Free The Adventures of Ulysses by Bernard Evslin

you any counsel for me?”
    “Yes. Death has cleared my eyes, and I see things I would not have known. I see your ship now sailing in a narrow place between two huge rocks. Beneath the starboard rock is a cave, and in that cave squats Scylla, an unpleasant lady with twelve legs and six heads who cries with the voice of a newborn puppy. If you sail too near that rock, she will seize six sailors to feed her six mouths—”
    “Then I will steer away from Scylla—toward the other rock.”
    “Ah, but under the other rock lurks a strange, thirsty monster named Charybdis, whose habit it is to drink up a whole tide of water in one gulp, and then spit it out again, making a whirlpool of such terrible sucking force that any ship within its swirl must be destroyed.”
    “Monster to the right and monster to the left,” cried Ulysses. “What can I do then?”
    “You must keep to the middle way. But if you cannot—and indeed it will be very difficult, for you will be tacking against headwinds—then choose the right-hand rock where hungry Scylla squats. For it is better to lose six men than your ship and your entire crew.”
    “Thank you, courteous Eipenor,” said Ulysses. “I will heed your words.”
    Then the air grew vaporous as the mob of ghosts shifted and swayed, making way for one who cleaved forward toward the trench of blood, and Ulysses recognized the one he was most eager to see, the blind woman-shaped ghost of Teiresias, sage of Thebes, expert at disasters, master of prophecy.
    “Hail, venerable Teiresias,” he cried, “all honor to you. I have journeyed far to make your acquaintance.”
    Teiresias came silently to the trench, knelt, and drank. He drank until the trench was empty and the misty bladder of his body was faintly pink.
    “You honor me by your visit, Ulysses,” he said. “Many men sought my counsel when I was alive, but you are the first client to make his way down here. You have heard these others tell you of certain petty dangers that you will do well to avoid, but I have a mighty thing to tell.”
    “Tell.”
    “Your next landfall will be a large island that men shall one day call Sicily. Here the Sun-Titan, Hyperion, pastures his herds of golden cattle. Your stores will have been eaten when you reach this place, and your men will be savage with hunger. But no matter how desperate for food they are, you must prevent them from stealing even one beef. If they do, they shall never see home again.”
    “I myself will guard the herds of the Sun-Titan,” said Ulysses, “and not one beef shall be taken. Thank you, wise Teiresias.”
    “Go now. Take your men aboard the ship and go. Sail up the black river toward the upper air.”
    “But now that I am here and have come such a long and weary way to get here, may I not see some of the famous sights? May I not see Orion hunting, Minos judging? May I not dance with the heroes in the Fields of Asphodel? May I not see Tantalus thirsting, or my own grandfather, Sisyphus, rolling his eternal stone up the hill?”
    “No,” said Teiresias. “It is better that you go. You have been here too long already, I fear; too long exposed to these bone-bleaching airs. You may already be tainted with death, you and your men, making your fates too heavy for any ship to hold. Embark then. Sail up the black river. Do not look back. Remember our advice and forget our reproaches, and do not return until you are properly dead.”
    Ulysses ordered his men aboard. He put down we helm. There was still no wind. But the sails stretched taut, and the ship pushed upriver. Heeding the last words of the old sage, he did not look back, but he heard the voice of his mother calling, “Good-bye … good-bye …” until it grew faint as his own breath.

The Wandering Rocks
    T HEY SAILED OUT OF darkness into light, and their hearts danced with joy to see blue water and blue sky again. A fair west wind plumped their sails and sped them toward home. “If this wind keeps blowing,”