Circe told them a strange sea road as they left. “You must go to the end of the world, to the country the sun does not reach.” There, she said, they must ask the way from the souls of the dead.
The ship came to a shore where day and night could not be told apart. Odysseus dug into the ground and made a pit, poured honey and milk and wine and water, and killed a black ram.
As the blood pooled in the pit, shades crowded in from every side. Some had died only lately and some very long ago, and all of them wanted a voice and reached toward the blood.