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.
ONE NIGHT WE had stayed late in Peleus’ chamber. Achilles was on the floor, an arm thrown beneath his head for a pillow. I sat more formally, in a chair. It was not just because of Peleus. I did not like the sprawling length of my new limbs.
The old king’s eyes were half-closed. He was telling us a story.
“Meleager was the finest warrior of his day, but also the proudest. He expected the best of everything, and because the people loved him, he received it.”
My eyes drifted to Achilles. His fingers were stirring, just barely, in the air. He often did this when he was composing a new song. The story of Meleager, I guessed, as his father told it.
“But one day the king of Calydon said, ‘Why must we give so much to Meleager? There are other worthy men in Calydon.’ ”
Achilles shifted, and his tunic pulled tight across his chest. That day, I had overheard a serving girl whispering to her friend: “Do you think the prince looked at me, at dinner?” Her tone was one of hope.
“Meleager heard the words of the king and was enraged.”
This morning he had leapt onto my bed and pressed his nose against mine. “Good morning,” he’d said. I remembered the heat of him against my skin.
“He said, ‘I will not fight for you any longer.’ And he went back to his house and sought comfort in the arms of his wife.”
I felt a tug on my foot. It was Achilles, grinning at me from the floor.
“Calydon had fierce enemies, and when they heard that Meleager would no longer fight for Calydon—”
I pushed my foot towards him a little, provokingly. His fingers wrapped around my ankle.
“They attacked. And the city of Calydon suffered terrible losses.”
Achilles yanked, and I slid half out of the chair. I clung to the wooden frame so I would not be pulled onto the floor.
“So the people went to Meleager, to beg him for his help. And— Achilles, are you listening?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You are not. You are tormenting our poor Skops.”
I tried to look tormented. But all I felt was the coolness against my ankle, where his fingers had been, a moment before.
“It is just as well, perhaps. I am getting tired. We will finish the story another evening.”
We stood and wished the old man good night. But as we turned, he said, “Achilles, you might look for the light-haired girl, from the kitchen. She has been haunting doorways for you, I hear.”
It was hard to know if it was the firelight that made his face look so changed.
“Perhaps, Father. I am tired tonight.”
Peleus chuckled, as if this were a joke. “I’m sure she could wake you up.” He waved us off.
I had to trot, a little, to keep up with him as we walked back to our rooms. We washed our faces in silence, but there was an ache in me, like a rotten tooth. I could not let it be.
“That girl—do you like her?”
Achilles turned to face me from across the room. “Why? Do you?”