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

who to trust. But what if there was more? Something you did not know but could. If you will but turn this corner and speak to who is waiting for you, all questions will be answered.”

Isme frowned. She rubbed at her bruised arms, considered, said, “That’s not possible. There’s always another question. How could something answer everything?”

“This is Delphi,” said the old woman.

And Isme inclined her head, taking the rebuke. She had somehow forgotten, in all this, where she was and who she was with. Her mind was now already racing around the corner, but she approached cautiously, on the balls of her feet, waiting to be grabbed again, but the old woman made no move. Isme approached the turn and let her eyes carry her around the bend.

The sweetened air was the worst yet. Isme felt her stomach inverting within her, turning inside-out. At first, she focused on the cave: the ceiling leaped high, so far that Isme could not see the other end even with the odd light from the window-nooks.

Then her eyes refocused. She saw what was directly ahead—but that was hardly any better. She stood before a curved wall that did not reach the cavern ceiling, made of inset tiles layered over each other, but with smoke pouring from the cracks between. This smoke filtered down through the air, spilling over her ankles as she walked closer, puzzled, shivering from the cold on her feet.

The wall had eyes. But wrongly tilted, with their corners pointing toward ground and ceiling. They were round and glossy and stared as she made her way around the curve of the tiled wall, encountering four great white spikes stabbed out of an alcove while the wall continued.

Only then did Isme realize: it was a serpent. An enormous creature with a skull as broad as two men lying flat on the ground with their feet touching, head lying on its side, its mouth open to reveal the long dark tunnel of a throat, teeth halfway emerged.

Dead. That was the smell; the soft parts had rotted away, leaving only this hardened shell still lingering with the scent of death.

Isme gawped, unable to comprehend what such a snake was doing under the shrine. Then clarity filtered through her, all the stories of her father, and she asked,

“Is this the great Python, which Apollon killed to create Delphi?”

“So you know the story,” said the old woman, a small distance from Isme, who watched as the old woman reached out and touched the tiles—the scales—from which the smoke seeped around the corners. There was an oddness to the reverence as the woman stroked the wall, Isme thought, like someone handling something holy but not at all moved by the experience. Mere formality.

“This is where priestesses of Delphi learn their prophecies,” said the old woman.

Turning to the snake, aware that she and the old woman were now alone—only not alone, thought Isme, for even while those guards did not follow, the voice from the woods is still here, must be... she resisted the urge to turn about and look.

The serpent was a good distraction. Isme said, “I don’t understand. Why would the Python remain down here? And why would priestesses of Apollon need to visit in order to learn the words to speak from Delphi? Surely Apollon speaks to them.”

“No,” said the old woman, “Apollon has left the Python here to speak to us.” And, when she saw that Isme did not understand, she said, “All knowledge cycles from the underworld. The dead bring what little they know down to the depths, and then from drinking the waters of the river Lethe, they forget and Lethe remembers. The waters of Lethe seep up from the deepest parts of earth, bringing up knowledge among the living—where we can see and find it.”

Her sharp eyes—the sort that reminded Isme of Kleto—stared down at the smoke billowing about their ankles. And Isme thought then of everything she knew...

What was knowledge, anyway? She had always thought it some ephemeral thing, but now reconsidered. If the priestesses of Delphi received knowledge here, from this dead Python, then she knew: somehow, it was in the mists, the coldness on her feet...

Can knowledge have a physical form? Isme pondered. She gazed down at the waves of fog at her ankles, saw what looked like a miniature and vaporous sea. Yes, she concluded—if knowledge has a body, then of course it would look like the ocean.

But she said, “But that cannot be. This is Delphi, which belongs to Apollon—he is the lord of light and song, of order and reason. He is not associated with the underworld. If anyone is, that would be Lord Hermes, who guides the dead to their rest.”

“You think small,” said the old woman. “If you mark a wheel, as the wheel spins the mark will eventually reach the ground again. Lord Apollon is not united with the underworld, but he is part of a long chain that extends down to the Kindly One and back up again. And thus knowledge passes up to Lord Apollon—and us.”

Isme considered these words and recalled the prophecy from the God Under the Mountain: If you go to Delphi, you will find death underneath. She and her father had assumed this meant that Isme, a mortal, would die. Yet here was death before her, eyes staring out.

Perhaps she and her father had been wrong. How could they have known that the prophecy merely referenced something already dead? Isme knew well enough that she knew very little—and her father was Epimetheus, the afterthought. He would not know how to predict the future when he was so consumed by the past. Neither of them were adept at deciphering prophecy.

How could Isme die here, even if they had been correct in their fears? The old woman may have been strong for her age, but Isme could feel the wiry muscles under her own skin. Without the guards she was not in any danger. Physically, at least.

Feeling some boldness