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No. My hands flurry in the air like startled birds, trying to halt the spear’s relentless movement towards my belly. But I am weak as a baby against Hector’s strength, and my palms give way, unspooling in ribbons of red. The spearhead submerges in a sear of pain so great that my breath stops, a boil of agony that bursts over my whole stomach. My head drops back against the ground, and the last image I see is of Hector, leaning seriously over me, twisting his spear inside me as if he is stirring a pot. The last thing I think is: Achilles.
Nothing.
For a moment, there is only nothing.
For the first time in all of my waking days, there is nothing.
And then, there is everything.
A stream of memories hits me, overwhelms me. I am dead, I know that. But I am nowhere, trapped in the space between death and beyond. I am not in the Underworld, as I have not gone to rest, and yet I am not quite restless. I cannot roam, not yet, not even incorporeally, not even as an indistinguishable spirit. I am nowhere, but still I can remember.
And I do remember.
My memories rush past me irregularly, lapping at my mind as the ocean to the shore. Some are insignificant and fly by, while others linger. I can barely fathom the face of my father or the toes of my mother and they disappear. They are soon long gone and I find myself no worse for it. The vague impressions of my early childhood flutter away, lost behind me, and the beat of the waves slows. In my thoughts, he approaches.
My first glance of him. He is fast, faster than I. Faster than any who oppose him. My father, his face obscured by forgetfulness, sneers at me with disdain. I look past him, charmed by the fleet-footed boy of Phthia.
I meet him, now. I taste dismissal and the heavy sting of my newfound unimportance as a lyre strums in the background.
I catch his eye, once, twice. It becomes a common occurrence. I am nothing to him. I resent him, yet I cannot help but admire him.
Catch, he says. I do catch. The excess warmth of his hands has been transferred to the fruit and now seeps into my palm. I bite into the fig with an eagerness that surprises me, and it is sweeter than any I’ve tasted before.
They come faster now, the memories. A storeroom. A lyre–my mother’s lyre. A spear, thrown with the sort of precision full-grown men only dream of. Figs and tussles in the dirt and the golden hair of a boy that will never cease to amaze me.
A cold morning. A parting glance, through lowered eyelashes. Panic, uncertainty. A burning need to once again be near the golden boy. A forest, bristles, scratched legs. They are of no importance to me.
He is there, and I am content.
A centaur. A cave. Lessons of medicine, of hunting, of music. Adolescence.
Finally, bliss. The feel of his hands, so masterful in their delicacy, playing me as though I am his lyre. Nights not stolen, but given. Days full of sun, of rivers, of the earth beneath us. The stars above his golden head, mapping out our destiny even as we lie together restlessly, gasping against the warm silence of rose quartz.
His mother is not present in my mind. I catch glimpses of thick black hair and a cold gaze, but they slink past me. They do not belong here.
A summons. The kingdom of Phthia is there, and then it isn’t. Nights spent alone in a cold bed in his father’s kingdom fly past me, and then I am with him again. He is wearing a skirt. I ignore any memory of his mother, of his wife, of any part of that island but him. He is what matters. In my mind, which is all that is truly left of me, I am in his arms.
I am in his arms for what seems like days. These are the memories that linger. His warm, golden skin. His smooth fingers, uncalloused yet by war, trace lines down my throat, down my chest, lower still. We are consumed by passion, yet there is something deeper, always. The light in his eyes warms me. I remember this, his golden warmth.
Then, we are cold. There is a man with a scar. He doesn’t matter. There is a crass man, with a sly face and a rude mouth. He doesn’t matter either. They are not him, so I do not care.
Memories of ships, of the sea, of a beach fall past me. Kings and princes fall past my gaze.
One other stays with me. Briseis. She is one of us. I love her, and her deep brown eyes stick in my mind. But she is not him either, and my love for her is of a different kind. I wish I could comfort her, but she has fallen past now, too.
It is only him. The early hours of the morning, the creeping golden light over his peaceful face, stay with me. I am lost in him, his softened frame, his tousled hair, his settled brow. I stay here longer than anywhere else.
But I cannot stop the rush of the tide. Even these fall from me and are replaced by ugliness. Battle, death, arguments. I turn away, try to speed the passing of the darkness. I try to hold on to my happy moments with him. But everything, in the nothingness of my mind, accelerates in a sickening tidal wave of remembrance. I hate it, and suddenly I don’t want to remember.
And then I don’t remember.
And then I do.
I am restless, and then I am not.
I cannot correctly gauge time, but I know it is passing. I know he is gone, but I am not with him.
And then I am.
As I see the names Achilles and Patroclus together, finally, I feel the dark of the earth rush away and know he is near.
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.
I know where I am, now. And it is golden.