by Kevin Beckett
in Issue 157, February 2025
The sorrow of knowing he would never see his cousin again turned his back on the river Styx.
The ferryman still held out a skeletal arm, bony talons outstretched for the two coppers Patroclus had in his own hands. He looked at them. They each had etched tentatively in them a profile of Patroclus himself, his face distorted in terror.
The coppers burned inside the shade of his fists as he shook the shade of his head and threw them away from the ferryman.
He turned his shade away. He could still see a fading imprint of his footprints, his shade left on those fields of eternal dusk, and he followed the path back, never turning his head despite the sepulchral cries of his name by the ferryman.
The footprints faded, but he still walked in the direction, refusing to let go. The greyness of an eternal void yawned above and below him, but the shade of his eyes focused on a tiny point beyond a nonexistent horizon.
In that timeless, spaceless place, he had no idea when the point stopped being a dream and became a flickering speck of light, but whether it took seconds or centuries, it did.
The greyness thickened into fog and then dissipated into mist. The sound of dripping water broke the silence as the greyness narrowed and darkened, and Patroclus found himself walking through stalagmites that jutted out from the darkness below him.
Swarms of albino bats took flight, their screeches echoing through him as he felt his existence ripple, disturbed by the flutter of their leather wings. But the light still flickered in front of him. The jagged circle grew in size, and the flickering slowed till he saw the fields he knew contained within it. Its bisection into the green lands he once treads upon, and above it, blue skies darkening to purple night studded with constellations of stars he could still name. Orion’s belt buckle became his focus. He would tolerate the shades of blue that would hide it, but when the buckle twinkled again, he felt a passion he had not felt since before he died in the sands before Troy. From the depths below where he had left before, he knew if his path would take him to Elysian fields or to dwell among the prisoners of Tartarus, but he felt nothing then.
Nothing but the sorrow of not being with Achilles.
To feel his chest, his tongue, his gaze, that gaze Patroclus missed most of all how he regarded Patroclus. It was a gaze Patroclus met with his own, not at first, but after he realized the bond they shared in the tent, the smell of the sweat-beaded bodies intoxicating himself and his cousin as they lay together. Those memories of those initial fumblings on Achilles’ part that awakened within Patroclus’ heart brought the sensation of stone tread beneath his sandaled feet. Despite the flickering days and nights before him, he refused to think how many grains of sand had poured through the hourglass from when he died till now as he exited the cave.
He saw where he was and saw where he needed to go, then struck forward. Never tiring of seeing only a vague outline of himself whenever he looked down, he followed through hills and glades and alongside streams till the paths became man-made and widened as trees cleared and a familiar city of seven walls came before him. It was here he died, his final breath rattling on bloodied sands, the cold steel of a spearhead nestling within him. It was here, though, that he began to sense where he could go from here. The Hellespont. It would be there he would find his cousin. It would be there he could see his face again. That is all he wanted.
That journey seemed more of an eternity than the one he escaped, but though he could not run, he could move with the pace of a stride and no more. Yet it was among the crashing waves of the Hellespont that he found what called out to him, and bitter despair claimed him as he saw the tomb in which he knew his bones lay and where he now knew his cousin lay as well.
The stone walls of the tomb were as translucent as the fog he had escaped from in the cave as he walked through them. He saw the urn and realized what was entombed inside was all too familiar to him—his burnt bones and also where his cousin lay.
Patroclus fancied he could hear the crash of waves saying words he could not understand, words in a foamy voice once familiar to him, but the call from within the tomb was too great, and he found himself drawn into the urn.
He found himself in darkness, darker than the void he had travelled through, pitch black, but it was something different than before. He could feel his bones in the dark. The bones were him, a jumble, but Patroclus knew he could not move from where he had found himself. He knew he was back within his skull.
It was there, bound in bone, that he thought he would lie forever. He wondered if he had indeed fled Hades or if this was some taunt from Olympus for defying their will. For seconds or millennia, he contemplated the darkness, letting it take shapes that writhed and danced against darkness ever more black.
He might have gone mad at times, but as those shapes stopped writhing, he began to notice a familiar light; it was the same shade of grey light that he remembered reflected off the river he refused to cross. He wondered if this meant he never left, and all this was an ill-conceived dream, a flight of fancy before Patroclus paid the ferryman his due, but the grey light did not cohere into that reflected off the River Styx. Instead, Patroclus watched as the light turned to a more humanoid shape, and a thrill of memory came over him as he realized the light reflected off the skin of his cousin, who was bathed as a child within those very same waters that Patroclus refused to cross.
For an eternity-lasting moment, he contemplated what that meant. If it was a further jest from Mount Olympus at his desire to see Achilles again, however, try as he might, he could not leave the prison of his skull.
Numb, he watched Achilles’s face. Something disturbed him, and over time, as he saw the face cave in, he realized what it was. Achilles’s skin was invulnerable, a gift from his mother’s inspiration and ability to visit the river Styx, which cut a border between life and death. Yet whatever soaked flesh might have that invulnerability, the bones inside were breaking up and turning to dust, as all mortals do.
The shade of Patroclus pondered the total cruelty of the joke. Both he and Achilles were dead, buried together, but one was present, the other not. One was nothing but burnt bones scraped from a pyre, the other becoming a boneless sack of flesh. The bitter irony overwhelmed him to the point he felt his bones quiver, and that was when a mad plan took form.
He tested it with more mental effort, but a rib here, a femur there, he could cause to move through sheer force of will. He focused on that sagging mouth, causing bones to roll forward a finger’s breadth at a time, knocking the head forward and with an intimacy that surprised Patroclus, one by bone, ever so slowly would slide into the mouth of Achilles and find their way inside the greatest warrior who fought at Troy.
Between these efforts, Patroclus pondered the oddness of being a shade. Dead, there was no fatigue, but the complete effort to move bones through sheer force of will took all focus. Sometimes, he would stop and try remembering his name, the odd fate that brought him here, who he was, and the lover he returned for.
Things were nearly in balance from before. Bones and flesh as one, all that was left was his skull itself, but he could feel the bones inside the flesh of Achilles move and, with clumsy grinding, bones began to connect. His skeleton snapped, backing into place. He puppeteered the arms; one, Achille’s sword arm, reached forward and grasped his skull. The other shield arm pulled Achille’s thick black mane of hair to left up the saggy face, letting the mouth slack open wide enough; with one final urge from the shade within the skull, the mouth swallowed the last of Patroclus.
Vertigo was instantaneous and eternal, but Patroclus felt the skull slide around till the skin of Achilles’ face pulled taut over it.
The sockets of his eyes remained empty, but just as touch returned, his sight remained unchanged. But that sense of touch was needed to feel the walls of the urn. Now, being able to move again, he felt time again. He had no idea if it was days or millennia before, but now he knew his sense of time was the same as any mortal. He wondered if the tomb this run was encased in had fallen into ruin or, worse, the waters of the Hellespoint had risen above it.
There was only one way to find out. He threw the strange, shambling mess he had become back and forth against the urn; now, he could feel the balance. He did not feel pain; he did not breathe, but he felt Achilles’ skin scrape and slap against the brass walls of the run and felt a tapping sensation.
There was another moment of vertigo, and the urn fell forward, and a crescent of the true light, not the incandescent grey glow he had about his skin, appeared at what had been once above him. The seal had been knocked loose. With fingers that felt strange and awkward, with many a failed attempt, the seal gradually worked loose, causing Patroclus to feel frustrated in ways he had not previously. With a resounding clatter, it came loose and fell, and bones shifted and snapped out of place for Patroclus to work through the narrow opening; he found himself in a tomb with cracks of light above him as it fell into ruin and decay. Those jagged shafts of light illuminated a sword in front of what was once the eternal resting place for them.
It was Achilles’ sword; in the reflected bronze of the blade, Patroclus saw the eyeless, slack-faced mockery of his lover’s face. Tightening his grip on the hilt, he turned and used it to slide into a gap in the salt-pitted doors that were the way out, where he could hear the waves crash in ways that sounded like language.
When the door finally jarred open, the waves became comprehensible.
“Took you long enough,”
It was a voice he had not heard since he had first learned to ride a horse on sandy beaches where the waves also spoke to him.
He fell to his knees and bowed his head.
“Lord Poseidon.”
“You’ve proven to do something no mortal shade has done before. You have aroused the curiosity of the gods.”
Patroclus raised his arms in supplication, feeling Achilles’ skin slide and folds of it falling like sleeves.
“I am sorry. I did not mean to defy your will.”
Patroclus wondered what punishment the Furies would use when he heard the waves gurgle laughter.
“It is curiosity stronger than the anger at your defiance.”
“What should I do?”
“The question is, wearer of another’s skin, what should you be?”
“I do not know. I only sought to see brave Achilles’ face one more time.”
“Now you have, but you do not seem satisfied.”
“I want to see the man again, not just,” Patroclus beckoned down at what he wore.
“You might just still be able. If you truly wish to satisfy our curiosity, there is something you should do.”
“Name it.”
“Do not fear, boy. You will like it. It is unfinished business, as the merchants say.”
“What is it then?”
“Who were you trying to slay when you received a spear in your belly?”
Patroclus surprised himself by knowing immediately.
“The warrior Sarpedon.”
“The same who fought against the Seven Against Thebes? He would be as old as a grandfather, would he not?”
“He was as young as I was.”
“There was a Sarpedon who Minos called brother, and how long ago was that? Would that be the same person?”
“That would have been even longer. It can’t be.”
Waves crashed in laughter as Patroclus realized the truth.
“They’re the same? That would mean he is not mortal or…”
The voice of the sea turned wrathful.
“He was a nephew of mine, and his father is the one who played a hand in your death.”
“You wish for me to defy the will of Zeus and kill a son of his?”
“Come now. You know our love for our children is fickle. He was protected by his father back then, but now he has lost favour and has fled beyond the north wind. Seek him out. Kill him like you never did before. When he dies, eat his heart, and then you will be able to see the person you wish.”
The waves withdrew as the skies darkened at twilight. Patroclus waited until he saw the seven stars shining in the dark that he needed and strode north.
With no hunger and no pain, the dark of night only shaded his vision in monochrome rather than robbing him of his sight; night and day, he walked, staying away from the humans who reminded him of what he once was and how he wore the skin of another. He saw through the wine-dark sea and strode across steppes that made him wonder at the miracle of the world the gods ruled over.
He avoided war bands of red-bearded Scythians, but as forests began to envelop the land, he felt emboldened to look for torchlight and bonfires. They spoke in a barbaric tongue, but as Patroclus listened, he understood the eddies and currents of their conversations. When wolves howled and ravens cried out as their wings fluttered overhead, the Scythians swore spoke a word with dread that Patroclus knew signified the person he sought. ‘Koschei’ The Deathless One.
It was when the lands froze into never-ending winter, and the word became more commonly spoken. He hid in small villages, outside windows at night, listening to the tales parents and older siblings told young children to scare them before they fell asleep to dream. He heard the tales of the Deathless One, how he buried his heart in a secret place and would only be slain by the hunter who found it.
The skin of Achilles’ face was covered in frost as it hung off Patroclus’s skull. It looked where Orion dwelt in the sky and prayed for a successful hunt.
Less than living and more than dead, he hunted for the heart first by following the grim tidings and folk tales he had gleaned from the people and his sense; he recognized that in the dark, the grey glow of Achilles’ skin that only he could see could also apply to other sorcery.
There were no poets to tell of his journeys, of his battles against monsters left to dwell in the recesses of the earth since the death of the great many-headed Typhon. Yet the skin proved his armour, and rescued from the depths of the earth after playing riddles with sphinx blind and maggot-white, he bore a blade rumoured to be forged from a falling star. It served him well as he pieced together clues to what he sought.
With the winter eternal, he knew not how long his hunting lasted, but whenever he looked in frozen streams and the reflection of his blade, he felt the keening shirt to see his cousin alive again instead of the mockery of his face Patroclus wore for now.
Eventually, it was from a dying chimera that wore a human face and a scorpion tail that Patroclus knew at least where Sardepon Koschei hid his heart. In an obsidian tower hidden in a valley between harsh, jagged mountains it lay within.
Several moons later on a night when storm clouds gathered, Patroclus evaded the living statues that stood guard around it, and he found himself in a seven-walled chamber where a box carved out of bone held what he sought. Before Patroclus could grasp it, he heard a voice behind him. A voice he had not heard since before he died, his blood staining the sand.
“So what I heard is true, a mockery of a man in ill-fitting skin seeks to kill me, and so you found yourself here. I would congratulate you, but–“
Eyes widened in Sarpedon’s youthful face as Patroclus did not remain silent for him to finish speaking but instead drew his blade from his leather scabbard with a whisper and leapt towards the Deathless One. They tangled together in limbs as Sarpedon struck at him with a dagger as obsidian as the tower they fought in. Achilles’ skin had not lost any of its magic and protected Patroclus as the storm raged outside, but still heard within the walls, the thunder giving no hints which the storm preferred as the victor.
Patroclus found that no matter where he cut on the Sarpedon, the wounds closed immediately. Yet as the storm buffeted to the tower, Patroclus kept matching Sarpedon thrust for parry, slash for evade, until the ground began to quake and the roof of the tower cracked above them; Sarpedon looked up as lightning flashed, his face almost at peace with what he saw in the storm clouds.
Patroclus grabbed the bone box and shattered it against a wall, revealing a stone in the shape of a heart that glowed with the grey light of the River Styx. He ignored Sarpedon’s howl of anguish as he bit into the heart, and the tower fell in the onslaught of thunder.
He dreamt of waking in a pile of the dead heaped on a battlefield of blood-soaked earth. He struggled his way out of it, severed heads and limbs spilling yet still twitching. He saw leaning on his sword the face of the man he had wanted to see again—one more time.
Achilles.
Patroclus shouted his name and stumbled down the pile, one of many surrounding Achilles, who raised his gore-covered shield and sneered as Patroclus always remembered him.
“Who wears my face? Who wears my skin as a mockery of me?”
“It’s me, Patroclus! I came for you–“
The backhand blow hit him with such force he fell to his knees. He felt pain radiate through his scalp as Achilles’ rough hand grabbed the hair of the skin and yanked his head back. Callused fingers worked their way into his mouth and tore at the skin, and Patroclus felt more pain. Familiar pain.
Pain that stopped when Achilles leapt back. Blood oozing from a cut on his forearm. The same blood dripping from Patroclus’ blade.
“You struck me, the one person who ever loved you.”
With a roar, Achilles attacked again, and Patroclus fought back, tormented by memories of his cousin’s rages and how he had endured them before.
As they clashed, and Patroclus fought for his life and the skin he dwelled in, he saw the piles of the dead begin to stir.
“Every cut,” rasped a burnt limbless corpse.
“Every wound.” spoke a warrior cradling his scarlet entrails.
“All blows that did not mark him,” A skeletal commander stated.
“All we now revisit upon him every day,” A throat gashed woman said, picking up a rusted dagger.
“and every night.” her daughter with the cloven skull said, picking up a rock.
“Take his skin. Unlike him, you’ve earned it.” a severed head whispered.
Achilles’s face turned to fear, and Patroclus felt glee as he struck it. He saw the cheek swell and the eye blacken. He looked around at the shambling dead, wondering if he had to cut his way out, when he felt wind set to the beating of a heart, the beating of great wings, and claws grabbed his shoulders and took him to the sky.
He looked up and saw he was in the clutches of a gigantic ibis, which turned its head and winked at him. Patroclus looked down and saw the black mirrored line of the Styx cut through the lands of the living and the dead. As they crossed over it, Patroclus saw the obsidian ruins of a tower in a snow-covered valley; the ibis dropped him to fall to his fate.
Patroclus woke freezing in the snow. He saw Sarpedon’s bearskin robe lying in a pile. He grabbed it and wrapped it around his body for warmth. He felt the muscles work under his skin, heard the beating of his heart and realized he was whole.
He noticed the ibis, only the size of the ones he saw in Hermopolis. One perched on top of one of the obsidian blocks, unbothered by the cold. Shuddering, he looked for the hilt of his sword, grabbed it from the snow, and pointed the tip of it at the bird, which turned its head and winked at him.
“Is that any way to treat a messenger? I came here to pass on to you compliments from my father. You have your life back for the price of one immortal son who can contemplate his folly in the pits of Tartarus. You need not worry of the eternal lash of the Kindly Ones.”
Doubt and fear trickled into his mind, knowing the tricks the gods played. “I am whole again?”
“Take a look in your blade.”
The reflection showed his cousin’s face, but he had eyes that expressed shock, a mouth he pulled back in a grimace, then a smile.
“Be grateful for the favour of the gods, you never know when we will take it back. Before I fly off, here’s something to pay your way the next time you die.”
The ibis spread its wings and flew off with a cackle as two copper coins fell from its claws into the snow. Hand freezing, Patroclus grabbed them. They were the same as the ones he had to pay the ferryman an eternity ago, but it was not his profile he saw on them, but the deeply etched profile of what he first thought of as Achilles, but realized it was someone who looked like him. But no sneer of arrogance demarcated his demeanour. While the set of his jaw revealed a stubborness that he recognized as sharing with his cousin, he saw the eyes in the profile radiate a compassion he knew his cousin never once saw in the eyes of Achilles.
Patroclus realized he was naked and mortal, with only a bearskin robe and a broken sword, in the middle of a land beset by winter, but he had something he had not before, something even his cousin did not have.
He was comfortable living in his skin.
He’d take it.
© February 2025, Kevin Beckett
Kevin Beckett’s work has appeared in Pro Se Press, Water Dragon Press, and Bronze Knuckles Magazine. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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