Madeline Miller

Name one hero who was happy.”

“I can’t.”

“I know. They never let you be famous and happy.”

It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.

fingered their metal,

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

In this last memory, I am skipping stones for her, plink, plink, plink, across the skin of the sea. She seems to like the way the ripples look, dispersing back to glass. Or perhaps it is the sea itself she likes.

In the five years since I had seen him, he had outgrown his babyish roundness. I gaped at the cold shock of his beauty, deep-green eyes, features fine as a girl’s. It struck from me a sudden, springing dislike. I had not changed so much, nor so well.

Achilles nodded and bent over the lyre. I did not have time to wonder about his intervention. His fingers touched the strings, and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once. A few hairs slipped forward to hang over his eyes as he played. They were fine as lyre strings themselves, and shone.

He stopped, pushed back his hair, and turned to me.

“Now you.”

I shook my head, full to spilling. I could not play now. Not ever, if I could listen to him instead. “You play,” I said.

“For many years now, Achilles, I have urged companions on you and you have turned them away. Why this boy?”

The question might have been my own. I had nothing to offer such a prince. Why, then, had he made a charity case of me? Peleus and I both waited for his answer.

“He is surprising.”

I looked up, frowning. If he thought so, he was the only one.

“Surprising,” Peleus echoed.

“Yes.” Achilles explained no further, though I hoped he would.

Peleus rubbed his nose in thought. “The boy is an exile with a stain upon him. He will add no luster to your reputation.”

“I do not need him to,” Achilles said. Not proudly or boastfully. Honestly.

Peleus acknowledged this. “Yet other boys will be envious that you have chosen such a one. What will you tell them?”

“I will tell them nothing.” The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. “It is not for them to say what I will do.”

I found my pulse beating thickly in my veins, fearing Peleus’ anger. It did not come. Father and son met each other’s gaze, and the faintest touch of amusement bloomed at the corner of Peleus’ mouth.