When Adrian Veidt is twelve years old, he discovers Homer's Iliad.

By this time, his preference for the culture of the Egyptians, fascination rather, had already begun taking shape somewhere in the dim chambers of his mind. Borrowing strangers' books untouched from the family and public library was his usual practice, and if asked, class project or just curious, the cover looked interesting or, if the book was big enough, shyly closing the covers like one might find a back issue of National Geographic tucked against the spine. Just indulging the normal young boy's urge to catch a glimpse of a little bared Polynesian breast, certainly not reading. He did that too much. Teaching himself hieroglyphics and putting off learning Greek a few more summers, in case it spoiled the mysteries.

By the time he was twelve, his mother and father no longer came into his room to say good night to him, or say a prayer, or kiss his forehead, which he never cared for. They were more concerned with what might be in their spouse's bed than what was in their son's, which was books. He ended up playing baseball with a crick in his neck more than a couple of times due to some carefully treasured library book hugged to his chest under the blankets. It's all on the sly, because he isn't supposed to be some academic freak, it isn't normal.

With this book, he takes his time.

The story is vaguely familiar from what he knows of Calvert and Schliemann, reckless archaeologists in pursuit of some fictional Troy. (He's seen the pictures of Schliemann's wife draped in the jewels of Helen and it looks like his mother's wedding photograph, the one on the mantel, not the one in the album. In the album picture, she stands between her husband and her brother, who is in Wehrmacht uniform. That one isn't shown very much.) And in the beginning his hopes are not high; from the first it has no magic in it, not properly. Animals scavenging bodies, the stilted style of someone trying to translate poetry as if it were prose. But the more he reads, this book slyly tucked in among his textbooks like contraband, the more it pulls him in. Dishonor and deities of uncertain temperament. (These gods aren't as interesting as the Egyptian gods and goddesses, upon which Adrian has very distinct and vocal opinions, but they are an indelible mark on the Classical landscape and cannot be discounted.)

And so he begins...

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles Peleus' son, the ruinous wrath that
brought on the Achaians woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades
many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs
and all winged fowls; and so the counsel of Zeus wrought out its
accomplishment from the day when first strife parted Atreides king of
men and noble Achilles.

At breakfast, the subject first comes up of his nighttime reading. (He strains to think of what she must be implying, because grown-ups never say what they mean, not to him, and not to each other.)

"You must be the last of your classmates to sleep with a light on, Adrian."

It is his mother, and she's trying to be delicate about it, without outright calling it babyish. Just like it's babyish to read storybooks instead of creeping around committing petty crimes or chasing girls. If he's the last in his classroom to develop an interest in the opposite sex, if it's atrophied from all of this reading, he doesn't care. Adrian has never felt young. But he must play this very, very carefully.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that his mother doesn't actually care overmuch. But it would mean more trips to the child psychologist or to Aunt Ada's.

The face he's making, caught mid-spoonful of his breakfast cereal, is one he's practiced in the mirror as being hard to read, easy to tell lies with. And his classmates and teammates believe him; he startles a little and then sudden, schooled blankness comes over him. It isn't a passable imitation of innocence, it's eerie.

"I like to know where things are in the night."

"Adrian..."

Mother reaches to stroke his hair back behind his ears.

---

"I read this in school, you know, and I wasn't much older than you are. It's a fine work of literature, there's nothing wrong with that."

Adrian doesn't like his father very much; he smells like tobacco and looks like a scout leader, heavy and slow in a way that seems deliberate rather than sluggardly. (Some of his friends have worse dads, but he wouldn't let them meet Father anyway. Everyone else's fathers fought in the war, for the proper side. His still speak German in the home.) He sits opposite his father at a narrow desk, hands folded on the desktop, but it's all he can do to keep from reaching for the pale green book his father's holding.

"It was from the library. I didn't want to lose it, that's all--"

It had found its way to the bottom of his bookbag, which in itself wouldn't have been objectionable if he hadn't gotten so worked up about a little light-hearted teasing. Red-faced and too quick to snatch it back.

The book is taken away from him before he has reached what the title headers promise (how Menelaos and Paris fought in single combat; and Aphrodite rescued Paris. And how Helen and Priam beheld the Achaian host from the walls of Troy) and Mother promises to replace it with a very nice Boy's Iliad, something with all the adventure and none of the redeeming literary or historical value. The book itself has ceased to be just its story in his mind (which he was rather interested in, and everyone knows it, after all) and an emblem of a self-created obstacle. He will read it again.