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

I hate to use yourself against you, Dionysos responds, But logically, since you rely such on blood closeness, Kalliope cannot steal what already belongs to her. And her mother’s husband, with no blood relation at all, cannot dedicate her to you, either.

Isme feels breath squeeze in her overtaxed lungs, for a moment it looks as though Apollon might strike out, has his bow off his shoulder, two fingers on the string. And Dionysos holds his thyrsus a little more ready—while among them the two lines of the wild men look not at the other god but glaring at each other, as though forgetting there are surely family ties among them.

Strange to see gods quarrel like this—like human brothers—

“Wait,” Isme interrupts. “Why are you arguing?”

It is our nature, Apollon tells her. I am light, logic, order, prophecy, far-seeing. Domestication and reason and medicine with its correlate, poison. I am the intellect, the mind, the soul—song and poetry. Of course I despise chaos.

Dionysos adds, And I am the body, the animal, free in the woods and carnal in nature, without limits, joy and revelry. What use is reason to someone free to feel everything? Theatre fits best with freedom to pretend and imagine. You don’t have to think ahead—you can just enjoy the now.

“But what does this have to do with me?”

This world is ending, they tell her.

“I already know that.”

There is a new world to be born, Apollon says. And knowledge is the most important thing of all when building new worlds.

Our father married Metis, Goddess of Knowledge, as his first wife, Dionysos continues. Because he knew that knowing is the most important thing.

And Isme’s mind trails back to the island, how Epimetheus taught her everything she needed, regardless of the situation—to be prepared, one did not need supplies or weapons, but merely the knowledge of how to make them, get them, use them.

“But what knowledge is worth fighting over?” Isme says, “You are brothers.”

As each world falls, says Apollon, There is the chance for change.

His fingers, on his bow, look ready to pluck as though a lyre.

You know only of the worlds where men lived, Dionysos adds. The world of gold, under the Titans, ruled by Kronos our grandfather—but there were worlds before then, under Ouranos, our father’s grandfather, and under Gaea, mother of us all.

Just like your knowledge extends back only as far as humanity, says Apollon, so ours extends only back to Gaea. Is it not possible that there were worlds before her?

And then Isme felt herself piecing ideas together, empty spaces in a tapestry that Epimetheus had left her to fill in, and she says, “The golden world... it was destroyed by Zeus, wasn’t it? That is the disaster that ended the first world of men... and the silver world, they were impious to you Olympians, weren’t they? But not to the Titans. They still honored the old race of gods, and so Zeus destroyed them and made a race of men who worship only Olympians.”

There is something like pleasure in both of the gods’ eyes, but only Dionysos speaks, I see that you can look backward, which means you can look forward.

The prophecy, Isme thought. I am fated to understand why this world ends. That is the key here—they want to know why and how our world will end!

And she considers the two of them, so different and yet alike, mind streaming along back to the old prophetess under the mountain, who had been so surprised when she asked how Zeus had not been deposed like his father...

“You are looking to overthrow your father,” she says. “And become the new ruler of a new world, a new race of gods...”

When worlds change, so does their order, Apollon says.

Dionysos hefts his club, stone grapes jiggling like they are real. He says, The son always overtakes his father in the end. And with a glance at his brother, he adds, But which son?

Neither of you could succeed, Isme thinks, barely manages to stop herself from speaking. Because the pattern fit wrong—the child was always legitimate, born from the previous king through his queen. And poor Hera, up in Olympus, a placeholder wife who could not have anything but daughters, by decree of Zeus...

Hera, stepmother to so many sons, but mother to none.

Gazing at them, she wonders why they have not pieced that part of the puzzle together. They are immortal beings, far beyond human, and yet have missed this element standing in the way of their plans? Or perhaps the same rules of humanity applied even to the gods—the ambitious overlook what would stop them... or maybe they were desperate... or perhaps she was the one who was wrong, and legitimacy was not the requirement that she thought it was...

She has been silent for too long, and they are holding back annoyance. Dionysos says, Well, then, it seems this is one of those rare times—when mortals decide the fate of gods. His face is dark as he says, That has been happening too much recently.

Mystified, Isme glances at Apollon, who offers, Not much more than ten years ago, Paris, Prince of Troy, decided which of three goddesses was most lovely. In that moment he held in his hands the beginning of a war that threatened to undo the cosmos. And he chose according to his whim, without thinking of consequence.

Thus began a war, says Dionysos, eyelids half-lowered, None of us are quite recovered from. Passions remain high—and should remain, I think.

You still fight over Troy? Isme wanted to ask, but the question was redundant. As long as she had been alive, Troy had been happening on the furthest side of the world—ten years of fighting, heroes dying, gods quarrelling. She supposed that immortal beings did not forget and forgive so easily, or so soon.

Well, then, says Apollon. Without stronger claim from either of us, you must decide.

Dionysos demands, Who is your choice? Who will be king of the gods