Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) by H.C. Southwark (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📕

And she charged.

Isme had just enough time to wonder if this is still performance—perhaps she has been tricked, and Kleto intends Isme’s death to be the distraction while she and Pelagia escape, or perhaps just to kill the other two women and deny these men their prize—or else is just mad—

But then Isme has Kleto’s arm around her ears, is pulled into a headlock, facing away from the crowd, the knife in front of her face. Without thinking, she screams.

This was not acting—though the knife does not come closer—

As it hovers before her face, Isme thinks: I’m a fool.

Or perhaps Kleto was simply that good of an actress.

And then because she has not cut her scream off, Kleto’s hand covers her mouth. The men are cheering again, and under the resumed noise, Kleto’s harsh breath in her ear. Perhaps the moment runs long, the men are still riotous, that covers the hesitation. Against her side, Isme can feel Kleto’s own sides panting.

Kleto whispers: “When I have them, take Pelagia and run.”

Isme is tossed away, but not with the same force. She stands and tries to make sense of the strange, whirling world, but fortunately every eye in the room is back on Kleto. She has raised her hand with the knife, a pose of victory, calling:

And so Tereus hides his dread deed!

No tongue to speak means no tale to tell!

Poor Philomel, little beheaded flower,

Lies entrapped in a cabin in the woods.

Tereus visits when he pleases,

Then goes home to his pleasant wife.

The men hoot like owls. Leading them on, Kleto is dancing again, but she has slipped the knife low and inverted in her grip, so that the blade lies along the bar of her arm. In the firelight it is hard for Isme to see that she is now—still—armed.

But Philomel does a woman’s work,

Weaving a cloth in purple and white, fine craft,

Which in pictures tells of her own devastation!

By a guard it is smuggled to Procne—

Halting her dance, Kleto flings her hair back, becoming Procne again by exposing her face—

And the look of horror there is painful to see.

Even the whooping men fall silent.

Kleto holds the pose one breath, perhaps that of a person swallowing, then says, flat, “Procne sees all. She goes to the woods and finds the cabin with her sister.”

Turning, she walks the lengths of the tables, to Isme’s half, and stands contemplating Isme like she is inspecting every flaw and finding too many to count. The men are silent, and Isme can feel curiosity rising from them like steam from a soup pot. Not many stories have women all alone like this—they must want to see what will happen, what women say when men are not around.

In Pelagia’s hands, the lyre became like light, like her fingernails were strumming air. The notes wavered, then became translucent, soft on the ears like the whispers of a parent saying goodnight to a sleeping child. Isme knew, without even ever hearing one before, what these notes were: this was a love song.

Letting the new music settle into the hearers, Kleto paces back toward Pelagia, contemplative, glancing at Isme. And Kleto sang, her voice low and soft like a lullaby:

My sister, oh my sister, are you now my rival?

Remember how we played in our father’s halls

Laughing, dancing in our private games

Shared by none but each other—

And at night we lay in each other’s bed

Counting all our woes and kissing them away.

Kleto reached forward, and Isme without thinking lifted a hand, feeling herself spellbound, the words drawing her to Kleto like water flows downhill. She wanted nothing more than to touch Kleto’s fingers—is this still performance? The two of them stood reaching, the moment taut like the air was a bridge between them.

But too far to touch. Kleto let her hand drop, empty.

My sister, oh my sister, are you now my rival?

What is a woman without her husband,

The bringer of her children, her home, her worth.

At any moment he may leave her for another

And then she is nothing, oh my sister.

So we must fight and scrape for every scrap

Of affection, of attention, for all our lives.

Clutching a fist, now, Kleto beat the air, and Isme let her own hand drop, stunned. She remembered then what the story entailed: how Philomel had been so worried that she was now Procne’s rival for her husband’s affection, and had begged her sister for forgiveness—something that Isme had not understood. After all, Philomel had not done anything to Procne, it was all Tereus’s doing.

Yet when she asked her father why, he had said he did not understand himself, except that this was how the tale went...

Now, Isme knew why. She had a cruel inkling blowing at her ear like the first winds of winter, leaving her shivering, wondering how the world could turn cold to warm to cold back again. Was Procne to have no choice, but to keep her happy life by following Tereus’s lead and throwing Philomel to the poor comfort of the world?

Kleto was already conjuring up Procne for the bad news:

My sister, oh my sister,

Ask any old kitchen maid

She’ll tell you the truth—

Two women cannot share a man

One will be hated and the other loved

One will be scorned and the other adored

One given wealth and the other left hungry.

Now without words to plead your own cause,

Oh, my sister, we are rivals

Gone are those childhood days.

And Kleto turned and held her face in her hands, shoulders hunched, as though she could not bear to look in Isme’s direction. She looked like a dying thing.

No, Isme wanted to shout, No, don’t leave me! Yet she truly was without a tongue. There was nothing in her sight but Kleto, but later, as she thought back, she thought that she recalled motion in the corner of her eye, of the men watching, stirred—even they were wordlessly beseeching that Isme not be abandoned.

But the line of Kleto’s body changed. A spark lit, she stiffened. Turned back to face