The Song of Patroclus

Chapter 9

The next morning I woke to the soft sounds of Chiron getting breakfast ready. I stretched my arms, eyes still closed, reaching over to where Patroclus had lain beside me the past night. My heartbeat fastened when my hands caressed the thick pallet instead of his soft stomach.

My heart fell as I thought Chiron had lied and sent Patroclus back to Phthia and the wrath of my mother. I shoot up, all sleep forgotten.

Relief floods me when I see Patroclus sitting cross-legged beside Chiron, who is make dinner. He looks up at the centaur with wide curious eyes, questioning everything he does and everything he puts in the pot.

I smile and throw the blankets off me as I join them on the ground.

—

I slowly get used to life on the mountain with Chiron. Patroclus always woke up before me, but I let go of the fear that I will wake up and he will not be with me.

He will always be with me.

Chiron always teaches according to opportunity, not in lessons. If a mountain goat falls sick, he explains to us how to mix purgatives to better their stomach.

After they are well, he teaches us how to make a poultice that repels their ticks.

When we had a caught a corncrake out of its nest, he taught us how to move across the uneven ground as quietly and possible, how to catch the animal, the best angle of the arrow as to give it a quick and painless death.

Once when we went out to pick berries and forgot out waterskin, he showed us the plants which carried beads of moisture in their roots.

After a month of staying with him, Chiron asked if there was anything we had wanted to learn. Patroclus, in a heartbeat, pointed to the wall.

"Those," He answered, finger still pointing towards the surgery tools. Chiron nodded and grabbed the tools off the wall, one by one, gently handing them to us.

"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." Patroclus nodded as he eagerly took the tools in his own hands. Chiron took our hands and made us roam them around the other's body, hands moving until they reached the places where he said "organs" lied.

"A wound in any of them will eventually be fatal," Chiron continued. He tapped lightly against the curve of my temple. It was Patroclus who shuddered.

—

That night, me and Patroclus lay in our bed as Patroclus told us of Andromeda, life in the hands of the monster who stood in front of her, and Perseus who rescued her, riding Pegasus, only moments after he had been birthed by Medusa, the very women whom Perseus slayed.

He told us of whichever constellation we pointed at, describing each story in great depth, as he was reliving it. Until he came to one he was reliving;

the tragedy of Heracles.

"Heracles had it all. He was a mortal deemed Olympian, with a loyal and loving wife, and beautiful children." Chiron's voice was filled with longing, with only the slightest hint of anger. I realized only then that Heracles was not only a story for him. A lesson to teach children, to help them sleep at night. No, he had known these people. He had known of the legend, of the woman and children he had slaughtered in his madness. He had cared for them. Heracles had probably lay on this same grass, listening to Chiron's smooth voice. He had learned everything we are learning, had been as common and clueless as I was. "In his fit of madness, he mistook his wife and children for enemies, and slaughtered them mercilessly." I realized I had stopped listening. No matter, because Chiron was done.