The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

THE SUN IS SETTING over the sea, spilling its colors on the water’s surface. She is beside me, silent in the blurry, creeping dusk. Her face is as unmarked as the first day I saw her. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as if to hold some thought to herself. I have told her all. I have spared nothing, of any of us. We watch the light sink into the grave of the western sky. “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 of the sun.