The Bag of Winds

Aeolus laid a hand on the swollen oxhide bag, and something inside it strained against his palm.

Odysseus heard no animal breathing. He heard a low, crowded sound, like distant weather gathering beyond a mountain.

“The winds that would drive you back,” Aeolus said.

For a month Odysseus had sat at his host’s table, telling of Troy, the fighting and the scattered ships. Now he could no longer bear another evening spent speaking of a journey he had not finished. Beyond the island lay the sea, and somewhere across it Ithaca, where his wife and son waited.

Aeolus had listened when he asked to leave. Zeus had given this man command over the winds, and he had prepared a gift for the passage home.

He drew the mouth of the bag together and bound it with a gleaming silver cord. The sound within became muffled. Not a breath escaped.

“Only the west wind remains free. It will carry you.”

They brought the bag aboard Odysseus’s ship and secured it there. Around him, sailors lifted their heads as a breeze touched the harbour. The sail stirred, opened and filled.

Odysseus took the steering oar.

The island fell behind. All the ships followed, their sails drawing steadily beneath the same clear sky.

Through the first night he kept the course. Through the next day he watched the light move across the water. When a man came to relieve him, he stayed where he was. Every hour the wind held was an hour nearer home; he would not risk losing one.

Salt dried on his wrists. Food was brought to him, and he ate without leaving the helm. At night the sail darkened above him, but it never sagged.

Nine days and nine nights passed.

On the tenth day a line of land rose from the sea.

At first he scarcely trusted it. He narrowed his eyes against the light. Then the slopes resolved, and with them a shape he knew so well that recognition hurt.

Ithaca.

The word travelled down the ship. Men left their places to stare. As they drew closer, small fires became visible along the land. People were awake there, tending their own work, unaware of the faces turned towards them from the sea.

Odysseus tried to keep his eyes open. The shore blurred, sharpened, blurred again. He had held the course all this way. Now the wind was carrying them straight towards it.

His head sank.

Near him lay the bag of Aeolus, its silver binding bright against the hide.

A sailor looked from the cord to the sleeping captain.

“Another gift.”

Nobody answered at first. The sail creaked above them.

“He goes into a hall and comes out richer,” the man said. “We fight beside him. We sail the same water.”

A second man crouched by the bag. He pressed the hide, trying to judge what lay beneath it.

“Gold,” someone said. “Or silver.”

They remembered the spoils carried from Troy, the honours given to their captain, their own empty hands. Home was close enough now for each man to think of what he would bring through his door.

“Let us see.”

Fingers worked at the silver cord.

The knot resisted. They loosened one turn, then another. The mouth of the bag opened beneath their hands.

Wind struck them from inside.

It flung the nearest man backwards and leapt into the sail. Another gust came against it; the canvas cracked, and the ship swung broadside. The sea that had carried them so smoothly broke into crossing ridges of white water.

Odysseus woke as the deck lurched beneath him.

For a moment he could not find the land. He caught the ship’s side and looked beyond the sail, beyond the men struggling with the ropes. Ithaca was there, but it was drawing away.

The open bag lay at his feet.

He stared at the loosened cord. Around him the men shouted, calling to one another across a wind that swallowed their words. The other ships were turning too, scattered by the same escaping storm.

He had stayed awake for nine nights.

The thought returned without changing anything. He looked down at the water rushing past the hull. He could let go. One movement would end the watching, the steering, the effort to bring them all home.

His hand remained closed on the wood.

At last he drew his cloak over his head and lay beneath it. The wind drove the ships away from Ithaca. Above its noise he could hear his men weeping.

When they reached the island of Aeolus again, nobody hurried towards the house.

They took on water and ate beside the ships. Then Odysseus chose a herald and one companion to go with him. The path was familiar. So was the smell of food from the hall, the voices within, the place at the threshold where a traveller could sit and ask for help.

Aeolus saw him and stopped speaking.

“You were on your way home.”

Odysseus lowered himself to the threshold.

“My men opened the bag. I was asleep.”

His two companions stood behind him. From inside came the faint clink of a cup being set down.

“You can help us again,” Odysseus said.

Aeolus looked at the salt-stiff cloak and the face beneath it. No welcome came into his own.

“If the gods drive you back after such a gift, I will not set myself against them. Leave my island.”

Odysseus remained where he was for a breath, waiting for another word. None followed.

He rose and walked back to the ships.

The men watched him come. He gave the order to embark, and they pushed the hulls from shore. There was no favourable wind to fill the sails now. Along the benches, one after another, the sailors took up their oars.