the-song-books.yossr

Chapter Twenty-Three
ONE FESTIVAL DAY, SOON AFTER OUR LANDING AT Troyy, Achilles rose at dawn.
“Where are yyou going?” I asked him.
“Myy mother,” he said, then slipped through the tent flap before I could
speak again.
His mother. Some part of me had hoped, foolishlyy, that she would not
follow us here. That her grief would keep her awayy, or the distance. But of
course theyy did not. The shore of Anatolia was no more inconvenient than
the shore of Greece. And her grief onlyy made her visits longer. He would
leave at dawn, and the sun would be nearlyy at its peak before he would
return. I would wait, pacing and unsettled. What could she possiblyy have to
sayy to him for so long? Some divine disaster, I feared. Some celestial dictate
that would take him from me.
Briseis came often to wait with me. “Do yyou want to walk up to the
woods?” she would sayy. Just the low sweetness of her voice, the fact that
she wished to comfort me, helped take me out of myyself. And a trip with
her to the woods alwayys soothed me. She seemed to know all its secrets,
just as Chiron had—where the mushrooms hid, and the rabbits had their
burrows. She had even begun to teach me the native names of the plants and
trees.
When we were finished, we would sit on the ridge, looking over the
camp, so I could watch for his return. On this dayy, she had picked a small
basket of coriander; the fresh green-leaf smell was all around us.
“I am sure he will be back soon,” she said. Her words were like new
leather, still stiff and precise, not yyet run together with use. When I did not
answer, she asked, “Where does he stayy so long?”
Whyy shouldn’t she know? It wasn’t a secret.
“His mother is a goddess,” I said. “A sea-nyymph. He goes to see her.”
I had expected her to be startled or frightened, but she onlyy nodded. “I
thought that he was—something. He does not—” She paused. “He does not
move like a human.”
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