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

already here!” calls Kleto, sweet-tongued, and she glances just so at Isme before she begins to sing—and Isme knows what she must do, pretends to be carrying something as she rushes out toward the man—

In storms Philomel!

Blood across her face!

Blood in her mouth!

Blood stains her hands!

She throws the head

Of Tereus’s son—

Right into the father’s lap!

Yet Isme does not aim for the man’s lap—she charges, flings her hands into the man’s eyes, and in that moment her momentum slams into him, and Kleto has him by the arm and hair, and even Pelagia has thrown down the lyre, ending the song in a crash of all the notes played wrong—

They pull him atop the table and Kleto has the knife under his jaw, Isme has his hands, Pelagia clutching his left arm. The look on his face is comical—

“Enough!” Kleto shouts. The men in the crowd have fallen silent. “We have one of you—now let us go, or else be one man less!”

A long pause like this was still part of the performance, the audience digesting a new twist in the tale. The hearth crackling is all that can be heard.

Then the men begin to snigger. There is no outright laughter, but Isme believes that this is not because they do not find the scene funny, but rather because they simply do not find it funny enough. When she glances at their captive’s face, he looks resigned.

Just for an eyeblink, Isme thinks she sees Kleto realize—they are going to die.

When the women do not release the man, one of the crowd speaks up, calling, “You cannot think that would work—we’re a den of thieves. Finish your prancing, woman, and then kill him, or don’t, you’ll end the same. Poor robbers we would be if every time a woman pulled knives on one of us, we let her go.”

Another added, in back, “Makes the tale more exciting, I say!”

And another: “Do to him what Procne and Philomel did to Tereus! I want to see!”

A chorus of jeering, now, and Isme’s untuned ears pick up the cry of Do it, Do it, Do it, Unless you’re too scared to tell it properly...

—and she thinks that maybe Kleto will. Kleto will kill this man and spill his blood all through Pelagia’s dark hair.

Certainly Kleto grips the knife harder; Isme can see her knuckles flex, fingers adjusting. Isme thinks: That is not the right way to hold a knife for slaughter—you won’t hit the main artery like that—

And then she realizes what she was considering, and closes her eyes. In her mind she is tracking back the days as though walking in muddied sand, only a few days ago—when they were there, lying on the beach. What sort of men had they been? Sailors—or perhaps pirates, sea robbers, same as this man still under her own grip now.

Isme had killed them. With nothing but words. A song—but not meant for them. The song was for the turtles. They were never supposed to hear me...

It was an accident, Isme thinks. I didn’t mean to. I never would have, if I’d known.

Yet now she was here and she knew. Was she going to participate now?

Opening her eyes, Isme thinks: He brought this on himself. He’s the one who robs and kills. And not by accident. But only if there was some other way—

If only men did not rob and kill at all. If only there was a song for that—

If I was Orpheus, Isme thought, that is what I would sing. That is how I would sway men’s hearts. She saw that the man had his eyes closed, waiting, Pelagia trembling, Kleto caught and indecisive, the men in the crowd jeering, and thought: If only there was a way, a song or a story to show them how horrible this all is, and how we should all never be this cruel in the first place—

Then maybe the world would not need to end. The men of iron could be flesh again. Another golden age. Perhaps, when this world ends, the new world could be...

And just like that, the well in her seemed to open.

Down, and down, and down—so fell Isme’s mind, and the well within her was not only deeper then she thought, or rushing faster then she had felt only a few moments ago, but it was not a well at all: it was the sea itself, Isme realized, and if it was a sea, then there doubtless had to be turtles.

There were always turtles, even when she could not see them.

Words clamored in her ears, coming from this ocean, drowning out the sounds of the room, the men jeering, and then Kleto wavering, realizing she could not do what her vicious heart wanted, not now that the choice was before her and the performance was reality—her hand lowering, knife glinting like sun against waves—

And the man scrambling, falling off the table and crawling underneath to his fellows, who kick at him, are booing, hooting, shouting their disapproval—they had wanted the blood—they had wanted to see how the story would end—

I can give them that ending, Isme thought.

Pelagia half-crawls to Kleto’s knees, Kleto standing like a beaten and weathered tree with only its last root keeping it upright, gazing out into the crowd of men who are still shouting, building themselves up into a rage, just a hair from surging forward and beating and mauling and doing far worse—

Then Isme rises to her own height, feeling the words pushing at her insides, finds herself afraid that the syllables will come out too quickly in a rush and burst her like an over-full water bladder. This time, the prayer that she gives to grandmother Kalliope is:

Let me not be crushed by your song, O Grandmother—

And Isme sings:

This is not how the story ends

Or the fires of Tereus’s hall die.

Round he chased Philomel and Procne,

Screaming a wild cry

To call upon Furies who did not listen

But hid and waited for the tempest to end.

The first notes from her throat