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“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?” “Perhaps,” Achilles admitted. I listened and did not speak. Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.
But tonight there was nothing. I closed my eyes and waited, long minutes, until I guessed he was asleep. Then I turned to look at him. He was on his side, watching me.
This was the moment of truest peril, and I tensed, fearing his regret.
I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
“Name one hero who was happy.”
“I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.” “Why me?” “Because you’re the reason. Swear it.”
Had she really thought I would not know him? I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
You do not have to humiliate her so thoroughly, I thought. But it was not kindness he lacked; it was interest.
“If you go to Troy, you will never return. You will die a young man there.”
“Whatever you became. It would not matter to me. We would be together.”
When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him. I opened my mouth, but it was too late.
He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”
I think: This is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: How long do we have?
Even there beneath the bright sun, I felt my skin go cold. He will not come home at all. But Peleus did not know this, yet.
As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.
“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”
And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.
“Briseis,” I said. “If I ever wished to take a wife, it would be you.”
I will never forgive him. I imagine tearing down our tent, smashing the lyre, stabbing myself in the stomach and bleeding to death. I want to see his face broken with grief and regret. I want to shatter the cold mask of stone that has slipped down over the boy I knew.
He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain.
“They stood by and let him insult me. As if he were right! I toiled for them for ten years, and their repayment is to discard me.” His eyes had gone dark and distant. “They have made their choice. I shed no tears for them.”
“If you love me—” “No!”
The frozen silence is broken by the hoarse, angry screams of Trojans. My mind startles to life: I am unarmed and alone, and they know I am only Patroclus.
He falls on the body. The knowledge rushes up in him, choking off breath. A scream comes, tearing its way out. And then another, and another. He seizes his hair in his hands and yanks it from his head. Golden strands fall onto the bloody corpse. Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only. Somewhere Odysseus is kneeling, urging food and drink. A fierce red rage comes, and he almost kills him there. But he would have to let go of me. He cannot. He holds me so tightly I can feel the faint beat of his chest, like the wings of a moth. An echo, the last bit of
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This is my element now, the half-life of the unburied spirit.
Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”
“I hope that Hector kills you.” The breath rasps in his throat. “Do you think I do not hope the same?” he asks.
“There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
“When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”
Achilles smiles as his face strikes the earth.
Will I feel his ashes as they fall against mine? I think of the snowflakes on Pelion, cold on our red cheeks. The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me. Somewhere his soul waits, but it is nowhere I can reach. Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free. His ashes settle among mine, and I feel nothing.
The only man whose spear could have reached her is dead. She is free.
“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.”
“I could not make him a god,” she says. Her jagged voice, rich with grief. But you made him. She does not answer me for a long time, only sits, eyes shining with the last of the dying light. “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.
