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

around the pots. Musings interrupted, Isme trailed after Kleto with Pelagia at her side. They joined six other women in a semicircle around an urn that came up to Isme’s waist.

Among them was an older woman with streaks of grey scattered in her dark hair, making her look striped like a fawn. Isme stared a little too long, wondering if she would one day look similar, yet the woman did not seem offended and merely smiled at her.

“First time, dear?” she asked, and Isme glanced at Kleto, who looked unwilling to intervene. She made a quick judgment: surely if she pretended to ignorance, she would not sound anything other than stupid to mainland ears. And so Isme nodded.

“I thought so,” said the older woman, nodding herself. “You look to have become a woman recently. I have a daughter at home who must wait another year to join—she’s probably sulking now, poor thing, because she thought this year would be her year.”

The other women were making similar talk, just small things as introductions, when Kleto reached forward to the lid of the urn, and pulled it toward herself. The cover was as big around as the wheels of the wagons in the caravan, and yet Kleto mustered the muscle to drag it over the edge, where its rim met the ground. Then she pushed, and it fled a few revolutions before falling on its side.

Pelagia clapped on her thighs. “Look, ours rolled the most.”

Isme realized that the groups of other women were doing the same, except for a few smaller assemblies who had collected the tiny palm-sized pots in clusters, and were simply peeling what looked like a cloth clinging with wax from the top of one or two.

Together the women of Isme’s group leaned in and huddled closer to look into the urn. Isme craned her head and saw that there was liquid inside, dark and viscous, thicker than water—and when Kleto stuck her finger in all the way to the knuckle, Isme revised the substance to that like something resembling honey.

But the color was off. Inside the urn, mostly blocked from the torch firelight, the juice looked dark. Yet as Kleto lifted her finger and it trailed off, the color rainbowed between black and purple and red like blood. The smell was of old flowers—sweetness and musk.

Yet Kleto stuck her finger into her mouth and smiled.

“It’s good,” she said.

One of the other women laughed, darting a hand in and scooping to bring it to her lips where she lapped like an animal. That seemed enough for everyone else, for there was a rush of hands and fingers, some of the women playfully jostling each other and laughing. The urn’s mouth was just wide enough to accommodate them all.

Isme struggled to keep track of who was saying what—even with practice her ability to follow more than one person speaking at a time was terrible. This was made worse by other groups of women beginning to talk among themselves, a low hum of chatter, pleased voices and laughter echoing back and forth as distraction.

Kleto nudged Isme in the ribs, and when she glanced over Kleto jerked her head at the urn. Carefully, Isme reached in and touched the surface of the liquid with the pads of two fingertips. These she held up to her face and observed as they glistened. Then she brought them to her lips one finger at a time, expecting them to taste like wild grapes—for she had figured out that this was undiluted wine.

Yet the taste was unfamiliar. More bitter than she expected, and the tiny sweetness at the end was a surprise.

Isme tried not to, but her nose wrinkled anyway. Kleto grinned, clearly expecting this reaction. The older woman with striped hair laughed softly. Pelagia said, “Don’t worry, in just a little bit you won’t care what it tastes like. You’ll love it.”

Thinking she had no other choice, Isme nodded and scooped again with the same two fingers. Pelagia giggled. They settled into banter. The women began to talk of various mundane things that Isme found fascinating. Two of them complained about their husbands. Another described how she was teaching the daughter of a friend how to use the spindle. Pelagia recounted in great detail a play where Lycander had tripped—into the crowd—and was forced to incorporate that into the story.

The woman with striped hair turned to Kleto. “What about you?”

“I fought off two men who wanted me without payment,” said Kleto.

There was a pause, a breath—where Isme froze with her hand scooping inside the urn, the other women’s faces centered around mouths pressed into lines—then the conversation changed—

One of the women complaining about her husband revealed that she was not so upset about him leaving his sandals everywhere—instead, she knew that he was visiting the brothels, and while she could not challenge him on that, she could punish him over his sandals. The other who had complained about her husband said, “I can only tell all of you these things because if I told him, he would beat me.”

Pelagia nodded, her mouth straight but with something like frivolity in her voice as she said, “Oh, I’ve been beaten plenty of times. The trick is to overact because he’ll think he’s hurting you more than he actually is and then he’ll stop sooner.”

Isme opened her mouth to say something, anything, but Kleto knocked Isme on the shoulder, causing her to accidentally bite the rim of her tongue. The women were already continuing, the moment lost. Kleto made some comment about once nearly castrating a man by seizing his scrotum and twisting, to more laughter.

Placing her hand in the urn for another scoop, Isme realized that now she had to lean over to reach the liquid. Moments ago the wine had been up to the rim. She frowned, listening to Pelagia giggle on the other side of Kleto. It occurred to her that in stories wine affected people, and she felt overly warm in the cool night.

“What