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

away blood guilt? That Prometheus was not here? That Isme was not—not—not carrying the blood guilt?

She was about to spew forth all of these questions in a rush, but the old woman’s eyes opened again, and she sighed with terrible weariness, as though this conversation had worn her down to the bone. Now her whole body looked deflated.

“You will not find the way to absolve her here. You are incapable of doing any absolving, Epimetheus, afterthought, storyteller. Nor is she able to absolve herself.” And again, the old woman’s eyes found Isme’s face, and only now after she realized the old woman’s blindness did Isme shudder at being under such observation.

“You may scour the whole of the wide world, my girl, and there will be no absolving for you. What is done is done. Not even the dead men in the underworld can help you, should they wish to forgive the one who sent them there.”

Isme felt something like a low strangled cry creeping up her throat, but it died before she could give it life. She said, “Then how? How—how can I—”

Sympathy smeared across the old woman’s face. She said, “You will go across the sea in search of an answer for this question, but you will find it only from the mouth of one that understands what it is like to bring harm without intent, but still harm. And then, when you have learned the secret of your absolution, you will die.”

Beside Isme, her father’s form stiffened as though he was bracing against the wind. Yet Isme felt every muscle in her body begin to relax, as if she had gone past some limit of her own strength. In that moment her own mortality overshadowed her: she had always known that she was a man, and therefore not that different from the animals that she hunted, how many bird necks had she wrung, how many fish gutted while they still gasped for water instead of air, she knew all about death—

And she knew what death on men looked like, the way their bodies had reclined supine on the sand. It was something deeper than sleep and far more terrible.

But somehow her own death had always felt something in the abstract, a concept that was contradictory, such as the idea of a married virgin, or a sunlit midnight. How could someone alive truly contemplate death? She was mortal and would spend eternity in the asphodel fields, a shade without shape or mass, no memory of herself as herself, shrieking and gibbering nonsense in the language of the dead, forever.

Somehow this had never seemed quite so terrible until now.

Her father spoke, strangled, “How can we avoid this fate?”

The old woman’s eyes closed. She did not bother saying aloud: you cannot.

They were not going to get past this point, Isme realized. They had gained much, but obscure, like viewing an object from an angle rather than straight-on observation. Go across the sea—and yet learn nothing, except perhaps some version of the same answer—and then her own death, inevitable before but more so now...

Yet they had asked and received answers to all three questions.

Glancing to her side, Isme could see that her father coming to the same conclusion. She recalled his statement, all those days ago, on prophets: they never say anything directly, they always leave you shrouded with mystery... Otherwise you would not believe, but instead would turn on them like Oedipus on old blind Tiresias...

Yet this old woman had spoken forthrightly, Isme thought. Perhaps not as they wanted, but maybe there were also limits to prophecy that she did not understand. Isme was not a prophet. Just because she and her father had not gotten the answer that they wanted did not mean that the answers were useless or wrong.

Stepping back with one foot, Isme bent her knees into a low bow. Beside her, Epimetheus started, and then did the same. He said, “Thank you for your time, O Oracle of the God Under the Mountain, may your days be blessed.”

Isme nodded agreement. “May you always receive honor due to you, O Oracle.”

The Oracle inclined her head, but at an odd angle, as though all at once her blindness prevented her from identifying exactly which place they were standing. They rose to their feet and turned to leave, but then the Oracle called: “Wait!”

Feet arrested, Isme turned to see the Oracle working her old jaw, as though she had bitten down on something too hard for her teeth and was working to get a bone out of a piece of meat. At last she said: “Tomorrow there will be a ceremony. The old priestess at Delphi will choose a replacement. If you are there, daughter of Orpheus, you will be chosen.” And the Oracle lowered her head. “If you enter the temple and listen to Apollon, then you will learn secrets about this world that will come to an end.”

Isme felt her breath catch as the old woman raised her head, sightless eyes matching her own. The Oracle said, “But at the same cost will be paid. You will find death under Delphi.”

And her mind began to weigh options. Nothing good seemed left to her: just twin choices that ended the same way. Go across the sea, speak to this thing that committed the same evil, as unintentionally as she had, learn the way to cure herself but then die. Or stay here at Delphi, be chosen, and through Apollon learn the same, but then die. Either way, the underworld lay straight ahead of her.

But that is always been the case, she realized. I am a mortal being. Ever since I was born, my end has been foreordained to the fields of asphodel. Lord Hades is truly the real king of the gods. And for just a second, she wondered: in this new world, would one day Lord Hades welcome his brother Zeus to his own realm?

Could gods die?

The woman seemed to be waiting for some sort of response. Isme