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Elysium was the place of heroes. Of those who had fulfilled their earthly duties and done good, in the eyes of the Gods.
When Briseis was a young girl, she would sit at her kitchen table in the humble, rickety home she so loved, and braid her mother’s curled black hair. The fields of tangled summer grass swayed like a breathing giant under the heat of the summer sun, so bright it made spots that danced in her vision when she closed her eyes. The air was sweet like honey and the olive trees were well on their ways to another good harvest. Her father had taught her to worship Demeter for this reason - a good harvest means a safe winter for her family, and when she marries she will be in charge of ensuring this for her children.
But her father wasn’t there. It was just her mother, and her mother would tell her the stories that were harder to envision. She’d weave tales of the heroes past, of how you’d have to be the very best to reach Elysium.
“Mama,” Briseis had asked, finishing off her mother’s slightly lopsided hairdo with a sprig of olive, “All the heroes are boys. How am I to reach Elysium if I am not a boy?”
Her mother had laughed, softly. “Elysium is not for us.” She turned, and her face held a sort of kind resignedness, the type adults sometimes get when speaking to a child gently about a topic that is difficult to explain. “We cannot live and please the gods at once. Such is being a woman. Give in to men’s whims, and you may stand a small chance.”
Briseis had frowned, and fiddled a little with the braid. “But I do not want to.” She had tried to make her voice sound as mature as possible, but even to her own ears she had still sounded like an insolent child.
Her mother had simply smiled again, and tucked a downy strand of Briseis’ hair behind her small ear. “And that is why we are not destined for Elysium.”
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Many of the girls Briseis grew up knowing talked about praying to Aphrodite for good looks, for skin cleared of the congealed sweat and grime typical of the farmer’s children, for full lips and curved hips like a marble statue. These same girls complemented or insulted her in turn, calling her blessed by Aphrodite, asking her how she prayed, or excluding her from their games. It was an awe-filled fear, despite their rumours holding no water. Briseis took the complements and insults in stride and left the groups of children to grow through a quiet childhood, wandering through forests and studying the names of the plants over the intricacies of the people.
Briseis had never prayed to Aphrodite. She saw the way men five, ten, thirty years older than her watched her, gazes falling too low to ever land on her face, ears too deaf to have ever been listening to her childlike rambling.
She knew it would be an insult to wish for a different face after the small blessing she had received. But she watched how the men looked at her, and she wished anyways.
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When the Greeks came and killed her family, Briseis did not cry. She did not weep when they looted the house of what little her family had, or when they dragged her past her father and brothers’ lifeless bodies towards their camp.
Briseis had always been a smart girl, though her brothers called it hubris and her father called it insolence. The men dragged her through the camp, bloodstained and shaking, a sheep spared from the wolf’s jaws only to be brought to the farmer’s axe. She saw the hungry looks on these men’s faces, how they watched her with perhaps more desire than even how they looked at the piles of coins and jewels and weapons she was thrown upon, as if she outshone them all.
Briseis had never sent a prayer to Aphrodite. Now she begged the goddess to take any beauty of hers away so that she may be spared.
The Greek men seemed so different from the familiarity of her father and brothers. These were not farmboys, no - they might have been once, but now they were warriors responsible for atrocities she could not even bring herself to imagine. Soon, I will not need to imagine it, she could not stop herself from thinking.
A man stood, and her breath caught - this man was most beautiful, by far. She knew him immediately, not by face but by imposing dominance alone, this Aristos Achaion. He glowed even in the dying light of evening, even though the sun was not gracing his golden skin. He shone brighter than the rising moon, for the moon's light is only a reflection of the sun, but he is the sun itself.
It should be an honour to bear the child of a half-god, she thought.
She shook so hard that coins rolled off of the pile and fell to her feet. To her, they were dull.
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She was brought by another man to a large tent and she felt a sharp awareness despite her desperation to slip into dissociation. This man was plain, especially in the contrast of the Aristos Achaion, but he wore the plainess like a badge of honour. He seemed to exemplify it through his clothes, and his manner - despite the clear closeness to the half-god, he did not claim any riches or gold-hemmed robes, and his hands seemed too careful to ever wield a weapon with brutality.
The sharp, unmistakable scraping noise of metal against sheath started her heart again, suddenly beating twice as loud as any other noise. The half-god stood with an intricately beautiful knife, but had yet to move towards her before instincts had spurred her legs backwards, away from the sound of death that had taken her family only earlier that morning. The men had the emotional intelligence, it seemed, even in their hunger, to see her terror. They spoke to her, even though they all understood its futility. Softness of the tone means nothing when a wolf’s pelt can be just as soft to the sheep.
When the plain man took the Aristos Achaion and kissed him as if he were a simple human, everything about the two men contrasting with each other, human and god, dull and shining, sun and moon - Briseis knew that the danger had passed for tonight.
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Life settled shockingly quickly after her first night when finally, left alone in a tent with food and water and soft blankets where she had believed that things would only be taken away, she allowed herself to cry.
The plain man - Patroclus, his name was, and Briseis would learn that he was farther from plain than anyone she knew or would ever know - came often to teach her his odd language and bring her to the beach, away from the camp where there were few women still and plenty of hungry eyes unafraid of watching a meal just out of reach (Wolf watching sheep, knowing a herd would soon follow). Patroclus treated her like her brothers did, she realised, so unlike how those accustomed to women treated her. She wondered if he had grown up without many women to speak to, and decided quickly that she was right, when he laughed at her jokes and did not question for a second her behaviour that was so unfit for the eyes of men.
It took longer for her to learn the name of the Aristos Achaion. Achilles. He was often out leading more slaughters of her people, and when he returned she could not bear to look at him, somehow still glowing even through the layers of her people’s blood. She watched Patroclus watch Achilles instead, and the love in his eyes was almost enough for her to push the thoughts from her mind.
They began to bring her more girls. Patroclus had explained to her, in the stilted communication they had formed, half words and half ingenuitive mimes, that he wished to protect as many girls as possible from the fate that she had almost endured. They ran to her as soon as their binds were cut and she thought of her mother, soft and warm and gentle on a summer’s afternoon and she in turn whispered gentle words in the language she had not spoken to a soul in weeks now, the language of her mother and the language of these girls. She told them half-truths of their safety and left out for now because no good came from it, she taught them how to form the strange words with their tongues only used to Anatoilian vowels and consonants, and she made them laugh with impressions. She found purpose in the first wary smiles the girls gave, like a new lamb stumbling out of the dark barn and into the light for the first time, after the grief and loss of their families. She formed a new family, one of nighttime whispers and carefully chosen truths and comfort when bodies had been wrung of all the sobs they could give and spinning cloth and easy gossip. They called her iterations of aunt, of sister, and she understood the love of protecting something precious for the first time.
The confidence came for the sole reason that she needed to be confident for her girls and so she exited her tent on a warm, windless night and joined Patroclus by the fireside, meeting the eyes of the people they sat with as if saying I dare you to question my place here. Patroclus simply smiled at her, dimples accentuated by the dusky firelight, and tilted his body so that she was more welcomed into the group. The campfire seemed to grow warmer when he was there.
Her girls came, one by one, evening by evening, for her tales and for the warmth of fireside sociality that they had been so sorely missing. Briseis became known among the little group of oddities for the way she spun stories, so quickly after learning Greek, picking the ripest words and threading them into her Anatoilian myths. She wondered what her mother would say, knowing the tales she told were being repeated by her own daughter in the language of her oppressors.
Briseis did not miss how her girls eventually welcomed their new lives. She caught the shy glances between Amara and Automedon across the fire, saw how they became enthralled with the beauty Achilles held. Briseis herself thought that around the fire, Patroclus was the one truly holding them together. His quiet observance, his chuckles affirming her jokes and stories, his immediate offers to help with passing around the food were the lime mortar sticking them all together. She’d catch herself observing him, sometimes, and then meet eyes with Achilles on his other side, watching Patroclus with equal adoration. Such was how they formed their own bond, not through speaking with each other but with mutual love for the one keeping them afloat.
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In retrospect, she should have known their familial peace would never have lasted.
When Patroclus fell, none thought to tell Briseis. She was the prize of Achilles, and to the men he and she were one and the same - his pets, to die and be traded off at his slightest whim.
No one thought to tell Briseis when Patroclus died, but she knew. She felt the weight as soon as she had uttered those words, soft and quiet and warm in the tent, she had sentenced him Best of men, Best of Myrmidons. How a sheep bleating loudly for the help of the farmer forgets that the wolf’s claws and teeth can also harm human skin.
Patroclus, who had saved her from the cruellest fate not once, but twice. Gone.
She had kissed him, once, sitting in warm whispering grass and surrounded by the humming of cicadas. He’d rejected it, of course he had - she could see how deep his love for Achilles ran, but his sweet, full lips on hers for the briefest of moments was all that she had wanted.
She had kissed him again, a fleeting goodbye, as she was taken to Agamemnon, and watched his wide rabbit eyes harden as the tent flaps closed.
She had almost kissed him from pure relief as he cut his wrist and bled for her, and again as they curled into each other in her tent, hidden from Agamemnon and holding the other as if it was their tether to the earth, as if the gods themselves would drag them away if they let go.
She had not kissed him. Instead, she had sentenced him best of men and watched him go with dread thick as honey clogging her throat.
For a brief moment, when they return with a body, and she runs to see his face, all she can feel is relief. Patroclus is back, warm summer breeze soft grass cicada hum herbal medicine campfire smoke. He is here, and she is safe.
He is dead, and she returns to Agamemnon’s tent to see his dried blood on the sand where he’d cut his wrist as an oath to her days prior.
Achilles dares to argue with her cleaning Patroclus’ body, as if he had not been the cause of the lunar eclipse. There is only the sun now, only room for one light source, and Achilles has snuffed out anything softer and less harsh than he like a candle.
Their bond had been over their love for Patroclus, and now he was gone, and she wonders if Achilles was ever capable of love in the first place or if it was Patroclus reflecting his own light on Achilles in the same way Achilles’ bright sun reflected upon Patroclus’ moon. She wonders if the love Patroclus felt was so strong it made Achilles seem capable of the same.
For the first time since arriving at this Gods forsaken camp, Briseis tells Achilles how she wishes he were dead.
She doesn’t hear his reply, so blinded by her grief.
When Achilles follows Patroclus, Briseis’ eyes stay dry. There was no Achilles without Patroclus to balance him, anyways.
She almost cries, however, when his son comes. A boy of twelve, twisted beyond anything that could be considered a boy. He calls her a bed slave and what little part of her that loved Achilles burns at the way Phyrrus tarnishes his father’s name. He calls Patroclus ‘no one’, and the smouldering coals of her heart that have been dampened with tears burst into raw flame.
Briseis never prayed to Aphrodite for beauty. Then she begged for her to take it away. Now she prays to Aphrodite, goddess of war, for her strength.
She moves quick, quick like Anatoilian vulture, for vultures prey only on the dead and whoever this boy once was is dead, replaced by a laughable replica of his father built on tales of his grandeur and a lack of parental love.
She does not move quick enough.
She feels his warm blood splash her face and the way the knife slices but does not sink in.
She runs quick, like a fallow deer. She runs for every moment she’s ever wanted to run in her life.
She reaches the shore and swims, quick like the monk seals she’d do impressions of around the campfire, making her girls giggle like their families had only ever been the ones sitting next to them.
If she can just reach the shoreline with the olive trees where she and Patroclus once sat, teaching each other words in the other’s language, then she can disappear into the forest, quick, like the owls that used to hoot above her farmhouse as she lay warm in bed with her mother.
Thinking of home, she barely feels the spear slice gracefully into the flesh of her back.
She sinks quick, like the anchors that brought these men to her land.
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She wakes slowly, in the heavy eternal dusk, to a stool around a campfire. The fire flickers softly, sparks floating upwards towards nothingness. There is no warmth, but the warmth is omnipresent.
A young girl sits across from the fire. She is the warmth, and she smiles.
“Welcome to Elysium, Briseis.”
Briseis doesn’t speak.
“I am Artemis.” The girl says. “You protected the young girls who came to you. For that, you have found yourself a place here. For you and the others like you.”
Briseis opens her mouth to speak, but the girl is gone. The warmth remains, this time from the campfire. As she stares into the flames, figures emerge from out of the dusk. Women and girls, some barely twelve and some over fifty join her at the endless seats around the campfire.
Briseis begins her tales.
She spins them for eternity. Girls appear and disappear around the fireside, they form bonds and create campfires of their own. Briseis stays, and she tells a thousand myths and sees their eyes light up at her impressions and relishes in their childlike wonder, and the way they grip each other at each exciting turn.
It does not take long for Patroclus to appear next to her. Or perhaps it takes centuries. He comes in the middle of her story, and sits down next to her like how he would on the beach, with the ease that they had created over the years of knowing each other like family. Achilles does not come, and she is grateful for it. He would not be welcome around her campfires, with her girls, though they were once welcome around his. She can feel his light clinging to Patroclus, his sun reflected on Patroclus’ moon, but they have another campfire with their own stories to tell, for their ears only.
Each time he comes, she continues her story, but her hands move to grip his. The campfire grows slightly warmer.
A woman comes, one day, and sits to her right where Patroclus is at her left. Briseis doesn’t recognise her, but then she asks for her to tell a tale of heroes and reaching Elysium and Briseis smells a warm summer's day and sweet olive trees and feels soft hair braided poorly in childlike hands.
She smiles, and begins another story.