The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom.

It was a pleasure for Achilles and me to host our own hearth, playing the adults we did not quite feel like, as we passed the meat and poured the wine.

Fanfic.

I felt that he had seen her, had understood why I spent my days with her when he was gone. She was one of us now, I thought. A member of our circle, for life.

The faghag.

I knew he killed men every day; he came home wet with their blood, stains he scrubbed from his skin before dinner. But there were moments, like now, when that knowledge overwhelmed me. When I would think of all the tears that he had made fall, in all the years that had passed.

His hands were in his lap, spear-callused but beautiful still. No hands had ever been so gentle, or so deadly.

“It is strange,” he said. “I have always said that Hector’s done nothing to offend me. But he cannot say the same, now.”

The prince Achilles spoke of treasure to be won, and where there was greed there was hope.

I should have seen it coming. Perhaps you will think me stupid that I did not.

Is this the first time he has addressed the audience?

“Now, while we die, you complain about the loss of a girl you should have ransomed long ago. You say nothing of the lives you have taken, or the plague you have started.”

“Your words today have caused your own death, and the death of your men. I will fight for you no longer. Without me, your army will fall. Hector will grind you to bones and bloody dust, and I will watch it and laugh. You will come, crying for mercy, but I will give none. They will all die, Agamemnon, for what you have done here.”

Hate knots my throat. I want them dead.

My stomach feels burned to cinders; my palms ache where my nails have cut into them. I do not know this man, I think. He is no one I have ever seen before. My rage towards him is hot as blood. 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.

We know the storm is coming; we are waiting as long as we can.

“You chose her,” he says. “Over me.” “Over your pride.”

“I would not,” I say. “But I would have the memory be worthy of the man. I would have you be yourself, not some tyrant remembered for his cruelty. There are other ways to make Agamemnon pay. We will do it. I will help you, I swear. But not like this. No fame is worth what you did today.”

The beginning of hope. We have given each other wounds, but they are not mortal. Briseis will not be harmed and Achilles will remember himself and my wrist will heal. There will be a moment after this, and another after that.

The funeral pyres burn through the night, their greasy smoke smeared across the moon. I try not to think how every one is a man I know. Knew.

“You make it sound as if I have abandoned my honor,” Achilles says, his voice tart as raw wine.

This book is about the price of honor and glory; about how these things corrupt the soul.

“You have eked out ten more years of life, and I am glad for you. But the rest of us—” His mouth twists. “The rest of us are forced to wait for your leisure. You are holding us here, Achilles. You were given a choice and you chose. You must live by it now.”

He's right.

Further evidence of corruption.

I am relentless, unerring, skirting buckles and bronze to tear flesh that spills red like the jagged puncture of a wineskin.

War corrupts all.

I lift my spear, gripping it as though it is a snake I will strangle.

“You care more for him in death than in life.” Her voice is bitter with grief. “How could you have let him go? You knew he could not fight!”

“He fought to save you, and your darling reputation. Because he could not bear to see you suffer!”

His beautiful body lost to bones and gray ash.

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.

Pyrrhus lifts his sharp chin. “A slave has no place in his master’s tomb. If the ashes are together, it cannot be undone, but I will not allow my father’s fame to be diminished. The monument is for him, alone.” Do not let it be so. Do not leave me here without him.

But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.” He spread his broad hands. “We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.

We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.