28- Cecilia I won´t leave you

“You knew?” This was Gerardo. I would never have spoken so boldly. “Then you have decided? You will disregard her message?”

Chiron’s voice held a warning of displeasure. “She is a goddess, Gerardo, and your mother besides. Do you think so little of her wishes?”

“I honor her, Chiron. But she is wrong in this.” His hands were balled so tightly I could see the tendons, even in the low light.

“And why is she wrong, Pelides?”

I watched him through the darkness, my stomach clenching. I did not know what he might say.

“She feels that—” He faltered a moment, and I almost did not breathe. “That he is a mortal and not a fit companion.”

“Do you think he is?” Chiron asked. His voice gave no hint of the answer.

“Yes.”

My cheeks warmed. Gerardo, his jaw jutting, had thrown the word back with no hesitation.

“I see.” The centaur turned to me. “And you, Patroclus? You are worthy?”

I swallowed. “I do not know if I am worthy. But I wish to stay.” I paused, swallowed again. “Please.”

There was silence. Then Chiron said, “When I brought you both here, I had not decided yet what I would do. Thetis sees many faults, some that are and some that are not.”

His voice was unreadable again. Hope and despair flared and died in me by turns.

“She is also young and has the prejudices of her kind. I am older and flatter myself that I can read a man more clearly. I have no objection to Patroclus as your companion.”

My body felt hollow in its relief, as if a storm had gone through.

“She will not be pleased, but I have weathered the anger of gods before.” He paused. “And now it is late, and time for you to sleep.”

“Thank you, Master Chiron.” Gerardo’ voice, earnest and vigorous. We stood, but I hesitated.

“I just want—” My fingers twitched towards Chiron. Gerardo understood and disappeared into the cave.

I turned to face the centaur. “I will leave, if there will be trouble.”

There was a long silence, and I almost thought he had not heard me. At last, he said: “Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.”

Then he bade me good night, and I turned to join Gerardo in the cave. Chiron getting breakfast ready. The pallet was thick beneath me; I had slept well, and deeply. I stretched, startling a little when my limbs bumped against Gerardo, still asleep beside me. I watched him a moment, rosy cheeks and steady breaths. Something tugged at me, just beneath my skin, but then Chiron lifted a hand in greeting from across the cave, and I lifted one shyly in return, and it was forgotten.

That day, after we ate, we joined Chiron for his chores. It was easy, pleasurable work: collecting berries, catching fish for dinner, setting quail snares. The beginning of our studies, if it is possible to call them that. For Chiron liked to teach, not in set lessons, but in opportunities. When the goats that wandered the ridges took ill, we learned how to mix purgatives for their bad stomachs, and when they were well again, how to make a poultice that repelled their ticks. When I fell down a ravine, fracturing my arm and tearing open my knee, we learned how to set splints, clean wounds, and what herbs to give against infection.

On a hunting trip, after we had accidentally flushed a corncrake from its nest, he taught us how to move silently and how to read the scuffles of tracks. And when we had found the animal, the best way to aim a bow or sling so that death was quick.

If we were thirsty and had no waterskin, he would teach us about the plants whose roots carried beads of moisture. When a mountain-ash fell, we learned carpentry, splitting off the bark, sanding and shaping the wood that was left. I made an axe handle, and Gerardo the shaft of a spear; Chiron said that soon we would learn to forge the blades for such things.

Every evening and every morning we helped with meals, churning the thick goat’s milk for yogurt and cheese, gutting fish. It was work we had never been allowed to do before, as princes, and we fell upon it eagerly. Following Chiron’s instructions, we watched in amazement as butter

formed before our eyes, at the way pheasant eggs sizzled and solidified on fire-warmed rocks.

After a month, over breakfast, Chiron asked us what else we wished to learn. “Those.” I pointed to the instruments on the wall. For surgery, he had said. He took them down for us, one by one.

“Careful. The blade is very sharp. It is for when there is rot in the flesh that must be cut. Press the skin around the wound, and you will hear a crackle.”

Then he had us trace the bones in our own bodies, running a hand over the ridging vertebrae of each other’s backs. He pointed with his fingers, teaching the places beneath the skin where the organs lodged.

“A wound in any of them will eventually be fatal. But death is quickest here.” His finger tapped the slight concavity of Gerardo’ temple. A chill went through me to see it touched, that place where Gerardo’ life was so slenderly protected. I was glad when we spoke of other things.

At night we lay on the soft grass in front of the cave, and Chiron showed us the constellations, telling their stories— Andromeda, cowering before the sea monster’s jaws, and Perseus poised to rescue her; the immortal horse Pegasus, aloft on his wings, born from the severed neck of Medusa. He told us too of Gerardo, his labors, and the madness that took him. In its grip he had not recognized his wife and children, and had killed them for enemies.

Gerardo asked, “How could he not recognize his wife?”

“That is the nature of madness,” Chiron said. His voice sounded deeper than usual. He had known this man, I remembered. Had known the wife.

“But why did the madness come?”

“The gods wished to punish him,” Chiron answered.

Gerardo shook his head, impatiently. “But this was a greater punishment for her. It was not fair of them.”

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Gerardo,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

“Perhaps,” Gerardo admitted.

I listened and did not speak. Gerardo’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.

“Come,” said Chiron. “Have I told you the legend of Aesclepius, and how he came to know the secrets of healing?”

He had, but we wanted to hear it again, the story of how the hero, son of Apollo, had spared a snake’s life. The snake had licked his ears clean in gratitude, so that he might hear her whisper the secrets of herbs to him.

“But you were the one who really taught him healing,” Gerardo said. “I was.”

“You do not mind that the snake gets all the credit?”

Chiron’s teeth showed through his dark beard. A smile. “No, Gerardo, I do not mind.”

Later Gerardo would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother’s lyre. He had brought it with him.

“I wish I had known,” I said the first day, when he had showed it to me. “I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it.”

He smiled. “Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.” The sun sank below Pelion’s ridges, and we were happy.

TIME PASSED QUICKLY on Mount Pelion, days slipping by in idyll. The mountain air was cold now in the mornings when we woke, and warmed only reluctantly in the thin sunlight that filtered through the dying leaves. Chiron gave us furs to wear, and hung animal skins from the cave’s entrance to keep the warmth in. During the days we collected wood for winter fires, or salted meat for preserving. The animals had not yet gone to their dens, but they would soon, Chiron said. In the mornings, we marveled at the frost-etched leaves. We knew of snow from bards and stories; we had never seen it.

One morning, I woke to find Chiron gone. This was not unusual. He often rose before we did, to milk the goats or pick fruits for breakfast. I left the cave so that Gerardo might sleep, and sat to wait for Chiron in the clearing. The ashes of last night’s fire were white and cold. I stirred them idly with a stick, listening to the woods around me. A quail muttered in the underbrush, and a mourning dove called. I heard the rustle of groundcover, from the wind or an animal’s careless weight. In a moment I would get more wood and rekindle the fire.

The strangeness began as a prickling of my skin. First the quail went silent, then the dove. The leaves stilled, and the breeze died, and no animals

moved in the brush. There was a quality to the silence like a held breath. Like the rabbit beneath the hawk’s shadow. I could feel my pulse striking my skin.