I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion’s tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?
ONE AFTERNOON, as I went to leave him to his private drills he said, “Why don’t you come with me?” His voice was a little strained; if I had not thought it impossible, I might have said he was nervous. The air, which had grown comfortable between us, felt suddenly taut.
“All right,” I said.
It was the quiet hours of late afternoon; the palace slept out the heat and left us alone. We took the longest way, through the olive grove’s twisting path, to the house where the arms were kept.
I stood in the doorway as he selected his practice weapons, a spear and a sword, slightly blunted at the tip. I reached for my own, then hesitated.
“Should I—?” He shook his head. No.
“I do not fight with others,” he told me.
I followed him outside to the packed sand circle. “Never?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know that . . .” I trailed off as he took up a stance in the center, his spear in his hand, his sword at his waist.
“That the prophecy is true? I guess I don’t.”
Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. Orpheus’ voice made the trees weep, Heracles could kill a man by clapping him on the back. Achilles’ miracle was his speed. His spear, as he began the first pass, moved faster than my eye could follow. It whirled, flashing forward, reversed, then flashed behind. The shaft seemed to flow in his hands, the dark gray point flickered like a snake’s tongue. His feet beat the ground like a dancer, never still.
I could not move, watching. I almost did not breathe. His face was calm and blank, not tensed with effort. His movements were so precise I could almost see the men he fought, ten, twenty of them, advancing on all sides. He leapt, scything his spear, even as his other hand snatched the sword from its sheath. He swung out with them both, moving like liquid, like a fish through the waves.
He stopped, suddenly. I could hear his breaths, only a little louder than usual, in the still afternoon air.
“Who trained you?” I asked. I did not know what else to say.
“My father, a little.”
A little. I felt almost frightened.
“No one else?”
“No.”
I stepped forward. “Fight me.”
He made a sound almost like a laugh. “No. Of course not.”
“Fight me.” I felt in a trance. He had been trained, a little, by his father. The rest was—what? Divine? This was more of the gods than I had ever seen in my life. He made it look beautiful, this sweating, hacking art of ours. I understood why his father did not let him fight in front of the others. How could any ordinary man take pride in his own skill when there was this in the world?
“I don’t want to.”
“I dare you.”
“You don’t have any weapons.”
“I’ll get them.”
He knelt and laid his weapons in the dirt. His eyes met mine. “I will not. Do not ask me again.”
“I will ask you again. You cannot forbid me.” I stepped forward, defiant. Something burned hot in me now, an impatience, a certainty. I would have this thing. He would give it to me.
His face twisted and, almost, I thought I saw anger. This pleased me. I would goad him, if nothing else. He would fight me then. My nerves sang with the danger of it.
But instead he walked away, his weapons abandoned in the dust.
“Come back,” I said. Then louder: “Come back. Are you afraid?”
That strange half-laugh again, his back still turned. “No, I am not afraid.”
“You should be.” I meant it as a joke, an easing, but it did not sound that way in the still air that hung between us. His back stared at me, unmoving, unmovable.
I will make him look at me, I thought. My legs swallowed up the five steps between us, and I crashed into his back.
He stumbled forward, falling, and I clung to him. We landed, and I heard the quick huff of his breath as it was driven from him. But before I could speak, he was twisting around beneath me, had seized my wrists in his hands. I struggled, not sure what I had meant to do. But here was resistance, and that was something I could fight. “Let me go!” I yanked my wrists against his grip.
“No.” In a swift motion, he rolled me beneath him, pinning me, his knees in my belly. I panted, angry but strangely satisfied.
“I have never seen anyone fight the way you do,” I told him. Confession or accusation, or both.
“You have not seen much.”
I bridled, despite the mildness of his tone. “You know what I mean.”
His eyes were unreadable. Over us both, the unripe olives rattled gently.
“Maybe. What do you mean?”
I twisted, hard, and he let go. We sat up, our tunics dusty and stuck to our backs.
“I mean—” I broke off. There was an edge to me now, that familiar keenness of anger and envy, struck to life like flint. But the bitter words died even as I thought them.
“There is no one like you,” I said, at last.
He regarded me a moment, in silence. “So?”
Something in the way he spoke it drained the last of my anger from me. I had minded, once. But who was I now, to begrudge such a thing?
As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.
Chapter Six
OUR FRIENDSHIP CAME ALL AT ONCE AFTER THAT, LIKE spring floods from the mountains. Before, the boys and I had imagined that his days were filled with princely instruction, statecraft and spear. But I had long since learned the truth: other than his lyre lessons and his drills, he had no instruction. One day we might go swimming, another we might climb trees. We made up games for ourselves, of racing and tumbling. We would lie on the warm sand and say, “Guess what I’m thinking about.”
The falcon we had seen from our window.
The boy with the crooked front tooth.
Dinner.
And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull. I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread: my father was not near, nor boys. I was not hungry, or tired, or sick.
This feeling was different. I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This and this and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.
He played my mother’s lyre, and I watched. When it was my turn to play, my fingers tangled in the strings and the teacher despaired of me. I did not care. “Play again,” I told him. And he played until I could barely see his fingers in the dark.
I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.
IT WAS LATE SUMMER, over a year after my exile had begun, when at last I told him of how I had killed the boy. We were in the branches of the courtyard oak, hidden by the patchwork leaves. It was easier here somehow, off the ground, with the solid trunk at my back. He listened silently, and when I had finished, he asked:
“Why did you not say that you were defending yourself?”
It was like him to ask this, the thing I had not thought of before.
“I don’t know.”