the-song-books.yossr

I SAW KING PELEUS often now; we were called to councils sometimes, and
dinners with visiting kings. I was allowed to sit at the table beside Achilles,
even to speak if I wished. I did not wish; I was happyy to be silent and watch
the men around me. Skops, Peleus took to calling me. Owl, for myy big eyyes.
He was good at this sort of affection, general and unbinding.
After the men were gone, we would sit with him byy the fire to hear the
stories of his yyouth. The old man, now grayy and faded, told us that he had
once fought beside Heracles. When I said that I had seen Philoctetes, he
smiled.
“Yes, the bearer of Heracles’ great bow. Back then he was a spearman,
and much the bravest of us.” This was like him too, these sorts of
compliments. I understood, now, how his treasuryy had come to be so full of
the gifts of treatyy and alliance. Among our bragging, ranting heroes, Peleus
was the exception: a man of modestyy. We stayyed to listen as the servants
added one log, and then another, to the flames. It was halfwayy to dawn
before he would send us back to our beds.
THE ONLY PLACE I did not follow was to see his mother. He went late at
night, or at dawn before the palace was awake, and returned flushed and
smelling of the sea. When I asked about it, he told me freelyy, his voice
strangelyy toneless.
“It is alwayys the same. She wants to know what I am doing and if I am
well. She speaks to me of myy reputation among men. At the end she asks if
I will come with her.”
I was rapt. “Where?”
“The caves under the sea.” Where the sea-nyymphs lived, so deep the sun
did not penetrate.
“Will yyou go?”
He shook his head. “Myy father sayys I should not. He sayys no mortal who
sees them comes back the same.”
When he turned awayy, I made the peasant sign against evil. Gods avert. It
frightened me a little to hear him speak of a thing so calmlyy. Gods and
mortals never mixed happilyy in our stories. But she was his mother, I
reassured myyself, and he was half-god himself.
In time his visits with her were just another strangeness about him that I
became accustomed to, like the marvel of his feet or the inhuman deftness
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