A silence, into which at last I opened my eyes. Odysseus stood unharmed. Thetis’ fists were strangling themselves white. It no longer burned to look at her.
“The gray-eyed maiden has ever been kind to me,” Odysseus said, almost apologetically. “She knows why I am here; she blesses and guards my purpose.”
It was as if I had missed a step of their conversation. I struggled now to follow. The gray-eyed maiden—goddess of war and its arts. She was said to prize cleverness above all.
“Athena has no child to lose.” The words grated from Thetis’ throat, hung in the air.
Odysseus did not try to answer, only turned to Achilles. “Ask her,” he said. “Ask your mother what she knows.”
Achilles swallowed, loud in the silent chamber. He met his mother’s black eyes. “Is it true, what he says?”
The last of her fire was gone; only marble remained. “It is true. But there is more, and worse that he has not said.” The words came tonelessly, as a statue would speak them. “If you go to Troy, you will never return. You will die a young man there.”
Achilles’ face went pale. “It is certain?”
This is what all mortals ask first, in disbelief, shock, fear. Is there no exception for me?
“It is certain.”
If he had looked at me then, I would have broken. I would have begun to weep and never stopped. But his eyes were fixed on his mother. “What should I do?” he whispered.
The slightest tremor, over the still water of her face. “Do not ask me to choose,” she said. And vanished.
I CANNOT REMEMBER what we said to the two men, how we left them, or how we came to our room. I remember his face, skin drawn tightly over his cheeks, the dulled pallor of his brow. His shoulders, usually so straight and fine, seemed fallen. Grief swelled inside me, choking me. His death. I felt as if I was dying just to think of it, plummeting through a blind, black sky.
You must not go. I almost said it, a thousand times. Instead I held his hands fast between mine; they were cold, and very still.
“I do not think I could bear it,” he said, at last. His eyes were closed, as if against horrors. I knew he spoke not of his death, but of the nightmare Odysseus had spun, the loss of his brilliance, the withering of his grace. I had seen the joy he took in his own skill, the roaring vitality that was always just beneath the surface. Who was he if not miraculous and radiant? Who was he if not destined for fame?
“I would not care,” I said. The words scrabbled from my mouth. “Whatever you became. It would not matter to me. We would be together.”
“I know,” he said quietly, but did not look at me.
He knew, but it was not enough. The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him. I opened my mouth, but it was too late.
“I will go,” he said. “I will go to Troy.”
The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious Death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.
“Will you come with me?” he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”
Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us.
Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed.
WHEN DAWN CAME, he rose stiffly. “I must go tell my mother,” he said. He was pale, and his eyes were shadowed. He looked older already. Panic rose in me. Don’t go, I wanted to say. But he drew on a tunic and was gone.
I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.
The room turned gray, then white. The bed felt cold without him, and too large. I heard no sounds, and the stillness frightened me. It is like a tomb. I rose and rubbed my limbs, slapped them awake, trying to ward off a rising hysteria. This is what it will be, every day, without him. I felt a wild-eyed tightness in my chest, like a scream. Every day, without him.
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?”