The Song of Achilles(45)

I left the palace, desperate to shut out thought. I came to the cliffs, Scyros’ great rocks that beetled over the sea, and began to climb. The winds tugged at me, and the stones were slimy with spray, but the strain and danger steadied me. I arrowed upwards, towards the most treacherous peak, where before I would have been too fearful to go. My hands were cut almost to blood by jagged shards of rock. My feet left stains where they stepped. The pain was welcome, ordinary and clean. So easy to bear it was laughable.

I reached the summit, a careless heap of boulders at the cliff’s edge, and stood. An idea had come to me as I climbed, fierce and reckless as I felt.

“Thetis!” I screamed it into the snatching wind, my face towards the sea. “Thetis!” The sun was high now; their meeting had ended long ago. I drew a third breath.

“Do not speak my name again.”

I whirled to face her and lost my balance. The rocks jumbled under my feet, and the wind tore at me. I grabbed at an outcrop, steadied myself. I looked up.

Her skin was paler even than usual, the first winter’s ice. Her lips were drawn back, to show her teeth.

“You are a fool,” she said. “Get down. Your halfwit death will not save him.”

I was not so fearless as I thought; I flinched from the malice in her face. But I forced myself to speak, to ask the thing I had to know of her. “How much longer will he live?”

She made a noise in her throat, like the bark of a seal. It took me a moment to understand that it was laughter. “Why? Would you prepare yourself for it? Try to stop it?” Contempt spilled across her face.

“Yes,” I answered. “If I can.”

The sound again. “Please.” I knelt. “Please tell me.”

Perhaps it was because I knelt. The sound ceased, and she considered me a moment. “Hector’s death will be first,” she said. “This is all I am given to know.”

Hector. “Thank you,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed, and her voice hissed like water poured on coals. “Do not presume to thank me. I have come for another reason.”

I waited. Her face was white as splintered bone.

“It will not be so easy as he thinks. The Fates promise fame, but how much? He will need to guard his honor carefully. He is too trusting. The men of Greece”—she spat the words—“are dogs over a bone. They will not simply give up preeminence to another. I will do what I can. And you.” Her eyes flickered over my long arms and skinny knees. “You will not disgrace him. Do you understand?”

Do you understand?

“Yes,” I said. And I did. His fame must be worth the life he paid for it. The faintest breath of air touched her dress’s hem, and I knew she was about to leave, to vanish back to the caves of the sea. Something made me bold.

“Is Hector a skilled soldier?”

“He is the best,” she answered. “But for my son.”

Her gaze flickered to the right, where the cliff dropped away. “He is coming,” she said.

ACHILLES CRESTED THE RISE and came to where I sat. He looked at my face and my bloodied skin. “I heard you talking,” he said.

“It was your mother,” I said.

He knelt and took my foot in his lap. Gently, he picked the fragments of rock from the wounds, brushing off dirt and chalky dust. He tore a strip from his tunic’s hem and pressed it tight to stanch the blood.

My hand closed over his. “You must not kill Hector,” I said.

He looked up, his beautiful face framed by the gold of his hair. “My mother told you the rest of the prophecy.”

“She did.”

“And you think that no one but me can kill Hector.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you think to steal time from the Fates?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” A sly smile spread across his face; he had always loved defiance. “Well, why should I kill him? He’s done nothing to me.”

For the first time then, I felt a kind of hope.

WE LEFT THAT AFTERNOON; there was no reason to linger. Ever dutiful to custom, Lycomedes came to bid us farewell. The three of us stood together stiffly; Odysseus and Diomedes had gone ahead to the ship. They would escort us back to Phthia, where Achilles would muster his own troops.

There was one more thing to be done here, and I knew Achilles did not wish to do it.

“Lycomedes, my mother has asked me to convey her desires to you.”

The faintest tremor crossed the old man’s face, but he met his son-in-law’s gaze. “It is about the child,” he said.

“It is.”

“And what does she wish?” the king asked, wearily.

“She wishes to raise him herself. She—” Achilles faltered before the look on the old man’s face. “The child will be a boy, she says. When he is weaned, she will claim him.”

Silence. Then Lycomedes closed his eyes. I knew he was thinking of his daughter, arms empty of both husband and child. “I wish you had never come,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Achilles said.

“Leave me,” the old king whispered. We obeyed.

THE SHIP WE SAILED ON was yare, tightly made and well manned. The crew moved with a competent fleetness, the ropes gleamed with new fibers, and the masts seemed fresh as living trees. The prow piece was a beauty, the finest I had ever seen: a woman, tall, with dark hair and eyes, her hands clasped in front of her as if in contemplation. She was beautiful, but quietly so—an elegant jaw, and upswept hair showing a slender neck. She had been lovingly painted, each darkness or lightness perfectly rendered.