Achilles by Elizabeth Cook Page B

hard to find; they are so large, the bones which could move faster than a stag.
    She holds the twelve long bones of his body across her arms like wands of peeled wood. They are curiously light now the fire has sucked out their moisture. Light as charcoal and as fragile. It is habit as much as anything that holds them in their shapes. It will not take much to break them into dust. She sets down her load on a clean cloth before returning.
    Next she finds the beautiful scapulae. So fine, they are almost transparent. She runs a finger along the delicate shelf of one, clearing it of powdery dust. This could be the beginning of a wing. The column of vertebrae, the spinal cord that threaded this necklace of armour now melted away. The circuit of the pelvis is intact. It makes a strange cincture with its buckle at the pubis. Now she collects the ribs like a precious bundle of kindling. The clavicles – first bones that formed in her womb – her womb now aching as it remembers how it was to carry him. She winnows the grey dust from the small bones that gave form to the spear-wielding hands, the swift and steady feet. She gathers them all and cradles them. They are hardly as heavy as the baby she once held. Much lighter than the armour she collected from heaven to protect him.
    But the great helmet of his skull she does not take yet.
    It is Machaon, the surgeon, who follows Thetis into the heart of the ash-field, who lifts the skull of Achilles from the dust. He wipes the dust from it and gazes with humble reverence into the dark hollows that housed the eye-pits. He walks over to Thetis. Gently he sets the skull down at the top of her bundle of bones.
    Like the jar which Hephaestus gave her she has to hold it in place with her chin to keep it from rolling off.
    For a long time she does not move. She stands, bare feet buried in soft ash, as in a field of snow. She looks alone, like a child who must cross a wilderness unescorted. No one who sees her now can remember that she is divine. They all pity her and stand back as she makes her way out of the ash-field with slow, careful steps.
    She knows what she must do and knowing is a relief. She sets down all the bones on a spread cloth, laying them out as if she would make another man of them.
    But she keeps the skull; tucks it in to the front of her robe as if she were suckling it and takes it with her as she goes to fetch the jar.
    It gives her a grim little pleasure to recall that the smith god made it. That this jar of chased gold is undoubtedly the finest funerary urn in existence.
    She remembers that her son wanted his bones to be mixed with the bones of Patroclus. Automedon has remembered this too and has been at work exhuming Patroclus’ urn. It is an earthenware pot and breaks open easily when struck. The desiccated bones have turned to porous fragments and it is hard to distinguish them from the other fragments – dust and bits of urn – which he carries to Thetis in a bronze bowl. With Thetis he feeds these fragments in through the mouth of the golden urn, then pours in the sediment of clinker.
    Now it is Achilles’ turn. Thetis handles these bones on her own, knowing how soon they will break up and be indistinguishable from Patroclus’. She feels what each one is and was before she lets it go.
    Lastly she removes the skull from her bodice. She cradles it in her hands and then, as Automedon watches in wonder, seems in a moment to unmake it. For as she takes her hands away the skull tumbles into pieces, its separate bones revealed.
    There is one bone, shaped like a bird in flight.

Fire
    Thetis had cherished a mother’s dream for her son: that he, and not Menelaus, would take Helen for his prize.
    They were so well-matched.
    One mortal parent, one divine.
    The most beautiful with the best.
    She knew that Achilles had dreamed of Helen: dreams that chilled him with their brilliance, like dreams of a waste of snow. He had woken from those dreams