I NUDGE JASON with my toe. He’s passed out.
Not again.
I’d gone to stretch my legs after an afternoon of standing before a class of Osteria’s elite children when, not far into the woods, I found Jason slumped against a tree. I’d stupidly hoped he was only napping, but in my heart I knew better. This is the third time I’ve found him like this. I have no idea where he got the wine, but I hate whoever has given it to him. When my nudging doesn’t stir him, I think of kicking him. I want to kick some sense into him. Instead, I leave him and storm back to the Fields itching to unleash my frustration.
"Did you give him the wine?" I accuse Achilles the moment I step into his cabin. His mother, Thetis, is there and she hisses at me. Literally hisses and makes to stand to defend her son.
"Sit down, mother. She’s not going to attack me." He then looks at me, notices my rage and asks, "Are you?"
"Did you give Jason the wine?" I repeat. The first time, Jason had gotten drunk on four bottles he’d hidden in his travel bag all the way from Illamos Valley. A waste of such high quality wine. The last time I found him sloshing around in the woods, barely able to stand, he told me Achilles gave him the drink. A bottle of strong wine meant to be well watered, but Jason had guzzled the whole thing straight. After that, Achilles was sworn to only give Jason wine with his evening meal, the one cup a day he is allowed.
"No, I want him to get better as much as you do. Okay, maybe not as much as you do, but quite a lot," he says with plenty of cheek. I blush when Thetis laughs at the insinuation.
It’s true though, I do want him to get better. When he’s sober I enjoy our time together. He’s kind and gentle and it’s hard not to feel for his loss. And yes, I’m attracted to the dark features he inherited from his father, and the lithe, athletic frame he inherited from his mother.
"Then where did he get it? It’s not like there’s a tavern or wine shop nearby and there’s no fruit in season for him to make his own." This is something I’ve worried about since I saw the first wild strawberry in the woods a few days ago.
"I gave it to him," Thetis says in her slinky voice that always carries a mix of seduction and threat regardless of who she’s talking to.
"Why would you do that?" I ask, then immediately regret my harsh tone. She’s not a woman to be yelled at. She’s not a woman at all, but a nymph, nearly a goddess but without the rules that restrict the gods from killing humans. "He needs to get better," I say more calmly.
"I don’t care about that. He takes up my son’s time. Better that he gets drunk and leaves my boy alone."
"Mother, I like Jason. You must accept that. He’s my friend. Briseis is my friend. My having friends is not a threat to my love for you." I want him to add that she should keep her slim nose out of our business, let her son be a man on his own, stop meddling in things, but that is too much to wish for.
"Will you help me with him?" I ask Achilles. We need to get him back to his cabin without Chiron seeing him. Although I would love Thetis to get in trouble for her part in this, after the last time Jason was caught inebriated, Chiron said if there was another incident, Jason would have to go. I don’t want him to leave just yet. I want him to heal. And I want to be there when he does.
Achilles shrugs and we go back to the woods, hoist Jason up between us, and start back. Thankfully, Jason’s cabin is next to mine at the forest edge of the Field. There’d be no way to hide his condition if we had to cross the central yard.
"What about Chiron?" Achilles asks.
"He’s got a rhetoric class until sundown."
Achilles grimaces at the memory of those long classes of debate—pointless chatter, as he calls it. Easy for him to say. People would agree with him simply because of his good looks, or to avoid the threat of his mother. When I first arrived here six years ago, I too was enamored by his beauty and found myself agreeing with him on everything. Despite my attraction to him, I never considered winning Achilles as a boyfriend; I don’t think I had the confidence to think he would be interested in me like that. Still, it’s hard not to get swept up in Achilles’s love of life and I couldn’t resist being around him.
It was the day I finally stood up to him, the day I demanded we do something I wanted to do instead of following blindly along with his wishes, that our friendship finally became one of equals, of two people who could banter and tease and debate, not one person leading the other around like a pet. Thetis didn’t like it. She never liked it when her son portioned any attention to someone other than her, but Achilles ignored her complaints until the jealous nymph grudgingly accepted the situation.
By some luck, we get Jason into his cabin without notice. Achilles passes me a sly grin and I know what he wants to do. I nod. Jason deserves a little discomfort. Holding our Illamosian king by his arms and legs, we swing him to one side, swing back, and on the next swing forward let him go, flinging him onto the bed. He bangs against the wall the bed is against and is jolted awake. I fill a large cup from a jug of fresh water.
"Drink it," I command.
"No," he says lolling his head back and forth so drunkenly it looks as if he has no bones in his neck.
"Drink it, you drunken sot!" Achilles bellows. Jason scrambles for the cup and drains it. And then promptly throws it up. Achilles looks away pretending he hasn’t noticed. I sigh and grab a rag to clean up the mess, trying to think of why it is that I think of Achilles as my best friend, almost a brother. An annoying little brother, I suppose would be accurate.
"What are we going to do with him?" Achilles asks, and the tone of sincere concern in his voice proves that he can be a decent person at times. I toss the dirty rag into a hamper, then grab a clean one and wet it.
"He needs a distraction," I say, wiping the fouled spot with the wet rag. "He needs to be kept busy."
"Did you have something particular in mind," Achilles asks in a tone bursting with innuendo.
I give him a scolding look. Not that I would complain, but Jason doesn’t need a relationship right now. He needs to find himself again. "Exercise, chores, anything to keep his hands so busy he doesn’t have time to drink and his body so tired he doesn’t have the energy to seek out wine."
"He could run with us."
Achilles and I love to race, we love to run. While I love working and living here, the Fields have strict rules about behavior, including not running through or around them. It makes my legs twitch just to think of it because I adore running. I love feeling fast. If I were a centaur I swear I would gallop half my days away. It was what I had insisted on doing that day when all Achilles wanted to do was lounge by the lake reading poetry or some such drivel, the day we truly became friends. Achilles loves anything physical and has joined me in my runs ever since, even though Thetis thinks it’s undignified. In her opinion, a person of Achilles’s status should only ever move swiftly on horseback.
"You’ll need to keep your mother from giving him any more wine."
"I’ll move my stores and put a new lock on. Do you think this could work? Can we run the drunkenness out of him?"
"I just feel like if we could somehow reset him, it might help."
And so the next day, despite his aching head and sensitive stomach, we make Jason run.