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

of purpose is not true. That is the same as your claim about hope. You have simply repeated the same error using different words.”

There must be something. Isme’s mind rose, stones laid atop one another to build into walls and palaces—even as she clung to the side of the tunnel down and up into her own soul, seeing no escape, she knew that this might well be the most important conversation of her life. It would define the rest of her—

Important conversations, she thought, and again her mind trailed back to that night on the island when her father had told her where she had come from. She saw his worry crinkled in the corner of his beady eyes, and the way his eyes had relaxed with relief when she told him that despite knowing about Orpheus, nothing had changed, she was still his child...

And Isme said, “Love.”

For a long time Apollon was silent, and Isme’s thoughts trailed over old paths she had worn through her heart, those long days on the island when her father alone was the only person she knew in all the world. How patient he had been with her, his hands showing hers how to hew stone for new arrowheads, how to fish without a net, how to make fire without her cheating method—

Then Apollon said, “Love is the worst of all.”

“You lie!” Isme felt the denial well up from her throat like vomit. She spoke without forethought, not caring that she was speaking to her own grandfather, much less the son of Zeus and a god in his own right—but even as she realized this, she knew that she would not have changed what she said if she had thought about it first.

Apollon did not seem offended. Something like amusement smeared across his features. He looked very much like her own father did, when Isme had said something foolish or sometimes asked a particularly good question. Like he was proud of her.

He said, “What is love? An emotion that spurs people against their own interests. It is the string that keeps all the firewood together so it can burn, without which the truth would emerge and all would see the underlying meaninglessness of existence.”

“No,” Isme disagreed, remembering her father’s face when he looked at her, after they had seen the sea reclaiming her lost sailors. His eyes had been soft at the corners.

“Love is the god-killer,” said Apollon, and Isme started at the claim, staring.

Apollon seemed satisfied by this reaction, and said, “In love, Gaea brought forth Ouranos, who usurped and replaced her. In love, Ouranos cast down his hundred-armed children who he despised seeing on his adored Gaea. In love, Gaea urged Kronos to destroy his father, and in love Rhea preserved her son Zeus, who destroyed his father in turn. In love, Zeus pursues his lovers—and in love, Hera punishes them.”

“That is not love,” Isme objected. “That’s twisted—”

“You are redefining love so that it carries only positive connotations,” Apollon said. “Rhea’s love for her children led to her husband’s mutilation and usurpation. She may feel—truly—positive emotions for her children, may not have intended the result, but what did that lead to? Her husband tortured and destroyed. Is not love horrifying?”

Isme sucked in a breath, ready to argue—

“And Epimetheus,” said Apollon, drawing breath back out of Isme’s lungs. “Love moved him to accept Pandora as a gift, and through her brought destruction on all his mortal children. He loved her—and because of that, a world ended, and untold thousands died.”

Isme found that she could not think of anything to say. This seemed a reasonable interpretation of the story—her own father had brought about the end of the last world—and in a flash, she understood how he had been able to see those dead sailors carried out to sea, to comprehend how he had looked at her that night with understanding in his eyes, and not the weight of judgement—

“And your father,” Apollon said, calmly. “My son, mighty Orpheus—able to sing the dead back to life, and not killed by my father Zeus like your uncle Asclepius was, for sheer wonder of what he could sing. In love, he wed Eurydice—and lost her. In love, he went to the underworld to find her. And in love he was unable to withstand one more moment from looking behind him—ending them both in misery and shame.”

Drawing his full height, Apollon announced, “Orpheus’s head now sings a dirge of love, how it brought him to destruction, this very day on the other side of the world.”

Isme closed her eyes, tried not to let her head dip forward. Within her there was great strains pulling in opposite directions—in her mind’s eye she saw the disembodied head with its mouth moving, found herself not wanting to hear such terrible music, and under that was longing to hear such music that was against nature...

“And finally,” Apollon whispered, gently, “love is what destroyed Prometheus.”

Isme’s eyes flew open. She barely caught a glimpse of Apollon’s face, the look unreadable. He said, “Prometheus, god of foresight, saw his own fate if he disobeyed the orders of Zeus. But why then did he steal fire? For the sake of men, whom he loved.” And Apollon crouched, “Even now, he holds within him the power to remove fire from the hands of men, freeing himself. If he merely had the thought, then man would be unable to bring fire forth. So what keeps him chained on the mountain? Love.”

This seemed so terrible that Isme put her hands over her ears, smearing them to her eyes, half-ready to claw her own organs out. With her grip on the rock gone, she began to slide down the tunnel again, but slowly, feeling her skin upbraided by stone.

She did not look at him, waited for him to respond or to press harder and make her truly crumble, but neither happened. At last, in a small voice, she whispered, “Why are you trying to drive me to despair?”

“I am