“I cannot.” The pain in her voice is like something tearing. “I cannot go beneath the earth.” The underworld, with its cavernous gloom and fluttering souls, where only the dead may walk. “This is all that is left,” she says, her eyes still fixed on the monument. An eternity of stone.
I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.
THE SUN IS SETTING over the sea, spilling its colors on the water’s surface. She is beside me, silent in the blurry, creeping dusk. Her face is as unmarked as the first day I saw her. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as if to hold some thought to herself.
I have told her all. I have spared nothing, of any of us.
We watch the light sink into the grave of the western sky.
“I could not make him a god,” she says. Her jagged voice, rich with grief.
But you made him.
She does not answer me for a long time, only sits, eyes shining with the last of the dying light.
“I have done it,” she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. ACHILLES, it reads. And beside it, PATROCLUS.
“Go,” she says. “He waits for you.”
IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
Character Glossary
Gods and Immortals
APHRODITE. The goddess of love and beauty, the mother of Aeneas, and a champion of the Trojans. She particularly favored Paris, and in Book 3 of the Iliad she intervened to save him from Menelaus.
APOLLO. The god of light and music, and a champion of the Trojans. He was responsible for sending the plague down upon the Greek army in Book 1 of the Iliad, and was instrumental in the deaths of both Achilles and Patroclus.
ARTEMIS. The twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and virginity. Angry about the bloodshed the Trojan War would cause, she stopped the winds from blowing, stranding the Greek fleet at Aulis. After the sacrifice of Iphigenia, she was appeased and the winds returned.
ATHENA. The powerful goddess of wisdom, weaving, and war arts. She was a fierce supporter of her beloved Greeks against the Trojans and a particular guardian of the wily Odysseus. She appears often in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.
CHIRON. The only “good” centaur, known as a teacher of the heroes Jason, Aesculapius, and Achilles, as well as the inventor of medicine and surgery.
HERA. The queen of the gods and the sister-wife of Zeus. Like Athena, she championed the Greeks and hated the Trojans. In Vergil’s Aeneid, she is the principal antagonist, constantly harassing the Trojan hero Aeneas after Troy has fallen.
SCAMANDER. The god of the river Scamander near Troy and another champion of the Trojans. His famous battle with Achilles is told in Book 22 of the Iliad.
THETIS. A sea-nymph and shape-changer, and the mother of Achilles. The fates had prophesied that Thetis’ son would be greater than his father, which frightened the god Zeus (who had previously desired her). He made sure to marry Thetis to a mortal, in order to limit the power of her son. In post-Homeric versions of the story she tries a number of ways to make Achilles immortal, including dipping him by his ankle in the river Styx and holding him in a fire to burn away his mortality.
ZEUS. The king of the gods and the father of many famous heroes, including Heracles and Perseus.
Mortals
ACHILLES. The son of the king Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, he was the greatest warrior of his generation, as well as the most beautiful. The Iliad calls him “swift-footed” and also praises his singing voice. He was raised by the kindly centaur Chiron and took the exiled prince Patroclus as his constant companion. As a teenager, he was famously offered a choice: a long life and obscurity or a short life and fame. He chose fame and sailed to Troy along with the other Greeks. However, in the ninth year of the war he quarreled with Agamemnon and refused to fight any longer, returning to battle only when his beloved Patroclus was killed by Hector. In a rage, he slew the great Trojan warrior and dragged his body around the walls of Troy in vengeance. He was eventually killed by the Trojan prince Paris, with the assistance of the god Apollo.
Achilles’ most famous myth—his fatally vulnerable heel—is actually a very late story. In the Iliad and Odyssey Achilles isn’t invincible, just extraordinarily gifted in battle. But in the years after Homer, myths began popping up to explain and elaborate upon Achilles’ seeming invincibility. In one popular version, the goddess Thetis dips Achilles in the river Styx to try to make him immortal; it works, everywhere but the place on his heel where she holds him. Since the Iliad and Odyssey were my primary sources of inspiration, and since their interpretation seemed more realistic, I chose to follow the older tradition.
AENEAS. The son of the goddess Aphrodite and the mortal Anchises, the Trojan noble Aeneas was renowned for his piety. He fought bravely in the Trojan War but is best known for his adventures afterwards. As Vergil tells in the Aeneid, Aeneas escaped the fall of Troy and led a group of survivors to Italy, where he married a native princess and founded the Roman people.
AGAMEMNON. The brother of Menelaus, Agamemnon ruled Mycenae, the largest kingdom in Greece, and served as the over-general of the Greek expedition to Troy. During the war he often quarreled with Achilles, who refused to acknowledge Agamemnon’s right to command him. Upon Agamemnon’s return home after the war, he was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. Aeschylus depicts this incident and its aftermath in his famous tragic cycle the Oresteia.
AJAX. The king of Salamis and a descendent of Zeus, who was known for his enormous size and strength. He was the second greatest Greek warrior after Achilles, and memorably stood against the Trojans’ attack on the Greek camp when Achilles refused to fight. However, after Achilles’ death, when Agamemnon chose to honor Odysseus as the most valuable member of the Greek army, Ajax went mad with grief and rage, and killed himself. His story is movingly told in Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax.
ANDROMACHE. Born a princess of Cilicia, near Troy, she became the loyal and loving wife of Hector. She hated Achilles, who had killed her family in a raid. During the sack of Troy, she was taken captive by Pyrrhus and carried back to Greece. After Pyrrhus’ death, she and Helenus, Hector’s brother, founded the city of Buthrotum, which they built to resemble the lost Troy. Vergil tells their story in Book 3 of the Aeneid.
AUTOMEDON. Achilles’ charioteer, skilled at handling his divine, headstrong horses. After Achilles’ death, he served his son Pyrrhus.
BRISEIS. Taken captive by the Greeks in their raids on the Trojan countryside, Briseis was given as a war-prize to Achilles. When Achilles defied him, Agamemnon confiscated her as a punishment. She was returned after Patroclus’ death, and in Book 19 of the Iliad, she and the other women of the camp mourn over his body.
CALCHAS. A priest who advised the Greeks, encouraging Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia and to return the captive slave-girl Chryseis to her father.