, you’ll throw chairs around the Hall of the Olympians, you’ll even curse every woman  he lies with, with the creativity that only blind fury inspires, but nothing changes. Where there are beautiful women, his eyes follow without fail, and everyone will know the Goddess of Marriage cannot keep even her own together. But you’ll never curse him. No matter his transgressions, you fix your rage on his mistresses, no matter how they protest and cry, because no matter what he does, you love him. A stupid truth, isn’t it? You’re embarrassed to say it, but you do. Every time you hope it’ll be the last, that this will be the moment he turns back to you. But hope is the last, measly thing trapped at the bottom of Pandora’s Jar, and you wonder if it ever escaped. It tears at your heart like a vulture at your liver, but when the next day reaches her rosy fingers across the sky, you are the woman stupid enough to love a man who is yours only in name. 

It was unusual for the Gods of Olympus to spend so long in human visages, with the emotions that accompanied them like rats to a ship, and it was only when Penelope placed her hand on hers that Hera realised she was crying. 

“You know, I’ve never prayed for anything more than I should have,” she started, and Hera was momentarily thankful, for nothing made anyone - deity or mortal - feel worse than being asked if they were alright, “I grew up in my father’s house, I married the man who won my hand, I became his queen, bore him a son. And he was still torn away from me. I did everything right. Sometimes, the Fates don’t have your best interests in mind, but you’re right. I’m Ithacan by name, but I’m Spartan by blood - I may be his wife, but he is my husband. This war has taken enough from me already. I refuse to let it take any more.” 

Annoyingly, Penelope was as perceptive as she was renowned to be. She shuffled closer, with care not to upset the boat, and her gaze, carrying a hardened intensity unlike the airiness of her cousin’s – Helen’s serene steadfastness over ten years of siege was something Hera begrudgingly admired – fixed her with a look that asked a question before she said it. 

“You don’t like him, do you?” 

“Why should I? He’s a smug, slippery little pest who thinks he’s cleverer than he is.”  

“I don’t mean Odysseus.” Penelope interjected with a small smile, and Hera was immediately distracted from wondering how she identified him so fast, “I mean your husband.” 

“He has a name.” 

“You’re fidgeting. Something tells me this is a conversation you’d rather he didn’t hear.” 

Objectively? Yes. Though her union with Zeus had lasted longer than humanity’s existence, it took her back to consider how he might react to hearing a mortal press her for her marital problems. Perhaps he would be lenient, given Penelope’s relationship with Athena’s favourite; she had more grit than Hephaestus, and more brains than Ares – Hera’s own children, a thought that stung – so he had a soft spot for his chariot-driving, spear-wielding progeny. Penelope wasn’t wrong, but she wouldn’t agree outright. 

“Of course I like him.” she huffed, arms folded, “I’m married to him.” 

“That’s not the question I asked.” Penelope retorted – there was the smugness, “You think Menelaus and Helen like each other? He laid siege to Troy for a decade to get her back, and honestly? I don’t think so. Did Galatea even know she had the option to dislike Pygmalion? Hades, Clytemnestra didn’t stick a knife into Agamemnon in a fit of affection, did she?” 

“Your point?” 

“You think that when he treats you badly, it’s a failing on your part. We get so caught up in our marriages, our children, our households, we forget who we are – when you view him as an extension of yourself, you view everything he does as though you’ve done it. You’re Hera, Queen of Olympus, and wife of Zeus, but before that, you must have been just Hera. Spartan, Ithacan – I’ve always been Penelope. Don’t forget about just Hera. She’s important too.” 

The mast creaked. Penelope fixed the ropework with a look that was only partially assessing, for the rest of it was a rebuke, daring the knots to misbehave. Hera imagined it was a look a young Telemachus had grown acquainted with. 

“You know, when Odysseus competed for my hand, Helen made fun of me.” Penelope interrupted the  silence that had fallen over the pair as she got to her feet to inspect the sail, which menacingly rasped, “She was used to every man she saw throwing himself at her, so it must have been jealousy – mocking me was an easy way  of dealing with the fact I was getting attention for once. The moment my father announced him as my betrothed, she turned to me with this massive smirk, and said he was too short and looked like a squirrel.” 

For the first time that afternoon, Hera laughed, with what wasn’t so much a laugh as a bray. While it crossed Penelope’s mind to joke that she had worked out why cows were so special to the goddess, she wisely kept her mouth shut and instead frowned. 

“What?”

“Don’t ask me what – he looks just like a squirrel!”

 “… a very handsome squirrel.”