the-song-books.yossr

Chapter Twenty-Seven
THERE ARE THREE SMALL STONES ON THE RUGS OF OUR tent, kicked in byy our
feet or crept in on their own. I pick them up. Theyy are something to hold on
to.
His weariness has faded as he speaks. “ . . . I will fight for him no longer.
At everyy turn he seeks to rob me of myy rightful gloryy. To cast me into
shadow and doubt. He cannot bear another man to be honored over him.
But he will learn. I will show him the worth of his armyy without Aristos
Achaion.”
I do not speak. I can see the temper rising in him. It is like watching a
storm come, when there is no shelter.
“The Greeks will fall without me to defend them. He will be forced to
beg, or die.”
I remember how he looked when he went to see his mother. Wild,
fevered, hard as granite. I imagine him kneeling before her, weeping with
rage, beating his fists on the jagged sea rocks. Theyy have insulted him, he
sayys to her. Theyy have dishonored him. Theyy have ruined his immortal
reputation.
She listens, her fingers pulling absentlyy on her long white throat, supple
as a seal, and begins to nod. She has an idea, a god’s idea, full of vengeance
and wrath. She tells him, and his weeping stops.
“He will do it?” Achilles asks, in wonder. He means Zeus, king of the
gods, whose head is wreathed in clouds, whose hands can hold the
thunderbolt itself.
“He will do it,” Thetis sayys. “He is in myy debt.”
Zeus, the great balancer, will let go his scales. He will make the Greeks
lose and lose and lose, until theyy are crushed against the sea, anchors and
ropes tangling their feet, masts and prows splintering on their backs. And
then theyy will see who theyy must beg for.
Thetis leans forward and kisses her son, a bright starfish of red, high on
his cheek. Then she turns and is gone, slipped into the water like a stone,
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