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“I’m afraid I can’t let you do this,” the woman says, with sympathy, stroking a slick, dark curl from Briseis’ face. Briseis chokes and coughs seawater down her chin, her face red.
“Who the fuck are you,” she manages. She’s still underwater, but she can breathe - her head is in some kind of bubble or shell. The woman in front of her is tan and shimmering iridescently, with long black hair in two braids that float behind her.
“Thetis. I’m Achilles’ mother.”
Briseis goes limp, stops fighting. She feels like a wet dress slumped in the current, slack. The gods always intervene.
“Poor girl. Come, I’ll take care of you.” Thetis pulls the hair out of her face again and starts to walk up the sandy floor.
“Just let me go,” Briseis tries weakly.
“I can’t do that, love.” Thetis strokes her head with her knuckles, pulling her closer by the waist as they approach the back of Achilles’ ship, beached and black as night. Briseis had climbed to the stern and dropped herself into the water, swam as far as she could. It wasn’t far. She is weak now. Her body gives out in ways she could not predict. Her shoulders refuse to stay in their sockets. Her breathing is always shallow like her chest is bound tight.
Thetis lifts her on her hip like a child or a basket of laundry as they emerge. The cool air makes her shiver. Briseis wants to fight her, wrestle her, make her let her go. But she just slumps against her.
Thetis lays her down on her back in the sand and kneels next to her, holding her hand gently between her own. Her skin shimmers ever so slightly in the night air. From here, Briseis can see the gills in the side of her neck ruffle.
“Why did you come into my waters?” Thetis asks gently.
“I don’t know.” Every answer seems so obvious and also so flat.
Thetis nods. “Does my son hurt you?”
What is there to say to that? Both of course and not at all, both he never hits me, doesn’t even touch me with a firm grip and he rapes me most nights, both I am a possession now and I am quite the valuable, both I like him and I want to kill him.
“He does not hit me,” she says carefully.
“Good.” Thetis takes her hand. “Are you still bleeding? Is he trying to get you with child?”
“I barely bleed, it’s completely irregular.” Is Achilles trying to get her with child? He’s not trying to avoid it. He doesn’t seem like he cares much about it, not like some of the other men. Patroclus always spills onto her belly or back when he takes her. Mostly he prefers her thighs like she’s a boy.
“I can tell some things, child, and one of them is life. There’s a seed sprouting in you now.”
Briseis’ ears ring like a thunderclap went off between them, and she has to keep herself from crying out by biting down on her lip. There are other women - other, stronger women - who have borne the children of their men, who hold themselves high and find comfort in their babies. Briseis cannot imagine her body encapsulating a whole baby that isn’t her husband’s, cannot imagine the weight of it, day in and day out. She would claw herself open.
“I would rather die,” Briseis says.
“Well, we don’t want that, do we?” Thetis smiles weakly. “Let me see what I can do.”
She puts her hand over Briseis’ stomach, presses down gently. There’s a pressure where her palm rests and then a tense cramp that makes Briseis cry out in pain.
“It will hurt. I’m sorry.”
Briseis nods and steels herself. Thetis seems intensely concentrated, her fingers searching over Briseis’ abdomen for something. The embryo, maybe. Maybe something else. Her hands are warm.
“Ready?”
Briseis nods again, and Thetis’ fingers press down hard. With them comes a choking sort of cramp, and Briseis cries out in pain, but it passes in just a moment or two. She pants. Thetis pets her hair.
“There we go. That’s it.”
Briseis sits up on her elbows, ignoring another shock of pain, and hikes up her skirt to her hips. Thetis massages her belly again, and a drop of blood soaks into the wet sand. Another after that, and another.
“That’s it?”
“That’s all it was. A bit of blood. Gone now.”
Briseis watches herself bleed into the sand, the dark patch expanding slowly. Thetis continues to massage her stomach, her fingers gently probing at the soft flesh.
“It was just a tiny bit of tissue,” Thetis says, as if she is trying to reassure Briseis.
“You don’t need to talk me down,” Briseis says. “I don’t care.”
“You might have been - it might have been hollowing you out, making you feel the way you feel.”
Briseis shakes her head. There is a lightness in her chest as Thetis massages her belly, but nothing she felt was markedly changed. She always feels like this, restless and empty.
“Let’s get you something dry. Don’t walk into the sea while I’m gone, love.”
Briseis nods, though when Thetis leaves she’s tempted to hurl herself back into the waves. Ultimately she can’t get herself up. Instead she watches the clouds pass through the night sky.
The moon is full. She prays - and when does she do that? - quietly to the moon for her loving hands as she bleeds out this half-thing. She wants Patroclus. He always rests with her after he’s had her and cleaned her up. She imagines his strong hand on her hip, her breast. Thinks of his smell, the blood he is always soaked in,
“Here we go, Briseis,” Thetis says, a hand on her shoulder as she sits her up and then helps her to her feet. Clasped in her other hand is a bundle of clothing. “I brought a cloth for your bleeding.”
Briseis lets Thetis undo her skirt and shrugs off her own tunic. She’s no longer modest about her body. Everyone has seen it, seen some of it, wanted to see it. Thetis hands her a sponge to scrub herself dry with and bows her head as she does. Briseis remembers her old husband, remembers undressing herself for him for the first time. How delighted he had been by her stomach and thighs. Never exposed to eyes that wanted before, no men of status, and how she hid a smile as he enjoyed looking at her. He was gentle and loveless, and she liked that. She liked that he looked at her at an arm’s distance. She liked that he had fifteen other lovers that he adored more than her, cycling through their bedroom as she busied herself with her weaving. It was solitary. She liked it.
“I am sorry,” Thetis says, folding Briseis’ wet clothes and setting them neatly in the sand. “I wish the Fates had spun something else for you, sweet girl.”
Thetis stands again, clearly expecting Briseis to be clothed, and instead Briseis is aware distantly that she is not moving, the sponge held in her hand, her chest stilled. Her hair feels so heavy and wet on her back.
“Mama,” Briseis cries, and Thetis grasps her tight.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I’m not your mama. But I’m here.”
She rocks Briseis for some time in her firm arms. She feels tiny and stupid, soaking wet and small and miserable, but Thetis’ big, soft hands are running down her spine and across her shoulders, her hot breath on Briseis’ head as she presses her nose to the crown of her head. Thetis is so tall that Briseis’ head is pressed against her breasts, her skin tender beneath Briseis’ cheek.
Achilles never cared much if she cried - plenty of other women certainly had to watch their leaky eyes around their captors, but not her. He didn’t really care if she got misty-eyed while he bedded her. He’d wipe her cheeks and finish quickly. Patroclus would encourage her to, if she seemed distant. He learned to read her well faster than she expected.
She hopes, even though it is just drops of blood, it was his sprout.
Thetis lets go of her and takes the sponge from her hand. “Let me dry you off, love. Can I?”
Briseis nods. Thetis starts at her neck, dabbing it gently, then moves to her back. She takes Briseis’ hair in hand and plaits it quickly, squeezing out the water, then drapes it over her shoulder. She dries her quickly, scrubbing her without being too firm, her shoulders, arms, breasts, back, stomach, thighs. There’s blood leaking down her calf, and Thetis sponges it up without blinking.
“Here,” Thetis says, ripping off a bit of sponge. “You can tuck that between your outer labia to catch the blood. Or inside yourself, if it doesn’t hurt.”
Briseis takes it between her fingers as Thetis crouches to clean the backs of her knees. It’s small enough she can roll it flat and tuck it inside. “Thank you,” she whispers, sounding small and faint. Thetis taps the sponge against her feet, then stands and finds the cloth for her.
“I’ll take you back to camp once you’re dressed.” Thetis gives her the loincloth, draping the dry tunic and skirt over her own arm.
“Why did you help me?” Briseis asks, watching the soft, undyed cloth absorb a few drops of blood as she pulls it on. “Don’t you need an heir?”
“Oh, don’t worry yourself about that. I’ve already got one.” Thetis hands her the tunic, pale blue and hemmed in saffron. Briseis notices that she seems to have a second eyelid, a clear membrane flicking over her shimmering, dark irises. She shuffles the tunic over her head, and once she’s pulled it on, Thetis is ready with the skirt to tie around her waist. “You can come back, if you need me again. Just come back to the water and call for me. I’ll listen.”
“Thank you,” Briseis echoes again.
“Sweet girl.” Thetis touches her braid with tender fingers. It’s left a wet patch on her dress. “Always. Always, Briseis. Just come back to me.”
-
The next time Briseis is left alone, she slips down to the beach, climbs onto Achilles’ ship, and runs across the deck in bare feet, light as wind, to hurl herself off the farthest edge and into the water. This time, Thetis grabs her before her toes brush the sand.