Karishma ’s Reviews > The Song of Achilles > Status Update

I learned to sleep through the day so that I would not be tired
when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last
detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I
wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat
and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and
make him Achilles again.

A month passes, a weary month of feverish sleep and sweltering days.
Men’s faces are heavy with anger, but there are no more fights—it is too
hot. They lie in the dark and hate each other.

Our men liked conquest; they did not trust a man who was
conquered himself.

The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I
could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him
face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would
follow, even into death.

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And
perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is
gone. Do you think?”
“Perhaps,” Achilles admitted.

The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It
was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a
texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once. A few
hairs slipped forward to hang over his eyes as he played. They were fine as
lyre strings themselves, and shone.

No soul wished to be sent
early to the endless gloom of our underworld. Exile might satisfy the anger
of the living, but it did not appease the dead.