Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel)

by H. C. Southwark

  ~

  Isme could not bring herself to tell him anything. Not about breaking the rules, visiting the beach, the turtles, the shadows in the sand, or even the voice in the woods. She had the impression that the voice was still out there and was listening to everything.

  Her father was confused and remained so. Where is the night fire? He kept asking. It’s cold and dark here—Why don’t you use your cheating method?

  And for the first time in days that felt like forever, Isme settled down next to the fire pit and closed her eyes and looked for fire. Grandmother Kalliope was quieter than Isme could ever remember. Took longer than usual for her to receive a song that fire wanted, but she did find it and then there was flames in the stone hearth, by which she saw that there was no one else but her father.

  Her father was a short stout man about Isme’s own height, but she had no way of knowing whether this made him tall or short. But she knew that he was broad—far broader than herself, so much that he almost reached the span between both her elbows at his waist. He was covered in bulging muscles that allowed him to move rock and stone, and his hands were big flat slabs like fish, fingers fat like eels. He had a flat-topped balding head and a nose that was scrunched up to reveal the insides of his nostrils. But above that were two beady eyes which normally twinkled, yet sagged in the corners whenever Isme was sad—as they were right now.

  “I’ve brought you something,” said her father. “You’ll like this.” He unwrapped an envelope of cloth to hand a small piece to her, and she took and chewed it. Somehow, it was both crumbly and smooth. Tasted like salt from the sea.

  “This is called cheese,” said her father. “Perhaps in another year I will come back with goats and then we can eat it together from now on. It’s good, yes?”

  Isme found that she had no opinion one way or another, some numb hollow inside herself where the well of songs used to be, or perhaps that was simply relief at no longer being alone. She nodded because he seemed like he expected her to.

  ~

  The next morning Isme saw that her father was watching her carefully. He was subtle but she knew him too well for him to get away with this for long. Of course, she understood that he knew her just as well as she knew him: doubtless, he had figured out that she was hiding something. Still she did not tell him anything.

  And so everything became a dance. She followed him around when he mentioned checking the garden, and continued at his heels even after. This could be excused because she had not seen him for a long time. But as she continued to follow him around for the rest of the day the excuse stretched credulity.

  Yet Isme’s father did not question her directly, nor did he stop her by declaring she should finish her own chores. He seemed aware that something was wrong. She caught him staring at her with a frown on his lumpen face, as though trying to understand something, but he seemed as reluctant to ask as she was to answer.

  As the day began to ebb, from the west the prevailing winds came stronger. Dark hulking shapes could be seen in the sky, low rumbles from far off.

  Squinting his bead-eyes, Isme’s father chewed his lower lip. He glanced at her from where she was emptying the ash from the fire hearth. And he said, “Sea storm. There will be no night fire tonight, so we best keep dry, stay away from the beach.”

  Feeling relief swell within her, Isme nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

  ~

  At sunset they settled into the cave under a blanket made from seal-skin, having weighed down with stones another seal-skin cloth at the entrance of the cave. Both of these were fur-side out, and therefore waterproof. Even without a fire, Isme and her father kept each other warm. Outside, the storm arrived.

  Isme drifted and found sleep waiting for her, but it flowed and ebbed the way waves at the shore did. Her eyes closed but felt like they were open, her feet twitched under the blanket and suddenly she was running through the woods, fleeing the taunting voice or rushing to the beach to stop herself from singing. Or perhaps she wanted to warn the turtles. Of what, she did not know.

  And then she was holding something in her hands, a turtle shell. The turtle was small enough to be carried, but not so small as the hatchlings that would emerge in a few moons. When she turned the shell over, she saw that the belly plate was missing and the turtle’s insides were gone: instead, within the cavern there were little threads of sinew, stretched side to side. Horrified, Isme touched one with a finger, and to her surprise the turtle’s head emerged from its hole. It gazed orb eyes at her, and she said,

  “Thank goodness. I thought something terrible happened to you.”

  Without words, the turtle blinked back at her, seemingly to say that it was quite all right. Touching the threads again, Isme discovered they made a sound. She began to pluck them, soft notes came that seemed to drown out the storm outside the cave.

  And she was walking through the woods down to the beach, the turtle in her hands watching her and listening to the music. She sang, and knew that the sound of her voice and the sound of the strings matched perfectly, but she could not hear her words, because they were not hers. Not really. They belonged to Grandmother Kalliope—as always...

  From far off came the sound of yelling, howls and screeches like animals approaching, chanting strange words, and the turtle looked concerned. She told it, “Don’t be scared. It’s all right. These are my friends.” But she did not know why she had said this. Especially when, as the sounds came closer, they sounded even less friendly than before—

  And then the voice that made her tremble said: “Isme, you are not dreaming.”

  Awareness returned. Isme realized she was indeed standing in the middle of the forest, but was drenched entirely down to the marrow of her bones, and with bruises on her arms—she had instinctively protected her face from branches whipped by wind.

  Where was her father? How had she been able to leave the cave with him there—surely, he would have felt her move and stopped her from leaving. Unless he had left first, probably thinking that she would be safe alone under the blankets.

  Cresting the hill, Isme made her way back down to the beach. She was aware that under the howl of the storm there were footsteps following her and that the voice was not part of the dream, if indeed carrying the turtle-harp had been a dream.

  Perhaps this was the dream and before she had been awake.

  She found her father standing on the top of the ridge just before the beach. Wadding her way through the scrub grass, Isme joined him. Overhead, the storm raged with lightning and thunder, wind strong enough that they both had to stand at angles, muscles taut to avoid being blown over. All of her senses strained to their limit. Touch, sound, the smell of salt and water, the taste of the air bitter. And yet in her sight—

  Isme had buried them on the beach, at the sand where the tide did not reach. Only storms came that far inland. She and her father stood there and watched as the sea came in, unearthed the mounds, and carried away the sailors back to the depths.

  ~

  They returned to the cave drenched, shaking from cold, wrapped each other in blankets, patting skin and hair dry. Through her chattering teeth, Isme began to speak. She told him everything—of the turtles, of the ship, of the many shadows that had lain on the beach until she found a home for them—except for one thing.

  She did not mention the voice in the woods.

  THREE.

  ~

  After Isme finished confessing, her father sat back on his own weight and adopted a look of consideration. Isme waited for him to speak, knowing that look—it was the same expression he held when telling her some new rule about preparation for the end of the world. She had not seen him like this for a while.

  Then he said, “What do you think happened? Why were they on the beach?”

  Isme said, “They came for my song, didn’t they?” She did not say that she had felt this was true from the start and that the voice in the woods had confirmed her fears.

  “Why do yo
u think that?” asked her father. “Simply because a thing happens after another thing—that does not mean the first thing caused the second.”

  And, all at once, Isme found that she did not want to tell him about the voice. She had been hesitant before but now telling him about the voice seemed beyond her ability to endure. To tell him that something—man, beast, genius, or god—was in the woods, revealing her guilt. She wanted so badly to forget what had happened, and having some mysterious force confirming her fault was the most terrible thing she could think of.

  So, she found some other excuse: “Because that is what happens in the stories. The sirens lure men to jump overboard and drown. That is what happened with me.”

  “Yes,” said her father, and Isme’s heart sank, as he acknowledged her fault even without knowing of the voice. “But you are not a siren. You are something different.”

  Raising her eyes, Isme gazed at her father and the troubled look on his face. He seemed to be blaming himself for something. She opened her mouth to ask, but he was already prepared to tell her:

  “You became a woman last winter. I had intended to explain to you then. But things kept getting in the way... First, you thought you were dying, and I had to tell you that blood is what always happens to girls when they become women. Then you seemed shaken for so many days that I decided not to tell you right away. And then that spring storm destroyed the garden—so much work—”

  And he broke off. As though chiding himself, he shook his head and said, “No. Those aren’t truth. Those are my excuses that I have been telling myself all this time. No, truth is I didn’t want to tell you. I always knew that I would have to explain in the future, but then the time was there and I did not want things to change.”

  That sounds ominous, thought Isme. She said, “Nothing will change. I am still your child and this is our island and we will wait here for the end of the world. Same as always,” and she hesitated. “Except I will stop singing because it is dangerous.”

  Her father shook his head again. “No, Isme, that is not truth. You should be careful when you sing because words can be dangerous. But other times songs may be the safest thing in the world, the thing that the world needs. Or, at least that was truth for your father.”

  Isme stared at him. “But you are my father. And you have never sung like me.”

  Her father shifted again, then said, “As I have been all this time. But this is what I hesitated to say, when you became a woman. Isme, you were not born to me. You were born to a man you know from my stories. If you merely put your mind to task, looking in the stories for similarities, you will figure out who he was soon enough.”

  Isme wanted to object—but she had never called her father a liar before, and there was no reason to do so now, even if he had never told her that she was not born to him. Plenty of people in stories were tossed away and raised by other parents, anyway... it did not truly seem so strange to have her origins be the same.

  But... to have another father? Some stranger, who was in her father’s stories? Isme considered this, looking over her father’s shape, hulking and still damp from the storm still screeching outside. Her birth father was someone else? Someone her father knew. She was similar to him, whoever he was. How? She had heard in stories that children often looked like their parents, and she had wondered what this meant. She had nobody to compare herself to but her father, and of course he was the thing most similar to her on the island because they were the only men around.

  She had wondered, sometimes: what would other people look like? When she imagined other people, she filled in their faces with her own and her father’s; all the men were broad-waisted with round nostrils and all the women were button-nosed, tanned, with ratty dark hair extended to their waists. But she knew they could not all look the same—how else could people recognize each other in stories?

  But now she thought that perhaps she and her father did not look alike, if they were not related by birth. Perhaps a person who knew other people would not make Isme’s mistake. Would see that they were strangers by blood. They would look too different.

  Then she found herself rebelling against that thought—that someone, a stranger, might see her and her father and not notice that they were family. Because they were. Did not stories always emphasize that the inside of a person was what counted?

  Isme said, “Who is this blood father, to me? He is not here in this cave with me.”

  And her father smiled, his relief crinkling the corners of his beady eyes. He raised one of his club-like hands to his broad chest, placing fingers on his breastbone. And, as if introducing himself for the first time, said, “As for me, you have always just called me ‘Father.’ But amongst men I have another name: I am Epimetheus, the afterthought. I do not see forward, only back. So I’m able to tell you all of the stories of the world since you were very small.”

  “I know you,” said Isme, and her voice was tinted with wonder, but not in shock. She had never heard her father’s name before, except in stories. The tale he told about himself was not very flattering. Epimetheus had been assigned by Zeus, king of gods, to create men in the last age, helped along by his brother, Prometheus. He had been chosen to give creatures form and Prometheus was to give them life.

  Epimetheus had been given a bag of talents and skills to allot to each creature according to their needs. Flight for birds, warm fur for animals, breathing water for fish. And yet when he had come around to man, he had discovered that he had already given out all of the other talents. Man was left cold, naked, with only two legs instead of four, no sharp teeth, and no beautiful or distracting shape.

  Distressed, Epimetheus had pleaded with his brother to fix his mistake: this last creature, Man, deserved something, some special talent like every other animal, or else they would all die.

  And so Prometheus had plucked one of his own hairs from his head and woven the strand into the creature’s mane, thus giving men minds like the gods.

  If Father is claiming that he is not my actual father, thought Isme, then he is not claiming truth. If he is Epimetheus, then he is a father to us all. At least, to us men who belong in the current age, because we are the children of Deucalion and Pyrrha...

  For the ages of men ran thus:

  A gold age—before Zeus ruled the world, a time of the previous generation of gods, known as the Titans. Mankind had been peaceful and lives wonderful. But nobody knew how this world had ended—although, Isme supposed that if her father was Epimetheus, he himself was a Titan and might very well know...

  A silver age—when the current generation of gods, the Olympians, began to rule. Men had been nothing but blubbering babies, supported by their mothers until they were a hundred years old. Zeus had destroyed them for their impiety by raining down fire from the heavens...

  A bronze age—when warlike men had nearly devastated the Earth and caused such great pain and anxiety to Mother Gaia that Zeus decided to send a terrible flood. Zeus had given Pandora, a beautiful woman, a box containing curses. He then offered her to Epimetheus as wife. When Epimetheus accepted her, Pandora eventually opened the box and caused the flood. Most of mankind drowned, except for Deucalion and his pious wife Pyrrha. These two survivors, by casting stones over their shoulders, had become the father and mother of the current age of men...

  —which was an age of iron. Men were made from stone as much as flesh and were just as hard and flinty inside as that implied. They warred, stole, murdered, and dragged women and children off as slaves. If her father was to be believed, all their great heroes had waged a single war for ten years now without stopping.

  And this world would end in darkness and an earthquake.

  Isme wondered what the next world would be like. Each world was worse than the last—and so she expected that the next would be the worst yet. This is why she followed her father’s instructions to learn as much as possible how to survive. After the darkness and earthquake, the fifth age of men would begin.

  Not iron, no
t stone, Isme thought. I wonder what the new men will be. I wonder who will create them—and she glanced at her father, at Epimetheus, and thought:

  Perhaps Father will make them, too. Or perhaps there will be some new race of gods who will replace the Olympians the way they replaced the Titans.

  Her father was watching her carefully, as though expecting some reaction. Isme considered; was she supposed to feel something? Perhaps he expected her to be happy about him revealing that he was one of his stories, which she so loved.

  Yet Isme found she was hardly surprised. This seemed like an inevitable revelation—she had always known, in some way, that her father was part of the stories. And in a way, she thought, this relates me to the stories, too—I am the daughter of Epimetheus. And birth child of someone else, some other man I do not know, who has not been here all my life, and therefore I do not love like Father...

  And she said, “Is that what you needed to tell me? What do you want me to know—to guess my birth father? Why is he important when the world is ending?”

  Epimetheus lifted a big paw-like hand to rub at his naked crown. He said, “Do you recall all the singing creatures in my stories?”

  “Yes,” said Isme. And she began to list them: “There are sirens, and nymphs and dryads, and Muses, beautiful Grandmother Kalliope, and even some of the gods—Apollon, Dionysos, Hermes...” And her mind circled to her favorite, and just like that, she knew. “And Orpheus—the man who could sing the dead back to life.”

  Stirring in her seat, she said, “It is him, isn’t it? He was the man I was born to. And that is why I am here with you, instead of him. Because he was torn to pieces and killed by the maenads.”

  If she was going to have a birth father aside from Epimetheus himself, then she could not think of a better one. Isme had always liked the story and admired the tales of Orpheus’s wonderful music. She believed that he had received his songs from the same place she did—the deep inner well inside which she could hear their voices before they were sung, asking to be born into the world.