With Apologies to the Sea Nymph Thetis
Sage Hunter
Crouching on the floor, the sergeant said, ‘This is it, lad. On my mark it all goes ahead. No second chances.’
He raised his hand above his head, ready to signal his troops into action.
I huddled behind my toy box, looming over the foot-high figure like a giant.
‘Where are… I mean, we won’t hurt them will we? They don’t even have guns and they’re my friends and I’d…’
I was cut off by the sergeant’s face, twisting into incredulity.
‘They don’t have guns, but they do have spears and shields and who knows what else. We don’t have guns either.’ He held his rifle above his head, slimmer than a finger. ‘Do you actually suppose someone would fit a firing mechanism into this, or make bullets small enough for it to shoot?’ The sergeant set his jaw and planted his useless rifle in the ground. ‘All we have are tactics and strategy – the heads on our shoulders – and cold, hard grit. And if that ain’t enough to carry the day then nothing will. That’s something you best learn early.’
The very figure of manliness, the sergeant looked for my go-ahead and gave the order. I peeked over my toy box. My bookshelf was against the wall to our left, a pile of sheets clumped together at its base. The limits of the battlefield were defined by my door, shut and locked behind me; and straight across the room my bed, looming over a phalanx of hoplites. A handful of peltasts swarmed about their left, brandishing javelins and slings. A single figure had broken from the phalanx and was shouting encouragement, smashing his spear and shield together.
‘…birthed of the immortals! …will follow me… as beside Scamander we…’
Fragments drifted across the room to our hiding place. The sergeant grinned at me and held up three fingers. Then two. Then one, and zero.
Chaos. Smooth, pink boulders – about the size of a knuckle – smashed down into the phalanx, sending soldiers crashing to the ground in their armour. A section of the sergeant’s squad emerged from between the volumes of my bookshelf, gave a sharp whistle, and lobbed down rock after rock. The Greek king screamed in rage and ran for the shelf, bounding strides carrying him over in a matter of moments.
‘Mum won’t be happy…’ I said. The boulders must have come from one of her toys, a jar she keeps on the kitchen table.
‘One of the first rules of warfare, kid. Never leave a potential resource untapped, a potential preparation unmade. Never leave a battlefield un-scouted. Now watch.’
The phalanx, wavering beneath its bombardment, had begun to stitch itself back together. The soldiers learned to carry their shields above their heads, like the Roman turtle, and were moving step-by-step towards the sergeant’s position, salt rocks crashing off their backs. The king had scaled the bookshelf and was hanging by the rim of the third shelf, about to pull himself up to face the sergeant’s artillery.
Suddenly, a force in khaki fatigues emerged from underneath the bed. They spread out, a dozen figures moving in squads of four, closing in on the rear of the phalanx and skirmishing with the peltasts. Pebbles flew back and forth as the lumbering square of bronze-age soldiery began to wheel around.
‘You’ve got them now!’ I said, ‘They won’t be able to turn in time, and none of them are good at fighting by themselves, except for…’
I trailed off in stupor. Left of the battle, on the third shelf of my bookcase, the bronze-helmed king of the Myrmidons was working his implacable rage. His muscles twisted and flared as he dodged an attack, hoisting the offending soldier and hurling him off the bookshelf. I heard a snap and winced.
The king charged the three remaining soldiers, who were trapped against my big Napoleon book. He seized the nearest figure and dashed its head against the hardcover. The two surviving soldiers advanced, and the bronze-age hero crouched, muscles tensed like a lion waiting to pounce. The soldiers lurched forward together, but the king was quicker, his body exploding into motion as he dodged the pair and landed a powerful kick on a soldier’s chest, sending him flying off the bookshelf. The hero turned to the last soldier, and after a second’s contemplation of his cowering form, impaled him; thrusting his spear through the soldier’s navel, lifting him off the ground with blood and white fluids sprouting from his mid-section.
The sergeant shouted, ‘No!’
My jaw dropped open.
When I looked back to the phalanx I couldn’t find it – instead the sergeant’s men milled about little groups of Greeks in bronze armour, separated from their weapons and forced to sit on the ground. The king saw the same thing, roared in anger and threw his spear and shield off the bookshelf. He turned and slipped between two volumes, weeping.
A piercing cry from outside. ‘Dinner!’
‘Oh no!’ I said, ‘I don’t want dinner yet! Will they all be okay?’
He shook his head. ‘Most of my artillerymen are joining the list of heroes today… you saw what happened the same as me.’
I felt a salty sting in my eyes. ‘But I didn’t want anyone to die…’
The sergeant closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Neither did I. The son of Peleus probably didn’t either. But we too rarely get what we want in this world, and war is hell. Remember that, kid, that things never work out how we think they should and sometimes, because of the choices we make, things die.’
‘Dinner!’ sliced through the walls again, even louder.
‘I better go… don’t… I mean, you won’t hurt them, will you? The Greeks? They were just doing their… what I made them do… don’t hurt them.’
The sergeant looked away. ‘The laws of war forbid the harming of prisoners,’ he said quietly.
I unlocked my door and went to dinner, thinking how odd a thing it was that even chaos deferred to law.
♦ ♦ ♦
‘…and where is that boy? Probably playing with his damn toys again, June would you go and – ’ Mum trailed off as I emerged into the kitchen.
‘I’m here,’ I said.
Mum sniffed, ‘Go and take a seat.’
I left my mum and sister to finish dinner and took a seat with Dad in the dining room.
‘How’d it go?’ Dad asked with a playful nudge to my ribs.
‘The scary one – the king – he killed some of the sergeant’s men. Four, maybe. Definitely one. I liked the fight, and the sergeant’s always teaching me new things, but I didn’t think any of them would die…’
Dad nodded and took a moment to think through what I said. That pause was the reason I loved him; where Mum would rattle off a stock response and change the subject to something easy, and June would just screw up her face or laugh, Dad would think about what I said and respond to it. He didn’t treat children like babies or animals, but like real people whose questions, whether as simple as reading a clock face or as impossible as the nature of God, could be taken just as seriously as the questions of adults.
‘It’s important to remember they’re not real, not like you and me. People like that don’t exist in the real world anymore, which is a good thing, probably. The scary one, he killed the others because it was his duty, and back in his time nothing would trump duty, not even sanity. I’ve told you before he’s not just any king, he’s a storybook hero, and once upon a time he slaughtered entire armies. You shouldn’t be surprised if he’s scary, if he does things that make you sick, but it’s good for you, we think, to know someone like that even though they don’t exist anymore.’
‘But how do we know they’re not real?’
‘That’s a very difficult question, and people have thought about it – or things like it – for a long time. It might not be fair to say we “know” they’re not real. We assume it, because assuming anything else would make us – ’
‘No philosophy at the dinner table,’ Mum snapped.
She and June had brought in the dishes: roast beef and vegetables in three cast iron pots. Mum loomed over Dad and gave him her best stare.
Dad mimed innocence and indignation at an unfair attack. ‘Of course, dear. Thank you,’ he said, making for the beef. Panic welled up inside me as I realised I wouldn’t hear the second half of his answer. How do we know? I screamed in my own head. They were real! Why do we assume they’re fake? What does it mean for something to die?
‘…for one, am not sure of the good in all this. Take June’s toys, for example, they teach something real and practical, but this stuff you’ve…’ June screwed up her face at me and I felt a spike of anger. Mum was lecturing Dad, who had the same expression he got when he lost his place reading one of his big books about numbers or law.
‘But darling, we’ve already talked about all this,’ he spoke as a suppliant when her rant was finished, plaintive and submissive. ‘We agreed it’s good for a boy to learn these things. My God, if the Iliad and World War II had come to life when I was a boy – ’
‘Then your head would be even less screwed on than it already is!’ Mum’s voice felt like a knife, cutting through deeper tones. June poked out her tongue. ‘Then you would spend even more time daydreaming about the past? Please. We have enough historians, and more than enough soldiers, and the amount you paid for those damn robots is obscene, if anything is!’
‘Please, could we just enjoy our dinner? I’m sure the kids don’t want to hear us argue about money of all things…’
Mum sniffed (she was an expert sniffer). ‘Money is one thing,’ she said, ‘But teaching little boys to be ancient Greeks is another thing entire. When he grows up and thinks Athena or whoever makes the sun go round, then we’ll know who to blame!’
I didn’t much like being talked about as though I wasn’t there, so I said, ‘Maybe she does!’
Mum looked at me as though her worst fears had been realised and a shaggy Argive reared up where her son had until recently been politely waiting. She opened her mouth to reprove me but heard Dad whisper, ‘Helios,’ and snapped her head around.
‘What?’
‘Helios is responsible for the movement of the sun,’ Dad said, looking at me. ‘His chariot circles the Earth each day and – ’
‘Enough!’ Mum demanded, a little too high-pitched to be really effectual. She opened a wine bottle and poured glasses for Dad and herself, lips pursed. Her eyes lingered on the jar of salt rocks in the centre of the table and she squinted. ‘Has someone been messing with my decorations?’ she asked, more to break the silence than anything else.
No one responded, and June followed up the old thread, blurting out, ‘I want to play with the soldiers next time!’
‘No!’ I screamed, ‘They’re mine!’
Dad began, ‘Now, we’ve told you over and over to share.’
But Mum snapped at June, ‘Don’t be silly, you don’t like toy soldiers!’
June pouted, and I grinned at her and stuck out my tongue.
♦ ♦ ♦
We hid between June’s dresses – me, the sergeant, the king and three of his Myrmidons. A truce had been struck after the battle, and the Greeks had had their arms and armour returned. We had snuck in while June was in the shower.
‘I don’t like the idea of targeting civilians…’ the sergeant whispered, cracking open the door of June’s closet and peeking into her room.
I scrunched up my face. ‘They’re not civilians! They’re filthy, dirty little things and June is a nasty girl and she deserves it! I hate her!’
The king gave me a knowing smile.
‘I still don’t like it,’ the sergeant said, turning to the Greeks. ‘Surely you agree with me. Even Troy had non-combatants.’
The king shrugged, ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. After my son spread Priam’s guts about the palace of Ilium, he took Andromache for his own. Such is the law I remember.’ He gestured toward me. ‘The girl is his enemy.’
I felt a burning passion well up inside me. The king knew. The invincible son of Thetis, who had mutilated the corpse of stallion-breaking Hector, had taught me something after all. I nodded and put a finger to my lips, hearing footsteps.
June danced into her room in her pyjamas and dropped to her knees by a dollhouse as tall as she. She hummed a tune and a foot-high woman emerged from the house. The little woman was dressed in a low-cut, high-skirted pink dress, her legs almost twice as long as her upper half and her waist barely thicker than her head.
‘June, where have you been?’ Barbie called. ‘You know we have just so much left to do! My date is tomorrow evening, and there are a hundred dresses I need to try on before then, and I need to clean the house and I still haven’t even had a chance to look at my makeup, which you’ll have to do by the way! It’s not like I can paint it on myself with no brushes or pens my size, and do you even know how to do a woman’s make up?’
June, smiling, shook her head.
‘Perfect!’ Barbie announced sarcastically. ‘So that’s one more thing I’ll need to show you, while the kitchen still needs cleaning and the entire house dusting!’
June laughed at the little figure and got to her feet, spinning around to find a sharply dressed male doll. She put it down next to the woman and hummed a different tune, springing the doll to life.
‘Ken!’ Barbie exclaimed. ‘I’m so glad there’s a man around to…’
June lay down on her elbows and kicked her feet up in the air. The dolls played out a domestic facade, arguing and making up and cuddling one another in the dollhouse, the front side of which opened out to allow for visibility. June was mesmerised.
‘They’re both here!’ I whispered.
The king nodded to his three men. They crept out of the closet and began to circle around the dollhouse, careful to avoid June’s eyeline. The sergeant chewed his lip, apprehensive.
The Greek warriors disappeared behind the dollhouse, unobserved by June. Ken and Barbie were in the midst of their umpteenth make up, cooing at one another and making pawing motions; Barbie placating Ken, smiling and leaning against him, her beauty tugging at the strings of his anger.
My three warriors burst into the dollhouse from a back window. June made a surprised grunt as the first warrior drew his short sword. He grabbed Ken’s shoulder, spun him round and with a single strike cut his throat and clove through half of his neck, leaving the doll’s head dangling backwards with fluids spurting from the wound. Barbie screamed and turned to run, but before her unwieldy legs had made two strides, a spear emerged from her chest, expertly thrown by my second man. The third ran up to her twitching body and lifted her head by the hair, quickly cutting her throat with a practised motion.
June screamed, and her piercing cry caught my readied gloats in my throat. She reached into the dollhouse – still screaming and blubbering – and picked out one of my soldiers. She jumped to her feet and threw it on the ground, then stomped on it over and over, leaving a bloody pulp staining her carpet. My other two warriors were withdrawing, and I was ready to reveal myself when I heard the sergeant.
‘Uh-oh,’ he said, terror shaping his face into a rictus death-mask.
I frowned, ‘What?’ I whispered.
‘I think that was Patroclus.’
The king of the Myrmidons roared like a wounded lion and charged into my sister’s room.
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