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

about you?” asked the woman with striped hair, and Isme took a moment to realize that she was the one being spoken to. “Any complaints about menfolk?”

My father left me here alone because he might be dead, Isme almost said, but could not bring herself to speak such a thing aloud for fear that might make it true. Instead, she thought back to the island, warm summer days of her father teaching her how to fire clay into bricks, and said, “I have none—my father is a good man.”

A murmur from the other women around, and Isme brought her hand to her mouth, lapping, listening. One mentioned she was proud of her son. Another said that her first husband had been kind. Kleto said, “There is one man I find trustworthy,” and after a moment thinking, Isme realized that she was referencing Lycander.

I have been lucky in many ways with you, Father, Isme thought, but as she turned her hand over, some of the wine having seeped through the creases of her fingers to the back, she licked, considered: But where is my luck now—where are you?

That sent her mind trailing, and she said aloud, “But I do have one complaint about another man.”

The other women nodded, or seemed to nod, she was not sure. Everything in her vision seemed to be happening all at once. Isme said, “A moon ago, my father told me that I was not his blood child—I was born to another man who died. He waited a long time to tell me and only told me because...” I killed those men, she cut herself off.

But the other women did not seem to notice that part. Instead they were smiling, or commenting, and the woman with striped hair asked, “You mean, you were taken in by a man who isn’t a blood relative? Did your mother leave you exposed as an infant?”

Another woman muttered about her husband forcing her to expose their first child, because it was a daughter. Isme, more wine in her hand and unsure when she had retrieved it, said, “Maybe I was. I... thought I was exposed and rescued by my grandmother, but I heard that I was given to a temple instead. I don’t know which is truth.”

“Why would your father not tell you this from the start?” asked Pelagia, her face open like the uncloudy sky. Kleto, too, looked to be studying Isme under the firelight. Isme could only shrug. Pelagia continued, “Do you know who your birth father was?”

Isme said, before she could stop herself: “He was Orpheus.”

A burst of laughter. Pelagia was grinning, chuckling, licking each finger. Isme had no idea why they found this hilarious—she recalled her father saying that ordinary people on the mainland thought stories to be only stories, but that did not explain their humor. Only Kleto was unmoved, gazing at Isme almost speculatively.

“Is your mother Eurydice?” asked the striped woman, but there was some kind of gentle teasing in her tone, like she hoped Isme would answer affirmatively.

“No,” said Isme, deciding to simply tell the truth. “My mother was a maenad.”

“How strange!” exclaimed Pelagia. “I’ve not heard that part...”

“She was one of the women who tore him apart,” said Isme, trying to explain. “When he refused to join their revel, the maenads ripped him into pieces, and I was born after that.” She frowned, dipped another hand into the urn. “I don’t understand stories sometimes—strange things happen, but that’s just the way it is.”

“What do you mean?” asked the woman with striped hair.

Isme said, “I don’t understand how tearing a man into pieces can conceive a child. Almost every time, a child is born from mating. So I don’t know how I came to be.”

“But, Isme, it sounds like your mother—” said Pelagia, but Kleto bumped her on the shoulder. She fell quiet. And Isme saw then that the other women in the circle were quiet, too.

“Well,” said the woman with striped hair, forcibly amicable, “Being the daughter of a maenad isn’t so terrible. I myself am one, and so is my daughter. Most of us in the town are—and if this is your first time, it must feel a little like coming home, yes?”

Isme nodded, felt the world swirl with her head’s movement. Maenads? If this was worship of Dionysos, perhaps this is all a maenad was. The stories might be exaggerated... Any further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the straw-haired woman. Isme started, her focus having narrowed to only the people around the urn. The other women greeted the new arrival with eagerness.

“Here,” said the straw woman, holding one of the knives that had been attached to her rope, now freed, and handed it to Kleto. “May Lord Dionysos bless you, sister.”

Kleto took the knife with a mixture of distaste and eagerness, which Isme found difficult to describe, and so attributed the expression to her own mind being cloudy with wine. As the straw woman moved on, the women in the circle huddled closer to the rim of the urn, pressing together that Isme could feel the stripe-haired woman and Kleto breathing up against her own ribs. There was an air of expectation, now, anticipation.

Taking the knife, Kleto held out her hand and sliced the edge of her smallest finger. Isme let out a noise of protest, but nobody intervened. Kleto handed the knife to Pelagia, at her right, and held her finger out over the urn. She said, “For Dionysos.”

A single drop of blood fell into the remaining wine.

Pelagia repeated the maneuver, though shrieked a little as she sliced herself, and seemed to giggle at reciting the words. Around the knife went, until the striped woman was handing it to Isme and saying, “Would you like me to help you, dear?”

Isme stared at the knife, at the outline of her own hand hovering over the dark liquid in the urn, the way the wine and blood were indistinguishable. She had heard that men in symposium cut their wine