Zachary Mason - The Lost Books of the Odyssey

Something glinted golden in the dust at my feet. I stooped to dig it out and found a disc of metal, a shield. Amazed, I saw that it was made of gold, not only that but it was the very shield forged for Achilles by the divine smith Hephaistos, which I had won at Achilles’ funeral games and lost again on the disastrous trip home. It was almost too heavy to lift but I hefted it with both hands and studied its familiar surface. I wondered how it could have come back to Troy — some nereid must have found it in the deep, I reflected, and brought it back to rest near Achilles’ tomb.

I could not bear the thought of bringing it back to Ithaca to gather dust on my wall, so in the fading light I walked down to the beach where all our ships had landed so many decades ago and in a sudden access of strength threw it toward the sea. For a moment it seemed to hang motionless in the air and I wondered if my gesture had somehow permitted me to step out of time, but then the shield splashed heavily into the water and the waves closed over it and I went back to my ship with a light heart.

Among the dunes stood Athena, who still watched over him as best she was able. She was relieved to see him sail back toward Ithaca, where, she knew, a peaceful death would find him before the year was out. Like him, the goddess had a light heart. She was grateful that his eyes were not as sharp as they had been and that the light had been flattering but not too bright and he had not noticed that the workmanship of the shield was crude, the figures awkward, that there had been countless other shields just like it for sale cheap among the stalls in Troy’s ruins.

*The cyclops’s cave was closed with an enormous stone which only the gigantic cyclops was strong enough to move. Thus, killing him would have meant a slow death by starvation.

*In prehistoric times the Greek islands were home to a number of species of small mastodons. Although they did not long survive the arrival of man, they did leave a fossil record, and, interestingly, their skulls (like the skulls of all pachyderms) have a mono-orbital, cyclopean appearance.