the-song-books.yossr

Her face looked veryy small, and so sad that I could not be silent.
“Briseis,” I said. “If I ever wished to take a wife, it would be yyou.”
“But yyou do not wish to take a wife.”
“No,” I said, as gentlyy as I could.
She nodded, and her eyyes dropped again. I could hear her slow breaths,
the faint tremor in her chest.
“I’m sorryy,” I said.
“Do yyou not ever want children?” she asked.
The question surprised me. I still felt half a child myyself, though most myy
age were parents several times over.
“I don’t think I would be much of a parent,” I said.
“I do not believe that,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do yyou?”
I asked it casuallyy, but it seemed to strike deep, and she hesitated.
“Mayybe,” she said. And then I understood, too late, what she had reallyy
been asking me. I flushed, embarrassed at myy thoughtlessness. And
humbled, too. I opened myy mouth to sayy something. To thank her, perhaps.
But she was alreadyy standing, brushing off her dress. “Shall we go?”
There was nothing to do but rise and join her.
THAT NIGHT I could not stop thinking of it: Briseis’ and myy child. I saw
stumbling legs, and dark hair and the mother’s big eyyes. I saw us byy the fire,
Briseis and I, and the babyy, playying with some bit of wood I had carved. Yet
there was an emptiness to the scene, an ache of absence. Where was
Achilles? Dead? Or had he never existed? I could not live in such a life. But
Briseis had not asked me to. She had offered me all of it, herself and the
child and Achilles, too.
I shifted to face Achilles. “Did yyou ever think of having children?” I
asked.
His eyyes were closed, but he was not sleeping. “I have a child,” he
answered.
It shocked me anew each time I remembered it. His child with
Deidameia. A boyy, Thetis had told him, called Neoptolemus. New War.
Nicknamed Pyyrrhus, for his fieryy red hair. It disturbed me to think of him—
a piece of Achilles wandering through the world. “Does he look like yyou?”
I had asked Achilles once. Achilles had shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
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