She fled across the beach, and he followed.
Not enough has been said about the survivors of Ilium. For there were survivors. Enough has been said about the laments, the epic journeys, the grand destiny revealed in a later empire. But there was also a woman lost at sea, and she found herself on an island, and there she lamented, too, and awaited destiny.
She wasn’t alone. The old man who greeted her told her about the island, and that she would live for an eternity, if she wanted, except that she would never be able to leave the island.
Eternity is for those who cling to the idea of youth. Eventually everyone grows tired of its comforting lies.
She began to feel cursed by the gods. On this island they were totally absent. There was a light that was beyond anything she had ever known, and it was nothing like the gods, who had forsaken her people, allowed them to be conquered, and left her here in exile, to protect an island, to save the world…
Many years later the northmen came. Their ships wrecked on the shore, and she believed for a few weeks that there were no survivors. None strolled about the island. She waited.
Then she saw them. A mother and her two young boys.
She watched. She found the other survivors. She knew what she had to do. She killed the mother, and took the boys as her own.
One of them was special. He knew things he shouldn’t. She thought she had found her successor. But his brother complicated things. His brother doubted. He was weak.
Then one day, everything fell apart. Her son found out the truth, and felt betrayed. He killed her. He said all he wanted was to leave the island.
His brother wouldn’t let him.
She lingered. She had met all the souls who lingered on the island. She was now among them. She watched. Her son was murdered, too. His brother cast him into the light.
And then she knew. She knew before she heard. She knew that her son had been transformed, and now she understood what had made him special.
He turned into a monster, a vengeful beast. He came to her first. He asked her why. She told him what she had tried to tell them before. He still insisted all he wanted was to reclaim his birthright.
His brother took over as protector. He had tried his own arguments with her son, how the world needed hope, essentially. But her son had rejected such ideas. All he wanted was the idea of what he had never known. He looked at his life as one massive betrayal. He saw nothing but despair and ruin and defeat, and he had become an avatar of what he saw. He just didn’t know it.
She grieved, as she had since she first came to the island. Not for herself, not for her son, but for his brother. For the boy she had never seen, the ordinary boy, the one who stumbled into this life.
For her son, she grieved harder, though. She had failed him. Not in the way he thought. But in failing to understand what he was, so that what he became had been inevitable. Her fault. Her failure. Her loss of faith.
His brother was the opposite of all these. She began to watch him instead.
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