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

into the roundness were two more round orbs, which glowed like coals, like softer versions of the fire that burned through Kleto’s eyes. The coals winked as the sea blinked. And Isme, recognizing her friend, held still, waiting to see more.

Behind the first sphere came others, bubbling up like dead men floating in water, and then they all advanced at once, as though they and the sea were all one creature.

Only when the first of them emerged from the spray and then began to struggle forward did Isme realize:

She was singing, but without words—just one long, high note—

But no, a second understanding followed the heels of the first, that song was not herself. The song came from something else—something out in the water...

Was it the turtles? She sat still until the first of them reached her knees, snuffing and tonguing her torn and abraded skin, stinging her with salt water. But the creature was silent, as always.

“Then what is it?” Isme whispered, bending slowly to ask the blinking turtle. “What is singing? Can you please tell me?”

The creature did nothing but breathe, but those furthest out, not yet beached, pulled back into the receding waves. Isme watched them vanish into the sea, and then reappear, but bobbling along with them was something smaller, round, and furry, wet hair splayed out in the ocean spray. The single note of song came louder as it emerged, and faltered only when the wave spat it onto the sand.

Then Isme was on her feet, running, heels and toes digging divots in sand, turtle heads extending and craning to watch her pass.

The note was so soft that Isme was surprised she could hear it, but once she had noticed the sound she could almost hear nothing else. Kneeling, knees smarting from the salt in the waves as they pushed back up around her, spray spattering her face, she reached out, cradled the thing, and turned it to face her.

Dark hair, contrast to Apollon—perhaps they shared Kalliope’s features. And as Isme gazed upon the head of Orpheus, she saw it bore a face much like her own—there was the same button-like nose, the cheekbones, the lips. If she had glanced into a pond and seen this face staring back at her then she would not have given it a second thought, it was so much like her own reflection.

Isme gazed for a long time in wonder.

Still the note emerged from between those cold lips, and being held did not seem to change the song. The eyelids were closed, as if sleeping and dreaming.

“Hello, Father,” Isme told it. “I am Isme, your child, come to ask your oracle.”

On the note carried, unbroken, her words were nothing.

Isme tried again, with different words. Nothing made any difference. She asked politely, she demanded, she pleaded. Still the note carried on. The eyes shut. And Isme began to consider the idea that perhaps there was no oracle from Orpheus’s head after all; perhaps this was just an idle tale told by mainlander men, who heard the song and then assumed more significance than it possessed.

But my father Epimetheus wanted to come here, Isme thought. So there must be something. I just don’t know how to ask him properly for a prophecy, perhaps.

The uncontainable note gave her an idea. Keeping her voice low, Isme sang,

Father, blood father, I come here

Seeking help and asking advice

I am Isme, adopted by Epimetheus

Fated to see the end of the world.

She hardly breathed when the eyes before her own opened, blue and sharp like the summer sky. The head worked its lips, as though untangling the tongue, then sang:

I have waited for you

These thirteen summers

Longing to speak to one

I unknowingly left behind.

And then a smile—just a small lift of the edges of those lips, hardly noticeable in the moonlight, but Isme did not believe she had imagined the gesture. She felt something like sobbing rise up in her, though she remained silent like the turtles that were now gathering around her, patting her skin with their lips and flippers.

She managed the next words clear enough:

Father Orpheus, king of song,

Why are you here in the sea,

Instead of within your temple

Speaking prophecies to men?

The head sang a response:

My child, there is no escape

From the desires of men,

They demand good songs

And deny all the bad ones.

When a prophet speaks true,

He is blamed for being honest.

When a prophet speaks lies,

He is rewarded as faithful—

But within him, his heart burns.

Some choose not to prophesy,

Others bear the shame and lie,

Still others speak in riddles.

But I, just as I lived, speak only

What I find within, and no more.

So I am cast from my shrine

And thrown here as trash,

In my place a stone head

That speaks of nothing,

Which men prefer to hear.

This is my warning, child—

Fear knowledge, always,

For fear begets respect.

Tell nothing to no man

Unless he truly deserves it.

Be always prepared to have

Your own words a snare

Used against you by friends

Who asked for your advice.

Men do not want the truth—

For if they did, they would

Need no prophet to speak,

Since truth is before them.

Even now, my answer to you

Is something you already knew.

For you also are a prophet,

My child born after death.

The last words of the song were like a blow, and Isme shuddered, the turtles shivering with her. Steadying herself, her mind tracked through all of her other questions she had wanted to ask, and she realized that while the head would be patient, would answer, she did indeed already know the answers well enough—

Is Epimetheus alive? No. Could the end of this world be averted? No. Did I do the right thing by rejecting both Apollon and Dionysos? And that answer gave her a spell of giddiness—for it was Yes.

But there were some questions, Isme realized, that she did not know the answer, and no matter how she searched she could not find inspiration. She sang,

Father, I know many things,

But not everything, not now—

And I beg answers to questions

I cannot stop asking each day.

Why will this world come to end,

And how soon will the end