The King Of Ithaca Reaps What He Sows

Written by Larissa Zhong Illustrated by Shelby Talbot

Remember running from the top of the hill telling stories about skeletons in the forest, Years later you buried yours there and I never knew

All I had was a pencil sharpener shaped like a house and a spelling bee trophy that didn’t belong to me What did I do to deserve you and our frozen yogurt afternoons

I don't remember if I said goodbye when I left you in the ruins of our childhood, behind our old school and forgot to look back I’m sorry I lost your number somewhere in this mess

Has the henna faded from your hands Have the gold bangles rusted on your wrists It's thirteen years later and you still haunt me like vines on broken bricks

Written by Madeleine Vigneron Illustrated by Audra Crago

Telemachus of Ithaca has been fatherless for twenty years. For twenty years, he’s been twiddling his thumbs, waiting for his king and father to return from a war that will capture people’s hearts and minds for millennia. Telemachus hasn’t been doing anything that exciting; learning his alpha-beta-gammas, walking his dog, arguing with his mom. Typical young boy behaviour. Telemachus is not the only fatherless boy in Ithaca. When Odysseus left to go to war, he took the men of Ithaca with him, and now their sons are old enough to eye his palace and his wife. Telemachus does not want one of his childhood playmates to marry his mom, thank you very much, but they didn’t pay his protests any heed; they simply walked into his house and parked themselves at his tables. The sheer masses of young men overrunning Telemachus’ house don’t seem to realize that there’s only one queen to wed. Maybe they’re planning on some sort of scheduled sharing scheme, or just to deal with that problem later; Telemachus doesn’t know and he has no desire to discuss it. He knows he should drive the interlopers from his house like cattle; he knows that’s what his father would do, strong king that he was. Telemachus has his father’s eyes and his father’s curls, but he doesn’t have his father’s fortitude, so the best thing he can do is go searching for Odysseus. All he finds are war stories from people for whom the war was a very long time ago. All he finds is that everyone else sailed home years ago, and none of them have a clue what happened to Odysseus. Maybe Odysseus is dead. Surely no one is that bad with directions. I mean, Telemachus has had enough time to grow a beard. The beginnings of a beard. Who’s to say at what point stubble becomes a beard anyway? But that’s not the point; the point is that his dad might not be coming back to fend off all the weirdos who are trying to marry his mom, and Telemachus is seriously not into the idea of having a stepdad his own age. As Ithaca appears on the horizon, Telemachus thinks that maybe this is his time to shine. He’ll stand up for himself and for his family and assert the authority that he’s been wielding more like a limp flower stalk than a sword. Telemachus’ royal boat docks on the shore of the land that he rules by right, and he marches home with a conviction that will not be swayed by anything the gods can throw at him. And what do the gods throw at him? Odysseus. Odysseus has finally washed up on the shore of the land he’s been missing from for so long. He returns with Athena hovering over his shoulder: the goddess of wisdom, and the goddess of war, and also the goddess of how not to get in your dad’s way. Prophecy claimed that the king of the gods would have a son who would usurp him; instead, he had Athena, an asset rather than a danger to the throne, by virtue of her gender and her consistent willingness to stand next to him and look threatening. She’s not stingy with that talent, either; she’s just