Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) H.C. Southwark (100 books to read txt) 📖

Isme, and Isme could see tears in her eyes, wetness on her cheeks that was not just sweat from the hearth at her back, her face blending and weaving between anger and love, and somehow more terrifying and beautiful than either emotion alone.

If this is acting, Isme later thought, then I could never learn such craft—but in the moment, when she saw Kleto like that, she fully believed everything.

Kleto lifted out a hand again, straining—

No! My sister! I cannot do what women do—

The old maids will mock me,

Our own mother would say I am a fool.

But the whole world could call on me tomorrow

Call me happy wife with the lordly husband,

Bards sing of my faithfulness unto the ages,

Hera herself praise me as wife—

And I would still choose you!

She moved like a flicker of flame from the hearth, so quickly and yet so silently that Isme felt almost that this was the pounce of a predator that would eat tonight, and yet the hand that grasped her own was warm and gentle. Their fingers interlocked.

And then Kleto’s hand squeezed. She turned to the assembly, and the lines of her face blurred until she carried a look that belonged on lightning in a storm:

Now is not the time for weeping,

But for the sword!

I am prepared for any wickedness

There’s no deed I’ll not do—

Burn down my own home with fire,

Cut out my husband’s eyes and tongue,

Piece by piece send Tereus’s soul

Out through a thousand wounds!

And Kleto threw her head back, not singing but screaming:

Oh you nameless gods before

The founding of the world—

I call on you dread ones,

Witness my oath!

Our revenge will be unspeakable

And the whole world bleed to hear!

Let even the Furies quake

And hide their faces crying,

Horror, horror!

Pelagia had halted her lyre, the air silent at this cry, except for the reaction after: every man in the building scrabbling and scrambling, leaning back, as though Kleto has held up the very face of Medusa. The air turned so cold that Isme sees her own breath.

But in her hand, she and Kleto only grasp tighter. Warm.

Pelagia picks up again, the strings so urgent that notes follow atop one another:

Fast the sisters run to the palace,

Procne cries, Bacchanal! Bacchanal!

But even Dionysos flees before them.

Kleto throws herself forward, dragging Isme from the table, both of them charge into the crowd of waiting men, who pelt around like sand kicked on the seashore.

Isme feels energy in the room, rising wild heat, men stamping their feet and slapping thighs as they charge round the room, stirred like water in a pot, pell-mell, somehow thrilled at this change of events, this great inversion in the story that is changed from lust for woman to lust of blood by women, the men almost frolicking, frantic to join and yet to avoid the mayhem, Kleto still singing:

They tear through the palace,

Seeking a way to bring death!

There’s no good sword,

There’s no good poison,

There’s no good net

To catch Tereus like a fat fish—

“—Until!” shouts Kleto, arresting mid-stride. The whole riotous room freezes, the prey instinct. Every hair on Isme’s body uprights, for she recalls what comes next—

And Kleto says, gently, “In comes little Itys, son of Tereus, Procne’s own son.”

A collective, indrawn breath. Even if those watching did not know where the story was walking before, now they do.

Kleto reaches out a hand, gestures to the air, speaks, “The boy calls, Mommy, Mommy! I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Sing me a song, Mommy!”

Her hand does not let go of Isme’s own, but her stance shifts. She is like a wolf, now, stalking, and Isme finds herself creeping behind. They tread toward the invisible child, who knows and suspects nothing. Every head strains atop its spine to follow their course. The lyre is plucked, the same note over and over... Isme feels the pound of her heart reduced to that single repeating sound of alarm—

Dashing forward, hand reaching, Kleto swings the knife out from where she had tucked it under her arm, brandishing, and the whole room draws back, leans forward, eagerly reluctant, unable to look away, desiring to see the imaginary blood.

“Come, my little son,” says Kleto, and Isme shudders, so sweet is her voice. In Isme’s hand, Kleto squeezes. Just the once.

Then Isme knows what Kleto will do. She knows that the gold-haired woman has set things perfectly; she is armed, and there is a man about to be stabbed, and she will. In the chaos she expects Isme to grab Pelagia and flee, but Isme also knows:

If you do this, Kleto, you will die. These men will cut you apart.

And so when Kleto gives her hand a gentle tug, trying to dislodge her, give her a signal, Isme only grips tighter. Another tug—and Isme turns her nails inward to pierce Kleto’s skin, a firm declaration: No, I won’t do it, I won’t let go of you.

You are Procne choosing Philomel, Isme thought.

So I’m choosing you.

Somehow, Kleto does not break character. If anything she looks even more a Procne, even more dangerous than before. She glances at Isme and seems with those fiery eyes to be saying, Do you know what will happen if we don’t do this?

And Isme hopes her own face answers back: I do.

NINE.

~

The moment stretches long. Isme sees Kleto’s eyes dart down to their joined hands, an indecision. Around them the robbers are leaning forward, waiting. And Isme thinks: either they or us will eat and the other be eaten. I have just doomed us both.

There was only one thing left that Isme could do. She felt her soul reaching down, down, down into the well from which she had brought up a fire. Into a current that she did not know how to swim through, trying to plumb to the depth of songs—

Grandmother Kalliope, if a song can save us, let it come to me....

Yet there is no answer. Just her own voice: I promise, I promise...

Kleto’s face was hard to describe. Perhaps she was angry, or resigned—of these, Isme found that