The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

“Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.”

There was a wildness in me, of hope and terror.

Our mouths opened under each other, and the warmth of his sweetened throat poured into mine. I could not think, could not do anything but drink him in, each breath as it came, the soft movements of his lips. It was a miracle.

We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room loving him in silence.

You do not give up so easily as you once did.

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.

His trust was a part of him, as much as his hands or his miraculous feet. And despite my hurt, I would not wish to see it gone, to see him as uneasy and fearful as the rest of us, for any price.

IN THE STORIES, the gods have the power to delay the moon’s course if they wish, to spin a single night the length of many. Such was this night, a bounty of hours that never ran dry. We drank deeply, thirsty for all that we had missed in the weeks we were separated.

This was a man who moved like the gods were watching; every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector.

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.” “But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?” “You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”

I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.

How much heat does it take for iron to grow soft enough to bend?

Yet it does not feel like leisure. It feels like a held breath, like an eagle poised before the dive. My shoulders hunch, and I cannot stop myself from looking down the empty beach. We are waiting to see what the gods will do.

I cannot escape the feeling that, below the surface, something is breaking.

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.