As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.
Odysseus inclines his head. True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. He spread his broad hands. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows? He smiles. Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.
There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that.
I have done it, she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S.Go, she says. He waits for you.In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
Circe, he says, it will be all right.It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. … He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.
That is — your friend? Philtatos, Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.
When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.