The Song of Achilles(12)

I learned that he was not so dignified as he looked. Beneath his poise and stillness was another face, full of mischief and faceted like a gem, catching the light. He liked to play games against his own skill, catching things with his eyes closed, setting himself impossible leaps over beds and chairs. When he smiled, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled like a leaf held to flame.

He was like a flame himself. He glittered, drew eyes. There was a glamour to him, even on waking, with his hair tousled and his face still muddled with sleep. Up close, his feet looked almost unearthly: the perfectly formed pads of the toes, the tendons that flickered like lyre strings. The heels were callused white over pink from going everywhere barefoot. His father made him rub them with oils that smelled of sandalwood and pomegranate.

He began to tell me the stories of his day before we drifted off to sleep. At first I only listened, but after time my tongue loosened. I began to tell my own stories, first of the palace, and later small bits from before: the skipping stones, the wooden horse I had played with, the lyre from my mother’s dowry.

“I am glad your father sent it with you,” he said.

Soon our conversations spilled out of the night’s confinement. I surprised myself with how much there was to say, about everything, the beach and dinner and one boy or another.

I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion’s tail hidden in his words. 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?

ONE AFTERNOON, as I went to leave him to his private drills he said, “Why don’t you come with me?” His voice was a little strained; if I had not thought it impossible, I might have said he was nervous. The air, which had grown comfortable between us, felt suddenly taut.

“All right,” I said.

It was the quiet hours of late afternoon; the palace slept out the heat and left us alone. We took the longest way, through the olive grove’s twisting path, to the house where the arms were kept.

I stood in the doorway as he selected his practice weapons, a spear and a sword, slightly blunted at the tip. I reached for my own, then hesitated.

“Should I—?” He shook his head. No.

“I do not fight with others,” he told me.

I followed him outside to the packed sand circle. “Never?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know that . . .” I trailed off as he took up a stance in the center, his spear in his hand, his sword at his waist.

“That the prophecy is true? I guess I don’t.”

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. Orpheus’ voice made the trees weep, Heracles could kill a man by clapping him on the back. Achilles’ miracle was his speed. His spear, as he began the first pass, moved faster than my eye could follow. It whirled, flashing forward, reversed, then flashed behind. The shaft seemed to flow in his hands, the dark gray point flickered like a snake’s tongue. His feet beat the ground like a dancer, never still.

I could not move, watching. I almost did not breathe. His face was calm and blank, not tensed with effort. His movements were so precise I could almost see the men he fought, ten, twenty of them, advancing on all sides. He leapt, scything his spear, even as his other hand snatched the sword from its sheath. He swung out with them both, moving like liquid, like a fish through the waves.

He stopped, suddenly. I could hear his breaths, only a little louder than usual, in the still afternoon air.

“Who trained you?” I asked. I did not know what else to say.

“My father, a little.”

A little. I felt almost frightened.

“No one else?”

“No.”

I stepped forward. “Fight me.”

He made a sound almost like a laugh. “No. Of course not.”

“Fight me.” I felt in a trance. He had been trained, a little, by his father. The rest was—what? Divine? This was more of the gods than I had ever seen in my life. He made it look beautiful, this sweating, hacking art of ours. I understood why his father did not let him fight in front of the others. How could any ordinary man take pride in his own skill when there was this in the world?

“I don’t want to.”

“I dare you.”

“You don’t have any weapons.”

“I’ll get them.”

He knelt and laid his weapons in the dirt. His eyes met mine. “I will not. Do not ask me again.”

“I will ask you again. You cannot forbid me.” I stepped forward, defiant. Something burned hot in me now, an impatience, a certainty. I would have this thing. He would give it to me.

His face twisted and, almost, I thought I saw anger. This pleased me. I would goad him, if nothing else. He would fight me then. My nerves sang with the danger of it.

But instead he walked away, his weapons abandoned in the dust.

“Come back,” I said. Then louder: “Come back. Are you afraid?”

That strange half-laugh again, his back still turned. “No, I am not afraid.”

“You should be.” I meant it as a joke, an easing, but it did not sound that way in the still air that hung between us. His back stared at me, unmoving, unmovable.

I will make him look at me, I thought. My legs swallowed up the five steps between us, and I crashed into his back.