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

“When you think you are important and that your life matters,” continued Apollon, “The thought that your life does not matter, that nothing matters, sounds like giving in to despair. But the truth is the opposite. If you truly accept your lack of purpose, and the world’s meaninglessness, then there is no reason to despair because there is nothing to despair for. It’s like wailing over the fate of something that never existed.”

But I do exist, Isme wanted to say—her throat was not working.

“Despair—happiness—these are things that small minds think and feel,” said Apollon. “But within us there is two minds: a mind that feels and a mind that observes the first mind feeling. The first mind comes from the body. The second comes from the soul. And now that you are Apollonis again, your second mind will grow stronger and you will no longer be ruled by the whims of the first.”

That did not sound so bad. This thought came to Isme at the heels of his statement, and was followed quickly by the idea that if she merely observed emotions instead of feeling them, then she would no longer feel sadness like this, and underneath that was the longing: to never feel guilt about those sailors ever again.

Even as she thought this, a worry rose: what about her father?

If she accepted this transformation—and the feeling of her back, being scraped raw even through the animal hide of her clothes as she was dragged down, showed that she was falling up further—Isme could not imagine ever having anyone but her father at the center of her life. Even if what Apollon said was true, and she had not been exposed as an infant nor saved by her grandmother Kalliope, and Epimetheus had stolen her—

He was good to me all my life, Isme thought. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to reach for the well of souls within her and ask: Goddess Kalliope, what should I do?

But there was no answer. And she remembered. There was no well of souls within her because she was already in the well of souls. Tilting her head up she repeated the prayer, hoping that directing her words towards the water would work—

The sound was so slight that at first she thought it came from imagination, but it came again and again and she realized it was not quiet, just far away. The sound of her name coming from her father’s voice repeatedly, as though he was frantic.

Isme, her father called. Isme, you are so far above I can hardly see you. I was looking for you everywhere down on earth but now I see you are far beyond that into the realm of the gods—I’ve been calling and calling but you aren’t listening!

I hear you now, Isme responded. Father—Apollon is here, he gave me something to drink and says I will become priestess of Delphi. I don’t know what to do.

Were you an ordinary mortal you would have no choice, said Epimetheus. But you have within you many gods—not just Apollon from Orpheus but also from your mother the maenad and myself and your grandmother, Kalliope. Listen to another of them if you don’t like the one who is currently trying to control your fate.

I would prefer to listen to you, Isme said. But even as she thought this she was already reaching up—or down—back towards the well of souls, calling out for her grandmother. She lifted her hands above her head and caught another ridge without any trouble, the shape of her now weighed nothing. Opening her eyes she saw Apollon was frowning, first at her and then in the abstract, and she knew that somehow the god had noticed she was talking with someone else.

“I will not tolerate interference,” said Apollon. He flexed his wrist, which extended outward from itself into a golden bow that he now gripped. And Isme remembered: Apollon was not just lord of reason, sunshine, and song—but also of poison.

Yet he held no arrow.

She had only a moment. That was enough—Isme felt the understanding of what she should do well up within her, like her own question to Kalliope had already made it down to the well and echoed back to herself. The muscles in her arms bunched and heaved as she pulled herself into a crouch, placing her feet against the walls of the tunnel, and she leapt—

The walls of the cave swirled around her and she fell down again—like a thrown stone—like a bird diving—face-first down toward the well of songs at the center of her being. The world had inverted back to down being down and up being up—

She passed her father, how, she did not know—but all at once her feet were slapping against rock as she fled—and he ran by her, big burly arms raised to strike. She knew then that she was being pursued—that Apollon—whose sister Artemis was the huntress and who had killed the Python—was not yet willing to give up his quarry—

Then she was stepping on sharp things—the cave floor no longer powdery but filled with little stones in the edges of bone, animals in pieces—femurs, teeth, ribs lined in rows, the arrows of spines—and there was the skull of what had to be a human child, so familiar but Isme’s mind did not quite catch the significance—

Light at the end of the tunnel. Her breath dry at the back of her throat. Isme emerged blinking into the sunlight and found that she was at the top of Mount Parnassus, coming from the cave mouth she had visited the previous night to hear the prophecy from the God Under the Mountain.

Below her was Delphi, glistening in the evening sun, an assembly of upright bones. Isme could not think to question how she had ended up here, of all places, but she knew that she was no longer trapped in her own well of songs, and had succeeded in what so