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

Cresting a small hill, Isme saw in the dark light of the stars—

Howling, the man fled, chased, but then was on all fours—bounding, not stepping—like a well-trained pack the women closest surrounded and brought him down, and the bay of death from his mouth was the call of a stag, wailing out his life.

Isme and Kleto and Pelagia were hurtling past the kill, watching the antlers jostle as the women fought and pulled and rent their quarry and meal—and Isme laughed—

For they were not bound by anything—all things were permitted—the circle of the woods encapsulating their wildness had been broken and now the whole world was theirs—

Up they rushed, muscles burning in legs and footsteps sending up sparks. Some women raced past Isme, others leaned down and seized rocks, sticks, beating them together in mindless echoing symphony—Isme threw back her head and howled with all their voices, and ahead of them animals raised their eyes—

Deer, sheep, goats, even shaggy little versions of the beast that Lycander had ridden, and among them some version of people—only not quite human, more like walking bags of blood and bone that shifted from two legs to four, or more—

And Isme yelled with her sisters: You broke the circle, invaded the ritual, you knew we called down Dionysos, and so he comes here for you! Now dance—or die!

Some animals obeyed, whirling and pelting downhill to the advancing horde, joining the frolicking, singing and baying and cavorting and swimming in air. But others made poorer choices: some stood, frozen, and were showered with sticks and stones. Others fled—and these were the ones Isme lusted for most—

What was more interesting than a moving target? Like a lioness she hurtles herself on, heedless of what was underfoot, she may well have been flying, Kleto was gone from beside her but that did not matter anymore, for she was no longer Isme—

Sheep, white like the pale undersides of leaves scattered in all directions, shrieking and crying like children in confusion. Dance, she howls at them, Dance, dance or die, but they respond back with nothing but animal noises that clearly mean: No!

Snarling she charges, slicing through air like a mother seal in water, and like a shoal of fish the sheep pelt, merge and separate and flow and flicker. Beside herself with rage and the joy of hate she calls to her sisters—they call back—and pursue—one by one snatching a prize that made a dodge too short or ran too slow—

A sheep made a stupid mistake—it turned and bayed at her, wet red throat trying to give human speech, but then she was upon the animal without hesitation—

Biting kicking pulling rending, flesh like clay between her fingers, raked about like a bundle of fallen leaves, the animal bleeds sweet wine and she howls in delight at the flavor—

If only she could have kept on forever, she would have—endlessly tearing away in this paradise of rage and glee—but then there was something in the east, some blend of light against the horizon, and she could feel her mind tumbling down into sleep—enraged, she dug harder and bit fiercer, but there was no escape from the long tunnel beneath her.

Before darkness enclosed her, Isme’s mind played one last trick: she thought that the sheep she was astride had a human face staring up at her. Memories merged—the sheep, the creatures that peeked into her fever tent, and then one more: the face of Lycander, saying that he still had not found her father, but had not given up searching.

EIGHTEEN.

~

Isme came back to herself slowly, at first thinking she was on the island, holding a new blanket in her arms. It was warm and still wet from the curing process. She huddled over it like a mother bird on a nest, enjoying the warmth while that lasted.

Awareness trickled over her how the bundle remained warm, and was hard in the middle, as though wrapped around a stone. She felt the fur on the outside, yet underneath was smooth softness like skin. Turning the bundle around, she found herself sitting on the ground with the head of someone she knew in her lap.

A scream rose and even without being voiced must have reached to the high Olympian heavens. Her first impulse was to throw the thing away, contaminant that it was, but somehow she clutched the head tighter, unwilling to let it touch the ground. The head was not a contaminating evil thing—it was holy. She was the problem.

Where had this come from? Looking about her gave no answer. Isme was sitting beside a rock outcropping below the city that lay under Delphi. There were no bodies around—living or headless—although she herself was nude and spattered with gore. The memories from the previous night thudded over her like rain.

And so Isme sat and cradled the head like a small child, rocking. She recalled—the turtle in her dream, which had its insides scooped out for strings, or the men on the beach and how their dead eyes had watched her haul their bodies and dig and bury for them, or the far-off dream-memory of her blood father, Orpheus, singing a dirge of love and fate to the sea.

“I’m sorry,” Isme said, but did not know which of them she was speaking to.

At length it occurred to her that she was sitting naked in a field with a decapitated head, and surely the town below Delphi would wake soon and tabulate the damage of the night. The stories her father told never explained what happened to maenads who came back to their senses—was this murder?

Yes, Isme thought, it was, though if people treated it as such she did not know.

At last she rose, wincing at overworked muscles, scratched and sore. Still cradling the head, she began to walk down the mountain, uncertain of her destination, but vaguely remembering there was a stream further into the woods. The dead had to