The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

I would marry her, and we would have a child. Perhaps if I had never known Achilles.

The sound that comes from him is hardly human. “I tried to stop him! I told him not to leave the beach!”

The breath rasps in his throat. “Do you think I do not hope the same?” he asks.

“Patroclus! Wait! I am here!” He shakes the body beside him. When I do not answer, he weeps again.

“Philtatos,” Achilles says, sharply. Most beloved.“Best of men, and slaughtered by your son.”

“When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”

I am made of memories.

I ALMOST REFUSE. But the ache for him is stronger than my anger. I want to speak of something not dead or divine. I want him to live.

I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.

“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...