Miller, Madeline - The Song of Achilles

“Yes, lady.”

Distaste ran over her face. Her eyes were not like a human’s; they were black to their center and flecked with gold. I could not bring myself to meet them.

“He will be a god,” she said. I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. She leaned forward, and I half-thought she might touch me. But of course she did not.

“Do you understand?” I could feel her breath on my cheek, not warm at all, but chilled like the depths of the sea. Do you understand? He had told me that she hated to be kept waiting.

“Yes.”

She leaned closer still, looming over me. Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.

“Good.” Carelessly, as if to herself, she added, “You will be dead soon enough.”

She turned and dove into the sea, leaving no ripples behind her.

I DID NOT GO straight back to the palace. I could not. I went to the olive grove instead, to sit among the twisting trunks and fallen fruits. It was far from the sea. I did not wish to smell the salt now.

You will be dead soon enough. She had said it coldly, as a fact. She did not wish me for his companion, but I was not worth killing. To a goddess, the few decades of human life were barely even an inconvenience.

And she wished him to be a god. She had spoken it so simply, as if it were obvious. A god. I could not imagine him so. Gods were cold and distant, far off as the moon, nothing like his bright eyes, the warm mischief of his smiles.

Her desire was ambitious. It was a difficult thing, to make even a half-god immortal. True, it had happened before, to Heracles and Orpheus and Orion. They sat in the sky now, presiding as constellations, feasting with the gods on ambrosia. But these men had been the sons of Zeus, their sinews strong with the purest ichor that flowed. Thetis was a lesser of the lesser gods, a sea-nymph only. In our stories these divinities had to work by wheedling and flattery, by favors won from stronger gods. They could not do much themselves. Except live, forever.

“WHAT ARE YOU thinking about?” It was Achilles, come to find me. His voice was loud in the quiet grove, but I did not startle. I had half-expected him to come. I had wanted him to.

“Nothing,” I said. It was untrue. I guess it always is.

He sat down beside me, his feet bare and dusty.

“Did she tell you that you would die soon?”

I turned to look at him, startled.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The wind blew the gray leaves above us, and somewhere I heard the soft pat of an olive fall.

“She wants you to be a god,” I told him.

“I know.” His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

But the question still waited to be asked; I could do nothing until I knew the answer.

“Do you want to be—” I paused, struggling, though I had promised myself I wouldn’t. I had sat in the grove, practicing this very question, as I waited for him to find me. “Do you want to be a god?”

His eyes were dark in the half-light. I could not make out the gold flecks in the green. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I don’t know what it means, or how it happens.” He looked down at his hands, clasping his knees. “I don’t want to leave here. When would it happen anyway? Soon?”

I was at a loss. I knew nothing of how gods were made. I was mortal, only.

He was frowning now, his voice louder. “And is there really a place like that? Olympus? She doesn’t even know how she will do it. She pretends she knows. She thinks if I become famous enough . . .” He trailed off.

This at least I could follow. “Then the gods will take you voluntarily.”

He nodded. But he had not answered my question.

“Achilles.”

He turned to me, his eyes still filled with frustration, with a sort of angry bewilderment. He was barely twelve.

“Do you want to be a god?” It was easier this time.

“Not yet,” he said.

A tightness I had not known was there eased a little. I would not lose him yet.

He cupped a hand against his chin; his features looked finer than usual, like carved marble. “I’d like to be a hero, though. I think I could do it. If the prophecy is true. If there’s a war. My mother says I am better even than Heracles was.”

I did not know what to say to this. I did not know if it was motherly bias or fact. I did not care. Not yet.

He was silent a moment. Then turned to me, suddenly. “Would you want to be a god?”

There, among the moss and olives, it struck me as funny. I laughed and, a moment later, he did too.

“I do not think that is likely,” I told him.

I stood, put down a hand for him. He took it, pulled himself up. Our tunics were dusty, and my feet tingled slightly with drying sea salt.

“There were figs in the kitchen. I saw them,” he said.

We were only twelve, too young to brood.

“I bet I can eat more than you.”

“Race you!”

I laughed. We ran.

Chapter Seven

THE NEXT SUMMER WE TURNED THIRTEEN, HIM FIRST, and then me. Our bodies began to stretch, pulling at our joints till they were aching and weak. In Peleus’ shining bronze mirror, I almost did not recognize myself—lanky and gaunt, stork legs and sharpening chin. Achilles was taller still, seeming to tower above me. Eventually we would be of a height, but he came to his maturity sooner, with a startling speed, primed perhaps by the divinity in his blood.

The boys, too, were growing older. Regularly now we heard moans behind closed doors and saw shadows returning to their beds before dawn. In our countries, a man often took a wife before his beard was fully fledged. How much earlier, then, did he take a serving girl? It was expected; very few men came to their marriage beds without having done so. Those who did were unlucky indeed: too weak to compel, too ugly to charm, and too poor to pay.

It was customary for a palace to have a full complement of nobly born women as servants for the mistress of the house. But Peleus had no wife in the palace, and so the women we saw were mostly slaves. They had been bought or taken in warfare, or bred from those who were. During the day they poured wine and scrubbed floors and kept the kitchen. At night they belonged to soldiers or foster boys, to visiting kings or Peleus himself. The swollen bellies that followed were not a thing of shame; they were profit: more slaves. These unions were not always rape; sometimes there was mutual satisfaction and even affection. At least that is what the men who spoke of them believed.

It would have been easy, infinitely easy, for Achilles or me to have bedded one of these girls ourselves. At thirteen we were almost late to do so, especially him, as princes were known for their appetites. Instead, we watched in silence as the foster boys pulled girls onto their laps, or Peleus summoned the prettiest to his room after dinner. Once, I even heard the king offer her to his son. He answered, almost diffidently: I am tired tonight. Later, as we walked back to our room, he avoided my eyes.

And I? I was shy and silent with all but Achilles; I could scarcely speak to the other boys, let alone a girl. As a comrade of the prince, I suppose I would not have had to speak; a gesture or a look would have been enough. But such a thing did not occur to me. The feelings that stirred in me at night seemed strangely distant from those serving girls with their lowered eyes and obedience. I watched a boy fumbling at a girl’s dress, the dull look on her face as she poured his wine. I did not wish for such a thing.