The Island Where They Leave Them

Her soul was doing cartwheels again, like it had before, like it had on that clifftop in the moonlight when everything was ending and beginning again. When she had watched the flutter of white descend, as though in slow-motion, and embrace the wild waves below. When she had watched the tiny raft disappear for what felt like the hundredth time over the horizon. Her heart had descended into the sea with the piece of white fabric, just as it was doing now.

It was less dramatic this time though. There was no moonlight, no cliff, no piece of fabric torn away from above her heart to touch the waves. There was only the strand of golden light and the young woman curled up in it, her limbs tangled, long blonde hair soaked and falling around her face, a river of gold that blended with the liquid light that cradled her.

Calypso could not help but follow the unnaturally focused beam of light with her eyes, up, up, to where the sun should not have been shining quite so brightly, so directly, into that one spot.

“So she’s one of yours?” Calypso glared sunwards. “How long are you going to let me keep her? How much is it going to hurt this time?”

The sun stayed quiet. If Calypso had been more dramatic, as she had been once, she would’ve shaken her fist at it. But she was not that same young girl who had stood barefoot in the moonlight with a sparkle of tears tightening her cheeks. It was brilliant daylight now, and a young woman lay in a heap, naked and bruised, and Calypso, as usual, had no choice.

By the time the stranger had woken up, she was wrapped in one of Calypso’s own white robes, her hair neatly arranged on the soft pillow. There was much that was soft here in Ogygia, soft and white and easy to find. The harder edges were there too, but it took some time to find those.

The stranger was confused at first. They always were. Confused, and afraid, but eventually resigned. Calypso wished she could be resigned. After all these hundreds of years, one would think that she could be. But never, never.

“Where… where am I?” The golden girl, as Calypso had begun to think of her, struggled to sit up on the cushions. “Who are you? What is this place?” She was already defending herself, Calypso noticed, fists clenched, body tight. A fighter. Calypso prepared herself for the speech, the one she always gave, the one that she could recite in her sleep, that never changed anything.

“You’re on Ogygia, my island. I’m Calypso, I rescued you from the sea. You’re safe now. Rest. Drink this.” There were usually more questions, but not this time. The girl simply stared with eyes as golden as the rest of her. She did not take the cup Calypso offered. The silence stretched.

Finally, Calypso could take no more. “Well, if you’re not going to drink it, you’re not going to feel better,” she said, almost letting the irritation of the last day and a half slip into her voice. “I’m going to leave it here.”

“Why are you so angry?” The question caught Calypso off-guard. She turned to the golden girl, suddenly aware of all the muscles in her face as she tried to pretend that the girl had not somehow seen behind her impassive mask.

“What in the world would make you think I’m angry?”

“But you are,” said the girl. She had relaxed a bit, fists no longer clenched. She blinked wonderingly at Calypso. “You’re furious. And sad. Why?”

“Because you’ve been dumped on me!” Calypso spat, with fury she hadn’t realized she possessed. “I didn’t ask for this! I’m fine here! I can be alone, I don’t care! This is just like the last time. They left him here too. ‘Take care of him, Calypso.’ ‘Love him Calypso, he’s for you.’ But he wasn’t, and they knew it, and that was all.” She was breathing hard, she realized, and her eyes were wet. The golden girl was simply staring, wide-eyed as ever. Calypso let her nostrils flare once before she strangled herself with iron-eyed control.

“You’re only one of many I’ve saved,” she said, ice to the golden girl’s fire. “I’m tired of it. You’ll leave as soon as you feel better.” But I won’t want you to, she didn’t add. It hasn’t been like this since him. It’s different, and I knew it from the second I saw you that it would be like tearing myself apart again, and it won’t matter. Because that’s all this island is to the gods. It’s where they leave them, their playthings, their heroes, until they’re no longer bored of them. Calypso felt as though she were screaming soundlessly, deep within her own mind.

Many silent screams later—that was how time passed on Ogygia, not in hours or minutes but in screams and kisses and spilled wine and dead flowers—the girl found Calypso in the music room that looked out over the endless sea, strumming her lyre. Calypso was aware of the golden girl, standing silently behind her, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn around and meet those melting honey eyes. She just waited.

“I’m Laurel.” That was all she said, all she had to say, and Calypso’s shoulders tightened.

“Laurel. Of course you are.” Calypso turned with a failed attempt at a sneer. “You truly are his, aren’t you?” She met the eyes and found she could somehow stand it. “You’re not his first Laurel you know. You probably won’t be his last.” Laurel continued to stare. Calypso suddenly felt a need to break something. “I knew her, you know. The first one. He saved her, your stupid patron god, he turned her into a tree. Now I expect Apollo wants me to save you while he goes off and does whatever he does halfway across the world.”

“No,” said the golden girl, Laurel. “I don’t need you.”

Calypso snorted ungracefully. “That’s not what you said when I dragged you off that beach and emptied the water out of your lungs.”

Laurel cocked her head in a quizzical manner that made Calypso’s heart stumble. “No, I needed you then. I’m grateful for that. But… I don’t think you like me needing you. So I don’t.”

Calypso couldn’t stop looking at this girl, this golden girl who could simply stop needing her just like that. “I don’t… I don’t not like you. Needing me. I like-” Calypso had misplaced all the words she had meant to spit.

“What did you mean earlier, then? About not wanting me dropped here.”

“I… I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…” Suddenly Calypso felt as though half of the island had dropped onto her shoulders. The hand that held the lyre fell limp to her side.

And suddenly, as the birds that were free in all the ways that Calypso was not danced over Ogygia’s invisible mountains, it all came spilling out. How she was a prisoner here in this paradise, and how she had loved and lost many times, but none like Odysseus. None like the one who had promised to stay and then fled without regret into the night, claiming she had enchanted him. How ever since then the loves had been different, more removed. And how she had seen Laurel on the beach, cradled by the sun, and had given up on removal and accepted that she would have to feel, although how she knew this could not be known. And as the words finished spilling out, the slim golden arms wrapped themselves around Calypso and there was silence in Ogygia, at least for a time.

Time, and its passage, seemed to have changed since Laurel came to Ogygia. After Calypso’s breakdown in the music room, she had discovered that she was still enfolded in Laurel’s arms, her own dark hair mingling with the tangles of liquid light that spilled over Laurel’s shoulders. The salty taste of the sea seemed to hover in the air around them and Calypso realized that she could’ve been there for hours, days, weeks, seconds. Laurel, however, seemed unaffected by however much time had passed; she sat very straight and very still as she held Calypso against her.

They had moved, at some point, to the alcove at the window, and Calypso had the sudden feeling of floating above the rocks far below, ready to fall at any minute. Her sense of self-preservation had started to creep back in, and she struggled into an upright position and drew away from Laurel. The golden girl did not fight this, merely continued to watch Calypso with those bottomless eyes.

Finally, for the first time since Calypso had released her river of emotion, Laurel spoke. “Why am I here?” she asked, tilting her head ever so slightly. “You kept saying that someone left me here. But that’s not true. The plane started going down and I thought I was going to die. Then we hit the water and everyone was screaming and the doors of the plane opened up and everyone was fighting to get out, and then someone shoved me, and then I must have hit my head because I don’t remember anything after that.”

Calypso stared at her, startled. Choosing not to ask the meaning of the word she did not recognize (“plane”), she instead responded: “You mean you don’t know? You don’t know you’d been chosen?” Laurel’s expression stayed blank, and Calypso began to realize. She had no idea, this golden girl, of the choices that had been made for her by entities who did not care about mortal pain. Although all that Calypso wanted to do was return to Laurel’s embrace and avoid the topic of the gods for at least a few centuries, she felt invisible golden chains tightening around her lightly, reminding her of her duty to anyone who came to this island.

“Where were you traveling?” Calypso asked, deciding to start at the beginning and sift through whatever story she could find. Surely there was some reason (other than her obvious beauty) that Apollo had chosen this magnificent girl, and somehow neglected to inform her of this. To Calypso’s surprise, Laurel’s cheeks reddened ever so slightly.

“I’m a musician,” she replied, gesturing vaguely at the instrument-filled music room around them. “Not this kind of musician. I’m in a band. Guitar. I-I play it. And sing. We were going on tour, our first world tour. We were going to Japan.” The last few words had gained a wistful tone, and Calypso could feel her heart plummet. Still, at least everything made sense now.

“A musician,” she said, taking in Laurel’s long, calloused fingers that fidgeted restlessly in her lap. “You must be very talented. He only takes the good ones.”

Something flashed in Laurel’s eyes and she stood up suddenly from the window seat, standing over Calypso.

“He, he!” she cried, making Calypso jump. “Who is he? No one took me, I washed up here! There’s no HE! Certainly not in my life…” She trailed off, crinkling her nose ever so slightly.

“So, what I said earlier,” said Calypso wonderingly, staring at the fire in the golden girl’s eyes, “about Apollo. You don’t know what that means?”

“I mean I know about all those myths,” Laurel replied almost dismissively. “Gods, goddesses, Greeks. But I didn’t think you meant…” Suddenly her eyes widened. It would be so easy to be swallowed up by those eyes, Calypso thought distractedly. The realization hit Calypso a moment later. Laurel knew nothing of the gods, nothing of the beings who had condemned Calypso to this endless life in this magnificent jail, nothing of the sun god who had chosen her for reasons known only to himself.

Calypso suddenly became aware of how long it had been since anyone had visited Ogygia. Much had changed in the world outside. But almost as soon as this realization had struck Calypso, Laurel had already moved past it.

“They’re real, aren’t they.” It was a statement, not a question. “The gods. They’re not just stories.”

Calypso had no idea how to respond so she simply nodded. Laurel was pacing now, up and down like the caged animal that Calypso felt inside herself on a daily basis. “They’re real and they’ve… chosen me? Sent me to you? But why? Why am I here?”

“I don’t know,” said Calypso, defeat returning to her in a rush. Tears threatened her again as she watched Laurel’s movements, graceful even now. “I don’t know. I just know that I have to take care of you until… until you have to go.”

Laurel froze in her pacing and stared with such intensity at Calypso that it almost shattered her.

“No.” She did not say it loudly or angrily, but in one word Laurel somehow managed to shake Ogygia to its very core. “No,” she said again, and suddenly she was striding across the room to where Calypso still sat in the alcove above the sea and reaching out with long golden fingers and gripping Calypso’s jaw firmly and, in a rush of fire and sunlight, pressing her lips up against Calypso’s.

Once again, time seemed to tumble over itself and fall unceremoniously into the sea. At some point Calypso found herself pressed up against the window, hands tangled in Laurel’s curls, heart racing in a way that it had not done for what she now realized had been centuries. At another point, she found Laurel’s cool fingers exploring her swollen lips, the curves of her face, and her own fingers gingerly tracing down Laurel’s neck to her collarbone where they rested, soft as hummingbirds.

After what felt like the world’s shortest eternity, Laurel pulled away. Calypso stared at her, speechless. Had she ever been kissed, truly kissed, by someone else, someone who chose it before she herself had chosen it, someone who knew her somehow and did not care, before? She couldn’t remember. Laurel was speaking she realized.

“I don’t have to go,” said Laurel, continuing their earlier conversation as though she had not just turned Calypso’s world into a storm-tossed sea. “I don’t have to go until I say so. I don’t care what these gods want. I’m here now, and I think…” she looked at Calypso for a long moment. “I think I want to be here.”

Picture this, just for a moment. Picture a beach with sand like sugar, and trees that call to the sea. Picture a golden girl and a woman who is neither ice nor tears anymore. Now see them lying in a paradise that once was hell on earth and is now simply a place that will hold them for who knows how long. Picture them needing each other equally, one no more than the other.

Who can say if that picture ever formed. Perhaps Apollo took Laurel back in the same way Athena took Odysseus, and Calypso was left once again to her prison and her paradise.

But after all those birds and lyres and gentle touches of lips and rays of sunlight that make up time in Ogygia, it may be safe to say: the beach will hold them for a long time. The gods can only do so much, and they sometimes forget: sometimes, a girl left in a painted prison will make it into a home. And, perhaps, two prisoners will forget their prison in each other, and lie on that white, white beach, for as long as the sun will allow.