Page 49 of The Song of Achilles

“Thetis!” I screamed it into the snatching wind, my face towards the sea. “Thetis!” The sun was high now; their meeting had ended long ago. I drew a third breath.

“Do not speak my name again.”

I whirled to face her and lost my balance. The rocks jumbled under my feet, and the wind tore at me. I grabbed at an outcrop, steadied myself. I looked up.

Her skin was paler even than usual, the first winter’s ice. Her lips were drawn back, to show her teeth.

“You are a fool,” she said. “Get down. Your halfwit death will not save him.”

I was not so fearless as I thought; I flinched from the malice in her face. But I forced myself to speak, to ask the thing I had to know of her. “How much longer will he live?”

She made a noise in her throat, like the bark of a seal. It took me a moment to understand that it was laughter. “Why? Would you prepare yourself for it? Try to stop it?” Contempt spilled across her face.

“Yes,” I answered. “If I can.”

The sound again. “Please.” I knelt. “Please tell me.”

Perhaps it was because I knelt. The sound ceased, and she considered me a moment. “Hector’s death will be first,” she said. “This is all I am given to know.”

Hector . “Thank you,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed, and her voice hissed like water poured on coals. “Do not presume to thank me. I have come for another reason.”

I waited. Her face was white as splintered bone.

“It will not be so easy as he thinks. The Fates promise fame, but how much? He will need to guard his honor carefully. He is too trusting. The men of Greece”—she spat the words—“are dogs over a bone. They will not simply give up preeminence to another. I will do what I can. And you.” Her eyes flickered over my long arms and skinny knees. “You will not disgrace him. Do you understand?”

Do you understand?

“Yes,” I said. And I did. His fame must be worth the life he paid for it. The faintest breath of air touched her dress’s hem, and I knew she was about to leave, to vanish back to the caves of the sea. Something made me bold.

“Is Hector a skilled soldier?”

“He is the best,” she answered. “But for my son.”

Her gaze flickered to the right, where the cliff dropped away. “He is coming,” she said.

A CHILLES CRESTED THE RISE and came to where I sat. He looked at my face and my bloodied skin. “I heard you talking,” he said.

“It was your mother,” I said.

He knelt and took my foot in his lap. Gently, he picked the fragments of rock from the wounds, brushing off dirt and chalky dust. He tore a strip from his tunic’s hem and pressed it tight to stanch the blood.

My hand closed over his. “You must not kill Hector,” I said.

He looked up, his beautiful face framed by the gold of his hair. “My mother told you the rest of the prophecy.”

“She did.”

“And you think that no one but me can kill Hector.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you think to steal time from the Fates?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” A sly smile spread across his face; he had always loved defiance. “Well, why should I kill him? He’s done nothing to me.”