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

came and the moon returned, peeking her head up over the horizon as though shy and curious, Isme felt her limbs jerk out from her control, like she had been tugging on strings that were now cut, and collapsed on the beach.

When the sun rose again, so did Isme.

This day she moved inland. And while the sun was still waking, stretching his influence above, she found the dew on the leaves of palms and sipped them from the tips. Then she pulled the long leaves down and wove two of them together, grafting the ends around her chin to provide shade all day.

Keeping the beach to her right, Isme walked on. If there was any true thought in her mind it was wondering on how the incoherent parts of her were forming some kind of wordless prayer, a wide-open empty request that asked her Grandmother Kalliope to guide her feet to their ultimate destination, whatever that may be.

She listened to the waves coming in for high tide around noon. She abandoned the leaf shade when clouds rolled in toward evening. She trod on an anthill and was stung, but only noticed the welts later when she collapsed for the night.

On the end of the third day she became aware that she was not, in fact, the only creature left alive in the whole world, when at sunset she spotted the flickering fires of civilization in the distance. And she realized one more thing:

Her throat was moving—she was humming to herself.

~

When Isme emerged into the town, a woman who saw her shrieked aloud, and a man came running, only to pause and stare when Isme approached. As Isme passed, the man called out asking what she wanted. All she said was, “Orpheus,” and the man pointed, flabbergasted, at the top of a hill.

There, in the morning light, Isme saw the bleached-white bone of a shrine.

Nodding thanks to save her voice, Isme walked on. She did not question how she was on Lesbos, or whether she was on the island the entire time with the bronze men, or how she had survived these last few days—especially how she had lived past Kleto. All she knew now was there were answers to be found and she was nearly arrived.

People startled when they spotted her, moved out of her way. She became aware of her appearance; hair cut short like a boy but clearly a young woman, breast exposed from the one shoulder of her chiton torn and gone. Her skin dark from the sun but still showing scrapes and bruises, crusted with mud, bare feet welted.

And above all Isme knew that the look in her eyes was that of someone who would tear open anyone who tried to so much as speak to her—and this, she supposed, was Kleto’s influence, her ghost pacing alongside her before entering the world below.

The trail to the shrine of Orpheus was long and steep, like Delphi, and Isme spared only a moment to contemplate how holy places were so often on mountains.

When she arrived, the courtyard had a small gathering of people, and there was a priest—dressed shining white, beard curled, speaking something that Isme did not care to hear. She was tired of intermediaries—she, who had seen the gods, had grown up under the care of a Titan, was going to speak to her father’s head directly.

The crowd dodged out of her way. The priest said something as she approached, but Isme merely stepped to his left and strode through the open doors into the gloom of the building. Then the man was shouting, following her, but somehow he knew well enough not to touch her. Compared to Delphi, this was a small building, and Isme reached the back soon enough.

Sitting on a pedestal was a head—and in the gloom Isme opened her mouth, ready to say, Hello, Father—but then her eyes adjusted. Dazed, she reached forward, and the touch of the head was not flesh, neither cold nor warm, but only that of stone.

Turning to the furious priest, Isme asked, “Where is Orpheus?”

“Right here, you foolish and insolent girl,” the priest snarled back, blustering in his overlarge robe, “And how dare you touch him, you wretched escaped slave—”

“No,” Isme interrupted, surprised at the strength of her voice. “This is a statue.”

“What did you expect?” the priest snorted, anger simmered down to annoyance, seemingly having concluded she was simple in the head. “All gods are statues.”

Isme thought of everything she now knew, and then without bothering another word turned and left the temple. There was nothing to be found here.

~

There was nowhere else to go. Her feet carried her down.

Again the villagers fled around her as Isme walked to the outskirts and down the hillside. She reached the sea as the sun was burning bronze in the western sky.

A few fishermen walked past, carrying a rickety old boat under their armpits, but they spared her only ominous glances as she sank to her knees in the sand. Soon enough she was alone with only the receding tide before her.

“Grandmother,” Isme whispered, “Your son is missing. What do I do now?”

A long silence to fill the void she found forming within her. The sea gurgled, beat against the shore, but hesitantly, drawing back further and further, drawn up and away by the pale light of the moon now peering over the horizon again.

She felt the song as it bubbled up, and tried to swallow it back down, afraid for what would happen to her voice, but the song would not be denied:

Let every night turn like this

Until the end of this world

And then let every night then

Turn also like this, once again.

The words were soft on the abused tissues of her throat, and she finished unharmed. Isme was grateful to Kalliope again. Then, as she watched the moon emerge and separate from the sea, something else came in the glimmer on the waves:

A little round shape, bobbling up from the receding surf.

Isme stared. The sea stared back.

Set