The sea has many voices. The voice this man is
listening for is the voice of his mother. He lifts his
head, turns his face to the chill air that moves in
across the gulf, and tastes its sharp salt on his lip.
The sea surface bellies and glistens, a lustrous
silver-blue – a membrane stretched to a fine transparency where once, for nine changes of the moon,
he had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence and
was rocked and comforted. He hunkers down now
on the shelving pebbles at its edge, bunches his
cloak between his thighs. Chin down, shoulders
hunched, attentive.
The gulf can be wild at times, its voices so loud
in a man’s head that it is like standing stilled in the
3
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Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
midst of battle. But today in the dawn light it is
pondlike. Small waves slither to his sandalled feet,
then sluice away with a rattling sound as the
smooth stones loosen and go rolling.
The man is a fighter, but when he is not fighting
he is a farmer, earth is his element. One day, he
knows, he will go back to it. All the grains that
were miraculously called together at his birth to
make just these hands, these feet, this corded forearm, will separate and go their own ways again. He
is a child of earth. But for the whole of his life he
has been drawn, in his other nature, to his mother’s
element. To what, in all its many forms, as ocean,
pool, stream, is shifting and insubstantial. To what
accepts, in a moment of stillness, the reflection of a
face, a tree in leaf, but holds nothing, and itself
cannot be held. 
As a child he had his own names for the sea. He
would repeat them over and over under his breath
as a way of calling to her till the syllables shone
and became her presence. In the brimming moon4
Ransom text102.pdf 10 Ransom B+ text.pdf 10 10/11/09 2:10 PM 4/2/09 2:15:46 PM
Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
light of his sleeping chamber, at midday in his
father’s garden, among oakwoods when summer
gales bullied and the full swing of afternoon came
crashing, he felt himself caught up and tenderly
enfolded as her low voice whispered on his skin.
Do you hear me, Achilles? It is me, I am still with
you. For a time I can be with you when you call. 
He was five then, six. She was his secret. He
floated in the long soft swirlings of her hair.
But she had warned him from the beginning
that she would not always be with him. She had
given him up. That was the hard condition of his
being and of all commerce between them. One day
when he put his foot down on the earth he knew at
once that something was different. A gift he had
taken as natural to him, the play of a dual self that
had allowed him, in a moment, to slip out of his
hard boyish nature and become eel-like, fluid,
weightless, without substance in his mother’s arms,
had been withdrawn. From now on she would be
no more than a faint far-off echo to his senses, an
underwater humming. 
He had grieved. But silently, never permitting
himself to betray to others what he felt. 
Somewhere in the depths of sleep his spirit had
5
Ransom text102.pdf 11 Ransom B+ text.pdf 11 10/11/09 2:10 PM 4/2/09 2:15:46 PM
Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
made a crossing and not come back, or it had been
snatched up and transformed. When he bent and
chose a stone for his slingshot it had a new weight
in his hand, and the sling had a different tension. He
was his father’s son and mortal. He had entered the
rough world of men, where a man’s acts follow him
wherever he goes in the form of story. A world of
pain, loss, dependency, bursts of violence and elation; of fatality and fatal contradictions, breathless
leaps into the unknown; at last of death – a hero’s
death out there in full sunlight under the gaze of
gods and men, for which the hardened self, the hardened body, had daily to be exercised and prepared.
A breeze touches his brow. Far out where the gulf
deepens, small waves kick up, gather, then collapse, and new ones replace them; and this, even
as he watches, repeats itself, and will do endlessly
whether he is here or not to observe it: that is what
he sees. In the long vista of time he might already
be gone. It is time, not space, he is staring into. 
For nine years winter and summer they haveThe sea has many voices. The voice this man is
listening for is the voice of his mother. He lifts his
head, turns his face to the chill air that moves in
across the gulf, and tastes its sharp salt on his lip.
The sea surface bellies and glistens, a lustrous
silver-blue – a membrane stretched to a fine transparency where once, for nine changes of the moon,
he had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence and
was rocked and comforted. He hunkers down now
on the shelving pebbles at its edge, bunches his
cloak between his thighs. Chin down, shoulders
hunched, attentive.
The gulf can be wild at times, its voices so loud
in a man’s head that it is like standing stilled in the
3
Ransom text102.pdf 9 Ransom B+ text.pdf 9 10/11/09 2:10 PM 4/2/09 2:15:46 PM
Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
midst of battle. But today in the dawn light it is
pondlike. Small waves slither to his sandalled feet,
then sluice away with a rattling sound as the
smooth stones loosen and go rolling.
The man is a fighter, but when he is not fighting
he is a farmer, earth is his element. One day, he
knows, he will go back to it. All the grains that
were miraculously called together at his birth to
make just these hands, these feet, this corded forearm, will separate and go their own ways again. He
is a child of earth. But for the whole of his life he
has been drawn, in his other nature, to his mother’s
element. To what, in all its many forms, as ocean,
pool, stream, is shifting and insubstantial. To what
accepts, in a moment of stillness, the reflection of a
face, a tree in leaf, but holds nothing, and itself
cannot be held. 
As a child he had his own names for the sea. He
would repeat them over and over under his breath
as a way of calling to her till the syllables shone
and became her presence. In the brimming moon4
Ransom text102.pdf 10 Ransom B+ text.pdf 10 10/11/09 2:10 PM 4/2/09 2:15:46 PM
Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
light of his sleeping chamber, at midday in his
father’s garden, among oakwoods when summer
gales bullied and the full swing of afternoon came
crashing, he felt himself caught up and tenderly
enfolded as her low voice whispered on his skin.
Do you hear me, Achilles? It is me, I am still with
you. For a time I can be with you when you call. 
He was five then, six. She was his secret. He
floated in the long soft swirlings of her hair.
But she had warned him from the beginning
that she would not always be with him. She had
given him up. That was the hard condition of his
being and of all commerce between them. One day
when he put his foot down on the earth he knew at
once that something was different. A gift he had
taken as natural to him, the play of a dual self that
had allowed him, in a moment, to slip out of his
hard boyish nature and become eel-like, fluid,
weightless, without substance in his mother’s arms,
had been withdrawn. From now on she would be
no more than a faint far-off echo to his senses, an
underwater humming. 
He had grieved. But silently, never permitting
himself to betray to others what he felt. 
Somewhere in the depths of sleep his spirit had
5
Ransom text102.pdf 11 Ransom B+ text.pdf 11 10/11/09 2:10 PM 4/2/09 2:15:46 PM
Copyright © 2009 David Malouf, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted 
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
made a crossing and not come back, or it had been
snatched up and transformed. When he bent and
chose a stone for his slingshot it had a new weight
in his hand, and the sling had a different tension. He
was his father’s son and mortal. He had entered the
rough world of men, where a man’s acts follow him
wherever he goes in the form of story. A world of
pain, loss, dependency, bursts of violence and elation; of fatality and fatal contradictions, breathless
leaps into the unknown; at last of death – a hero’s
death out there in full sunlight under the gaze of
gods and men, for which the hardened self, the hardened body, had daily to be exercised and prepared.
A breeze touches his brow. Far out where the gulf
deepens, small waves kick up, gather, then collapse, and new ones replace them; and this, even
as he watches, repeats itself, and will do endlessly
whether he is here or not to observe it: that is what
he sees. In the long vista of time he might already
be gone. It is time, not space, he is staring into. 
For nine years winter and summer they have

. Explain what we learn of Achilles and his parentage here. Include some short quotes.