Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
15
Homecoming at Last
MY PEOPLE AND I set sail to the south, for I’d decided we had been blown through the gates of the inner sea to the outer sea during our battle with the Scylla. When we got back through that channel, I had a pretty good idea where Greece was. I figured I might as well head there and get the marital confrontation over with. It was only just of me to tell Penelope of Odysseus’s demise and offer the remaining men and those who sailed in the infinity room, an opportunity to return home.
Do you think Poseidon would let it go at that? Not a chance.
Another storm, another shipwreck and I’m on Circe’s Island. Now Circe was a beautiful pig farmer and—wouldn’t you know it—Helios’s daughter. I never thought of pig farming as being the profession suited for a beautiful woman, but she seemed to derive great pleasure from the pigs.
That was the point at which my crew and their women decided to take a permanent powder. They’d apparently worked out whatever differences they had and salvaged all the treasure from the wreckage they could find and took off into the hills. I figured I’d run into them again before long, but they were dead set on being scarce. I bid them good riddance.
That left me to deal with Circe.
I’d actually known a delightful pig farmer. Manannán mac Lir, from whom I got cattle, told me a long story as we sat on the hillside about having once been a pig farmer. He owned a drove of immortal pigs. When they were killed, they resurrected and came back to life. In all but one instance. If they were butchered and eaten, the pigs did not return to life. It reminded me a bit of my monster son. Nonetheless, the gods of that region found out about Mac Lir’s pigs and descended en masse to have a great feast for days on end. When the feast was done, there were no immortal pigs left, but the gods had all gained immortality by eating them.
It didn’t take long for me to discover Circe was also more than a pig farmer. She was a sorceress.
If you are curious about the various words used for workers of magic, perhaps I can help you. I’ve often referred to my maker as a mage or magus. That might not have been a correct term as it is credited to the Zorastrians sometime around the first millennium BCE. In that culture, it simply meant priest of the religion of the Wise Lord. It implied a worker of unnatural acts or miracles. A wizard, however, is derived from the Middle English word for wisdom. A much later term. They were originally known more for divination than magic, but the magic evolved as well. Finally, ‘sorcerer’ referred to one who influenced fate, from a Latin root. So, you see, the terms are all more modern than what I have applied, though mage seems to be the earliest, etymologically speaking.
Who am I to describe language? I just use the words that fit.
However, Circe considered me a sorcerer, too, and I had to ask why that and not some other branch. She said that in a sorcerer (or sorceress), the magical ability is innate rather than studied. We might learn specific techniques or new spells through our reading of scrolls, but our ability was inside us, not based on what we learned.
Circe was a fascinating woman when she wasn’t trying to kill me. I could see a spell spinning out of her hands from a mile away which is about where she started throwing them at me. She was fun. There is something about a dangerous woman that is just too appetizing to pass up. We engaged in a battle of wit and magic that went on for days. Foreplay. That’s all I can call it. I never managed one spell correctly but they all turned out all right. I was just learning to make spells out of nothing. There were a few well-studied spells—like my transformation spell—I had done so frequently, I knew them forward and backward. But even that one could go awry. There was the time I turned myself into...
I shouldn’t get sidetracked when I’m telling a romantic story about doing battle with a sorceress. Gods playing tricks again. But oh, she got hot when she wove spells and brewed potions, and I was not at all above taking advantage of that. We fucked from one end of her island to the other and back again. She was raw passion. She wanted a child and I seriously considered revoking my vow and giving her one. After all, I reasoned, she wasn’t a human woman, but a demigoddess. She should be able to handle a demon child. But then, I thought about there actually being a little me running around somewhere, learning sorcery and potion making at his mother’s knee. That kind of thing will really dull the desire to make babies.
I finally decided it was time for me to get going and so I proposed a feast during which I intended to give her one of her own potions that would make her sleep long enough for me to push the little raft I’d made off her island and into the sea. I butchered a hog and set it to roast for an entire day, turning the spit myself. Late that evening, I brought the feast to her, laced with the potion I had stolen.
“Oh!” she said in surprise as we ate the roast pork. “Laertos tastes divine!”
“Laertos?” I said. “You named the pigs? I once had a sailor named Laertos.”
“Yes. I rounded up all the crew and women from that shipwreck and turned them into pigs,” she yawned. “I seldom keep one more than a year before I butcher it.”
I was horrified. I’d killed and roasted a man, thinking it was a pig. Then I saw Circe grin as I picked up my goblet to wash the taste from my mouth. Something about that grin told me I would end up spitted if I drank from her cup. I started to set it down and Circe gathered herself to throw a spell at me. I threw the drink at her and in her haste and drugged state, she slurred her words, accidentally reversing the transformation spell. I heard the pigs suddenly talking and running for the woods as Circe fell asleep.
I took off as well, reaching my raft and shoving off from the shore. I don’t know what happened to the rest of my crew. I called for them to join me but, of course, they’d just witnessed me take one of their number and roast him, so there was no trust between us. I do hope they survived.
I’ve never had a taste for pork since then.
And then there was Callie. Oh, my, what a girl! There are so many islands in the sea and it seemed I beached my raft on each of them. When I managed to get to her little island, I found a beautiful and sensual woman who sat looking out at the sea, praying to Aphrodite for a lover, even if only for a year. The past few days had been rather peaceful on the raft, and I had a feeling Aphrodite might have been pushing my craft toward this island as the answer to the prayer of one of her devotees.
“Why do you weep, girl?” I asked when I saw her. She stared at me in disbelief and fainted. Being the gallant demon I am, I caught her as she plunged toward the rocks below and scooped her up in my arms—where she woke.
“My prayers have been answered!” she exclaimed.
Whenever I’m the answer to someone’s prayers, you can bet a god or goddess has been interfering. But I really had no urgent need to be anywhere. What crew was left in the infinity room had long since given up ever returning to Ithaca and had found a peaceful seaside paradise where they built a village and were thriving with some of the women brought from Troy by the sailors and some of the priestesses I’d brought from the temple. Most of the children and nurses from the harem had been delivered there as well, much to the delight of the women. Since arriving in the infinity room, they’d ceased aging and even regressed some to an optimum age. Those who had wives in Ithaca had no desire to return to the old women back home. Yes, they were heartless cads. And also highly sexed. For myself, I had Penelope’s image from Odysseus’s memories, but she was his wife, not mine.
Following Callie’s instructions, I carried her to her home where I met her family, such as it was. She lived with an elder brother and his wife and their three children. The wife was pregnant with another. The village in which she lived was isolated and a little inbred. It looked like Callie was doomed to become a lower wife to her brother. Neither of them was looking forward to that.
The people of the village lived a peaceful and pastoral life and most were bored silly. They had regular free sex parties during which they had sex for entertainment and occasionally procreation happened.
Callie was soft and sensual—perhaps not the most beautiful woman in the world, but I’d already had her. It did not take long courting Callie before we were in bed together. That night, I think. We were shown to a little cabin nearby that was empty and from that moment were considered married. She was plush. No bones stuck out in odd places like hips or ribs. She had adequate padding overall to be perfectly delightful to sex. She was phenomenally receptive to making love at any given time and usually twice at a time.
Sinking into her steamy depths was like being welcomed into a volcano of love. And when she erupted, she sprayed her juices everywhere!
I mentioned the village and surrounding area as having regular sex parties. One might think of them as orgies that included everyone in the village. Each orgy resulted in at least one pregnancy, father unknown. The women all flocked to my pole, hoping to bring new blood into their progeny. I needed to help the village expand its gene pool. After my first introduction and for the next seven years thereafter, I would slip into the infinity room during the orgies and disguise one to six of my men to take to the village to plunder the waiting pussies. Over the next few years, I could count most of a generation as having come from outside the village. The people, of course, credited the new blood to me, including the three children I had with Callie (seeded by one of my men). In fact, Bartolos became quite fond of Callie as I was myself, and occasionally I left him for as much as a month with my wife while I returned to the infinity room.
I discovered our own population growing. Several of the women in the village of my former sailors had children and our experience told us that as of that time, mother and father would both begin to age naturally—but healthily. Since we’d never indicated this was a place where they would be immortal, they considered the process natural and to be expected.
As I worked my way from woman to woman in my harem, I always ended up in Josie or Nimia. They wanted me to bring Callie to the infinity room to stay with them, but somehow, I didn’t think the village girl would adjust to life with the ageless. Josie and Nimia had been with me for the better part of a millennium and still looked like the teens I’d married. They never came out of the room into the natural world anymore. I was never sure how much time had passed in the infinity room while I was outside, but I was always greeted as if it was just the next day.
My idyllic life was interrupted by a dream. Not mine, but Callie’s. She woke in the morning weeping on my shoulder.
“What is it, my little love?” I asked.
“You have to leave me,” she whimpered. “My goddess Aphrodite said I asked for just one year and she had rewarded me with six more, but now your time on the island is over. You must re-build your raft and leave my side. Oh, my Odysseus, why must you leave?”
“I don’t know, Callie,” I said. I was still masquerading as Odysseus, though I’d neglected to really age while on the voyage or the island, so I suppose that could have raised alarms soon by looking ever young. In fact, I probably looked younger than I had at Troy.
I could see Aphrodite’s hand all over this decree. I went to the top of the island that night to call out to her and find out what was going on. Imagine my surprise when the bastard Hermes showed up.
“I suppose you’re the one who told everyone I was here,” I said.
“Hardly,” he sniffed. “Your wife has made so many sacrifices and prayers of thanksgiving that there is scarcely a god on Olympus who hasn’t heard her.”
“So, why are they demanding all of a sudden that I leave her?”
“Politics,” Hermes spat as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. I could understand that. “Zeus has been afraid that another war like Troy would break out soon unless he got Aphrodite and Athene to make nice. They’ve reached a conditional truce.”
“Condition that I leave my happiness behind,” I grumbled.
“Side effect. Athene’s condition is that her beloved Odysseus be allowed to return to his wife and home on Ithaca.”
“Doesn’t she know I’m not Odysseus?”
“Irrelevant. She decided you had assumed his identity, so you needed to assume his responsibilities.”
“And what is she giving up?”
“She has gracefully consented to allow Odysseus’s men to remain in your little concealment with the spoils of Troy and Aphrodite’s priestesses. She asks, however, that you take care of their widows and provide for them as you will for Penelope.”
“What about Poseidon?” I asked. There had to be another catch to this. The gods were never this straightforward.
“That was your own fault. Destroying the Scylla and blinding his son put you on Poseidon’s bad side. He has consented to letting you reach Ithaca, but not to make it easy.”
“Great. And I get no say in any of this?”
“It has been decreed by Zeus.”
“Shit.”
Homer made ten books out of the adventure, but I’ll try to make it short. I built the raft and left my peaceful life with Callie, calling out a thousand curses on the gods for disrupting her happiness. Then I thought of another person and went to talk to Bartolos, one of the men who had come often to join the orgies, and who I knew was rather sweet on Callie. He agreed that it would make him very happy to stay with Callie and he would do his best to make her happy. I was satisfied. I built my raft and shoved off from yet another island. And pursuant to the Olympian Convention, Poseidon wrecked my raft and I floated to shore hanging onto a log. He finally let me be.
Ithaca was a mess when I got there and I sympathized with Athene over wanting Odysseus to come back and clean it up. I put on a different and much older body so that no one would recognize me and went in to take a look at how things were in the city Odysseus had left nearly twenty years before.
In fact, the city was preparing a wake for their hero to be held on the twentieth anniversary of his departure. Penelope would then be required to choose a new husband from among the suitors who had been gathering in and basically despoiling the royal house for over a year. A hundred and eight of the bastards, figuring one of them would bed Penelope and displace her son as heir to Ithaca!
Penelope was not happy. She’d been delaying for over a year by weaving a funeral shroud to honor her husband. She would work all day and at night, would pull all the weaving out that she’d done that day. Finally, she’d been forced to set up a contest to eliminate the weak ones. She always did have a weakness for a six-pack and guns. She had a bow she claimed was her husband’s and that she would only marry a man who could draw and shoot it.
Now, I ask you: What kind of warrior goes off to battle and leaves his bow behind? Well, I’ll tell you: A warrior who has no intention of ever getting close enough to the battle to make a difference! Nonetheless, the bow was as thick as a man’s arm and I could tell there was a powerful spell on the bow that would make it difficult for any mortal to draw.
On the day of the festivities, I took my place at the end of the line as the 109th suitor, which made people laugh. Each suitor ahead of me tried and failed to even get the bow strung, let alone to draw it.
I hadn’t really heard anything from Athene since she made her bargain, though I often felt her presence nearby. As I stepped up to the bow, to the laughter and jeers of the crowd, I heard her whisper that she wanted the suitors dispatched permanently. I really don’t like killing people, but Athene insisted I would be unable to draw the bow unless I promised to take aim at the line of suitors. I finally agreed and stepped up to string the bow. It was a good stiff bow with arrows nearly thick enough to be considered a spear shaft. I nocked an arrow, pulled the bow, and swung to let the arrow loose at the reformed line of suitors who couldn’t believe an old man like me had defeated them and wanted another chance. I closed my eyes and let loose the arrow, figuring Athene could guide it as she wished.
She wished them all dead and the arrow passed through every suitor in the line.
That wasn’t the end, of course. I still had to convince Penelope that I was her long-lost husband. Simply letting my visage fade to look more like Odysseus was not enough. She wanted to know what was unique about her wedding bedroom. I dredged that up from Odysseus’s memories—telling her the bed was made from a living tree. Then I showed her even more intimate knowledge of her body. The latter was pleasurable for both of us.
Old softy that I am, of course, I could not let Penelope dwell under the mistaken perception that I was Odysseus. My job here was technically done. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, had gone straight to work cleaning up the remains of the invading suitors. He also created a few remains, hanging several household staff who had helped the suitors in exchange for various rewards, and a couple of suitors who had not been in the line I shot. He was a good kid, just an infant when Odysseus left home. A little bloody for my taste, but a lot braver than his father.
“Penelope, I need to talk to you seriously,” I said as I led her to a hill away from the city where I read in Odysseus’s memories that the two had shared many pleasant times. “I am not the Odysseus who left you. He died at Troy,” I said as I touched her face and looked into her eyes so she could see I was earnest. I saw her countenance fall and she heaved a great sigh.
“I know,” she whispered. It was my turn to be surprised. “I was visited in a dream by Aphrodite. She told me she was sending me a lover who would always be by my side and that I should go with you and find eternal happiness. Can you do that? Can you bring me eternal happiness?”
“I hope to do so. Athene laid the charge on me to rescue you and to provide for the widows of those who sailed with me. I can do that. I would like to show you my secret sanctuary.”
“Before you do that, could I ask one boon?” she said.
“Yes, of course, my dear.”
“Would you make love with me one more time as Odysseus so I may say goodbye at last. I know he was not always a noble man, but he was my husband and my lover.”
That was an easy request to satisfy. We made love on the hill and she cried out his name, asking the gods to care for his spirit. I gradually let my horns show through so she could see I was a demon, but I didn’t go whole goat on her. I took her hand and led her into the infinity room to meet my other wives and become a part of my family. She was thrilled. She lectured the remaining men who had stayed with me and they all agreed to accept their own wives if they could be brought into the infinity room.
Of course, I couldn’t remain in the visage of a demon, but Penelope and I returned to the city and our palace where we began turning over the kingdom to Telemachus. In the meantime, we gathered the widows of the sailors and gave them the option of either coming to the infinity room to join their husbands or even live on their own in a land of plenty, or staying where they were. Some chose to stay in Ithaca, happy with their grandchildren and not caring about the old coots who left them. These I gave a dream that they’d only received their husband’s share of the spoils and they thanked us for providing for them. The others went to see their husbands again, some staying with the men and their new families and some choosing to find a place in our capital city. All were happy.
Eventually, Penelope and I reached the point where we could fully abdicate the throne in favor of Telemachus and retire ‘to travel the world.’ Once we were away from Ithaca and on the mainland, Penelope moved into the infinity room as my wife, and I restored her very seductive teenage body. Then I adopted a new body for myself, shouldered the bag, and hit the road again.
A quick word about wives. I have had many, starting with Ariane and including notably Portia, Bao, and Callie. But only one had taken up permanent residence in the infinity room before Penelope. Nimia had entered the room when it was first created and we fled from Knossos. She was the undisputed head of my household. Penelope accepted this without objection. My other wives had all been temporal and either died or were left behind.
“What about Josie?” you ask.
Josie had never actually become my wife. She was my possession. In her mind, being possessed by a demon trumps being married to one. Go figure.
I decided it was not a good idea to go back on the sea. So, as soon as I’d managed to get from the island of Ithaca to the mainland of the Peloponnese, I made my way down to Sparta to see what became of the old soldiers. There weren’t many. Menelaus told me stories of the great generals. Word of the return of Odysseus to Ithaca had already reached Sparta. Menelaus was reconciled with Helen, but if anything, she was even more slutty and had even more hair than before. He spent most of his time drunk while she slept her way through all of Sparta.
His brother, Agamemnon—the king who took Cassandra to become his personal slave—was killed by his wife and her lover when he returned to Athens. Cassandra, attending him in the bath at the time, was joined in the same fate, even though she’d warned him repeatedly that Clytemnestra would kill them both. And Ajax, I was happy to learn, had been cursed by Athene for despoiling Cassandra in her temple. She raised a storm on the sea herself to shipwreck him. All the sailors with him, including those who jumped ship from me when I forbade rape, were drowned. Ajax was tossed up on a rock and laughed at the foolishness of the gods in failing to kill him. Poseidon himself rose up from the sea and smote the rock with Ajax on it. It split open and swallowed the rapist.
Years later, I told Homer about Odysseus and the trip I made back to Ithaca, but I was not heroic enough for the poet. Homer wanted a superhuman who had single-handedly outwitted the Trojans with a wooden horse, who had defied the gods and survived the storms, the sea monsters, and sorceress, and who had returned to bring truth, liberty, and justice for all to the island of Ithaca where he lived in eternal youthfulness with his faithful wife, Penelope. I told Homer about the infinity room, and he even experienced it for a while as we went to find Ilium. I’d hidden most of Odysseus’s men there, but Homer needed the tragic tale of men who disobeyed the gods and were killed as a result. He refused to mention the priestesses of Aphrodite’s temple there, even though he slept his way through half of them while I carried him in the bag.
I gave him all the highlights of history and then made him walk back to Greece. Maybe by the time he got there, he was blind. I never saw him again.
So, you see, you should never trust the words of a cheap novelist. They only take the historical facts and rework them into what they think will be a best seller. His agent probably told him to change it.
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