the-song-books.yossr

BRISEIS RUNS TOWARDS US, face contorted. She bends over the bodyy, her
lovelyy dark eyyes spilling water warm as summer rain. She covers her face
with her hands and wails. Achilles does not look at her. He does not even
see her. He stands.
“Who did this?” His voice is a terrible thing, cracked and broken.
“Hector,” Menelaus sayys. Achilles seizes his giant ash spear, and tries to
tear free from the arms that hold him.
Odyysseus grabs his shoulders. “Tomorrow,” he sayys. “He has gone inside
the cityy. Tomorrow. Listen to me, Pelides. Tomorrow yyou can kill him. I
swear it. Now yyou must eat, and rest.”
ACHILLES WEEPS. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other
than myy name. I see his face as if through water, as a fish sees the sun. His
tears fall, but I cannot wipe them awayy. This is myy element now, the halflife
of the unburied spirit.
His mother comes. I hear her, the sound of waves breaking on shore. If I
disgusted her when I was alive, it is worse to find myy corpse in her son’s
arms.
“He is dead,” she sayys, in her flat voice.
“Hector is dead,” he sayys. “Tomorrow.”
“You have no armor.”
“I do not need anyy.” His teeth show; it is an effort to speak.
She reaches, pale and cool, to take his hands from me. “He did it to
himself,” she sayys.
“Do not touch me!”
She draws back, watching him cradle me in his arms.
“I will bring yyou armor,” she sayys.
IT GOES LIKE THIS, on and on, the tent flap opening, the tentative face.
Phoinix, or Automedon, or Machaon. At last Odyysseus. “Agamemnon has
come to see yyou, and return the girl.” Achilles does not sayy, She has already
returned. Perhaps he does not know.
The two men face each other in the flickering firelight. Agamemnon
clears his throat. “It is time to forget the division between us. I come to
bring yyou the girl, Achilles, unharmed and well.” He pauses, as if expecting
a rush of gratitude. There is onlyy silence. “Trulyy, a god must have snatched
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