PEOPLE VISIT HIS GRAVE.

Young children, bouncing and scrubbed raw from the inky red of war, with trembling chins and weak knees. Families and lone stragglers, all swarming the grave yet never touching; the imaginary brush of a hand against the grave, a stray glance, a tugging desire, but never nearing, for his was a spirit of a god, and they are mortals. I call out,

I am here.

They take their wispy fingers, buzzing and flitting around the grave, their sticky-fingered children, whose eyes are not bright and flaring like Achilles's were, for his contained a fire, explosive but to never be again, streaking red and gold across the sky but only once, only once.

Their children, whose eyes are not sweet and tender like Achilles's had once been, whose pink, teasing mouths do not taste like almonds and earth, whose noses did not once press against mine as soft flesh pressed against flesh. I call out to them, but they are like me.

Nervous frightfulness reflects in their eyes, which I had seen so often as I stared in the glass when I was young, so unlike the way Achilles's bravery and courage would infect others, so abundant it was. I see myself in the way they back away, reluctant and wavering. I see myself, at the weak, withering boy I had been before Achilles in them; a mere mortal, nothing more.

They look up at their mothers, hands curling around their mothers, and they are led away, like sheep herded by a dog.

I think of Achilles, glorious and bright and burning as bright as a fire.

The carvings engraved onto his tomb are murky depths, where I can see him, almost catch him, but no, the beast wielding a sword as if it he loved it like the sun, cutting down soldiers; that is not him. He is not the soldier who killed people meaninglessly, but he is the boy who was as quick as a gazelle, heels licking the ground as he ran, gentle touch soft like cotton against my skin, back golden and bright in the blazing, fiery sun.

His tomb is nothing more than his achievements in war; the pictures they deemed his most important moments are as meaningless as his wife, his beloved, was to him–to us–for to him, his moments were the beautiful seconds where everything was golden and bright and filled with heavy breathing and tangled limbs and hair; a wild golden mane, fine hairs where no one had ever seen before, secrets laid bare and the air hot and heavy with them.

Thetis comes.

She is quiet and the air is still, and her form does not carry the harsh need for something, something great and magnificent and unattainable anymore, and her eyes are no longer demanding and cruel and narrowed, as if you could disappear if pinned too long by her gutting, immortal gaze.

I hate her still, for where has she been the past years, where has she been as children who were never a tenth of the boy Achilles was press against his grave? Her cold sharpness has faded, replaced by the soft wetness of a broken, grieving mother, and she has never been so mortal as she is now, so vulnerable and filled with useless regrets.

I would like to see her fall, and yet Achilles loved her with a ferocity of a boy who loves his mother.

He did not fear her, Achilles, because fear was such a small, trivial thing to him; why would a lion be afraid of his mother? And we–we were all mice, scurrying beneath his feet, desperately trying not to get lost in his shadow. I was ever so lucky he loved me, or I would have been a terrified boy, head bent and soul a wisp, lost and carried in the wind.

Achilles did not fear his mother, who would watch his life, dangle it from her hand and toss it around, with a cold detachment. He did not fear anything, only the imminent promise of death, looming over him, ready to embrace him with cold hands, and he lived life with loud laughter and swelling pride and, "That is what a son should be."

He was a god in all rights, brilliant and powerful, but even his power had limits, and his face hit the ground with a smile, they said.

Hate fills me, for she raised Pyrrhus and loved him more than beautiful, sweet Achilles, with all the power of a god and yet the bright love that wrapped around him sweetly, and she told him so, and watched as he crumpled under the weight of a mother's spiteful words.

She watches, hand rising to brush against the scenes of death on his tomb, the pictures of death all that remains of him now, all that I have. Her mouth is open, as if she is breathing softly and noisily all at the same time, and I cannot help it.

Thetis, I call.

She jerks back. She vanishes, like the color that bled from Achilles's neck.

She returns, after days and nights bleed together, and the air stills and she is quiet once more. Thetis, I call again, and she remains quietly, as if mourning for a son she would not, refused to love, refused to mother. As if mourning for a son who was just as motherless as she was heartless.

I am here. In your son's grave.

Silence, and she only looks at her son's grave, and her cold face, carved from stone, is crumpling and folding.

Every day she comes, quiet and still and doing nothing, and I can do nothing to make this frightful creature who I once feared with a passion that chilled my weak, rattling bones, leave, and so I simply wait and hate her and the misery and beauty she inflicted onto my life.

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 body is stone, cold and unyielding and uncaring. I do not speak again that day, only weep and scream in hatred. It is a break from the overwhelming sorrow that weights me, that crushes me to the ground with its burden.

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, and she is angry, and I; I am unafraid, carrying the euphoria of living without fear, of living a predator, that Achilles must have grasped so easily in his hand, for what more can she do to me that would add to my pain?

Returning Hector's body, I say. That should be remembered.

She is silent for a long time, her eyes unseeing yet having seen too much, suffered too much, battered and bruised and nothing compared to what Achilles suffered in his mortality.

"And?" She asks.

His skill with the lyre. His beautiful voice.

There is too much to tell, too much that has lived and bounced inside me for too long. Too much that has never been told, too much that has been my secret, mine and only mine, the parts of him which only I bore witness to.

She waits, hungry and yearning for more, as all are with Achilles.

The girls. He took them so they would not suffer at the other kings' hands, you know.

A quick, fleeting disappointment. "That was your doing."

Anger, and yet: the want to tell of the beauty Achilles possessed, how his fingers would dance so effortlessly over the lyre, a mesmerizing music in its own right. The way his voice would lull me, whisper sweet secrets to me as we lay together, the way his skin flashed gold in the sun.

The hate I felt before surges, and I ask of her, "Why are you not with Pyrrhus?" She is here, at the grave of the boy she spat at, the boy she abandoned to his death, the boy she was supposed to love unconditionally as mothers love their children and yet she called a disappointment, the boy who tried everything to please her, who even those who did not know him felt an inexplicable pride of, the boy who she left to comfort in my weak, mortal arms.

Something in her eyes. "He is dead."

I am unsurprised, and yet I feel a quick relish, that he should be gone from the earth so quickly, leaving his bloody mark on it for all to admire. I am glad, fiercely and ferociously.

How? I demand the answer of her, beseechingly.

"He was killed by Agnamemnon's son."

For what?

She is silent for some time. I do not care.

"For stealing his bride and then ravishing her."

I see the regret, the remorse lingering in her eyes, and yet I must salt her wounds for the way she did to Achilles. "This was the son you preferred to Achilles?" I ask, and she turns away from me.

Her stone is cracking.


"Anything I want," he told Briseis.

His arrow stabbed the back of her head so violently.

He killed Hector's wife and his only son, proof of the mercy Achilles had inside his pumping, human heart.

The son's skull shattered like rotted fruit.

"My father had no such wife," he told Odysseus.

"Achilles is pleased," he said, and tore open the throat of the princess.


"Have you no more memories?" She asks, after the sun has set and rose, after the sky has bled a vibrant sunset.

I am made of memories, I reply.

It is the only thing I have, my bottle of whiskey to keep me company in the lonliest nights, when I could hear Achilles's breathing and his bright laughter, and yet never touch him.

One touch.

It was all I asked.

Speak, then, she says.


I ALMOST REFUSE.

But the ache for him, to hear his name pass my lips, to taste the way his name felt on my mouth, to speak of him, is stronger than anything else that I possess. I want to speak of his beauty and his kindness, of his compassion and mercy, his strength and power.

I agree.

It is strange, to spill the stories and memories overflowing inside the battered vessel I am. I am accustomed to keeping the merciful, compassionate Achilles from the harsh goddess demanding strength and godliness from a boy who is her son.

Still, the memories overflow as if from a fountain, surging without pausing, faster than I can speak. They come to me, not in words or any legible or tangible thing, but as a slight of a scent, the dream of his voice. This, I tell her. This and this.

The way his hair glittered like spun gold in the summer sun. His face, exuberant and naive, when he ran. His eyes, solemn like an owl's, and yet so bright and full of life.

This and this and this.

So many moments, all crowding forward.

And because it is only fair, she closes her eyes and she too remembers. The long dark hair, spilling wetly down her back. Then rough, brutal and bruising mortal hands, scrubbing against her polished ones. Sand, scraping her raw, a sharp scream. The gods, smiling and pleased, handing her to him.

She remembers the way the child grew and stretched within her dark womb, luminous and bright and everything Achilles was and the rest of the world was not, could not be. The prophecy the three old women with the eyes who had seen too much.

'Your son will be greater than his father.'

The way the gods had recoiled. They knew what powerful sons could do to their fathers–Zeus's thunderbolts still smell of burned flesh and patricide. They gave her to a mortal, trying to shackle the child's power. Diluting him with humanity, diminishing him.

She knows, as her hand rests on her stomach, that it is her blood that will make him strong.

But not strong enough.

I am a mortal! he screams at her, his face blotchy and sodden and dull. I am a mortal!

She is helpless. She is his bearer, his womb, nothing more. She is not a mother and never would be. She turns away from him, leaving him desolate and desperate, for she is a goddess and he is her champion.

She turns away from him, leaving him in the embrace of a knobby-kneed, uncertain mortal whose only surety is the burning love he has for her son.


WHY DO YOU NOT GO TO HIM?

"I cannot." The pain in her voice is like blades, sharp as a razor, skidding and tearing. "I cannot go beneath the earth." The underworld, for the dead and the lost, which not even a desperate, immortal mother could break open. "This is all that is left," she says, looking at the tomb.

The empty tomb, without his soul nor any of him, of who he was and why he was a hero.

I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as his green eyes laugh into mine. Achilles, sword fast and slicing, looking up at me cluelessly as I stare up at him in wonder. Achilles, outlined against the sky, lithe body hanging off the highest branch of the tree. Achilles, so wonderfully unafraid of life.

I remember the thick, sleepy breath, whispering against my ear. "If you have to go, I will go with you." My trembling fears, forgotten and sang away in his golden arms, feet dangling over a blue, sparkling river.

The memories come, and come. She listens, looking at her son's tomb.

We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.


THE SUN IS SETTING OVER THE SEA.

Its bright colors bleed into the water, spilling its paints across the rippling surface. She is beside me, still and quiet and as unmoving as the first day I saw her.

I have told her everything. I have not reserved a memory for myself, have not hidden away a moment, an hour, a day. because I know the hunger she is feeling, to know everything about this beautiful creature. I hunger for him as well, but both our yearnings can not be sated with the memories we have, so why hold back?

We watch the light sink away, until all that is left are the scattered marks of the sun's last dying rays.

"I could not make him a god."

Her jagged voice, cut and broken like shattered glass, razor sharp and just as painful on the inside as it is on the outside.

But you made him.

She does not speak for a long time, only sits and contemplates, eyes shining with a glistening liquid in the last of the dying sun. At last, she speaks.

"I have done it," she says.

I do not understand, until I see the tomb, and see the word, Achilles. And beside it, rough and messy and freshly new compared to the older carving, Patroclus.

In the shock and the bright, bright ecstasy, I am grateful, brimming with gratitude, for I understand how painful it was, to carve the words beside her son's name. To release the only other who remembered her son, the only other who understood her pain.

To allow herself to be so painfully alone, defiled and lonely and with a broken heart.

Still, she raises her head, proud to the last, and says, "Go." She says, "He waits for you."


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.


His eyes are burning with a bright, feverish fire, and he says my name, as if savoring the taste on his tongue.

"Pa-tro-clus."