Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.

Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.

Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.

Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.

I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.