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

the same to birds: break the neck and then the fight was over. Her hands raised, and only by instinct her left forearm prevented his swinging fist from connecting with her cheekbone.

After that everything was a jumble. Isme recalled kicking and hitting the ground as much as his shins—his hand in her hair had her scalp on fire—but she could not spare a hand for that, not when she needed both to fend off his other arm, him punching—striking—clouting—she felt bruises blooming under her skin—

She managed to protect her face just enough to keep her wits, managing after a few tries to clasp his swinging arm under her own armpit—and he would not let go of her hair—so she turned and sunk her teeth into his flesh. Soft. Like biting down on an apple. He tasted like the sea—melted wet and salty on her tongue too—

Cursing, the man flung Isme away.

But falling was something that Isme was used to—all those bouts practicing staves with her father, his chiding: When you fall, don’t try to stop yourself from tumbling, don’t you dare raise your arms and land on your wrists or elbows, that is how you break bones, that is how you jar your muscles so they won’t work later—roll, roll—

Using the momentum, Isme let herself curl until she had her feet under her, and at the end of the movement launched herself upright again. There was nothing to defend herself but her bare hands—

An abrupt thought: If only I had my staff—

—then what? Did she think winning was more possible?

The man inspected his arm, then his eyes tracked from Isme, weaponless but a proven biter, and Kleto, who stood in front of Pelagia with a stone as large as her head held high. Good choice, thought Isme. That would certainly crush through his skull.

If one had the will to kill.

Kleto certainly looked the part. Her eyes were hooded, yet her pupils were like sparks sent out from the hearth they had left behind. She looked as though she would gladly smash her own skull in before giving into the loss of a fight.

Isme recalled: the purpose of being a robber is to do less work for more gain, but if you look like too much work for too little gain, then they will leave you...

The man laughed.

“Woman,” he told Kleto, “If you were willing to kill, you would have used the knife.”

He charged her. Isme saw the moment that Kleto came to self-realization: that she had been bluffing. And Isme remembered Kleto’s hand trembling back at the robber’s den... Isme had almost dismissed the flickering as firelight on the blade, but now she knew that her other suspicions were correct:

Kleto, the actress, could look savage. She could struggle. But she was no killer.

Isme was a killer. By accident, yes, but still—

Tearing after him, hoping to catch him first before he struck the other women—Isme missed the sound of hoofbeats against the ground. Pelagia noticed, but Isme was focused on one central point: the throat of the man who was attacking Kleto.

When the arrow came, in Isme’s sight it appeared backwards, reversed. As though the arrow’s long neck bloomed outward from the robber’s head.

Isme faltered, momentum pulling at her as she slowed. The man was dead before he hit the ground. Standing above him, she knew that she did not need to check if the deed was complete.

The stone rolled out of Kleto’s hand and fell into the underbrush.

Eyes starting up from what she had finally understood was an arrow, a projectile with an origin point, Isme saw the familiar animal, standing and snuffing the air as though it was grateful for a rest, and astride was Lycander.

Now that he had her attention, Lycander said, “I hear you ran off into the woods, wild woman. It’s astonishing that the three of you are still alive.”

Isme tried to process the words and tone they had been spoken in at the same time, for despite their harsh meaning, he sounded light and airy, like he was joking, as he had before the caravan had been attacked. Despite the dead man lying in front of them.

Opening her mouth, Isme found that words did not come. Instead, Kleto stepped forward, brushing a hand quickly through her hair, which now seems less golden and more dusty, tangled. She said, “Why are you always riding in at the last moment? Would it not be better to kill them before we get to this point?”

“Well,” said Lycander, observing her. “We are dramatists.”

Pelagia said, “For the sake of Apollon himself, please let me ride back to camp.”

Glancing down at her, Isme saw that mixed with the relief on her face was an undercurrent of pain, and she held her limb with the swollen ankle far away from her center mass, as though the distance could also make the pain she was feeling fainter.

As Lycander assented to this, Isme caught a brief sight of Kleto’s face: there was something strange there, some kind a terrible burden. Perhaps disappointment. Or maybe, thrilled by her understanding of Kleto’s hostility towards her, Isme was now overestimating her abilities to read the mainlanders again.

Yet this time, as Kleto glanced up and met Isme’s eyes, her own were not full of resentment and anger. Instead, they had become harder to read once more.

But if Isme had to give the expression a label, she would have said that Kleto looked curious. Or perhaps—suspicious. Of what, Isme did not exactly know. Perhaps Lycander, if Pelagia was right about Kleto’s love obsession; or perhaps whether Isme would interfere with her claim, if it was a claim, on Lycander; or perhaps—

Perhaps Isme’s own singing. She recalled her father’s demand: Show no mainlander what your voice can do unless he risks his life for you, and her voice echoing, I promise, I promise...

She had learned another thing: Kleto was clever, at least.

Even if we are not enemies, thought Isme, that does not mean that we will be friends.

~

Isme finally escaped