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“Of all the mortals on the earth, there are only a few the gods will ever hear of. Consider the practicalities. By the time we learn their names, they are dead. They must be meteors indeed to catch our attention. The merely good: you are dust to us.”
It’s summer when he arrives.
He comes in a ship that, compared to all the ships Ten has seen in his life, is not much more than a rowing boat. It holds a naked woman at the front, clothes carved to cover her, simulating wind. The state of the figurehead is a well enough representation of what the rest of the ship looks like. Flaked, broken, and beaten, it docks.
Ten is joined by the animals of the island as he watches. With the sound of the pigs squealing in Ten’s ears at the thought of another meal, the crew anchor the boat. The roots of the trees pulse underneath the earth as the men set foot onto the island.
As the crew struggles through the sand, Ten walks back to his home behind the hills. With the years, Ten feels like he has become as much of an animal as the ones he keeps around him. He lights the hearth and starts cooking. And like always he is ready, lying in wait, like his pigs that are bathing under the sun on his front steps.
They are boisterous and loud, like all of the ones before them.
Ten offers them wine, a buffet, conversation, and a place to spend the night.
They are thankful, they feast. One of them asks if such a delicate boy as him can manage all of this alone. Ten answers, yes, and more.
He can feel the threads of his spell knotted around the room, ready to be pulled.
They drink and drink and drink so much their mouths turn red. It looks like blood is gushing out.
There is an obvious leader. The man who had knocked on his door first and asked for a meal is now the same man that indulges his crew. He listens to them talk and smiles at their playful bickering, even joins in himself. He is like a father figure to the younger and a trustworthy comrade to the elder.
Ten is not naive, not anymore. He is not the same boy from years ago that let a horde of thirsty seaman into his home and expected to be treated with respect. The boy who was surprised when the men with their full stomachs turned to him with filthy grins.
But these men before him are also frail, worn out, young souls aged into exhausted bodies. And that is what sets them apart from all that come through.
The captain comes back to Ten after his second glass of wine. Underneath the filth and the wiry hair, he is handsome. He smiles and tells Ten about his crew, the trial they had to face before coming here. It was a cave, and in it lived a spider with a thousand legs. It ate half his crew, the captain says. Traumatized the other half.
Ten doesn’t want to hear about the spider, he knows her all too well. Knows her from before. Before this. Before the animals, before the roots of the trees, before the island, before he knew there was magic running through his veins. Before his punishment when he finally used it.
Ten doesn’t want to hear about the spider, so he asks for another story. The man complies and gives him a different one.
Taeyong came to him a month ago. Unannounced and full of smiles dripping with seduction, ready with news about Ten’s siblings that he would rather pretend don’t exist. Taeyong spent a week in Ten’s bed before pulling on his winged sandals and telling him that a man was coming. A lot of men come through here, Ten had responded. Taeyong had just smiled.
He had a guess when his lioness started pacing two weeks after Taeyong left, the restlessness in her bones indicating an arrival, his assumption became clearer when the boat docked, but when the captain tells Ten his name is Kun, he knows for sure.
Kun is a good storyteller. Unfortunately, even if he is favored by the gods, that is not enough to get him to where he wants to go most.
He talks about being locked in a wooden horse, painting a city red in blood while the moon is full. About leaving behind the war too fast and being thrown onto the wrong waters.
He talks about lotuses and roaring campfires and songs. He talks about opening a present too soon that was given to him by the god of wind, and how he and his men paid the price for it. He does not talk about home.
Twelve years since the war started, two years since it ended, and yet Kun and his men are still on their way to get back to their loved ones.
Ten isn’t the only one that hangs onto every word that pushes past the captain’s lips, all the men in the room do. They were all there, through the hardships, and like a unit they nod. Agreeing. Yes, this happened to us. Yes, tell it again.
When he looks around, Ten can count the years spent fighting in their eyes. For the first time, for the very first time in a long while, Ten thinks maybe these men deserve to make it out of his lion’s den alive.
The spell still hangs in the air, hot on every man’s mouth. Ten pours himself a cup of wine, his first of the evening. He puts it to his lips and drinks. When he puts the cup back down he meets Kun’s eyes, crow’s feet stark in the corners. Along with the beard, it makes him look older than one would expect.
Ten leans in closer and lets his hand settle onto Kun’s thigh. Kun leans forward as he pours both of them another cup. As Ten drinks, the threads in the room disappear into the fog in his head. Tonight, Ten thinks, it will be the other way around. He looks up at Kun through his eyelashes and says, tell me another story.
The next morning, Kun takes him out to see the ship. Up close, it is an even bigger wreckage. Of the three sail posts, only one is still standing. The sails themselves are gone, some of the pieces strewn about the broken deck. With the many leaks, it’s a miracle they even made it onto the island without sinking.
“Scylla did all this?” Ten can feel his blood boil. If she was still in her human form, she would have laughed at him right now. That skating, painstaking laugh, like nails on linoleum tiles. See what your magic can do, Tennie, see what it can create. He can almost hear her whisper it.
“We started out with twelve ships,” Kun takes a deep breath before continuing, “I lost most of my men long before we encountered Scylla.”
Ten can’t help but feel for him. Two years they’ve been at sea, trying to find their way home. How many more will it take?
“Chittaphon, witch of Aeaea, my men are as broken as the ship you see before you,” Kun says. “I would not ask if it wasn’t necessary, but if we go out to sea like this, we won’t even make it twenty miles west.”
Ten thinks back to the damaged men in his dining hall last night. He looks at their equally battered captain standing before him. Twenty miles is generous.
“Can we have a month to regroup, rebuild our ship?”
Taeyong said that a man will appear, he did not say anything else. He did not give a name or a purpose. He did not give any advice. But nonetheless, it was special, for all Taeyong ever brings is rumors about Ten’s siblings having gone off the rails with their magic, and an overload of sexual remarks.
Ten will never admit to his loneliness. He has his animals, his lioness, the trees. The whole entire island is his and he is theirs. But still, he almost betrays himself with how quick he wants to answer.
“I think I can do a month.” Kun’s body visibly relaxes at the answer. The tension leaves his shoulders and a relieved smile passes over his face. Ten puts on his cockiest grin. “Also, Kun, if you can call me Ten at night you can also say it in daylight.”
The first person Ten is officially introduced to is Doyoung, Kun’s second in command and right-hand man. He is the most stoic person Ten has ever met in his life, outclassing even Ten’s own father. Ten takes an instant disliking to him, and from the looks Doyoung gives him in return, the feeling seems to be mutual.
Johnny is a breath of fresh air. His smile is more charming and wider than anyone’s, and his heart even bigger. Despite the years, his humor has not left him. Maybe in a different life, Ten would have taken a husband like that. Settled down on a plot of land and lived out their days until both of them grew old and grey. But this is not that other universe. In this one, Ten does not die, and he has seen too much in his immortal life to be satisfied with easy smiles and quick jokes. Still, Johnny’s friendship comes easy, and because of it, the others’ too.
After Johnny’s acceptance, the rest come to him by themselves, one by one. Yangyang starts asking him to join Kun with the judging of the games he keeps thinking up. One day it will be discus throwing and the next a race through the mountains.
The nymphs Ten was sent over the years, boys that were exiled by disappointed fathers and angry mothers, start to mingle with the newcomers as the days pass. Ten is happy to see his household come out of the shadows. The one they gravitate towards the most is Mark, who makes them join every competition Yangyang thinks up.
Dejun is the last one to come to Ten, and when he does, it is not with fear but admiration.
“Is she yours?” he asks one evening while Ten sits by the fireplace.
Ten smiles behind his glass of wine. He scratches the lioness under her chin. “She is as much mine as I am hers, I suppose.”
“May I?” The eagerness in his voice is evident.
Ten’s smile widens. “You may.”
From that point on Dejun becomes his shadow. He wants to know everything about the herbs Ten keeps, about the animals surrounding the house that never stray too far, the island, Dejun says, tell me about it.
It would be a lie to say Ten doesn’t enjoy the attention, for the first time in his life he isn’t shunned for his magic. But still, he is selective in what he reveals. He has guarded the secrets of his island ever since he first set foot here. The island’s weaknesses are also his.
Dejun isn’t the only one who wants to know his stories.
Kun looks at him like he is a puzzle. He looks at him, and the island, and the pigs, and Ten can see the gears turning in his head, trying to get the pieces to fit.
Ten keeps his stories even closer than his secrets. The thought that when Kun leaves, Ten will be reduced to just another story the captain will share, not leaving the back of his mind.
But when Kun tells him about the Cyclops that had eaten some of his men while they were still breathing, Ten in turn reveals the truth about his heritage. He tells Kun about his sister in the east, having gone mad after bearing a child that was half minotaur. He tells Kun about his brother further up north, said to be producing dragons and other creatures that are more fit to roam the underworld than the world of the living.
Kun asks if he has ever made contact with them since he was forced to move to the island. Ten says, yes, just once, and doesn’t elaborate. He does not tell Kun about Hendery, the inventor he met when he sailed to his sister’s kingdom to help her bear the minotaur.
Hendery who dreamt of a world that Ten knew didn’t exist, but did not have the heart to tell him so. Especially not when Hendery had already promised his son Donghyuck that life out there, outside of the kingdom, would be different. Free is the word Hendery used. Free, Donghyuck would repeat back to him, they would be free.
Ten had seen the sketches, had seen the prototypes. Wings. If there was one mortal that could make himself fly, it would be Hendery.
Ten spent a season with him and his son. The only reminder of his stay a loom standing in the corner of his home given to him as a farewell present. Like all things Hendery makes, it is the finest of its craft. But it goes unused, for Ten does not know how to spin.
It stays collecting dust until the day Mark asks if he can teach Renjun how to weave. And who is Ten to deny this boy to teach one of his nymphs to use his loom. This boy who’s face flushes so quickly from embarrassment you would think he was twenty years younger. This boy who has a habit of hiding his quirky smiles behind his hands and who turns sideways when his face goes red.
There is a reason his nymphs are pulled to him. And for all that Mark only has a couple of years on them, he takes on the role of shadow leader without complaint.
Kun talks throughout dinner every evening, sharing stories from his travels. His men tell Ten about their own island, Ithaca. A land of goats and olives. Johnny tells him about the harvest, about the best time to plow and sow. Yangyang is all too happy to talk about the annual tournaments, especially the chariot races.
After sunset, when the crew has already made their way to their respective beds, most of them opting to sleep outside under the stars now that the weather will still allow it, Ten takes Kun up to his room.
When Ten first laid eyes on him, he wanted to ruin the man before him. Make that mouth that always had another story, another tale, speechless for once.
And he does. But over the weeks, he discovers that Kun will do that to him just the same. There is passion, in the way they fuck. Once again it reminds Ten of his animals, his pigs. If humans are not much more than animals, than how far from them stand immortals.
What Ten also discovers, is the fact both he and Kun keep their weapons close to their chests even in the late hours of the night. When both of them are spent and sweating on the mattress, their bodies may be laid bare, but their minds stay locked.
On one autumn evening, after Ten has just spent two rounds getting fucked into the mattress, crying out so loud he is considering putting silencing spells around his room, Kun asks him the question they both know has been haunting the back of his mind.
“Winter is coming,” Kun says. The fact that if he sails now he could make it home before the ice sets in, Ten keeps to himself. After all, that is not what Kun wants to hear. And besides, the reparations on the ship are not done, the men just as much as their captain seeming to put it off to a later date.
Ten knows what Kun wants him to say, to offer. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it back down. Ten would rather throw himself off a cliff than give in and admit.
To his surprise, Kun offers it himself.
“I would stay the winter. Wait out the ice and sail when the water is settled back into its natural flow.”
It’s more of a statement than a question. Kun turns to him with calm eyes and an open face. “If you’ll have me.”
There is no shame in his words. Just like there was no shame when he first appeared at Ten’s door, pleading for food and a place to rest for his men. Just like there was no shame when he asked for his first month.
It sets something aflame in Ten’s stomach, the fact that Kun who will not back down. This man that is not afraid to ask for the things he wants.
“I’ll have you and your men.” Ten rolls over so Kun cannot see his delight. “You can drag your ship to one of the caves in the morning.”
A month turns into two, turns into three. It is slow but gradual, the way things change.
Johnny likes helping out in the kitchen, all the different herbs enchant him just as much as they do Dejun. Ten spends hours talking to them about their special handlings and different uses. He teaches Johnny how to cut wild laurel and grind chicory the right way. And more often than not, Dejun accompanies Ten on his walks across the island in the morning. Helping to gather leaves and flowers, roots and berries. Ten’s lioness walking beside Dejun as he carries his basket full of gatherings back to the house.
Yangyang is unable to sit still. Despite his loudness, his joyful cries and shimmering eyes, Ten can see war has been the hardest on him. He jumps when Jeno puts down plates too hard and twitches when Kun raises his voice. But under the trauma, he continues on fighting, desperate not to let himself be reduced to just a shell of his former self.
When the first day of winter hits, Ten takes all of them out to the bay to dip their toes in the first icy waves. None of them dare take the first step. The water has not been kind to them. Xuxi, the god of the seas who carries his trident anywhere he goes, is the closest enemy they have.
After the lotus eaters with their hallucinations, Kun arrived with his twelve ships on an island inhabited by a Cyclops. Some of his men were eaten by the giant with one eye. To escape, Kun had to trick the Cyclops and ended up blinding him. I did not know he was a son of Xuxi, Kun tells Ten. Ever since then, bad luck has followed them and their ships wherever they go.
Not even the fact that he is favored by all the other gods has kept Kun out of Xuxi’s claws. The only luck he has is that Xuxi cannot kill him. When Ten asks him how he knows this, Kun responds with, if he was allowed to, he would have done it already.
Water is not something Kun and his crew like to willingly succumb to anymore. Especially not if there isn’t a wooden cover of protection underneath their feet. And stepping into this bay, that’s so open and filled with unseeable dangers, feels like them akin to ritual suicide. Ten though, Ten delights in the looks on their faces when he says Xuxi will not come for them here.
Kun’s men have not seen what he can do, have not heard the spells that come out of his mouth. They think he is a kitchen witch, but his nymphs, they know better. They have seen the seaman come and enter Ten’s home. They have seen how most of them do not leave.
From the corner of his eye, Ten sees Jaemin nod to Mark. Mark hoists Jisung, the youngest of his nymphs, up on his shoulders and trudges through the sand into the water. He throws both himself and Jisung under. When they break the surface again it is with loud screams. Not of fear, but of the cold. The screaming is soon followed by the shrieking laughter of Jeno and Yangyang, telling the pair they are a bunch of idiots but running to join them in the water nonetheless.
That evening, sitting in front of the hearth after dinner, Kun asks him if Ten was going to kill him and his men that first spring day, when they arrived as a wreckage on his doorstep.
Ten tilts his chin up and keeps his eyes focused on the fire. “Yes.” He has tricked and deceived many men, lied to even more, but Kun has been rubbing off on him. Ten is not ashamed. So he looks Kun square in the eye as he says, “I was going to feed you to the pigs.”
Kun’s body doesn’t siege. There is no tightening of muscles at a threat. Instead, he takes a deep breath. “But you didn’t.”
“Taeyong came to me, told me a man would arrive.” Ten picks up his abandoned cup of wine and refills it.
Kun shifts in his chair. He motions for Ten to add more wine to his cup as well.
“Did you spare us because the messenger told you to?”
Taeyong hadn’t told him anything, but mentioning Kun’s arrival was already enough. Ten could guess for himself that the gods had something in store for Kun. What that was, only time could tell.
“No,” Ten says, smiling wanly. Ten hands Kun his cup, their fingers touch, neither rushes to pull away.
“Do you keep me around because the gods want you to?”
Ten has to let out a silent laugh at that. When has he ever obeyed the same people that sent him to rot.
“No,” Ten tells him, “I keep you around because I want you here.”
Later, in Ten’s golden four poster bed, he tells Kun he wants it slow. With every thrust, every urge to speed up, Kun goes slower. He drags it out as he peppers Ten in kisses and small bites, swipes his tongue over the wounds even though the bruises won’t appear on Ten’s immortal skin.
Ten digs his heels into Kun’s back and urges him deeper. He scratches at Kun’s shoulders while tears stream down his face and he sobs into a kiss. Ten may not be able to feel pain, but Kun is teaching him very well how to hurt with pleasure.
They make love for the first time that night.
Mark pricks himself on a spool and Renjun rushes to Ten to ask him to heal the cut. The rest of the nymphs and Dejun stand around as they see the blood stop gushing out and the skin reknit itself. Jisung comes to prod at it, amazed at how slow the human body heals.
As Ten traces the deep white scar on Kun’s leg—an accident that happened during a boar hunt when he was younger—he asks Kun if he wants him to heal his bruises. Kun immediately refuses. The scars are what make him his own person. This is my body, he says, I won’t recognize myself without them.
To his surprise, Doyoung does come to him. The stoic man has not yet warmed up to Ten. He keeps to Kun, Johnny, and surprisingly Jeno’s sides, but to himself even more.
Ten knows it’s not all personal. He’d asked Kun about it once, what happened to Doyoung. Instead of telling him outright, Kun told him a story about a Greek hero by the name of Yuta.
Yuta, the man with the smile of a thousand suns when he was happy, and also the man who carried the biggest grudge in the entire camp. He wouldn’t fight in the war because of an argument with his father, so his lover put on his armor and went out to fight for him.
Sicheng. Kun’s eyes turn sad when he says the name. When he died, a part of Yuta died as well. He spent a couple of days locked in his tent, just like he had done during the dispute with his father. He went quiet, very quiet. Every man carries his grief in different ways, but Kun thinks Doyoung and Yuta’s show some resemblance.
Ten passes another log of wood to Kun, standing ready with his ax. “What happened after?” he asks.
“Yuta’s grief made him go mad, he tore through Troy and flattened the city to the ground before meeting his end. He stormed Troy recklessly, maybe because the only thing on his mind was to avenge Sicheng’s death.” Kun splits the log in half and throws both halves onto the growing pile for tonight’s fire. His muscles are slowly strengthening, more flesh is adding to his bones. “Or maybe he did it to throw himself into his own demise so they could be reunited. I think it was a bit of both.”
There is a long angry cut that travels from Doyoung’s shoulder all the way down to his lower back. Ten tells him to lay down as he gathers up his herbs to make a salve. The wound never healed well and he has to cut some of the skin away to give it a chance to sew itself together properly. Doyoung does not talk as Ten works, he does not scream while Ten cuts his skin and chants his spells under his breath. The only form of discomfort that he shows is a clenched jaw.
Even with the magic, it takes a long time to heal. And once again, Ten is reminded of how fragile human bodies are.
Every week, Ten reapplies the salve onto Doyoung’s cut. And every week, Doyoung strings more and more words together to form sentences. Instead of Ten’s usual one way talk, their conversations are starting to feel more like dialogues.
Ten learns that Doyoung loves the sheep but hates the pigs that linger around the house. And that he does not in the slightest feel intimidated by the wolfs that sometimes come out of the woods.
Doyoung talks about the fields surrounding his own house, about how his mother would have to scold all the neighboring children because they never stopped stealing from their apple trees. He confides in Ten where to buy the best goat cheese on all of Ithaca, and in the late hours of the evenings, he whispers that he is afraid of going home.
Ten has seen it in all of them, the fear. They have been gone for thirteen years now, a lot can happen in that time. What if there is nothing to come home to?
But unlike all of them, Doyoung confesses he is also afraid of it being the exact same as when he left. How can I go back to plucking apples in summer, plowing the fields and riding horses? How can I go back to normal after what I’ve seen?
It isn’t until the seventh week into this arrangement that they have, that Doyoung says his name.
“Jaehyun.”
At first, Ten thinks he misheard. “What?”
“Jaehyun, that was his name.”
Ten holds him as Doyoung breaks down. As more words spill over his lips than he has said in months. He holds him close and listens to the tragedy of facing Scylla. Having to see Jaehyun get thrown over the ship and into the deep waters, before being picked up by one of the many legs of the spider.
Ten sits there with his guts having dropped to his stomach, as he listens to how his creation ate the lover of the man he is now comforting. He wants to say he is sorry, apologize, but he does not have that right, so he shuts up and strokes Doyoung’s back as the latter streaks his shirt with tears.
“I hate that the last memory I have of him is the terror on his face,” Doyoung says. “Every time I think of him I can’t help but see that look.”
Ten wonders if Doyoung would burn an entire city to the ground for his lover like Yuta did. He looks at the man before him wiping angrily at his eyes and thinks yes. Yes he would.
As winter turns to spring, Kun talks to him for the first time about his husband. Ten has heard about his son before, given birth to by an unnamed midwife. The child’s name is Chenle and Kun loves to talk about him. He wishes that when he gets home, there is still something he can teach his son.
Kun has mentioned his husband here and there. But it’s only when Ten outright asks about him that Kun delves into details.
Taeil, the humble husband. Brother of the woman that evoked the entire Trojan War. He is clever in his own way, hides it behind gummy smiles. You wouldn’t think it at first sight, Kun says, but he is the funniest man you’ll ever meet.
He isn’t boisterous or loud, has never raised his voice. But that is because he doesn’t have to. His silence is his strongest weapon. It speaks greater than all my words ever will, admits Kun. Taeil’s favorite season is spring and he makes the meanest omelet. When there is a storm, he plays the lyre to calm Chenle down.
Kun went to war for him. He went to war to protect Taeil and his son. When the army came knocking on his door for recruitment, Kun refused. He wanted to stay home with his husband and child. But Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army, knew how clever Kun’s mind was. He threatened to take Chenle, and Kun being nothing more than a king of a small country that thrives on harvest instead of violence, could do nothing about it. So he pleaded with Agamemnon to let his husband stay and raise their child, while Kun in return would come and win him the war.
Ten knows Kun treats his time here like a simulation for what it will be like when he gets back home. Knows that Kun and his men are trying to relearn what it’s like to not live in constant fear, to not be surrounded by death.
Johnny does it by going out to fish and taking a part in cooking dinner, Doyoung does it by helping around the garden, Kun by chopping firewood and treating Ten like he would a lover.
The thought that Kun will go back to his husband, will fit himself around another body at night and play house on a different island doesn’t bother Ten as much as he thought it would.
“And his voice,” Kun drops his own down to a whisper, “it could match Orpheus’s in its beauty.”
Ten raises his head from the loom he is bent over, having asked Mark for his own personal weaving classes so the thing won’t go back to collecting dust when they set sail.
“Orpheus?” Ten asks, having never heard of the name.
“The only man to ever enter the underworld and make it back out alive.” Kun’s eyes sparkle with joy as he gears up to tell another tale.
The thought that Kun will leave doesn’t hurt as much as Ten thinks it should, but that does not mean it doesn’t hurt at all.
The nymphs notice it too, the moment the men start to get restless.
The ship has been built and winter has passed and yet, they are not out at sea. The men start talking about Ithaca more. Wouldn’t it be great to be home?
Johnny’s laugh loses its boisterousness. And whereas Yangyang seems to slow down by the day, Doyoung becomes restless. Even Mark’s patience starts to wear thin.
They have fallen in love with the island and Ten and his nymphs desperately try to keep reminding them of it.
Renjun takes Mark out for swims at the bay. Jisung spurs on Johnny to go for walks around the island, to look at the beauty of it. Jaemin challenges Yangyang to game after game. Cards, archery, anything. When Jeno has run out of ideas to occupy Doyoung, he proposes to expand the garden and thrusts a shovel into Doyoung’s hands.
Even Ten’s own lioness comes to them more often than before and lets herself be pet. It seems not only the immortals but also the animals have found comfort in the humans and their lifestyles.
The only one that does not need convincing is Dejun, he is content where he is. He loves the island and the island loves him back. The birds are not afraid to sit on his shoulders, the wolves eat out of his hand, and sometimes it seems like the trees bend towards him as he walks past.
Ten asks him if he wants to go home. Dejun responds that there is no home for him to go to. The question if maybe he could find it here, Ten keeps to himself.
It’s hard on Kun. His crew wants to stay as much as they want to leave. But their hushed voices keep on repeating in the back of his mind. Is he going to make us stay forever?
Ten lets himself be taken apart and put together every evening, and in return, Kun lets him do the same. While Ten’s skin stays honey smooth, Kun’s gets covered and littered in love marks and bites. There are permanent red lines on his back. Ten knows it’s desperation that’s making them act this way.
He knows he can keep Kun and his men here forever, but he does not want to be their jailor.
They are living on borrowed time. Because the gods have something in store for Kun. He still has to play his piece in their game of chess, and Ten knows they will not rest until he does.
The god of the sky and thunder starts to come to him in his dreams. Ten tries to push the bolts of lightning away. He brews a sleeping drought for dreamless sleep but it does not help. The face of the sky master is always there at the edge of his vision, angry and lingering. Let him go, he hears the voice say in his head. Chittaphon, witch of Aeaea, let him go.
It comes to a standoff one night as thunder strikes down on the beach. Kun is restless in his own dreams beside him as Ten slips out of bed and goes to face the king of the gods.
Ten has no chance to get out a word before a vision is pushed upon him. His mind is clouded with sheep and blood. Kun in the middle of it all, stood at a crossroad between the mortal land and the one down under. And a man, Tiresias, Ten’s mind supplies even though he has never seen him before.
When the vision vanishes and the clouds in his mind subside, Ten’s fury rises. He looks Jungwoo in his eyes because that is what Ten used to do with his father when he didn’t agree. He remembers how he paid for every time he spoke up, can still smell the blood on the linoleum tiles of the palace. But Ten is not afraid. He squares his shoulders and raises his voice.
“He comes from death and you dare send him back.”
Jungwoo is the god of all gods. Father of all humans. He could torch Ten where he stands with a snap of his fingers. In the midst of all his anger, Ten finds he does not care.
He can feel the earth pulse underneath the soles of his feet. Ten might not have the ability to draw up creatures from the shadows like his brother can, or the ability to infiltrate the minds of people like his sister does to her subjects, but he has this island. And just like he would die protecting it, so will it die for him.
“I will not tell him about the prophecy.”
Ten knows death is not the worst punishment you can receive for standing up to a god like this. Ten knows about Prometheus, Jungwoo’s childhood friend who had betrayed him and now spends his days chained to a stone, an eagle coming to pick out his liver every single morning.
There is no fear in Jungwoo’s eyes, for he does not know fear. But there is a hint of admiration.
“You do not need to,” Jungwoo says, and leaves. He takes his storms and lightning bolts with him. The night is clear, there is no star in the sky, the only witness is the moon. She sees how Ten drops down onto his knees, how he buries his hands in the sand to ground himself as he shakes off the adrenaline waves.
His lioness comes running and licks at his face as his entire body trembles. He lets her, even leans into it. Right now he will accept any form of comfort.
Kun comes to him first that morning. After breakfast, he huddles Ten close and says that he has to leave now, or he never will.
Kun leaving of his own accord does not break his heart. It is his choice and not one that Ten will make for him. This island is not a jail and Ten will not keep him against his will.
What does break Ten’s heart, as he takes Kun for a walk through the meadow still sprinkled with morning dew, is the fact that home is not where Kun is headed. Not yet. It breaks Ten’s heart to tell him this, to relay the information of his vision.
The plan Ten presents is simple. He has sheep that Kun can take and slaughter, use the blood from them to speak with Tiresias. Keeping off the dead before they can get to the blood is going to be hard. But most difficult of all is not knowing who he will see there. Will he see his son Chenle stand between the dead? His husband?
Kun stops in his tracks. “I’m going to have to stand there and look Yuta and Sicheng in the face and be okay with it. Be okay with the fact that I got to live and they didn’t.”
As Kun speaks the words, Ten’s blood boils again, but he exchanges his anger for comfort and takes Kun into his arms. Ten has no words to give him, nothing to say to ease the thoughts racing through Kun’s mind. He has nothing to say because in the end the gods always get what they want, no matter the cost. And so Ten says nothing, just holds Kun until his breathing has slowed down.
The wait is agony. Ten has spent years on his island in solitude, before the angry fathers who didn’t know how to get their sons to behave started sending them to him. But now, he has someone’s presence to miss. The feeling settles in his bones, along with the worry.
Jeno and Jisung weep daily with their fear. Jaemin tries to be strong for them, stepping into the leading role after Mark vacated it, but still, he sits at the dining table with red-rimmed eyes. Renjun spends all his time behind the loom, weaving. He is careless but does not stop no matter how many times he nicks himself, no many how many times he has to start over because his head isn’t with him.
Ten tries to distract them with tasks and games but it is a useless effort. His nymphs have gotten as used to the captain and his crew as he has. The difference now that they are gone is stark.
Jaemin joins him one night as Ten sits under the stars, overlooking the waves. He sits down next to Ten, keeping a respective distance.
Ten wasn’t kind to any of them when they arrived, has never been kind to any of his nymphs. He didn’t want them and still, they kept coming. Even though they lived in the shadows of his home, he could feel their presence, their eyes on the back of his head.
When Kun and his men got to know his nymphs, Ten finally did too.
“When they come back,” Jaemin starts off. He takes a deep breath and pushes his question out, “Is there a chance we can join them?”
“You want to leave.” Ten doesn’t ask it like a question. He hears Jaemin inhale sharply.
Ten has seen the way Jeno clings to Doyoung, sticking to him, trying to impress him, imitate him. Like a younger brother would an older. Ten thinks about the way Renjun’s face lights up when Mark tells him he did a good job on the loom. Or the way Jisung smiles cheekily when Johnny laughs the loudest at his jokes.
Jaemin and Yangyang have become each other’s biggest competition, trying to outdo one another in every situation they encounter, often making Dejun decide on who did better. Dejun never picks one, says he himself can top them both and proceeds to blow them out of the water.
But Ten has also seen the way Yangyang calms down around Jaemin, has seen the way his body shakes less, has heard their shared whispers of it’s going to be alright.
“You know you would have to live between mortals,” Ten says. “How are you going to bear the smell.”
Jaemin’s face slips into a grin. “I think we’re going to have to clog our nostrils with beeswax.”
“Better take a lot with you then, when they come back.”
Jaemin shifts his body and rests his head against Ten’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Ten puts his arm around Jaemin’s small frame and pulls him closer, lays his head on top of Jaemin’s. Together they sit and, as the moon gets dragged across the sky by Selene and her chariot, they wait.
Jisung is the one who spots the ship first. He rushes back home to gather up Ten and the rest of the nymphs. As one, they move together with the island to welcome the humans back. The pigs do not squeal, the birds sit in the trees and do not sing. Ten’s lioness stands still as stone beside him.
The ship docks and the men stumble out one by one. They don’t even pretend to keep themselves strong as death sticks to their skin. Ten can almost smell the rot in the air. When Dejun falls to his knees on the ground, Ten is there to catch him. As Dejun puts his face to the sand, Ten whispers in his ear, it’s okay now.
He ushers them back to the house and lets them scrub themselves clean until their skin is red. All the while he tells them, you did well, you went to the underworld as mortals and walked out alive.
The only good news comes from Kun. They live, he tells Ten under his breath, my son and husband, they live.
Kun saw Agamemnon between the dead and couldn’t gather up the urge to be mad at him for taking him from his family, not when the man before him was permanently taken from his own. He met Yuta and Sicheng, together at last, but envious of the life that still courses through Kun’s veins.
“My mother,” he says, “she was there.” He simulates the way she wanted to hold her son, resting both of his hands on Ten’s cheeks. “But her hands went through my skin, Ten. She couldn’t even touch me.”
Jaemin helps Yangyang get a piece of bread down his throat as Renjun sits by Mark’s side and tries to distract him with talk about anything other than what they had faced in Hades’s domain.
Jisung and Jeno rush around the room with wine, Johnny and Doyoung gratefully drinking cup after cup.
Kun explains that they can finally go home, that is what Tiresias told him. But of course, there are still trials they must face, for the gods are never done with their games.
He and his men will have to travel past the island of Thrinacia, where the cattle of the sun graze. Whatever he does, Kun must not harm them in any way. Then, he will sail home where there will be men waiting for him. Suitors that have come to ask for his husband’s hand in marriage. He will have to beat them, with tricks or violence, and reclaim his throne.
Ten holds his hand in a firm grip as Kun finishes talking. In his mind, Ten goes over the sea routes, remembers the way he sailed when he went to his sister.
“There are sirens you will pass also, after the cattle,” he tells Kun and his men. “Do not give in to them, they will lead your ship straight to the rocks.”
“You can take our beeswax and put it in your ears,” Jaemin says from across the table, looking at Ten for confirmation.
Ten smiles at him. “Beeswax would do the trick.”
They all drink so much, Ten almost runs out of wine. But that is a price he is willing to pay. Because slowly color starts to push its way back to their cheeks and laughter spills out of their mouths again.
When Johnny stands up and does his parrot impression, complete with movement and all, Doyoung for the first time doesn’t tell him to shut up.
Slowly as the night progresses, life starts to trickle back into them.
Doyoung stays behind while everyone else stumbles off to bed. Ten rests his hand on his shoulder, urges him to speak.
“He wasn’t there, between them. I didn’t see him.”
It was to be expected. Souls can only cross over into the realm of the dead if they pay the ferryman to take them there. Jaehyun’s body was taken if not by Scylla, then by the sea, and so there was no way to give him a proper funeral. No time to put coins on his eyes so he can pay the toll.
What this means is that Jaehyun’s soul has not yet found rest, it probably resides on the riverbank of the Styx where it has to wait a decade before the ferryman takes pity on him and lets him swim across.
“Did you do what I told you to?”
Doyoung buries his head in his hands. “What if it doesn’t work,” he says in a gush. His voice is raw from sorrow. “What if Tiresias doesn’t keep his promise.”
Ten told Doyoung to give the coins to Tiresias, for if there is one person that can pass them along to Jaehyun, it would be the prophet of the dead.
“But he promised?” Ten asks.
Doyoung lets out a laugh to mask a sob, “He took one look at me and said he would.”
There is no humor here but still, Ten mimics Doyoung’s laugh. “Well you do look a mess. I’d probably take pity on you too.”
Doyoung shakes Ten’s hand off his shoulder but Ten can see he is trying to fight a smile.
“All we can do now is trust the man on his word Doyoung. You did all you could.”
Doyoung nods and wipes his nose on his sleeve, ready to slip back into his facade. “I know,” he says. “I just hope it’s enough.”
Before going to bed himself, Ten stops by Dejun’s room to offer him some of the residue of the dreamless sleep potion. He refuses. So Ten sits by his bedside as Dejun lets Ten card a hand through his hair until he falls asleep.
That night, when Ten crawls into bed and Kun wraps himself around him, Ten’s head tucked against his chest, he whispers the rest of Tiresias’s prophecy into his hair.
After Kun has taken back his kingdom, he must set sail again, to satisfy Xuxi.
He must collect a ram, a boar, and a bull and then go home to offer them to the lord of the sea. If he does so, Tiresias said he will get a peaceful death. The sea will come for him in the end, at old age when he is surrounded by the people he loves.
Kun tightens his grip around Ten’s body as he asks in a whisper, “Will it ever end?”
Ten clings back against Kun’s body and says, “Yes, Kun. I promise it will.”
The day before Kun and his crew leave, Ten takes him up a hill to lay in the grass as the hot summer sun strikes down on them.
Ten swipes Kun’s hair out of his face so he can look him in the eyes. They need to cut it again, before he leaves.
“The nymphs want to come with you.”
Kun shakes his head immediately, “They cannot. I won’t let them.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice. If you refuse they’ll probably hide below decks and reveal themselves when you are too far to turn back around.”
Kun chuckles and draws Ten into a kiss. “And you just agreed to this?”
Ten places his hand on Kun’s cheek and kisses him back. “What more do I have to offer them here? At least they can be happy in Ithaca.” Ten kisses him again. “Between the goats.” And again. “And the olive farms.” He rolls them over so he can sit on top of Kun.
Kun settles his hands on Ten’s thighs. “Why do I get the feeling you’re looking for a fight?”
“That’s because I am,” Ten mutters as he leans down for another kiss.
Kun stops him with a hand to his chest. “Talk to me.”
“Can’t I just ride you until I can’t feel my legs anymore?”
“Yes, after,” Kun says. “First talk to me.”
Ten rolls off of him with a sigh and brings his knees to his chest. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what, Ten?” Kun asks as he sits up. Ten can feel his eyes boring into the back of his head, he has never felt so small.
“I’m not going to ask, Kun. It wouldn’t be fair.” Ten looks sideways to face him, arms still wrapped around his legs. “And besides, I already know the answer.”
Kun doesn’t deny it.
They sit in silence, unsaid words like a border between them. Ten doesn’t want it to end here, doesn’t want his last day, his last hours with Kun to be spent like this.
“I can’t take the nymphs, Ten.”
“Why not?”
Kun audibly swallows. When he speaks, his voice is barely more than a whisper. “There is still something I haven’t told you.” Ten’s head whips around so fast he is amazed he doesn’t get whiplash.
“What,” he snarls.
“Tiresias he,” Kun shakes his head and falls silent again.
“Spit it out.”
“He said I would make it back home alive. He didn’t say anything about the others.”
Ten wants to curse him out. Drag his name through the mud and back. “When the bards sing their songs about you in the taverns, I hope they mention how the great Kun wasn’t only a liar but also a coward.”
“That’s fucking rich coming from you,” Kun snaps back.
Ten knows he has no right to be mad. “What do you want me to say, Kun?” He can feel the earth shift underneath him, can hear the birds take flight from their nests in the trees. “Do you want me to plead you to stay. Throw myself at your feet and beg you not to leave.”
“Why not come with me?” Kun challenges. “You cannot be scared of the gods.” Ten wants to rip that cocky smirk off of his face. Kun does not look away from Ten’s anger. He leans back on his hands and tilts his chin up. The movement is like a blow to Ten’s heart. He’s going to miss that stubbornness.
“And do what? Insert myself into your marriage? Into your bed, sleep between you and your husband?”
“Just admit that the gods have got you trapped as much as they have me.”
“I am bound to this island. I do not have a choice. You, on the other hand, do. And you made it Kun. You made it when you decided to fight that war, and you made it when you sailed home from it ten years later. You make that choice every single day. And every single day you pick the same option. You are not a victim in this scenario.” Ten exhales through his teeth, fighting to get his temper back under control.
Kun’s shoulders slump back under the truth. “I am no Yuta, Ten. I am no hero.”
“Maybe not in body. But in mind, you defeat Yuta ten times over.”
Kun snorts and raises his head. “I never wanted this role.”
“And I never wanted to be a witch, but here we are Kun.” Ten gestures around him to emphasize his point. “And we both know we wouldn’t trade our lives for the world. What would you do if you had no stories to tell? You feed off of them, just like I feed off of having this island as my own.”
“Aren’t you wise,” Kun spits back. Another blow to Ten’s heart.
“I’d like to think that over the past decades I’ve learned a thing or two.” Ten reaches out a hand. Kun takes the offer of peace almost instantaneously, not a moment of hesitation, his body moves on its own. He lets himself be wrapped in Ten’s arms and held.
“Fuck the fates,” he says after a while. Ten wholeheartedly agrees.
In silence, Ten lets himself feel Kun for one last time. Lets his hands roam over Kun’s body, touch every nook, get his hands on every cranny. Kun turns around and buries his face in Ten’s neck, inhales. In that moment more so than any other, Ten wants to retract his earlier speech, take Kun up on his challenge and sail off with him tomorrow.
I’m going to miss you, he wants to say. Stay, he wants to plead. Instead, he kisses the crown of Kun’s head. The silence speaks for him well enough.
That night they sleep under the stars. Johnny reaches for everyone and pulls all of them in one big bear hug. They fall asleep like that, wrapped in warmth. The animals of the island are strewn about, never too far out of reach. Ten’s lioness rests her head on Dejun’s stomach as he pets her behind her ears. They fall asleep to Kun’s lulling voice as Ten asks him, tell us another story.
Ten knows the moment Kun sails away from his island for the second time that it will also be the last.
The last time Ten will see him, will be able to lay his eyes on him. The last time he can see that stark face lift into that grin he wears so well.
Ten knows Kun is not coming back. So, because it is the very last time he can see Kun leave, he waits until he and his boat are completely out of sight. Ten allows himself this small thing.
His nymphs stand next to him through it all. At one point, Jeno takes Ten’s hand. Ten squeezes back and doesn’t pull away. They do not weep.
They stand there silent until the ship disappears into the horizon and the only thing left is the waves and the shimmer of the sun upon them.
The very next day, Ten sends all his nymphs home. He doesn’t know how to say that there are futures out there for them. So instead he says, go, I don’t care to where. Just go.
They do not draw out their goodbyes, but before Ten waves them off onto their own journeys, he tells to them the same thing he told Kun’s men. There is a home here, he promises them, may you ever need a place to come home to.
Ten knows not only the island but also he himself has changed. It doesn’t bother him, instead, he welcomes it. The island and he shaped themselves around each other before, they can do it again.
He doesn’t go mad with loneliness, doesn’t pull out his hair or race down the beaches. He does not throw himself to the rocks or pray for Kun’s return. He spends his days like he did before, only now adding weaving to the roster.
Ten puts a spell on the island to make it look like breaking rocks and high waves on the outside. He is not interested in visitors on his shores anymore.
After their unofficial banishment, Ten does not receive any new nymphs. No parents wanting to send their children to a man that makes them disappear forever.
The only one that comes to him sometimes is Taeyong. He brings to Ten the news he misses.
He tells Ten about his nymphs. Two of them sailed to Ithaca after leaving Ten’s island. One of them went south, where the best chariot races are held, competing against the new champion that came out of nowhere a couple of years ago. The last one went east, spends his days behind looms bigger than himself, sometimes sending his self made tapestries off to somewhere.
Ten asks after Kun and his men with as much nonchalance as he can muster. The only thing that Taeyong says about them is, they live. And for Ten, that is enough. He can’t help the small feeling of pride that blossoms in his chest for Kun. Fuck the fates indeed, he whispers with a smile.
Taeyong informs him of his sister’s death. When Ten asks who killed Scylla, Taeyong shrugs his shoulders. Some unknown. A man who carries two pairs of coins on him at all times.
Taeyong gives him spices and ingredients he collects from places Ten will never see. Honey from the northern bees, olives from the east, wine from Dionysius’s own stores.
Ten doesn’t lay with him like before. Taeyong doesn’t seem to mind. Ten thinks Taeyong likes having someone to talk to every once in a while just as much as Ten does.
And maybe in the quiet of the nights, when Ten sits by the hearth with a cup of wine and his lioness purring next to him, maybe he talks to her about how Johnny once almost took off his entire hand while preparing a meal, and how Mark and Jaemin once tricked him into thinking there were sea turtles by the reefs, and maybe he tells her he misses when Doyoung and Jeno used to join him in working the garden.
He strokes his hand through her fur and tells her how he misses Dejun’s presence while going into the woods. She lets out a whine. He whispers back to her, perhaps, in another universe.
Maybe he recounts how Renjun got Johnny to dance on some nights when too much wine was poured, or how Jisung and Yangyang would sometimes not be seen for an entire day before stumbling in at night, looking torn to piece with twigs in their hair and mud on their faces, but exclaiming with bright eyes about having discovered a new cave up in the mountains.
Maybe he shares some of the tales Kun told him. And confides in his lioness that even though he loved the sound of Kun’s voice, he misses the quiet between them the most. Those early mornings where neither of them wanted to get out of bed and Kun would pull him closer and breathe in his smell.
Maybe he does share those memories, tell those stories. But in the quiet of the night in front of the fire, none will be the wiser. And besides, stories are there to be told.
It isn’t until years later, long after Kun has cleared all his trials and returned home to loving arms. Long after Taeyong brought him the message of the death of Hendery and his son, and Ten rose the biggest memorial fire for them the living and the dead had ever seen.
It’s long after that one blissful year that now seems like a faraway daydream, that Ten sees a ship on the horizon. It is the first ship since that one summer.
Ten breaks his spell on the island’s appearance, lets the barrier drop, and waits on the beach with open arms. His lioness and her pups eager at his feet beside him, the pigs squealing with happiness, the birds chirping with songs. Even the wolves have come out of their hideouts in the woods to join Ten as he waits till the boat docks, till the anchor drops, till the man steps out onto the sand.
The man runs as soon as he has both feet on land. Ten meets him in the middle.
The years have changed his appearance but they have not taken away the spirit in his eyes. Ten would recognize that childlike curiosity anywhere. He can still remember the voice that used to ask him about the island, about its magic.
With tears in his eyes Ten tells him, “You’re home.”
Dejun pulls Ten into another hug and laughs.
“Welcome home son,” Ten says. “Welcome home.”