"Calydon had fierce enemies, and when they heard that Meleager would no longer fight for Calydon-"

I pushed my foot towards him a little, provokingly. His fingers wrapped around my ankle.

"They attacked. And the city of Calydon suffered terrible losses."

Achilles yanked, and I slid half out of the chair. I clung to the wooden frame so I would not be pulled onto the floor.

"So the people went to Meleager, to beg him for his help. And- Achilles, are you listening?"

"Yes, Father."

"You are not. You are tormenting our poor Skops."

I tried to look tormented. But all I felt was the coolness against my ankle, where his fingers had been, a moment before.

"It is just as well, perhaps. I am getting tired. We will finish the story another evening."

We stood and wished the old man good night. But as we turned, he said, "Achilles, you might look for the light-haired girl, from the kitchen. She has been haunting doorways for you, I hear."

It was hard to know if it was the firelight that made his face look so changed.

"Perhaps, Father. I am tired tonight."

Peleus chuckled, as if this were a joke. "I'm sure she could wake you up." He waved us off.

I had to trot, a little, to keep up with him as we walked back to our rooms. We washed our faces in silence, but there was an ache in me, like a rotten tooth. I could not let it be.

"That girl-do you like her?"

Achilles turned to face me from across the room. "Why? Do you?"

"No, no." I flushed. "That is not what I meant." I had not felt so uncertain with him since the earliest days. "I mean, do you want-"

He ran at me, pushed me backwards onto my cot. Leaned over me. "I'm sick of talking about her," he said.

The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine.

Then, just like that morning, he was gone. Up across the room, and pouring a last cup of water. His face was still, and calm.

"Good night," he said.

AT NIGHT, IN BED, images come. They begin as dreams, trailing caresses in my sleep from which I start, trembling. I lie awake, and still they come, the flicker of firelight on a neck, the curve of a hipbone, drawing downwards. Hands, smooth and strong, reaching to touch me. I know those hands. But even here, behind the darkness of my eyelids, I cannot name the thing I hope for. During the days I grow restless, fidgety. But all my pacing, singing, running does not keep them at bay. They come, and will not be stopped.

IT IS SUMMER, one of the first fine days. We are on the beach after lunch, our backs to a sloping piece of driftwood. The sun is high, and the air warm around us. Beside me, Achilles shifts, and his foot falls open against mine. It is cool, and chafed pink from the sand, soft from a winter indoors. He hums something, a piece of a song he had played earlier.

I turn to look at him. His face is smooth, without the blotches and spots that have begun to afflict the other boys. His features are drawn with a firm hand; nothing awry or sloppy, nothing too large-all precise, cut with the sharpest of knives. And yet the effect itself is not sharp.

He turns and finds me looking at him. "What?" he says.

"Nothing."

I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyacinths we had walked through, their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to. I cannot describe it. It is sweet, but not just. It is strong but not too strong. Something like almond, but that still is not right. Sometimes, after we have wrestled, my own skin smells like it.

He puts a hand down, to lean against. The muscles in his arms curve softly, appearing and disappearing as he moves. His eyes are deep green on mine.

My pulse jumps, for no reason I can name. He has looked at me a thousand thousand times, but there is something different in this gaze, an intensity I do not know. My mouth is dry, and I can hear the sound of my throat as I swallow.

He watches me. It seems that he is waiting.

I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do. I lean forward and our lips land clumsily on each other. They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen. I can taste his mouth-hot and sweet with honey from dessert. My stomach trembles, and a warm drop of pleasure spreads beneath my skin. More.

The strength of my desire, the speed with which it flowers, shocks me; I flinch and startle back from him. I have a moment, only a moment, to see his face framed in the afternoon light, his lips slightly parted, still half-forming a kiss. His eyes are wide with surprise.

I am horrified. What have I done? But I do not have time to apologize. He stands and steps backwards. His face has closed over, impenetrable and distant, freezing the explanations in my mouth. He turns and races, the fastest boy in the world, up the beach and away.

My side is cold with his absence. My skin feels tight, and my face, I know, is red and raw as a burn.

Dear gods, I think, let him not hate me.

I should have known better than to call upon the gods.

WHEN I TURNED THE CORNER onto the garden path, she was there, sharp and knife-bright. A blue dress clung to her skin as if damp. Her dark eyes held mine, and her fingers, chill and unearthly pale, reached for me. My feet knocked against each other as she lifted me from the earth.

"I have seen," she hissed. The sound of waves breaking on stone.

I could not speak. She held me by the throat.

"He is leaving." Her eyes were black now, dark as sea-wet rocks, and as jagged. "I should have sent him long ago. Do not try to follow."

I could not breathe now. But I did not struggle. That much, at least, I knew. She seemed to pause, and I thought she might speak again. She did not. Only opened her hand and released me, boneless, to the ground.

A mother's wishes. In our countries, they were not worth much. But she was a goddess, first and always.

When I returned to the room, it was already dark. I found Achilles sitting on his bed, staring at his feet. His head lifted, almost hopefully, as I came to the doorway. I did not speak; his mother's black eyes still burned in front of me, and the sight of his heels, flashing up the beach. Forgive me, it was a mistake. This is what I might have dared to say then, if it had not been for her.

I came into the room, sat on my own bed. He shifted, his eyes flicking to mine. He did not resemble her the way that children normally look like a parent, a tilt of chin, the shape of an eye. It was something in his movements, in his luminous skin. Son of a goddess. What had I thought would happen?

Even from where I sat I could smell the sea on him.

"I'm supposed to leave tomorrow," he said. It was almost an accusation.

"Oh," I said. My mouth felt swollen and numb, too thick to form words.

"I'm going to be taught by Chiron." He paused, then added. "He taught Heracles. And Perseus."

Not yet, he had said to me. But his mother had chosen differently.

He stood and pulled off his tunic. It was hot, full summer, and we were accustomed to sleeping naked. The moon shone on his belly, smooth, muscled, downed with light brown hairs that darkened as they ran below his waist. I averted my eyes.

The next morning, at dawn, he rose and dressed. I was awake; I had not slept. I watched him through the fringes of my eyelids, feigning sleep. From time to time he glanced at me; in the dim half-light his skin glowed gray and smooth as marble. He slung his bag over his shoulder and paused, a last time, at the door. I remember him there, outlined in the stone frame, his hair falling loose, still untidy from sleep. I closed my eyes, and a moment passed. When I opened them again, I was alone.

Chapter Eight.

BY BREAKFAST, EVERYONE KNEW HE WAS GONE. THEIR glances and whispers followed me to the table, lingered as I reached for food. I chewed and swallowed, though the bread sat like a stone in my stomach. I yearned to be away from the palace; I wanted the air.

I walked to the olive grove, the earth dry beneath my feet. I half-wondered if I was expected to join the boys, now that he was gone. I half-wondered if anyone would notice whether I did. I half-hoped they would. Whip me, I thought.

I could smell the sea. It was everywhere, in my hair, in my clothes, in the sticky damp of my skin. Even here in the grove, amidst the must of leaves and earth, the unwholesome salty decay still found me. My stomach heaved a moment, and I leaned against the scabbed trunk of a tree. The rough bark pricked my forehead, steadying me. I must get away from this smell, I thought.

I walked north, to the palace road, a dusty strip worn smooth by wagon wheels and horses' hooves. A little beyond the palace yard it divided. One half ran south and west, through grass and rocks and low hills; that was the way I had come, three years ago. The other half twisted northwards, towards Mount Othrys and then beyond, to Mount Pelion. I traced it with my eyes. It skirted the wooded foothills for some time before disappearing within them.

The sun bore down on me, hot and hard in the summer sky, as if it would drive me back to the palace. Yet I lingered. I had heard they were beautiful, our mountains-pears and cypress and streams of just-melted ice. It would be cool there and shaded. Far away from the diamond-bright beaches, and the flashing of the sea.

I could leave. The thought was sudden, arresting. I had come to the road meaning only to escape the sea. But the path lay before me, and the mountains. And Achilles. My chest rose and fell rapidly, as if trying to keep pace with my thoughts. I had nothing that belonged to me, not a tunic, not a sandal; they were Peleus' all. I do not need to pack, even.

Only my mother's lyre, kept in the wooden chest within the inner room, stayed me. I hesitated a moment, thinking I might try to go back, to take it with me. But it was already midday. I had only the afternoon to travel, before they would discover my absence- so I flattered myself-and send after me. I glanced back at the palace and saw no one. The guards were elsewhere. Now. It must be now.

I ran. Away from the palace, down the path towards the woods, feet stinging as they slapped the heat-baked ground. As I ran, I promised myself that if I ever saw him again, I would keep my thoughts behind my eyes. I had learned, now, what it would cost me if I did not. The ache in my legs, the knifing heaves of my chest felt clean and good. I ran.

Sweat slicked my skin, fell upon the earth beneath my feet. I grew dirty, then dirtier. Dust and broken bits of leaves clung to my legs. The world around me narrowed to the pounding of my feet and the next dusty yard of road.

Finally, after an hour? Two? I could go no farther. I bent over in pain, the bright afternoon sun wavering to black, the rush of blood deafening in my ears. The path was heavily wooded now, on both sides, and Peleus' palace was a long way behind me. To my right loomed Othrys, with Pelion just beyond it. I stared at its peak and tried to guess how much farther. Ten thousand paces? Fifteen? I began to walk.

Hours passed. My muscles grew wobbly and weak, my feet jumbled together. The sun was well across the zenith now, hanging low in the western sky. I had four, perhaps five, hours until dark, and the peak was as far as ever. Suddenly, I understood: I would not reach Pelion by nightfall. I had no food, nor water, nor hope of shelter. I had nothing but the sandals on my feet and the soaked tunic on my back.

I would not catch up to Achilles, I was sure of that now. He had left the road and his horse long ago, was now moving up the slopes on foot. A good tracker would have observed the woods beside the road, could have seen where the bracken was bent or torn, where a boy had made a path. But I was not a good tracker, and the scrub by the road looked all the same to me. My ears buzzed dully- with cicadas, with the shrill calls of birds, with the rasp of my own breath. There was an ache in my stomach, like hunger or despair.

And then there was something else. The barest sound, just at the limit of hearing. But I caught it, and my skin, even in the heat, went cold. I knew that sound. It was the sound of stealth, of a man attempting silence. It had been just the smallest misstep, the giving way of a single leaf, but it had been enough.

I strained to listen, fear jumping in my throat. Where had it come from? My eyes tracked the woods on either side. I dared not move; any sound would echo loudly up the slopes. I had not thought of dangers as I ran, but now my mind tumbled with them: soldiers, sent by Peleus or Thetis herself, white hands cold as sand on my throat. Or bandits. I knew that they waited by roads, and I remembered stories of boys taken and kept until they died of misuse. My fingers pinched themselves white as I tried to still all breath, all movement, to give nothing away. My gaze caught on a thick clutch of blooming yarrow that could hide me. Now. Go.

There was movement from the woods at my side, and I jerked my head towards it. Too late. Something-someone-struck me from behind, throwing me forward. I landed heavily, facedown on the ground, with the person already on top of me. I closed my eyes and waited for a knife.

There was nothing. Nothing but silence and the knees that pinned my back. A moment passed, and it came to me that the knees were not so very heavy and were placed so that their pressure did not hurt.

"Patroclus." Pa-tro-clus.

I did not move.

The knees lifted, and hands reached down to turn me, gently, over. Achilles was looking down at me.

"I hoped that you would come," he said. My stomach rolled, awash with nerves and relief at once. I drank him in, the bright hair, the soft curve of his lips upwards. My joy was so sharp I did not dare to breathe. I do not know what I might have said then. I'm sorry, perhaps. Or perhaps something more. I opened my mouth.

"Is the boy hurt?"

A deep voice spoke from behind us both. Achilles' head turned. From where I was, beneath him, I could see only the legs of the man's horse-chestnut, fetlocks dulled with dust.

The voice again, measured and deliberate. "I am assuming, Achilles Pelides, that this is why you have not yet joined me on the mountain?"

My mind groped towards understanding. Achilles had not gone to Chiron. He had waited, here. For me.

"Greetings, Master Chiron, and my apologies. Yes, it is why I have not come." He was using his prince's voice.

"I see."

I wished that Achilles would get up. I felt foolish here, on the ground beneath him. And I was also afraid. The man's voice showed no anger, but it showed no kindness, either. It was clear and grave and dispassionate.

"Stand up," it said.

Slowly, Achilles rose.

I would have screamed then, if my throat had not closed over with fear. Instead I made a noise like a half-strangled yelp and scrambled backwards.

The horse's muscular legs ended in flesh, the equally muscular torso of a man. I stared-at that impossible suture of horse and human, where smooth skin became a gleaming brown coat.

Beside me Achilles bowed his head. "Master Centaur," he said. "I am sorry for the delay. I had to wait for my companion." He knelt, his clean tunic in the dusty earth. "Please accept my apologies. I have long wished to be your student."

The man's-centaur's-face was serious as his voice. He was older, I saw, with a neatly trimmed black beard.

He regarded Achilles a moment. "You do not need to kneel to me, Pelides. Though I appreciate the courtesy. And who is this companion that has kept us both waiting?"

Achilles turned back to me and reached a hand down. Unsteadily, I took it and pulled myself up.

"This is Patroclus."

There was a silence, and I knew it was my turn to speak.

"My lord," I said. And bowed.

"I am not a lord, Patroclus Menoitiades."

My head jerked up at the sound of my father's name.

"I am a centaur, and a teacher of men. My name is Chiron."

I gulped and nodded. I did not dare to ask how he knew my name.

His eyes surveyed me. "You are overtired, I think. You need water and food, both. It is a long way to my home on Pelion, too long for you to walk. So we must make other arrangements."

He turned then, and I tried not to gawk at the way his horse legs moved beneath him.

"You will ride on my back," the centaur said. "I do not usually offer such things on first acquaintance. But exceptions must be made." He paused. "You have been taught to ride, I suppose?"