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

“When we reach Delphi,” said Isme, “Are you sure they will find your brother? That he would be able to say how to erase my blood guilt?”

“I do not know,” said her father. “The prophetess probably will just give us some kind of puzzle to solve. That is the way with prophecy.”

“Because if we are not sure,” said Isme, “Perhaps we should use our one question to ask about the end of the world. Maybe the gods know something about it.”

Her father said, “Perhaps. But there are things even the gods don’t know.”

And Isme recalled the song from her among the robbers, which called the birds. What words had come from her? ‘And so it is with those have broken faith with the great ancient law, whose words even the gods do not know’—strange, to think that the beings running the world would be ignorant of something so important.

Pulling back, Isme said, “Father, I think some of these women are slaves—they played the lyre and sang, and said that they served in symposiums.”

Her father frowned, said, “Isme, we cannot interfere with mainlanders. We must find my brother and learn to absolve your blood guilt before the world ends. These people will probably not survive anyway—the darkness and earthquake will create a new world. That probably means everything will be destroyed.”

And Isme started, reminded that these people would possibly all die soon. Each end of each world was a cataclysm. Something turned in her belly, but she nodded.

~

What followed were the long days. Every morning, Isme would wake in the tangled pile of women, then she would rise and spend the day walking, would pause for rest and eating when the sun got to his height, and then at the time when the sun let his head fall over the horizon, back she would go to the pile in the night.

Years later, looking back, Isme surmised that she learned as much from those days as half again she had learned from years with her father. Except this time she was not learning how to survive the end of the world; she was learning about the people from this old world that would perish soon.

Pelagia spent most of the first few days riding on a wagon, Isme walking behind her a little to the side so if the animal dragging the load defecated, she would not immediately step in the fresh droppings. She had learned that these animals were called horses—they were not what she imagined from the stories. When she had heard about horses in the stories she had conceptualized in her mind a large deer with beautiful hair like a woman and a tail like a fox. By contrast, these horses were long-faced and rather dull-looking. Although they did swing their ears to you in an endearing way whenever you spoke to them, regardless of what you said.

At first Pelagia only whined about how much pain she was in. Eventually the swelling in her ankle went down and then she began to talk. It took Isme almost a whole day to realize that Pelagia was speaking about ordinary and boring things; mindless chitchat. But for her this was all new and therefore fascinating.

She learned about merchants in cities, who would try to haggle terrible prices from foreigners, sometimes as much as three or four times what the locals paid. She learned that money, which had appeared in her father’s stories, was what many people valued most in the world. Pelagia even appealed to Lycander, to show Isme what money he had, whereupon Lycander had drawn a bag from where it was tied on his blanket and pulled out a long thin stick about as wide as Isme’s fingernail.

“So the wild woman does not know the mark of civilization,” Lycander had said, and Isme thought that the stick looked like a spear for a mouse. “This is an obol. Six obols make a drachma, and sometimes you’ll see those as a coin, a circle, instead.”

“I see,” said Isme, although she did not see. Lycander seemed aware that she was pretending to understand, because he waited. And then Isme decided to admit, “I don’t understand why these little sticks are so important.”

“Because you can buy things with them,” said Pelagia, sounding eager. “You can buy cloth, or new shoes, or food and water—”

“But why?” said Isme.

Pelagia laughed. “Well, because the merchant wants the money. When he has them, he will buy things that he wants with them.”

Isme frowned, and Lycander said, “That is not what your question meant, is it?”

“No,” Isme admitted. “I meant, why do you buy those things?”

“Because we need them,” said Pelagia.

“But you can just make them,” said Isme. She lifted a hand, gestured at the forest. “There are animals in there, and you can eat them. You can grow what you need. And from the animals you can make cloth to wear and shoes to walk in.”

“But who wants to do all that?” said Pelagia. “Hunting and farming is hard. This way, we don’t have to farm or hunt for food and clothing. We earn money and just buy it.”

Isme thought to herself about the way Pelagia had cast up her arms in the forest and cried that the robbers were not any worse than any of the men she and Kleto had known before. And Kleto’s luminous eyes, turning on Isme, as she said ‘What do you think happens when our songs and dances are over and—?’

And Isme thought, They must do such things for money. I imagine that money must cause all sorts of evils in this world.

Lycander reached over with his foot and nudged Isme’s shoulder. “Wild woman, don’t look so serious. When women look so concerned, I start to think that they’re practicing for funerals because maybe someone will fall sick and die.”

This was apparently a joke, because Pelagia started laughing.

There was also a laugh from Isme’s other side, but while the voice was familiar Isme