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

realized that she had just been given a boon—an answer to a fourth question that she had not even asked. Turning back to face the woman, Isme bowed even lower, saying, “I understand. Thank you, O Oracle of the God Under the Mountain.”

Then she followed her father back out through the cave.

~

They made their way down the hillside. Laboriously, each footstep a peril that could send them slipping and tumbling to die from a thousand battered bruises in the dark. Though she felt like a day had passed in the cave—from the stars Isme could tell that the night was little over halfway done.

They reached the temple at Delphi, and once again her father stood between her and the central structure, but this time they skirted around the outsides of the crowd, and no matter where Isme glanced she found that they were being ignored. All of these silent people were staring solely at Delphi.

She could not blame them. Isme also kept casting glances at Apollon’s Temple.

They were mostly back down when her father stopped.

Isme glanced at the end of her own staff, which still smoldered the smallest embers from the cave at the top of the mountain. She knew without looking at her father’s face that he was troubled, could almost predict what he would say.

“We will leave this place quickly,” said her father. “You cannot be present tomorrow, to avoid the priests of Apollon choosing you.”

Isme asked, “Then what will we do? Your brother is still chained in the Caucasus Mountains, hidden. There is no other major Oracle to ask, only Delphi. Tiresias is dead.”

“There are many oracles,” said her father. But then with his words hesitated. “But you are right—we are speaking of great things now. Any old fortuneteller will not do.”

“Then there is no choice,” said Isme. “Delphi has never failed prophecy, Father.”

Her father’s shoulders expanded and contracted, barely visible in the faintest glow from her spent torch. He said, “There is one more oracle. Across the sea.”

Isme wondered why they should bother, for crossing the sea would be a perilous task and the answer they received would be the same, and the end result—her death—had already been foretold to be the same. They might as well save the trip.

But curiosity had her. She asked, “What oracle?”

Her father said, “At Lesbos, the Oracle of Orpheus’s head.”

And now curiosity had crawled closer within Isme, reaching down almost into the well of songs. The head of Orpheus—even when he had died, dismembered, his head still sung of sorrows as the waters of the river Hebrus had carried it out to sea, far from the reach of the Muses, his nine mothers who had gathered up the remains of his body and buried the pieces about all the lands. It had landed on the island of Lesbos, and was said to sing when asked.

But that was only one variation of the Orpheus story. The other, which Isme preferred, was that the head was never found, and drifted alone in the sea, singing, forever.

Who knew which story was right?

Yet Isme wondered, If Orpheus’s head is an oracle, what kind of song would it sing? Would I hear the same song in the same way that others, who cannot sing as I do? Would I be able to repeat the words back, to carry that song into the wide world with my own voice?

Would my father’s head recognize me?

And one more stray thought: I wonder if the turtles would like to hear that song.

Isme said, “But the journey will be dangerous. What if the answer is the same?”

“It will not be,” said Epimetheus. Isme regarded him in the dark, and then her mind stumbled on his reasons.

She said, “You think because he is my father that his prophecy may be different.”

Epimetheus did not answer, but his silence was answer enough.

Isme said, “I do not think prophecy works that way. I think people talk about reality, rather than make it by talking.”

And her father laughed. “Tell that to poor Oedipus.”

Isme did not have a ready answer to that, so she was forced to settle for, “Perhaps if I stay outside of Delphi during this ceremony, then we can ask these questions when a new priestess is chosen and the six days of Apollon are being spent.”

Her father heaved a big breath. “No, Isme. We cannot risk it. We leave tonight.”

But if that was so, they would need to hurry—for they were not quite down the mountain, and there was the faintest beginnings of light in the east. Helios was awake.

THIRTEEN.

~

Thinking back on this day over the years, Isme would conclude with vicious certainty that one of the gods had been meddling, or perhaps two quarreling and the muddle was a trap she could not escape. Sometimes she would go to the turtles, then, and sing to them of that day, how cursed prophecies could be, and then would freeze with horror when she saw the effect of the story on her old friends.

The turtles would weep.

~

Tired as they were from scaling the mountain, Isme could see in the awakening dawn that her father was on high alert. Every look, every glance he gave back and forth, every new encounter with a person or bush, he was looking for whatever trouble would follow them. News of her death had spooked him.

She thought, Why? I am a mortal and you are a Titan—you’ve known my fate all along...

Still, she could not blame him. Her fingers and toes felt numb, had been since she had received the prophecy of the God Under the Mountain. When they reached the town beneath Delphi she realized that this was not because she was cold.

The rising light of the sun was everywhere. The world had not ended last night, under the light of the stars there had been no darkness and no earthquake.

Isme felt it was strange to think of that now. The end of this world had been hovering over her since before she could speak.