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

had never heard it make such a sound before. Whirling her head so fast that her hair lashed her cheeks, Isme saw that Kleto was walking abreast of her, and smiling, saying:

“If anyone wails for you, Lycander, it would not be us.”

Lycander looked hurt, but a twist against the corner of his lips told Isme he was feigning. He said, “Now how could you say that about your dashing rescuer?”

“I say it very well,” said Kleto, “When the only reason we were in trouble in the first place is because our rescuer was not looking after the women, as was his job.”

Lycander nodded, “Certainly such a man should be punished.”

“Certainly,” said Kleto. “This night, he should be forced to pretend to be Prometheus, failing his duty to Zeus and being lashed to the mountain forever.”

And on the banter went. Isme liked to listen to them, and had many opportunities. Such conversations were common while on the march. They produced wonders in the evenings, when there could be no fires lit because that would tell robbers to come, but in the dying light of the sun Lycander and the performers would put on practice shows, often dictated by the topic of previous conversation.

In those hours between night and dusk, Isme would snuggle close to her father, watching the stories that she had always been told on the island come to life. It was Apollon against Marsyas, Athene besting Arachne, the hunt for the Minotaur through a maze constructed of people pretending to be walls, and Perseus running around with a gorgon’s head but the body still attached, and when the other onlookers shouted that did not work, the illusion was broken, Pelagia grinned, her hair still held in the other actor’s grip, and said, “Well, if you’re volunteering to be a more accurate beheaded head, please feel free to take my place.”

At night Isme would be back in the tumble of women. Sometimes the last thing she saw before she fell asleep was Kleto’s eyes, blinking lazily, staring up at the stars. Somehow she always thought that Kleto’s eyes were lit from within like embers.

Isme had always known about the end of the world. She knew that for a new world to begin, first the old one must be destroyed. But while Isme knew the people in the old world would probably die as well, she had always considered this in the abstract, something distant and unrelated to herself, like watching the waves far out from shore. But now she had names and faces that went with them.

I hope the next world will not come quite like this one did, thought Isme. If there was another flood, then everyone would die. But darkness and an earthquake… perhaps there will be many survivors. Perhaps even these people will live.

Before long, Isme had lost track of the days. Then the time came that Kleto nudged her shoulder and said, “Look, here is Hermes, welcoming travelers coming and going.” Isme started at the image of the god’s head on a pillar, his erect phallus pointing toward arrivals. They were arriving at Delphi.

ELEVEN.

~

Their caravan met others on the road. An endless press of people, so many that Isme began to lose track. She tried to hang back with the women that she knew, but this was hardly any help when women in other caravans would call out and chatter. Overwhelmed by people, she kept her head down. All her travel over those days and still she struggled to understand synchronized speech, preferring to talk to one person at a time, or perhaps at most three or four. That was—herself, Kleto, Pelagia, and Lycander.

Underfoot, the trail that had been winding through all of the hills and forest began to stretch, branches of other roads meeting theirs, widening and widening like streams flowing into a river. More people now than ever. And then the trail began to move upwards, all of these endless numbers of people huffing with the effort of climbing, the path no longer smooth and level.

Cresting over a hill, Isme felt her eyes widen as the vantage point allowed her to see the mainland itself for the first time: great gaping peaks in all directions, except for a divot in between two rows of them, which she would have called a ditch, but no ditch was as wide as this, which would have taken days to cross. She had never realized that the world could be so big—except for the ocean, of course.

Kleto nudged her shoulder. “First time at Mount Parnassus?”

Isme merely glanced at her, but this was a mistake—it seemed that every time Isme took her eyes off Kleto, she forgot how beautiful the other woman could be. And this time, she was captured much like the first glimpse: for Kleto, surrounded by these lands, looked nothing less than some minor goddess roving the countryside.

Swallowing with her dry mouth, Isme nodded.

“It will not be so bad,” said Kleto. She seemed breezily unaware of her appearance, which Isme knew was a lie, because Kleto was always careful with her looks. Kleto, the actress. She added, “We will perform for all these people. Plays, symposiums, music on the street. The whole world will hear us—aside from the Priestess at Delphi, we will be the reason why everyone is here.”

“You mean, ‘you’ will be, not ‘we,’” said Isme. “I am no actress.”

“Nobody is really an actress,” said Kleto. “Actors are the ones who perform on stage. We women must be content on the sidelines. But—” and she drew herself higher, “The real performances are the ones when the audience is so close that they can see every small error you make. Actors on stages are too far away.”

Isme heard hoofbeats as Lycander rode past, just in time to hear Kleto’s jibe. He said in his wounded tone, “What’s this? Women besmirching the theater, the mighty living temple of the gods? Poor Dionysos, to have such enemies for his art! Poor Apollon, to have his