Before Achilles had jumped from his ship, another man was already in the shallow water. Protesilaus moved forward with his shield in his hand protecting him. But he stumbled, and as he stumbled, a Trojan fired an arrow through his throat. Protesilaus fell forward, his blood staining the waves. Hundreds of miles away, his wife, Laodamia, felt a sudden pain in her chest.
Laodamia and Protesilaus had married shortly before he had gone to war. She loved him and missed him when he was gone, so she made a wax sculpture of her husband and placed it in her bed.
But it did not comfort her, and every day Laodamia went to the temples to pray for her husband's return. The days passed, and soon she started to think: "What if he is killed? What if I never see him again?"
Then one day, half-crazed with loneliness, she prayed to Zeus: "If Protesilaus must die, let me see him once more, if only for a little while."
Zeus heard her prayer, and he told Hermes to take Protesilaus' spirit to his wife after he was dead ? but only for one night.
And so when Laodamia felt that pain in her heart, and went to her bedroom to rest. There she found the wax statue of her husband had come to life. Protesilaus stood there, as real and alive as the day he had left her.
Neither of them spoke. They sat on the bed. He took her hand in his, and looked at her.
"There was so much I wanted to tell you," she said.
"There is nothing that needs saying," he said, wiping away the tears.
And so they sat, together in silence, and when the dawn, with her rose-red fingers, finally shone through the window, he was gone.
Laodamia lay down on the bed and followed her husband to the world of the dead.
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