The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull.

‘There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,’ Chiron said. ‘And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth, when another is gone. Do you think?’ ‘Perhaps,’ Achilles admitted. I listened, and did not speak. Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark, or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.

We were like gods, at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

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.

When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

‘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.’

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. ‘No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.’

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 the sun.