The Last Voyage

Odysseus the Pioneer, Odysseus the Adventurer, Odysseus the Scourge of Troy.

Those titles, once marks of prestige, now taunt me. They were given to me by the men and women of my youth, the Greeks who sailed 10,000 ships across the sea to forge a legend. Now they are spoken only by my pitiful subjects who have grown fat on the spoils. They have never known the walls of Troy, the Wooden Horse, the Cyclops, or the man eating Laestrygonians. They use them to gain my favour to further their own interests, rats feasting on the corpses of lions.

I spend my days presiding over court, enduring the empty rituals of regal tradition. The feasting and revelling have lost their appeal, the petitions for justice brought to me by my subjects are petty. Men kill and are prepared to die to be called kings, how naïve is the belief that this crown is anything but a burden.

Even my happiest days now cannot compare to the satisfaction I felt on my worst at sea. That is where I belong. This island has become a prison with the sounds of the waves crashing against the walls of my castle as I lie awake at night, giving a call to me that I feared I could no longer answer.

I have known traitors during my long reign though the greatest among them has revealed itself so late in life. My own body, whose allegiance I believed I could always rely upon now plots my destruction. My hair falls from head like the leaves of autumn. My muscles fade, and I grow frail. My mind, once famed for its sharpness that rivalled any sword, has now gone dull and rusted. Most days I must be reminded of the names of my own grandchildren.

I envy the dead. I see now that the fate of Achilles, to die a hero and never have to age is preferable to what I suffer. I thanked the fates that I survived my brushes with death. Now I realise they were punishing me for my pride. Where once I offered prayers of gratitude to the divine beings, now I send them nothing but curses.

I take little comfort anymore in company with my wife. For she like me, has grown old and like even the prettiest of flowers has wilted and decayed.

My son Telemachus has filled me with pride with the man he has become, but like all parents and mentors, I have suffered the realisation that he no longer has need of me. He is his own man and will make a better ruler than his father. My heart will always belong to the sea and to discovery but his is here, on Ithaca and with its people. I can do nothing for him now but die.

I dream that I can still do something with that remains of my life, that there is more left in my story than to fade further away until I am but a living ghost.

I gaze more at the sea each day and feel it’s pull becoming stronger. Unlike my Penelope it is as beautiful as when I first set on eyes on it and it will remain unchanged a thousand years after my bones are dust. Perhaps it is my true my love.

I have gathered what remains of those who joined me on those fateful voyages long ago for one last journey. Though old and weary with our spirits sapped, we are still the mortals that once battled gods.

I have told them that we will make a push for the horizon, our final expansion of the frontier. From the signs however I know that Poseidon is due to send us a mighty storm shortly after our departure.

Our true destination will be Elysium. We will arrive in the afterlife not as old, crippled men, but as mariners of Greece.

Time has been cruel to us, as it is to all, but some work of noble note may yet be done.