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

TWENTY-FIVE.

~

The three of them let her gaze out onto the ocean of Styx, the dead waters silent and still, for a long time, barely able to see the shape in the water. An island—in the far distance from the shore of the underworld’s mainland.

Then they let her have as much of them as she wanted. They talked to her and told a few stories and explained some of what they thought and felt and did. As if death had opened them, somehow, split their minds and bodies away from whatever shields they raised, so there was no more room for lies or subtleties.

But time did not change here, in the world of the dead, so Isme did not know how long this lasted. They assured her that such talks were possible again, whenever she wanted, if only she was recovered enough to let them borrow some of her life.

And Isme was beginning to comprehend that she would indeed live a long time.

When she stepped into the water, she turned for one last look at the three of them. In her mind she was running through fantasies, possibilities, and it occurred to her that in some part she had always thought this would be the end. That they would stand and say goodbye as she returned to the island with her father.

Except this was not her island. And she would be alone.

Waiting was making everything harder. Isme forced her legs to move through the water, heavy as it was, and pushed out from shore. Her clothing was little more than rags, and the island, or so they had said, lay on the very boundaries of death’s kingdom.

A long way indeed. But Isme had no fear in swimming.

She had not asked if there was anything in the water to be worried about, so when the first shape moved under her, beside her, Isme shivered and swam harder, faster, for there might be sharks or serpents or horrid things. Yet the smooth shape that crested one of the ripples she made—no splashing—was recognizably oblong.

Then there were more of them, paddling alongside her in the sea, silent and watchful. Yet Isme had the impression that any moment they might break into song.

The turtles did not follow her onto the beach, once she reached the island. Exhausted, trembling with fatigue, Isme rolled to her back and stared out at the little forest of lights set in round faces, all of them staring at her quietly from the smooth sea.

“I will sing to you later,” said Isme. “I have some new songs, and some old.”

One by one they seemed to accept this, bubbling back down into the water.

Isme lay on the beach looking up at the stars for some time. Yet she noticed that the stars looked different here—the patterns were off-center from those before, like the sky really was a dome but of limited size, and by moving underneath to a distant corner she had distorted their configurations and shapes.

Pulling to her feet, Isme tracked up the sand, grainy and black. Yet this island was not like the mainland of Hades, for there was a clear crest, as though the place was prepared for the rising and falling of tides, and as she walked over, she found herself not in a field of asphodel, but of scrub-grass. The burrs nicked at her toes and the new scars on her feet as she treaded through—to a forest.

Weaving her way among the trees, Isme found herself marking all of the edible plants with her eyes—for there were many here, all familiar, and even the trees themselves echoed in a pattern she knew—and as the trees rose to a hill, sudden conviction slammed within under her breastbone, and she began to run.

Uphill, dodging trees she knew—that one twisted trunk, another that looked like it had arms, up and up she went over the hill, then down, and then—

A clearing. A cave. Signs of habitation—a kiln, a few rows of plants, tidy. And around them big round oval stones—with faces carved upon them.

Breath sticking in the back of her throat, Isme crept up to the stones, staring and cataloguing. The faces were familiar, well-known from the times she had seen them, the ones facing outside with their eyes open, the ones looking inside with their eyes shut.

“Watcher stones,” she whispered to herself, noting how the one had a crooked nose that she recognized well. The stones that her father had buried around their cave back home, on the island, which prevented anyone from seeing what was inside, their home, unless someone already knew what was inside the ring.

“But they were underground!” Isme shrieked, her words echoing in the trees and startling her out of her fright. Underground, she thought—yes, she and Epimetheus, digging them up every few years, moving them around, so they kept at their posts.

Underground. The underworld was the other side of a map, the reversed side of the world of the living. So something underground up there, would be—“Above ground, down here,” Isme finished the thought as a murmur, and stepped through the ring.

Everything was as she had left it. The garden needed a bit of weeding. The kiln was roofed with extra tiles, so any rain would not get into the center, just in case it was needed. Striding to the cave mouth, Isme pulled back the corner of the seal-skin cloth, half expecting Epimetheus to be waiting inside. But the cave was empty, except for the pots, the extra blankets, the walking sticks that her father had carved.

All at once, she was home.

I will wait here, Isme thought, still not quite comprehending.

I will wait here for the end of the world.

“It all looks in order,” said a voice behind her, and Isme, knowing she would see nothing, turned to face her invisible companion. She would have asked, Even here—even now? And yet knowing the answer made the question pointless.

She managed to ask, “Is my father