The Song of Achilles: A Novel

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.

Chiron’s voice held a warning of displeasure. “She is a goddess, Achilles, and your mother besides. Do you think so little of her wishes?” “I honor her, Chiron. But she is wrong in this.”

But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread:

THE PROPHECY TOLD TRULY. Now that Pyrrhus has come, Troy falls. He does not do it alone, of course. There is the horse, and Odysseus’ plan, and a whole army besides. But he is the one who kills Priam. He is the one who hunts down Hector’s wife, Andromache, hiding in a cellar with her son.

It was Achilles, standing over me. His face was serious, the green of his eyes steady as he regarded me. I prickled with guilt. I was not supposed to be there and I knew it. “I have been looking for you,” he said. The words were expressionless; they carried no hint of anything I could read. “You have not been going to morning drills.” My face went

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.

“I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

It almost made me want to like him. But I had seen his smiles too often now.