‘When night fell, the conjugal bed was made ready for them,’ I read aloud, ‘and they rested beside each other as in former days. But it was late before they fell asleep, because he had to tell his wife about everything he had witnessed, about the Ciconians, about the Lotus Eaters, about the cyclops Polyphemus, about Aiolos and the bag of storm winds, about the Laestrygonians, who crushed 161his fleet, about Circe and her sorcery, about his journey into the kingdom of the dead, about Scylla and Charybdis, about the Sun God’s oxen, about Calypso’s island, where he was kept so long.’

My voice sounded flat in the room, false. I felt ridiculous. Yet I read it till the end, till the part where he finally drifts ashore among the Phaecians, who treat him kindly and take him to Ithaca. Till sleep closes in on him.

I thought of Ithaca, the island at the end. Not then, but now. Now being some time afterwards, as I was standing at the base of Sørvágur fjord, with the village behind me and a view over Mykines. My soles sank into the rough, damp sand. The water glided silently to and fro, inches from the toes of my shoes. The salty shore was flat and grey, flecked with greenery along the bank. We had an hour before the rental car was due to be returned and we boarded the plane. Ma and the Tarantula were walking around among the houses. I’d followed the river down here.

The sun was above Mykines, bleaching the surf crinoline-white. From a distance the foamy crests were a frayed ribbon, but close up, I knew, they were thrashing so wildly that boats could only land in clement weather.

Every time we’d tried to reach Mykines, something had got in the way. The currents changed. The weather turned. The helicopter wouldn’t work. 162

Omma stubbornly insisted that Mykines would make off by itself from time to time: in some unnoticed moment, one stormy night, one coal-black winter’s morning, it would go on the run. She told Abbe so, and he told me. And then she said the thing about it waiting. It could float freely but it stayed: it was waiting for something.

I thought of Abbe’s longing, and now, for the first time, I thought of Omma’s too.

The Tarantula whistled.

I turned around and saw them on the road, my father with his hand in the air and his arm around my mother. As I began to walk, they moved in the direction of the car.

Abbe told me once that the listening station at Skúvanes had masts so tall they rose above the clouds. As a child I thought: the mountain’s antennae. It struck me now as silly. The mountain listens with its feet. Deep beneath the sea, where all landmasses meet, tectonic plates converse in mumbling dialogue.

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