“No!” I brandished the spear. “This mortal is under my protection. You will suffer eternal agony if you try to take him. You see I have Trygon’s tail.”
She screamed again. Her breath washed over me, stink and searing heat. The heads were weaving faster in her excitement. They snapped the air, long strands of drool swinging from their jaws. She was afraid of the spear, but that would not hold her for long. She had come to like the taste of mortal flesh. She craved it. Stark, black terror rolled through me. I would have sworn I had felt the spell take hold. Had I been wrong? Panic drenched my shoulders. I would have to fight her six ravening heads at once. I was no trained warrior. One of them would get by me and then Telemachus—I would not let myself finish the thought. My mind spat through ideas, all useless: spells that could not touch her, poisons I did not have, gods who would not come to my aid. I could tell Telemachus to jump and swim, but there was nowhere to go. The only path safe from her reach would take him into the devouring whirlpool of Charybdis.
I set myself between her and Telemachus, spear out-thrust, nerves drawn up. I must wound her before she gets by me, I told myself. I must at least get Trygon’s poison in her blood. I braced for the blow.
It did not come. One of her mouths was working strangely, jaws hinging and unhinging. A choking noise came from deep within her chest. She gagged, and a yellow foam ran over her teeth.
“What is it?” I heard Telemachus say. “What’s happening?”
There was no time for an answer. Her body sagged out of the mist. I had never seen it before, gelatinous and huge. As we watched, it scraped down the cliffside above us. Her heads squealed and bucked, as if trying to haul it back up again. But it only sank further, as inexorably as if it were weighted with stones. I could see now the beginnings of her legs, those twelve monstrous tentacles stretching away from her body into the mist. She kept them hidden always, Hermes had told me, coiled in the cave among the bones and bits of old flesh, gripping the cave’s stone so that the rest of her might dart down for her meals and return.
Scylla’s heads were snapping and whining, rearing back to bite their own necks. Her gray skin was streaked with yellow foam and her own red blood. A noise began like a boulder drawn across the earth, and suddenly a gray blur tumbled past us, smashing the waves beside our boat. The deck dipped wildly, and I nearly lost my balance. When I was steady again I found myself staring at one of her huge legs. It hung limp off her body, thick as the oldest oak on Aiaia, its end disappearing into the waves.
It had let go its hold.
“We must leave,” I said. “Now. There will be more.” Before the words were out, the dragging sound had begun again.
Telemachus cried out a warning. The leg smashed so close to our stern it sucked the rail half beneath the waves. I was knocked to my knees, and Telemachus thrown from his seat. He managed to cling to the oars, and with effort wrested them back to their places. The waters around us seethed with wash, the boat pitched up and down. In the air over our heads, Scylla cried and thrashed. The weight of the fallen legs had pulled her further down the cliff. The heads were within range now, but she paid no attention to us. She was biting at the limp flesh of her legs, savaging it. I hesitated a moment, then wedged the spear-haft against our supplies so it would not roll in the chaos. I seized one of Telemachus’ oars. “Go.”
We bent ourselves to rowing. The dragging sound came again and another leg fell, its great surge soaking the deck, slewing the prow towards Charybdis. I caught a glimpse of its whirling chaos that ate ships whole. Telemachus grappled at the rudder, trying to turn us. “A rope,” he shouted.
I scrabbled one out from our stores. He looped it around the rudder, yanking at it, fighting to point us back out of the straits. Scylla’s body swayed two mast-lengths above us. The legs were still falling, and each impact pulled the dangling trunk further down.
Ten, I counted. Eleven. “We have to go!”
Telemachus had righted the prow. He tied off the rudder, and we scrambled back to the oars. Beneath the cliff the boat tossed back and forth in the chopped waters like a fallen leaf. The waves around us were stained yellow. Her remaining leg stretched back up the cliff face. It was all that held her, pulled grotesquely taut.
She let go. Her massive body struck the water. The wave ripped the oars from our hands, and my head was buffeted by cold salt. I caught a glimpse of our stores washing into the sea, and vanishing with them into the white, Trygon’s spear. I felt the loss like a blow to my chest but there was no time to think of it. I seized Telemachus’ arm, expecting any moment the deck to crack beneath us. But the stout planks held, and the rope on the rudder too. The wash of that last great wave shoved us forward, out of the straits.
The sound of Charybdis had faded, and the sea lay open around us. I got to my feet and looked back. At the base of the cliff, where Scylla had been, was a hulking shoal. The outline of six snaky necks was still visible upon it, but they did not move. They would never move again. She had turned to stone.
It was a long way to land. My arms and back ached as if they had been whipped, and Telemachus must have been worse, yet our sail was miraculously intact and it bore us on. The sun seemed to drop into the sea like a falling plate, and night rose over the water. I sighted land through the star-pricked black, and we dragged the boat onto its beach. We had lost all our fresh water stores, and Telemachus was dull-eyed, nearly speechless. I went to find a river and carried back a brimming bowl I’d transformed from a rock. He drained it, and afterwards he lay still so long I began to be afraid, but at last he cleared his throat and asked what food there was. I had gathered a few berries by then, and caught a fish which was spitted over the fire. “I am sorry I put you in such danger,” I said. “If you had not been there, we would have been smashed to pieces.”
He nodded wearily as he chewed. His face was still drawn and pale. “I confess I am glad we will not have to do it again.” He leaned back upon the sand, and his eyes drooped closed.
He was safe, for our camp was backed into the corner of a cliff, so I left him to walk the shore. I thought we were on an island, but I could not tell for certain. There was no smoke rising above the trees, and when I listened, I heard nothing but night birds and brush and the hiss of the waves. There were flowers and forests growing thickly inland, but I did not go look. I was seeing before me again that rocky mass that had been Scylla. She was gone, truly gone. For the first time in centuries, I was not lashed to that flood of misery and grief. No more souls would walk to the underworld written with my name.
I faced the sea. It felt strange to have nothing in my hands, no spear-haft to carry. I could feel the air moving across my palms, salt mingling with the green scent of spring. I imagined the gray length of the tail, sinking through the darkness to find its master. Trygon, I said, your tail comes home to you. I kept it too long, but I made good use of it at last.
The soft waves washed across the sand.
The darkness felt clean against my skin. I walked through the cool air as if it were a pool I bathed in. We had lost everything but the pouch of tools he had worn at his waist, and my spell bag, which had been tied to me. We would have to make oars, I thought, and lay in new stores of food. But those thoughts were for tomorrow.