Page 24 of The Song of Achilles

The strangeness began as a prickling of my skin. First the quail went silent, then the dove. The leaves stilled, and the breeze died, and no animals moved in the brush. There was a quality to the silence like a held breath. Like the rabbit beneath the hawk’s shadow. I could feel my pulse striking my skin.

Sometimes, I reminded myself, Chiron did small magics, tricks of divinity, like warming water or calming animals.

“Chiron?” I called. My voice wavered, thinly. “Chiron?”

“It is not Chiron.”

I turned. Thetis stood at the edge of the clearing, her bone-white skin and black hair bright as slashes of lightning. The dress she wore clung close to her body and shimmered like fish-scale. My breath died in my throat.

“You were not to be here,” she said. The scrape of jagged rocks against a ship’s hull.

She stepped forward, and the grass seemed to wilt beneath her feet. She was a sea-nymph, and the things of earth did not love her.

“I’m sorry,” I managed, my voice a dried leaf, rattling in my throat.

“I warned you,” she said. The black of her eyes seemed to seep into me, fill my throat to choking. I could not have cried out if I’d dared to.

A noise behind me, and then Chiron’s voice, loud in the quiet. “Greetings, Thetis.”

Warmth surged back into my skin, and breath returned. I almost ran to him. But her gaze held me there, unwavering. I did not doubt she could reach me if she wished.

“You are frightening the boy,” Chiron said.

“He does not belong here,” she said. Her lips were red as newly spilled blood.

Chiron’s hand landed firmly on my shoulder. “Patroclus,” he said. “You will return to the cave now. I will speak with you later.”

I stood, unsteadily, and obeyed.

“You have lived too long with mortals, Centaur,” I heard her say before the animal skins closed behind me. I sagged against the cave’s wall; my throat tasted brackish and raw.

“Achilles,” I said.

His eyes opened, and he was beside me before I could speak again.

“Are you all right?”

“Your mother is here,” I said.

I saw the tightening of muscle beneath his skin. “She did not hurt you?”

I shook my head. I did not add that I thought she wanted to. That she might have, if Chiron had not come.

“I must go,” he said. The skins whispered against each other as they parted for him, then slipped shut again.

I could not hear what was said in the clearing. Their voices were low, or perhaps they had gone to speak elsewhere. I waited, tracing spirals in the packed earth floor. I did not worry, any longer, for myself. Chiron meant to keep me, and he was older than she was, full grown when the gods still rocked in their cradles, when she had been only an egg in the womb of the sea. But there was something else, less easy to name. A loss, or lessening, that I feared her presence might bring.

It was almost midday when they returned. My gaze went to Achilles’ face first, searching his eyes, the set of his mouth. I saw nothing but perhaps a touch of tiredness. He threw himself onto the pallet beside me. “I’m hungry,” he said.

“As well you should be,” Chiron said. “It is much past lunch.” He was already preparing food for us, maneuvering in the cave’s space easily despite his bulk.

Achilles turned to me. “It is all right,” he said. “She just wanted to speak to me. To see me.”

“She will come to speak with him again,” Chiron said. And as if he knew what I thought, he added, “As is proper. She is his mother.”

She is a goddess first, I thought.

Yet as we ate, my fears eased. I had half-worried she might have told Chiron of the day by the beach, but he was no different towards either of us, and Achilles was the same as he always was. I went to bed, if not at peace, at least reassured.