The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Beneath his poise and stillness was another face, full of mischief and faceted like a gem, catching the light. He liked to play games against his own skill, catching things with his eyes closed, setting himself impossible leaps over beds and chairs. When he smiled, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled like a leaf held to flame.

He was like a flame himself. He glittered, drew eyes. There was a glamour to him, even on waking, with his hair tousled and his face still muddled with sleep. Up close, his feet looked almost unearthly: the perfectly formed pads of the toes, the tendons that flickered like lyre strings. The heels were callused white over pink from going everywhere ...

I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion’s tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. Orpheus’ voice made the trees weep, Heracles could kill a man by clapping him on the back. Achilles’ miracle was his speed. His spear, as he began the first pass, moved faster than my eye could follow. It whirled, flashing forward, reversed, then flashed behind. The shaft seemed to flow in his hands, the dark gray point flickered like a snake’s tongue. His feet beat the ground like a dancer, never still. I could not move, watching. I almost did not breathe. His face was calm and blank, not tensed with effort. His movements were so precise I could almost see the men he fought, ten, twenty of them, advancing on all sides. He leapt, scything his spear, even as his other hand snatched the sword from its sheath. He swung out with them both, moving like liquid, like a fish through the waves.

“Fight me.” I felt in a trance. He had been trained, a little, by his father. The rest was—what? Divine? This was more of the gods than I had ever seen in my life. He made it look beautiful, this sweating, hacking art of ours. I understood why his father did not let him fight in front of the others. How could any ordinary man take pride in his own skill when there was this in the world?

“There is no one like you,” I said, at last. He regarded me a moment, in silence. “So?” Something in the way he spoke it drained the last of my anger from me. I had minded, once. But who was I now, to begrudge such a thing? As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.

“Why did you not say that you were defending yourself?” It was like him to ask this, the thing I had not thought of before. “I don’t know.” “Or you could have lied. Said you found him already dead.” I stared at him, stunned by the simplicity of it. I could have lied. And then the revelation that followed: if I had lied, I would still be a prince.

I understood, now, the disgust in my father’s eyes. His moron son, confessing all.

I SAW KING PELEUS often now; we were called to councils sometimes, and dinners with visiting kings. I was allowed to sit at the table beside Achilles, even to speak if I wished. I did not wish; I was happy to be silent and watch the men around me. Skops, Peleus took to calling me. Owl, for my big eyes. He was good at this sort of affection, general and unbinding.

THE ONLY PLACE I did not follow was to see his mother. He went late at night, or at dawn before the palace was awake, and returned flushed and smelling of the sea. When I asked about it, he told me freely, his voice strangely toneless. “It is always the same. She wants to know what I am doing and if I am well. She speaks to me of my reputation among men. At the end she asks if I will come with her.” I was rapt. “Where?” “The caves under the sea.” Where the sea-nymphs lived, so deep the sun did not penetrate. “Will you go?”

He shook his head. “My father says I should not. He says no mortal who sees them comes back the same.” When he turned away, I made the peasant sign against evil. Gods avert. It frightened me a little to hear him speak of a thing so calmly. Gods and mortals never mixed happily in our stories. But she was his mother, I reassured myself, and he was half-god himself.

A breeze blew down the beach and, grateful, I closed my eyes to it. When I opened them again, she was standing before me. She was taller than I was, taller than any woman I had ever seen. Her black hair was loose down her back, and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon. She was so close I could smell her, seawater laced with dark brown honey. I did not breathe. I did not dare.

“You are Patroclus.” I flinched at the sound of her voice, hoarse and rasping. I had expected chimes, not the grinding of rocks in the surf. “Yes, lady.” Distaste ran over her face. Her eyes were not like a human’s; they were black to their center and flecked with gold. I could not bring myself to meet them. “He will be a god,” she said. I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. She leaned forward, and I half-thought she might touch me. But of course she did not. “Do you understand?” I could feel her breath on my cheek, not warm at all, but chilled like the depths of the sea. Do you understand?

Thetis (goddess) first meets with Patroclus

me that she hated to be kept waiting. “Yes.” She leaned closer still, looming over me. Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone. “Good.” Carelessly, as if to herself, she added, “You will be dead soon enough.” She turned and dove into the sea, leaving no ripples behind her.

You will be dead soon enough. She had said it coldly, as a fact. She did not wish me for his companion, but I was not worth killing. To a goddess, the few decades of human life were barely even an inconvenience.

Her desire was ambitious. It was a difficult thing, to make even a half-god immortal. True, it had happened before, to Heracles and Orpheus and Orion. They sat in the sky now, presiding as constellations, feasting with the gods on ambrosia. But these men had been the sons of Zeus, their sinews strong with the purest ichor that flowed. Thetis was a lesser of the lesser gods, a sea-nymph only. In our stories these divinities had to work by wheedling and flattery, by favors won from stronger gods. They could not do much themselves. Except live, forever.

Thetis

“Did she tell you that you would die soon?” I turned to look at him, startled. “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry,” he said. The wind blew the gray leaves above us, and somewhere I heard the soft pat of an olive fall. “She wants you to be a god,” I told him. “I know.”

He turned to me, his eyes still filled with frustration, with a sort of angry bewilderment. He was barely twelve. “Do you want to be a god?” It was easier this time. “Not yet,” he said. A tightness I had not known was there eased a little. I would not lose him yet. He cupped a hand against his chin; his features looked finer than usual, like carved marble. “I’d like to be a hero, though. I think I could do it. If the prophecy is true. If there’s a war. My mother says I am better even than Heracles was.” I did not know what to say to this. I did not know if it was motherly bias or fact. I did not care. Not yet.

I was shy and silent with all but Achilles; I could scarcely speak to the other boys, let alone a girl. As a comrade of the prince, I suppose I would not have had to speak; a gesture or a look would have been enough. But such a thing did not occur to me. The feelings that stirred in me at night seemed strangely distant from those serving girls with their lowered eyes and obedience. I watched a boy fumbling at a girl’s dress, the dull look on her face as she poured his wine. I did not wish for such a thing.

I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do. I lean forward and our lips land clumsily on each other. They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen. I can taste his mouth—hot and sweet with honey from dessert. My stomach trembles, and a warm drop of pleasure spreads beneath my skin. More.

Dear gods, I think, let him not hate me. I should have known better than to call upon the gods. WHEN I TURNED THE CORNER onto the garden path, she was there, sharp and knife-bright. A blue dress clung to her skin as if damp. Her dark eyes held mine, and her fingers, chill and unearthly pale, reached for me. My feet knocked against each other as she lifted me from the earth. “I have seen,” she hissed. The sound of waves breaking on stone. I could not speak. She held me by the throat. “He is leaving.” Her eyes were black now, dark as sea-wet rocks, and as jagged. “I should have sent him long ago. Do not try to follow.” I could not breathe now. But I did not struggle. That much, at least, I knew. She seemed to pause, and I thought she might speak again. She did not.

He stood and pulled off his tunic. It was hot, full summer, and we were accustomed to sleeping naked. The moon shone on his belly, smooth, muscled, downed with light brown hairs that darkened as they ran below his waist. I averted my eyes. The next morning, at dawn, he rose and dressed. I was awake; I had not slept. I watched him through the fringes of my eyelids, feigning sleep. From time to time he glanced at me; in the dim half-light his skin glowed gray and smooth as marble. He slung his bag over his shoulder and paused, a last time, at the door. I remember him there, outlined in the stone frame, his hair falling loose, still untidy from sleep. I closed my eyes, and a moment passed. When I opened them again, I was alone.

I ran. Away from the palace, down the path towards the woods, feet stinging as they slapped the heat-baked ground. As I ran, I promised myself that if I ever saw him again, I would keep my thoughts behind my eyes. I had learned, now, what it would cost me if I did not. The ache in my legs, the knifing heaves of my chest felt clean and good. I ran.

Types of Repetition Symploce: A combination of anaphora and epiphora, in which repetition is both at the end and at the beginning. The following examples of repetition are classified according to the different types of repetition used, both in literature and in daily conversations. Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word in a line or clause. Anaphora: Repetition of words at the start of clauses or verses. Antistasis: Repetition of words or phrases in opposite sense. Diacope: Repetition of words broken by some other words. Epanalepsis: Repetition of the same words at the beginning and the end of a sentence. Epimone: Repetition of a phrase (usually a question) to stress a point. Epiphora: Repetition of the same word at the end of each clause. Gradatio: A construction in poetry wherein the last word of one clause becomes the first of the next, and so on. Negative-Positive Restatement: Repetition of an idea first in negative terms, and then in positive terms. Polyptoton: Repetition of words of the same root, with different

“Patroclus.” Pa-tro-clus. I did not move. The knees lifted, and hands reached down to turn me, gently, over. Achilles was looking down at me. “I hoped that you would come,” he said. My stomach rolled, awash with nerves and relief at once. I drank him in, the bright hair, the soft curve of his lips upwards. My joy was so sharp I did not dare to breathe. I do not know what I might have said then. I’m sorry, perhaps. Or perhaps something more. I opened my mouth.

Chiron.

The horse’s muscular legs ended in flesh, the equally muscular torso of a man. I stared—at that impossible suture of horse and human, where smooth skin became a gleaming brown coat. Beside me Achilles bowed his head. “Master Centaur,” he said. “I am sorry for the delay. I had to wait for my companion.”

Chiron the Centaur who taught Achilles, Heracles and Perseus

“I am not a lord, Patroclus Menoitiades.” My head jerked up at the sound of my father’s name. “I am a centaur, and a teacher of men. My name is Chiron.”

Chiron’s stern face softened. “That is why you have been sent here. So that I may teach you what I know.”

There was something in Chiron’s face, firm and calm and imbued with authority, that made us children again, with no world beyond this moment’s play and this night’s dinner. With him near us, it was hard to remember what might have happened on the day by the beach. Even our bodies felt smaller beside the centaur’s bulk.

Chiron’s voice, when it came, startled me. “I will tell you that your mother has sent a message, Achilles.” I felt the muscles of Achilles’ arm tense against me. I felt my own throat tighten. “Oh? What did she say?” His words were careful, neutral. “She said that should the exiled son of Menoitius follow you, I was to bar him from your presence.” I sat up, all drowsiness gone. Achilles’ voice swung carelessly in the dark. “Did she say why?” “She did not.”

cleared my throat, rusty and suddenly dry. “I’m sorry,” I heard myself say. “It is not Achilles’ fault. I came on my own. He did not know that I would. I did not think—” I stopped myself. “I hoped she would not notice.” “That was foolish of you.” Chiron’s face was deep in shadow.

“You knew?” This was Achilles. I would never have spoken so boldly. “Then you have decided? You will disregard her message?” Chiron’s voice held a warning of displeasure. “She is a goddess, Achilles, and your mother besides. Do you think so little of her wishes?” “I honor her, Chiron. But she is wrong in this.” His hands were balled so tightly I could see the tendons, even in the low light.

“And why is she wrong, Pelides?” I watched him through the darkness, my stomach clenching. I did not know what he might say. “She feels that—” He faltered a moment, and I almost did not breathe. “That he is a mortal and not a fit companion.” “Do you think he is?” Chiron asked. His voice gave no hint of the answer. “Yes.” My cheeks warmed. Achilles, his jaw jutting, had thrown the word back with no hesitation. “I see.” The centaur turned to me. “And you, Patroclus? You are worthy?” I swallowed. “I do not know if I am worthy. But I wish to stay.” I paused, swallowed again. “Please.” There was silence. Then Chiron said, “When I brought you both here, I had not decided yet what I would do. Thetis sees many faults, some that are and some that are not.” His voice was unreadable again. Hope and despair flared and died in me by turns. “She is also young and has the prejudices of her kind. I am older and flatter myself that I can read a man more clearly. I have no objection to Patroclus as your companion.”

I turned to face the centaur. “I will leave, if there will be trouble.” There was a long silence, and I almost thought he had not heard me. At last, he said: “Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.

Something tugged at me, just beneath my skin,

Chiron liked to teach, not in set lessons, but in opportunities.

“A wound in any of them will eventually be fatal. But death is quickest here.” His finger tapped the slight concavity of Achilles’ temple. A chill went through me to see it touched, that place where Achilles’ life was so slenderly protected. I was glad when we spoke of other things.

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother’s lyre. He had brought it with him. “I wish I had known,” I said the first day, when he had showed it to me. “I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it.” He smiled. “Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.”

idyll.

“It is not Chiron.” I turned. Thetis stood at the edge of the clearing, her bone-white skin and black hair bright as slashes of lightning. The dress she wore clung close to her body and shimmered like fish-scale. My breath died in my throat. “You were not to be here,” she said. The scrape of jagged rocks against a ship’s hull. She stepped forward, and the grass seemed to wilt beneath her feet. She was a sea-nymph, and the things of earth did not love her.

“Achilles,” I said. His eyes opened, and he was beside me before I could speak again. “Are you all right?” “Your mother is here,” I said. I saw the tightening of muscle beneath his skin. “She did not hurt you?” I shook my head. I did not add that I thought she wanted to. That she might have, if Chiron had not come.

Achilles turned to me. “It is all right,” he said. “She just wanted to speak to me. To see me.” “She will come to speak with him again,” Chiron said. And as if he knew what I thought, he added, “As is proper. She is his mother.” She is a goddess first, I thought.

“Well, what do you think?” Achilles was eager, and I remembered that Chiron was only the fourth person to have ever seen him fight. I did not know what I expected the centaur to say. But it was not what followed. “There is nothing I can teach you. You know all that Heracles knew, and more. You are the greatest warrior of your generation, and all the generations before.”

“Men will hear of your skill, and they will wish for you to fight their wars.” He paused. “What will you answer?” “I do not know,” Achilles said. “That is an answer for now. It will not be good enough later,” Chiron said. There was a silence then, and I felt the tightness in the air around us. Achilles’ face, for the first time since we had come, looked pinched and solemn. “What about me?” I asked. Chiron’s dark eyes moved to rest on mine. “You will never gain fame from your fighting. Is this surprising to you?” His tone was matter-of-fact, and somehow that eased the sting of it. “No,” I said truthfully. “Yet it is not beyond you to be a competent soldier. Do you wish to learn this?” I thought of the boy’s dulled eyes, how quickly his blood had soaked the ground. I thought of Achilles, the greatest warrior of his generation. I thought of Thetis who would take him from me, if she could. “No,” I said. And that was the end of our lessons in soldiery.

He touched my jaw with his right hand, drew his fingertips along it. “Here. Your face is wider than it once was.” I reached up with my own hand, to see if I could feel this difference, but it was all the same to me, bone and skin. He took my hand and brought it down to my collarbone. “You are wider here also,” he said. “And this.” His finger touched, gently, the soft bulb that had emerged from my throat. I swallowed, and felt his fingertip ride against the motion. “Where else?” I asked. He pointed to the trail of fine, dark hair that ran down my chest and over my stomach. He paused, and my face grew warm. “That’s enough,” I said, more abruptly than I meant to.

His voice was remote, almost careless. “You would not be displeased, I think. With how you look now.” My face grew warm, again. But we spoke no more of it.

Sixteen was our last year of childhood, the year before our fathers named us men, and we would begin to wear not just tunics but capes and chitons as well. A marriage would be arranged for Achilles, and I might take a wife, if I wished to.

when I tried to imagine what they spoke of, my mind slid away, like a fish who would not be caught.