The Plan

For now I will set up a contest of the axes, which Odysseus used to set up in a row in his halls, like the props of a ship when you are building it, twelf in all. He would stand a good distance away and shoot an arrow through them. Now I will set up this contest for the suitors. Whoever shall string the bow in his hands most easily and shall shoot through all twelf axes, I will follow him, leaving the house, filled with livelihood.

Then Penelope is the first to speak. She tells Odysseus about a dream she had. Twenty geese came to her house and she liked to watch them.

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Penelope and her geese

The plan is set. No one who overheard this coversation would have onderstood that the beggar is in fact Odysseus. But his task to eliminated the 108 suitors within one day is a tremendous one. And Penelope went to her upper room, knowing that a certain death is awaiting her husband.

She wept for Odysseus, her dear husband, until flashing-eyed Athena sent sweet sleep onto her lids.

Then a great eagle with bent beak came from the mountains, and he broke the necks of all of them and put them to death...... ...... Then the eagle returned and sat down on a projecting roof beam, and with the voice of a mortal man he restrained my weeping, and he said: "Courage, daughter of far-famed Ikaros! This is not a dream, but true reality, a vision of what will come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I who was the eagle, a bird, am now your husband returned, who will impose a bitter doom on all suitors."

Replying to her the resourceful Odysseus said:

Lady, there is no way to turn aside the meaning of this dream, destruction for the suitors, all of them, is plain to see. Not one of them will escape death and the fates!

Penelope's wish is clear and Odysseus confirms that he will fulfil it. This is not a conversation between strangers. They know and understand each other perfectly. Penelope even sets up a trick, to give Odysseus an advantage tomorrow.