It seemed to go on for a long time, and my arms grew sore with lifting and placing the point of the sword. At last Chiron called a stop. We drank deep from waterskins and lay back on the grass. My chest was heaving. Achilles’ was steady.
Chiron was silent, standing in front of us.
“Well, what do you think?” Achilles was eager, and I remembered that Chiron was only the fourth person to have ever seen him fight.
I did not know what I expected the centaur to say. But it was not what followed.
“There is nothing I can teach you. You know all that Heracles knew, and more. You are the greatest warrior of your generation, and all the generations before.”
A flush stained Achilles’ cheeks. I could not tell if it was embarrassment or pleasure or both.
“Men will hear of your skill, and they will wish for you to fight their wars.” He paused. “What will you answer?”
“I do not know,” Achilles said.
“That is an answer for now. It will not be good enough later,” Chiron said.
There was a silence then, and I felt the tightness in the air around us. Achilles’ face, for the first time since we had come, looked pinched and solemn.
“What about me?” I asked.
Chiron’s dark eyes moved to rest on mine. “You will never gain fame from your fighting. Is this surprising to you?”
His tone was matter-of-fact, and somehow that eased the sting of it.
“No,” I said truthfully.
“Yet it is not beyond you to be a competent soldier. Do you wish to learn this?”
I thought of the boy’s dulled eyes, how quickly his blood had soaked the ground. I thought of Achilles, the greatest warrior of his generation. I thought of Thetis who would take him from me, if she could.
“No,” I said.
And that was the end of our lessons in soldiery.
SPRING PASSED INTO SUMMER, and the woods grew warm and abundant, lush with game and fruit. Achilles turned fourteen, and messengers brought gifts for him from Peleus. It was strange to see them here, in their uniforms and palace colors. I watched their eyes, flickering over me, over Achilles, over Chiron most of all. Gossip was dear in the palace, and these men would be received like kings when they returned. I was glad to see them shoulder their empty trunks and be gone.
The gifts were welcome—new lyre strings and fresh tunics, spun from the finest wool. There was a new bow as well, and arrows tipped with iron. We fingered their metal, the keen-edged points that would bring down our dinners in days to come.
Some things were less useful—cloaks stiff with inlaid gold that would give the owner’s presence away at fifty paces, and a jewel-studded belt, too heavy to wear for anything practical. There was a horsecoat as well, thickly embroidered, meant to adorn the mount of a prince.
“I hope that is not for me,” Chiron said, lifting an eyebrow. We tore it up for compresses and bandages and scrub cloths; the rough material was perfect for pulling up crusted dirt and food.
That afternoon, we lay on the grass in front of the cave. “It has been almost a year since we came,” Achilles said. The breeze was cool against our skin.
“It does not feel so long,” I answered. I was half-sleepy, my eyes lost in the tilting blue of the afternoon sky.
“Do you miss the palace?”
I thought of his father’s gifts, the servants and their gazes, the whispering gossip they would bring back to the palace.
“No,” I said.
“I don’t either,” he said. “I thought I might, but I don’t.”
The days turned, and the months, and two years passed.
Chapter Ten
IT WAS SPRING, AND WE WERE FIFTEEN. THE WINTER ICE HAD lasted longer than usual, and we were glad to be outside once more, beneath the sun. Our tunics were discarded, and our skin prickled in the light breeze. I had not been so naked all winter; it had been too cold to take off our furs and cloaks, beyond quick washes in the hollowed-out rock that served as our bath. Achilles was stretching, rolling limbs that were stiff from too long indoors. We had spent the morning swimming and chasing game through the forest. My muscles felt wearily content, glad to be used again.
I watched him. Other than the unsteady surface of the river, there were no mirrors on Mount Pelion, so I could only measure myself by the changes in Achilles. His limbs were still slender, but I could see the muscles in them now, rising and falling beneath his skin as he moved. His face, too, was firmer, and his shoulders broader than they had been.
“You look older,” I said.
He stopped, turned to me. “I do?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Do I?”
“Come over here,” he said. I stood, walked to him. He regarded me a moment. “Yes,” he said.
“How?” I wanted to know. “A lot?”
“Your face is different,” he said.
“Where?”
He touched my jaw with his right hand, drew his fingertips along it. “Here. Your face is wider than it once was.” I reached up with my own hand, to see if I could feel this difference, but it was all the same to me, bone and skin. He took my hand and brought it down to my collarbone. “You are wider here also,” he said. “And this.” His finger touched, gently, the soft bulb that had emerged from my throat. I swallowed, and felt his fingertip ride against the motion.
“Where else?” I asked.
He pointed to the trail of fine, dark hair that ran down my chest and over my stomach.
He paused, and my face grew warm.
“That’s enough,” I said, more abruptly than I meant to. I sat again on the grass, and he resumed his stretches. I watched the breeze stir his hair; I watched the sun fall on his golden skin. I leaned back and let it fall on me as well.
After some time, he stopped and came to sit beside me. We watched the grass, and the trees, and the nubs of new buds, just growing.
His voice was remote, almost careless. “You would not be displeased, I think. With how you look now.”
My face grew warm, again. But we spoke no more of it.
WE WERE ALMOST SIXTEEN. Soon Peleus’ messengers would come with gifts; soon the berries would ripen, the fruits would blush and fall into our hands. Sixteen was our last year of childhood, the year before our fathers named us men, and we would begin to wear not just tunics but capes and chitons as well. A marriage would be arranged for Achilles, and I might take a wife, if I wished to. I thought again of the serving girls with their dull eyes. I remembered the snatches of conversation I had overheard from the boys, the talk of breasts and hips and coupling.
She’s like cream, she’s that soft.
Once her thighs are around you, you’ll forget your own name.
The boys’ voices had been sharp with excitement, their color high. But when I tried to imagine what they spoke of, my mind slid away, like a fish who would not be caught.
Other images came in their stead. The curve of a neck bent over a lyre, hair gleaming in firelight, hands with their flickering tendons. We were together all day, and I could not escape: the smell of the oils he used on his feet, the glimpses of skin as he dressed. I would wrench my gaze from him and remember the day on the beach, the coldness in his eyes and how he ran from me. And, always, I remembered his mother.
I began to go off by myself, early in the mornings, when Achilles still slept, or in the afternoons, when he would practice his spear thrusts. I brought a flute with me, but rarely played it. Instead I would find a tree to lean against and breathe the sharp drift of cypress-scent, blown from the highest part of the mountain.
Slowly, as if to escape my own notice, my hand would move to rest between my thighs. There was shame in this thing that I did, and a greater shame still in the thoughts that came with it. But it would be worse to think them inside the rose-quartz cave, with him beside me.
It was difficult sometimes, after, to return to the cave. “Where were you?” he’d ask.
“Just—” I’d say, and point vaguely.