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

have hardly strength to them, especially compared to the mob before her, but nonetheless they are heard: as though in a room full of low bass tones she has struck the only high note, became impossible not to hear.

Isme does not pause her singing:

Where were the gods

On this night of horror?

In the golden Olympus

Feasting with red wine—

Or cowering in the world below

With Hades alone to witness

What happened in the above?

Let say the truth of their state:

Still, the men rave on and on, but they are less now—as though they are nothing but the leaves of saplings billowing in the wind—

Mouth open, Pelagia stares at Isme; Kleto’s face is unreadable.

In the end the nameless gods

Broke the back of the world—

No man is meant to eat his kin

Nor butcher her little son

Nor destroy the bonds of sisters—

And so no man shall boast,

‘I did this, and all was well,’

For there were no men

Left in Tereus’s hall.

Isme can feel her throat straining, the words and notes of this song Perhaps the most beautiful she has ever sung, and yet she feels as though her insides have become raw, scorched with heat that bubbles from the deep well between body and soul—

But the song is unstoppable now. Isme knows how Orpheus’s head had drifted down the river, still singing all its way down to the ocean—

Without her consent, her hands raise, cradle the melody weaving through air:

Procne runs shrieking the cry of the Furies

The roar of the avengers who were silent

But as her hands wave through the air

Like wind, like calling down lightning,

At the tips of her fingers, under the nails

Small feathers sprout—

Then each pore of skin opens like an egg

Bristling with feathers speckled

Brown and white and spider-webbed

All over, until—

Nothing but a sweet swallow chirruping

Its little war cry to the heavens!

And Philomel opens her bloody mouth

The last cry of Itys escapes her lips—

But her skin flickers and scales like a snake

Shedding and billowing away like leaves—

In her place there is a night-singer

Caller of woes

Telling the story each day before dawn—

Oh, nightingale, do not be silent tonight!

And so it is with those who have

broken faith with the great ancient law,

whose words even the gods do not know!

The last note is a sound Isme was not certain her own throat could produce, a long mournful wail that continues on, even when her own singing ends—

Everyone has fallen silent. The men stare at Isme, though why and how they have come to this, she does not know. She had not been paying attention—

Except the sound at the end of the song is not stopping. There is just the long note, held in the air, but now it is changing, there are more voices, like women screaming, like the note of the sun rising, or like—Isme strains to think—like birds—chattering—

When the fire from the hearth explodes outward, at first Isme thinks that somehow a bundle of leaves has been thrown down the chimney, but then the leaves are leaping up into the air and hurtling past her, still singing and shrieking, and Isme realizes they are alive. And there is more—a badly-kept wall cracks, holes popping open and more golden singers burst through as though just hatching, cheering their war cries.

Swallows and nightingales—

The men in the room howl. A thousand beaks rending men apart is nothing Isme ever contemplated or wants to see—and yet, as they writhe in this mass of hand-sized bees swarming, they do not look like men any longer, more like animals, limbs distorting, feathers emerging in their hair, eyebrows, trills sounding from lips—

A hand grabs Isme’s shoulder, and she instinctively pulls, whirls with fists ready, but then she has hardly noticed that her captor is Kleto before she is being dragged across the floor. Kleto has only one destination in mind, eyes fixed like stone:

The door, leading out into the night.

Had she not been so focused, Isme doubts they would have made it in the chaos of the screaming men and the howling swarm of birds which trilled their songs: Woe, Woe, Woe!

Then she was out the door, her arm under Pelagia’s, helping Kleto pull her through the trees. The air is cool on her face.

The last thought that Isme has for a long time is:

Thank you, Grandmother Kalliope.

~

The woods seemed dark and welcoming, now, the muffled sounds of night soothing. Isme carried Pelagia and her own weight, perhaps Kleto too, rushing forward even if she knew that the robbers would not be following. Her ears rang with the quiet.

At once, Pelagia threw back her head and screamed, “What is the difference? They were only a little worse than the men we always know!”

Feet stumbling at Pelagia’s sudden pull of weight, Isme’s mind tumbled over those words. She barely managed to avoid toppling all three of them over. And then she could do nothing but stand dumb in the dark, wondering and confused, as Pelagia whimpered in what sounded like pain and Kleto spoke and shushed in a voice that was hard to recognize coming from her own mouth, because Isme was most reminded of her father, Epimetheus, when she had been a little girl afraid of the summer storms.

Only when Pelagia quieted, and Kleto heaved to move again, did Isme ask: “What do you mean, the men you always know?”

Kleto’s eyes, luminous as ever, found Isme’s in the dark.

“Wild woman,” she said, sharp like her words were a knife, “I am a singer and dancer. Pelagia is a lyre player. What do you think we do when our songs and dances are over and the men at symposium are drunk with wine?”

Isme can find no words.

“Truly, Artemis has lost one of her nymphs,” muttered Kleto. “You run wild in the woods free from the cares of women and don’t even know it.”

As they began to stumble through the trees again, Isme’s mind trailed behind, trying to match words and ideas, to link places and people and things. She thought about the men they left behind, the way Pelagia had curled up then uncoiled and