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“I will not. Do not ask me again.” “I will ask you again. You cannot forbid me.”
They have good chemistry.
They never let you be famous and happy.”
I love the struggle with the mother. It's the relatable struggle of dealing with the in-laws.
Chiron’s words: war was what the world would say Achilles was born for. That his hands and swift feet were fashioned for this alone—the cracking of Troy’s mighty walls. They would throw him among thousands of Trojan spears and watch with triumph as he stained his fair hands red.
Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. “If you have to go, you know I will go with you.” We slept.
My heart!
I imagined him in black armor, a dark helmet that left him nothing but eyes, bronze greaves that covered his feet. He stands with a spear in each hand and does not know me.
I could not stop imagining her skin beside his, her swelling breasts and curving hips. I remembered the long days I grieved for him, my hands empty and idle, plucking the air like birds peck at dry earth.
He had always trusted too easily; he had had so little in his life to fear or suspect. In the days before our friendship, I had almost hated him for this, and some old spark of that flared in me, trying to relight.
His trust was a part of him, as much as his hands or his miraculous feet.
The king of Argos made a noise of disgust. “I’m sick to death of this tale about your marriage bed.” “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have suggested I tell it.” “And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom.”
It was one thing to wear a dress out of necessity, another thing for the world to know of it. Our people reserved their ugliest names for men who acted like women; lives were lost over such insults.
“I see nothing but a cuckolded husband and Agamemnon’s greed.”
I should have known that Odysseus would not come with tawdry blackmail as his only coin. The stories named him polutropos, the man of many turnings.
Far from the hero of The Odessy.
“Athena has no child to lose.” The words grated from Thetis’ throat, hung in the air.
A bitch. But a sympathetic bitch.
This is what all mortals ask first, in disbelief, shock, fear. Is there no exception for me?
“I do not think I could bear it,” he said, at last. His eyes were closed, as if against horrors. I knew he spoke not of his death, but of the nightmare Odysseus had spun, the loss of his brilliance, the withering of his grace. I had seen the joy he took in his own skill, the roaring vitality that was always just beneath the surface. Who was he if not miraculous and radiant? Who was he if not destined for fame?
When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.
Envious Death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
It was that moment, perhaps, that our lives changed. Not before in Scyros, nor before that still, on Pelion. But here, as we began to understand the grandness, now and always, that would follow him wherever he went. He had chosen to become a legend, and this was the beginning. He hesitated, and I touched my hand to his, where the crowd could not see it. “Go,” I urged him. “They are waiting for you.”
This, out of all of it, was perhaps the strangest: that he was their commander now. He would be expected to know them all, their names and armor and stories. He no longer belongs to me alone.
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.
Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.
True to his word, Achilles had not told him of the prophecy, merely hugged him tightly, as if to soak the old man into his skin.
I thought, This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.
Thetis, I thought. It could be no one else. She was pulling his divinity forth, mantling it like cream on every inch of his skin. Helping her son make the most of his dearly bought fame.
I heard the words, whispered from behind beards and broken teeth and callused hands: Aristos Achaion. Was he as Odysseus and Diomedes had promised? Did they believe those slender limbs could hold against an army of Trojans? Could a boy of sixteen really be our greatest warrior? And everywhere, as I watched the questions, I saw also the answers. Yes, they nodded to each other, yes, yes.
Odysseus sees, as he sees everything. “Sadly, you will only have a night together before she must leave again. Though of course, much may happen in a night.” He smiles.
Blood slicked Agamemnon’s hands. He spoke into the silence: “The goddess is appeased.”
Achilles seemed frozen, fixed to his spot beside the dais. I took his arm and pulled him through the crowd towards our tent. His eyes were wild, and his face was spattered with her blood. I wet a cloth and tried to clean it away, but he caught my hand. “I could have stopped them,” he said. The skin of his face was very pale; his voice was hoarse. “I was close enough. I could have saved her.” I shook my head. “You could not have known.” He buried his face in his hands and did not speak. I held him and whispered all the bits of broken comfort I could find.
Inside our tent Achilles fell into exhausted sleep, his head in my lap. I stroked his forehead, watching the trembles of his dreaming face. In the corner lay his bloodied groom’s tunic. Looking at it, at him, my chest felt hot and tight. It was the first death he had ever witnessed.
I stepped past him and threw open the tent’s door.
“May I give you some advice? If you are truly his friend, you will help him leave this soft heart behind. He’s going to Troy to kill men, not rescue them.”
“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.”
“What was it like when you killed that boy?” I looked up. His face was in shadow, the hair falling around his eyes. “Like?” I asked. He nodded, staring at the water, as if to read its depths. “What did it look like?” “It’s hard to describe.” He had taken me by surprise. I closed my eyes to conjure it. “The blood came quickly, I remember that. And I couldn’t believe how much there was. His head was split, and his brains showed a little.” I fought down the nausea that gripped me, even now. “I remember the sound his head made against the rock.” “Did he twitch? Like animals do?” “I did not stay
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I love everything about this scene.
Achilles’ face was still, almost peaceful. He did not look like a man who had performed a miracle.
“Did you think of them as animals? As your father said?” He shook his head. “I did not think at all.”
“Are you frightened?” I asked. The first call of a nightingale in the trees at our backs. “No,” he answered. “This is what I was born for.”
Our world was one of blood, and the honor it won; only cowards did not fight. For a prince there was no choice. You warred and won, or warred and died. Even Chiron had sent him a spear.
He seemed so much the hero, I could barely remember that only the night before we had spit olive pits at each other, across the plate of cheeses that Phoinix had left for us.
I closed my eyes, felt his lips on mine, the only part of him still soft. Then he was gone.
Twelve men with nothing at all to do with Paris or Helen or any of us.
“How many will you kill tomorrow, do you think?” I asked. He heard the edge in my voice and looked away. The pain on his face struck me, and I was ashamed. Where was my promise that I would forgive him? I knew what his destiny was, and I had chosen to come to Troy anyway. It was too late for me to object simply because my conscience had begun to chafe.
I listened to every word, imagining it was a story only. As if it were dark figures on an urn he spoke of instead of men.
I learned to sleep through the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. 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.
“Everyone knows I am better. This only makes Agamemnon look greedy.”
I turned to Achilles and seized the front of his tunic. I kissed him. When I let go again, she was staring at us. Staring and staring.
Achilles stayed away. He knew that they had seen him killing their brothers and lovers and fathers. Some things could not be forgiven.
All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.
A man who still loved the gods, even as his brothers and cousins fell because of them; who fought fiercely for his family rather than the fragile ice-crust of fame.
“That’s the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief.”
