Page 101 of The Song of Achilles

Her hand jerks back. She vanishes.

Later she returns. Thetis . She does not react. Only stands, looking at her son’s tomb.

I am buried here. In your son’s grave.

She says nothing. Does nothing. She does not hear.

Every day she comes. She sits at the tomb’s base, and it seems that I can feel her cold through the earth, the slight searing smell of salt. I cannot make her leave, but I can hate her.

You said that Chiron ruined him. You are a goddess, and cold, and know nothing. You are the one who ruined him. Look at how he will be remembered now. Killing Hector, killing Troilus. For things he did cruelly in his grief.

Her face is like stone itself. It does not move. The days rise and fall.

Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods. But how is there glory in taking a life? We die so easily. Would you make him another Pyrrhus? Let the stories of him be something more.

“What more?” she says.

For once I am not afraid. What else can she do to me?

Returning Hector’s body to Priam, I say. That should be remembered.

She is silent for a long time. “And?”

His skill with the lyre. His beautiful voice.

She seems to be waiting.

The girls. He took them so that they would not suffer at another king’s hands.

“That was your doing.”

Why are you not with Pyrrhus?

Something flickers in her eyes. “He is dead.”

I am fiercely glad. How? It is a command, almost.

“He was killed by Agamemnon’s son.”

For what?

She does not answer for some time. “He stole his bride and ravished her.”

“Whatever I want,” he said to Briseis. Was this the son you preferred to Achilles?

Her mouth tightens. “Have you no more memories?”

I am made of memories.

“Speak, then.”

I ALMOST REFUSE. But the ache for him is stronger than my anger. I want to speak of something not dead or divine. I want him to live.

At first it is strange. I am used to keeping him from her, to hoarding him for myself. But the memories well up like springwater, faster than I can hold them back. They do not come as words, but like dreams, rising as scent from the rain-wet earth. This, I say. This and this. The way his hair looked in summer sun. His face when he ran. His eyes, solemn as an owl at lessons. This and this and this. So many moments of happiness, crowding forward.

She closes her eyes. The skin over them is the color of sand in winter. She listens, and she too remembers.

She remembers standing on a beach, hair black and long as a horse’s tail. Slate-gray waves smash against rocks. Then a mortal’s hands, brutal and bruising on her polished skin. The sand scraping her raw, and the tearing inside. The gods, after, tying her to him.