Achilles by Elizabeth Cook

darkening of the waves makes the men look up at the sky, expecting to see signs of a storm. They find unbroken blue. The mild wind continues to lift the locks of hair – they hang in the air like leaves on an autumn day. Yet still the sound grows and the small waves race in. Some meteorological catastrophe must be at hand: a whirlwind, a twister, or else a tidal wave once these flat little waves have gathered force. The keening must be the sound of the wind whipping in the distance. They have heard of such phenomena.
    In spite of the strangeness of the sea, some men make for the ships. The instinct of sailors who want home.
    Chaos on the beach: as before a storm when dry leaves swirl on the forest floor in separate conflicting eddies. The generals attempt to impose some kind of order but it is hard for them to be heard.
    Only the Myrmidons to a man keep close to you. Not one of them will desert his beloved commander.
    Nestor sees what is happening and has a word with Odysseus. There is no storm coming. Achilles’ mother and her sisters are arriving from the sea to be present at the funeral. He speaks quietly – his old voice cannot carry as Menelaus’ does – but once he has spoken calm settles again.
    With calm a sense of wonder spreads. Now the fear has gone the warriors stand in silence, listening to the subtle harmonies that make up this keening.
    The sound is the sound that would happen if every fish in a silver shoal had its own fine note. An intricacy of sound, a close-stitched cloth. Each fish a needle darting over and under, under and over, till the cloth is tight. Each needle a note, taking its place in the vast canopy of sound that spreads itself out over their heads. This pliant, seam-free cloth of shot silk which encloses them unfurls, interposing itself between them and the sky.
    Many who are there have never knowingly met gods before. Their hearts, open already with grief, salute the marvellous happening.
    The air too seems to stand to attention and within it, each mote of light moves. Each mote twirls and dances, like the bright lifted sections of hair. Each mote sings.
    Then something happens which all can discern. The sea is suddenly crowded with silvery creatures. Not like fish. Bigger. More like a large colony of seals making its way up onto the shore; heaving, sliding, pulling, arcing. A flickering mass of gleaming bodies, dark as ore or mottled and luminous. Some are pale as honey. Each one in an ecstasy of movement.
    As they arrive on the beach the song thickens. Soon they are all here: Thetis, her sisters, and those nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Muses. They stand together on the shore and sing and their song burns in the veins of all who hear it. It is stronger than unmixed wine.
    *   *   * 
    T HETIS HAS been busy on Olympus, rousing the Muses; moving through the earth’s salt waters in search of her sisters. As an immortal she can go wherever she likes, in any shape she chooses.
    But what is the point of immortality if your child does not share it? The freedom of Heaven and earth is a small gift to one who wishes to go nowhere except into Hell where she cannot get in. It is impossible for her: the wrong density. Ordinary living mortals have more to do with the dead than the likes of her. They see ghosts; hear the dead’s commands. Thetis will never hear the dead Achilles ask for Polyxena any more than she saw Patroclus when his ghost came to visit her still-alive son.
    For seventeen days and nights they mourn; mortals and immortals together. If any human there doubts the reality of divine grief, the cries of Thetis set them right. Terrible to hear, they pierce the tight mosaic of the Muses’ song. Those who hear feel as if the sea is emptying itself having scoured its floor. That strange creatures will be cast up on the beach.
    While others sit hunched, concentrated in grief, Thetis is restless, pacing the beach as she wails, or darting