Chapter Nine

Summary

• The narrator wakes up after a good night's sleep, it was his first morning with Chiron, who was preparing breakfast.
• The narrator and Achilles spend their day with Chiron and learn various practical skills and knowledge through chores, including basic first aid, hunting skills, and horticulture skills.
• Chiron also taught them how to help with meals, churning the goat’s milk to make yogurt and cheese and how to cook fish.
• After a while, the narrator and Achilles expressed the desire to learn about the surgical instruments. Chiron taught them about human anatomy and the essential skills of surgery.
• At night, Chiron showed them the constellations and told them stories related to those constellations. Achilles and the narrator discussed the injustice of the punishments gods could inflict upon humans.
• Eventually, Thetis (Achilles' mother) visited them. She expressed her displeasure at the narrator's presence, which scared the narrator, but Chiron defended him.
• Thetis began to visit more frequently, always causing unease in the narrator, who preferred her absence.
• As time passed, winter arrived and snow fell. They spent most of the winter indoors and marked the days until the arrival of Spring. Once Spring came, Achilles asked Chiron to teach them how to fight. However, Chiron proclaimed that he had nothing to teach Achilles, for he was already the greatest warrior in their generation.
• However, Chiron suggested that the narrator could learn to be a competent soldier as he does not excel in fighting. But the narrator decided he did not want to learn to be a soldier.
• As summer arrived, Achilles turned fourteen and received gifts including new lyre strings, fresh tunics, a new bow, and arrows from Peleus. The goods piqued the curiosity of the servants and fed palace gossip.
• Time went by, and the narrator and Achilles spent two years living this life.