The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Here is Phoinix’s craft: Cleopatra, Patroclus. Her name built from the same pieces as mine, only reversed.

There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.

The last thing I think is: Achilles.

The numbness now is merciful. A last few moments of it. Then, the fall.

“And you will fight after that, also?” “If you wish,” Achilles answers. “I do not care. I will be dead soon.”

“I wish he had let you all die.”

“You are the one who made him go.” Briseis steps towards him. “He fought to save you, and your darling reputation. Because he could not bear to see you suffer!”

He is wearing Achilles’ own armor, the unmistakable phoenix breastplate taken from beside my corpse.

“There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

You have killed him and taken your vengeance. It is enough.” “It will never be enough,” he says.

“Then who is it, Mother? Am I not famous enough? I killed Hector. And who else? Send them before me. I will kill them all!”

“Philtatos,” Achilles says, sharply. Most beloved.“Best of men, and slaughtered by your son.”

In grief, men must help each other, though they are enemies.”

“But it is worth my life, if there is a chance my son’s soul may be at rest.”

“It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after.”

He collects my ashes himself, though this is a woman’s duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks. “When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”

Always, its muscles betray it, seeking life instead of the peace that spears bring.

Achilles smiles as his face strikes the earth.

“Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.” “I doubt it.” Odysseus shrugs.

“My consolation is that we will be together in the underworld. That we will meet again there, if not in this life. I would not wish to be there without her.”

He has gone to the underworld, and I am here.

Let the stories of him be something more.

“Have you no more memories?” I am made of memories. “Speak, then.”

I want him to live.

This and this and this. So many moments of happiness, crowding forward.

The underworld, with its cavernous gloom and fluttering souls, where only the dead may walk. “This is all that is left,” she says, her eyes still fixed on the monument. An eternity of stone.

The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

“I have done it,” she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. achilles, it reads. And beside it, patroclus. “Go,” she says. “He waits for you.”

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.