The bodies extend across the wasteland to the blank horizon. Sometimes they exist in pieces. A naked trunk jutting from the ground. A pyramid of smoke-wisped heads. Sometimes they lie quietly and sometimes curl fetally on their sides or sit hunched, ribcage to kneecaps, translucent maggots tumbling from where their noses used to be.
Will it be what it appears to be? asks Iphigenia.
Achilles raises his blasted face to hers.
Some things should be a surprise, he says without speaking. Some things you shouldn't know about until you know about them.
Is it as awful as they say?
I would rather be slave to the worst of masters than king of this. There is no sleep, nothing to eat or drink, no one with whom to converse, no sense of time passing, no more than your memories for company, which you are sure may be someone else's, which you are sure may be no memories at all, forever.
Achilles thinks some more.
On the battlefield? he says. As Paris' arrow struck its target? I didn't think of you. I wish I had, but I didn't. You should know that.
Iphigenia stares at him.
Turns to leave.
Behind her, Achilles adds: Remember one thing as you make your way back to wakefulness: there is never a death, not a single one, that isn't a surprise to the one dying.
Her father's face darting above her, now a stranger's: indifferent, blank-eyed, unwavering.
Be still, it says. Be
Lying beside Achilles in the dark hotness, appalled by what he has just done to her, and how, Iphigenia knows that, come dawn, her sudden husband will rise and dress and step through the tent flap to join her father down at the docks. They will sail for Troy with more than a thousand ships, each carrying fifty rowers, each a hundred soldiers, to fight for the woman whose mother was raped by a god descended from the heavens in the form of an outrageous swirl of swan wings. Paris has kidnapped Helen. Paris must pay. This may take months. This may take years. Such retribution is as it should be. Yet there is only a short chain of minutes left in this wedding bed, the atmosphere around them already beginning to soften into a fuzzy gray daybreak, and then Achilles will start to become less than himself, more recollection than man, something you cannot even hold in your hands, let alone your heart.
Good.
They murder her pet Zeno first.
Five attendants wrestle the squirming, hissing cheetah toward the altar, its neck and hindquarters roped. They have lifted it so that its flailing claws cannot find purchase. Hanging there, it twists madly, struggling, strangling, flared eyes an outburst of shock and fury.
Quickly, Agamemnon commands.
The priests make way. In a single gesture, two soldiers level their spears. One thrusts for the lungs, one for the throat.
A cable of blood arcs from the animal's neck.
It claws wildly on its side, gargling forth its life. Its chest heaves. Its body goes flaccid as a stand of wet flax.
Agamemnon turns toward his daughter.
She catches sight of the glint in his enormous right fist.
No one is waiting for her: this is the first thing she notices as the altar swings into view. A large gray slab of stone on a steep rocky promontory. The crowd surrounding it falling silent as she approaches, heads bowed in awe. Warriors in full armor mostly, but also men, women, and children from the nearby town. Their reverence is as it should be. This is the part Iphigenia always likes best about her appearances, how others offer her their respect and admiration. But there is only the granite lozenge, only her
She notices the stubby-legged man with the bulbous stomach step from the crowd, arms akimbo. His crazy hair is thinning, his face pocked with acne. When he simpers at her, Iphigenia sees what teeth remain to him are flecked brownblack.
Beside her, Agamemnon smiles proudly.
Meet your new husband, daughter, he proclaims. Meet the heroic conqueror Achilles.
A lurch, and
A lurch, and Iphigenia wakes to her mother's mouth whispering so close to her ear that she can feel its wet heat: I avoided you because you avoided me. Each time I mustered the nerve to look in your direction, I shuddered, for I could tell how little you wanted to look in mine. Each time I swallowed my pride and attempted hugging you, I felt you biding your time in my arms until you could wriggle free. This is why I let you be yourself. These feelings we have for each other? They are called family. But never forget this: you are a version of my loins. Your blood was my blood first. And so I shall avenge your murder. I shall suffer your father's embraces, the coarseness of his beard. I shall wait, thinking of you when he thinks of me. And one evening, when he is comfortable in his bath, daydreaming of his other pasts and futures, I shall step up behind him and split his skull with my axe like an ox's. The noise will sound like a club crunching through ripe melon, sweetheart. The noise will sound like victory.
Achilles slips the veil away from Iphigenia's face and Iphigenia whispers:
What's it going to be like?
Achilles is standing before her in the tent on their wedding night, slender, strong, chest and arms and legs agleam with oil. He takes her wrists in his hands, bends toward her. Around them, a night sky of votive candles.
You'll see, he says.
Iphigenia grins mischievously.
But I want to know now.
Unclipping his belt, he replies: Some things should be a surprise. Some things you shouldn't know about until you know about them.
With that, his tunic flaps open.
Iphigenia gazes down, her grin loosening into a full-blown girlish smile.
She is thirteen, but she suddenly feels much older and wiser.
It isn't soon. It isn't soon at all. Sex with Achilles is a long, plodding disappointment. He thrashes about like a hooked salamander. He makes disgusting wet sounds at the back of his throat. He calls Iphigenia by the name of other women. His breath smells like cat shit. Somewhere in the midst of this awful perplexity, he slips out of her and doesn't even seem to notice. He just keeps grinding away against her tummy. Iphigenia decides to let him.
And so she lies there beneath him, despondent, staring up at the dark hotness, past his sweaty grimace that reminds her of an angry monkey she once saw chittering in its cage at the market, waiting for this profound embarrassment to be over.
A soggy metallic seep leaks from between Iphigenia's thighs, soaks the sheets.
Tomorrow morning Anthea will hang this bloody flag outside the couple's wedding tent as a trophy for all to witness.
His muscles, the sheen upon his walnut-brown skin, the way his breath will always smell of mint and licorice: Iphigenia hates each of these with a ferocity she could not have imagined a short hour ago.
A lurch, and
A lurch, and the knife a long flash of sunlight.
The knife a silver bird plunging down, its solitary voice chok
Iphigenia jolts awake to her mother's lips softly brushing her forehead, her fingers running through her hair.
There, there, Clytemnesta whispers. There, th
A lurch, and
A lurch, and Iphigenia steps onto the rocky shore from her father Agamemnon's ship. She immediately feels she has done this before. Gnarled graygreen cypress trees spattered here and there. The sky a violent blue. How the flock of white birds gyre above her like a flock of silent white hands.
So this is where I shall be wed, she thinks. So this is what it feels like.
The blade piercing her breast in an azure thunderclap.
Achilles thrashes on top of her like a hooked salamander, pressing the air out of her lungs, spraying sweat across her clamped eyes, mumbling into her neck a series of mysterious syllables, Pa-tro-clus, Pa-tro-clus, Pa-tro-clus.