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

by H. C. Southwark

  At last daylight—and I wail with terror. I cry that I want to die again right away. He steps into the sun, pauses. And I knew then that he could hear me, perhaps had been hearing me at least faintly all this time. If he takes one more step, I will be in the world of the living and there will be no turning back—

  But he does not. He turns, and looks at me, and I feel the hands of Hades pulling me back under, with only a single moment to tell him, “Thank you.”

  The ends of the story falter, halting and broken, and Isme watched Eurydice struggle to finish, Isme’s life within her burning brightly, and quickly, and then Eurydice without so much as a goodbye stumbled away. Yet Isme believed she was pleased somehow at recounting the story, for she heard the shade humming.

  Isme stood and gazed out at the shades around her, knowing their names, stories, and began to wonder—for she found within her the welling up of Apollon’s words, from within her well of songs—

  Love, he had said. Love is the worst of all. Love is the god-killer...

  And that was true here, too, Isme saw. Oedipus had fallen in love with the wrong woman. Agamemnon had loved glory more than his daughter. And Orpheus... that long note, the simplest song of all, echoing above against the sky forever... and Eurydice.

  Better to have one day of love, she had said, than a life of regret. And yet, if Eurydice’s mother had only been successful at preventing her from meeting a man, meeting Orpheus, then she would have had neither love nor regret. She could have been happy.

  If Orpheus had not loved you enough, Isme wanted to tell the empty shade of Eurydice, then he could have brought you above and lived happily with you. His love caused him to die in sorrow for you. And if I did not love my father so much, I would not feel empty now that he is gone somewhere far away.

  Or perhaps she felt empty because she was so light-headed. Lifting her arm, Isme found that the blood still flowed, the asphodel around her blooming, and she pressed her other palm against the wound. She stood, uncertain where to go now, for there were no other souls nearby, and decided to step forward and search—

  But something sharp through her ankle, piercing around the tendon of her heel, and a soundless cry from her lips as Isme felt her muscles lax and she tumbled to the ground. The scent of sweet was as strong as honeycomb here, and cedar like she was sticking her head above a cooking fire at full heat. Or perhaps heat was within her—

  Between her ankles the creature slid, pausing on its way to observe her face. Only when the tongue emerged, a flicker, did Isme realize it was a snake and not a long piece of asphodel somehow come alive.

  “I’m sorry,” the creature said. “I was not fully in control of myself when I bit—you stood on me, as I followed her, and I am nothing if not myself even here and now.”

  Sucking in a breath, Isme asked, “How can you speak?”

  “Your blood,” said the snake. “All creatures speak in their own way.”

  The next question Isme had was, “Will I die from your bite?”

  “Not directly,” the serpent said. “I am dead, after all, but when you can move, you should stem the bleeding quick. You’ve already given too much.”

  Isme had no idea what a snake should look like when feeling sad, or even if they had different emotions, but there was something in the countenance of the creature that communicated hesitance and sorrow. It remained by her side, quiet and gazing out to where Eurydice was roaming, as if torn on whether it should follow.

  “Do you always remain by her?” Isme managed to ask. The numbness in her limbs did not extend to her tongue, not fully, but she felt swollen and wet all over.

  “I do,” said the snake. “I followed her down here, not just for my broken back, but for the song—when she lay dying, Orpheus broke out in a wail of sorrow, and many of his guests were killed for sheer despair. I myself writhed in the dust and my heart splintered, to know what I had done in a moment of anger. And so down I went.”

  “That is a sad thing,” Isme said. The snake turned its attention to her more fully.

  “All things are sad, in their own way,” it said. Tilting its head to the side, it said, “What is this question that you have been asking without any satisfying answers?”

  “Blood guilt,” Isme said, and realized that before her was one much like herself: something who, unknowing, had struck out in a moment of passion and disliked the results. Perhaps it truly would understand. “I have killed, and like you, I regret. Is there any way to obtain absolution of blood guilt, forgiveness for wrongs?”

  “Those are two different things,” said the serpent. “Absolution is payment. Forgiveness is that wrongness will not be held against you. But neither are possible, in the living world or the next.”

  Isme frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  And the snake coiled in on itself, a remarkable movement that suggested it was thinking, composing its next words. It must have taken more of Isme’s blood than she had thought, because it did not seem ready to fade back to an unknowing shade, scales rippling with vibrant colors, radiant, brightly marking: here is poison.

  Once compiled in on itself, the serpent said: “When someone commits a wrong, the stain is on him always. Even should he be caught and punished, even should the victim offer forgiveness, and should restoration ten, twenty, a hundred times over be paid, the wrong itself does not disappear. The wrong and the price is forever.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Isme said. She felt pins prickling all over her arm, especially her ankle and wrist.

  The serpent said, “When you killed that person, where did his soul end up?”

  “Here,” said Isme, “Among the dead.”

  “Now imagine you came upon him,” said the snake. “Imagine he threw his arms around you, said that he understood what happened, and he forgives you. Is everything restored to the way it was?”

  “The relationship was,” Isme said, imagining Lycander smiling at her.

  “But does he come to life again?” said the serpent. “Does he continue on, restored? All the things he was going to do now available to him? No, that does not happen. He remains dead. Because forgiveness is just an idea.

  “For every deed there is a price to be paid—and he is paying it, for you forced it on him. The price for him is this: he is dead and will remain dead. And the price for you is this: you have killed and there will never again come a time when you did not kill.

  “You are, now and forevermore, the sort of person who kills, no matter how sorry you are. Consequences. The price remains. And so you and he continue paying them, forever.”

  “I—” Isme stopped. What the snake was saying made sense—but the terrible implications of this lesson was too much to bear. She thought: I cannot go on like this—always a murderer, in my heart, for all time and all worlds—there must be a way— “But,” she added, “What if he could be restored? Come back to his body?”

  “The price remains,” said the snake. “Even if you were to restore him, there will never be a time when he was not once murdered and dead. He will bear the memories and marks upon him for all time; and so will you. The event is not erased. Even if he forgets, the worlds do not forget, the gods do not forget, and so the event remains.”

  “But if it could—” Isme whispered, “Oh, if only it could—”

  “There is a price for wrongdoing, every wrongdoing, no matter how small,” said the snake. “And that price is everything. Because the wrongdoing has been done—and so it remains committed, forever and for all time, and thus each guilt remains forever.”

  “Impossible,” gasped Isme, and she jerked what of her body she could, limbs tightening. “How can anyone escape? Even a single wrong is an endless weight around us to bear down to the grave and beyond—how can we then endure?”

  “There is no way I know of,” said the serpent, eyes lowered. “But they say that the world will end soon—and perhaps that will be the end of everything. The last price can be paid and then there will be no more wrongdo
ing upon the earth. Thus the sorrows of now will not be strengthened further by the sorrows of tomorrow.”

  “You’re talking about an end of all,” Isme said, slowly. “An end of everything—a world dying, and nothing following it.” And the serpent nodded, slowly. Isme closed her eyes. At length she said, “Even knowing what I know, I cannot want that to happen.”

  “I do not understand you men,” said the serpent, at last. Isme opened her eyes. It continued, “Somehow you always hope for something better, although yesterday was the same as today, and will be tomorrow. It is like there is something in you that is missing, longing for more, always striving upward even in death.”

  “I do not understand it myself,” said Isme, quietly, and before she could say anything more, the serpent turned and slithered away—but she saw that its scales had gone ashen again, surmising that what life it had bitten from her was gone. She watched the tail flick as it moved through the asphodel, trailing after the feet of Eurydice.

  You do follow her, don’t you? Isme thought. Even unknowing, without any life or memories left, something in you still regrets and seeks a kind of absolution. You, too, long for forgiveness, that the weight can be lifted. But you have told me enough—now I have no idea how such a thing can be done. I did not comprehend the magnitude of my offense, that murder remains murder for all time—it is inescapable.

  Isme lifted her head, found her eyesight blurry, tried to think. If only there was a way of becoming another person. Perhaps that would eliminate the blood guilt; a different Isme, an Isme who did not sing to the turtles, or who otherwise had not killed. She had dreamed of such a possibility but that was just that—dreams. All her life seemed a dream. Perhaps that was the way of this world—

  Her arm was a pool of red—sticky and sickly-sweet like the undiluted wine.

  She moved her toes, her fingers. Sluggish. She had the impression that this was not due to poison—indeed, whatever had been in the serpent’s bite had faded. Looking up, she saw that the unfamiliar stars above were whirling, like the ones in the night of the living sky, but from the nausea in her own belly she knew the cause lay within her, not them.

  I will die here, she realized, thoughts forming slowly. I’ve asked too many shades advice, and the answer I found is not to my liking, but such is truth. I will die and wander a murderer in this asphodel for all eternity. The world has not ended—I have. And the prophets and Persephone were all wrong... which is just as well, because how can I go on, knowing what I know, waiting for the end?

  Yet as she was thinking this, there was the padding of pale feet, stopping in front of her, and then hands reached down to her wrist, tearing cloth from the ends of their own peplos and binding the wound. Other hands were at her feet, and a voice saying:

  “Wild woman, if you die here, then I shall use what life remains in me to punish you. Here you go dragging me on a big wild adventure, but you don’t have the decency to finish the long road that you have barely started down—I am going to rage at you.”

  Blinking the focus back into her eyes, Isme found herself enveloped by a shower of golden hair, Kleto’s face smiling down, her hair unbound like Isme had seen only a few times before, but each time more beautiful than the last.

  “There you are,” Kleto said, “Awake and alive again.”

  Isme struggled to pull herself up, was helped by other hands. And then she was shoulder to shoulder with Kleto, sitting in the dusty asphodel, watching the powdery puffs spring up under the feet of Pelagia running toward them. To her left crouched Lycander, his hand steadying her shoulder to keep her propped upright.

  Pelagia knelt before them, loose brown hair swinging. “You look too pale, wild woman. I’m pained to say it, but burned dark by the sun looked better on you.”

  Isme flicked her tongue behind her teeth, managed, “How?”

  “What do you mean, ‘how’?” Kleto responded. Her eyes were as vicious as always, yet lacked that vital glow from before. “We’re dead, of course. It’s you who don’t belong here—or perhaps I should say, didn’t belong here, until you went and got yourself cursed. But even then that’s a stretch, since everyone belongs here.”

  “This is the world of the dead, after all,” Pelagia added.

  “But—” Isme struggled to speak. “But you all look alive.”

  “For now,” said Lycander. “While our bodies above remain, and memories of us last, and we are not so far from our deaths—we will look like this. But the clothes will rot on us, and our shapes thin from hunger, and the asphodel coat us, and we will drink from Lethe in thirst until there isn’t anything else we remember.”

  “I’m told it’s not so bad,” added Pelagia.

  Isme held back a sob, but her arm came up and pulled tight around the shoulder of Kleto, who leaned closer until Isme could feel herself breathe against Kleto’s side, though of course there was no answering breath from Kleto’s own lungs.

  “How did you find me,” Isme said, but what she meant was: Why are you here?

  Lycander shrugged, beside her. He said, “I was wandering near the dock, Pelagia and me waiting for those we knew, when Kleto arrived. Then we heard a voice whisper your name in the distance. We came running and here we are.”

  “But I,” said Isme, and she could not finish the sentence—I murdered you—and somehow the words still reached them, Lycander’s head lowering.

  “I’ve killed lots of people,” he said. “Sometimes it was necessary, traveling, protecting the slave-girls, and more. But each time I felt a cutting in my own insides, and now I know many of them are here wandering the expanses. How can I blame you?”

  “Besides,” said Kleto, “I explained things, and we know you still have a job to do.”

  “The end of the world,” chittered Pelagia, “How exciting! Of course, it pays to be dead when you hear about that, because then you don’t care as much. Oh, Isme, when the world ends, can you spare a bit of blood and let us know it’s happened? And why?”

  “Of course,” said Isme, feeling as though everything had become surreal, or perhaps that reality was surreal, and she was just now becoming aware of this. She found herself thinking of what she had told Kleto, the night before her death: Sometimes I wonder if there is something about the nature of reality I don’t understand...

  As if sensing Isme’s thoughts, Kleto pulled on her shoulder, dragging the both of them upright. She began walking, Isme forced to pace along, and Lycander and Pelagia were following, attentive. The shore was ahead, empty and calm.

  “Come,” whispered Kleto in her ear, “Your adventure isn’t over yet—there’s a place for you to wait for the last part. I wasn’t much help in the world of the living but I can help bring you there now. Here is where you will see the end of the world.”

  TWENTY-FIVE.

  ~

  The three of them let her gaze out onto the ocean of Styx, the dead waters silent and still, for a long time, barely able to see the shape in the water. An island—in the far distance from the shore of the underworld’s mainland.

  Then they let her have as much of them as she wanted. They talked to her and told a few stories and explained some of what they thought and felt and did. As if death had opened them, somehow, split their minds and bodies away from whatever shields they raised, so there was no more room for lies or subtleties.

  But time did not change here, in the world of the dead, so Isme did not know how long this lasted. They assured her that such talks were possible again, whenever she wanted, if only she was recovered enough to let them borrow some of her life.

  And Isme was beginning to comprehend that she would indeed live a long time.

  When she stepped into the water, she turned for one last look at the three of them. In her mind she was running through fantasies, possibilities, and it occurred to her that in some part she had always thought this would be the end. That they would stand and say goodbye as she returned to the island with her father.

  Except this was not her island
. And she would be alone.

  Waiting was making everything harder. Isme forced her legs to move through the water, heavy as it was, and pushed out from shore. Her clothing was little more than rags, and the island, or so they had said, lay on the very boundaries of death’s kingdom.

  A long way indeed. But Isme had no fear in swimming.

  She had not asked if there was anything in the water to be worried about, so when the first shape moved under her, beside her, Isme shivered and swam harder, faster, for there might be sharks or serpents or horrid things. Yet the smooth shape that crested one of the ripples she made—no splashing—was recognizably oblong.

  Then there were more of them, paddling alongside her in the sea, silent and watchful. Yet Isme had the impression that any moment they might break into song.

  The turtles did not follow her onto the beach, once she reached the island. Exhausted, trembling with fatigue, Isme rolled to her back and stared out at the little forest of lights set in round faces, all of them staring at her quietly from the smooth sea.

  “I will sing to you later,” said Isme. “I have some new songs, and some old.”

  One by one they seemed to accept this, bubbling back down into the water.

  Isme lay on the beach looking up at the stars for some time. Yet she noticed that the stars looked different here—the patterns were off-center from those before, like the sky really was a dome but of limited size, and by moving underneath to a distant corner she had distorted their configurations and shapes.

  Pulling to her feet, Isme tracked up the sand, grainy and black. Yet this island was not like the mainland of Hades, for there was a clear crest, as though the place was prepared for the rising and falling of tides, and as she walked over, she found herself not in a field of asphodel, but of scrub-grass. The burrs nicked at her toes and the new scars on her feet as she treaded through—to a forest.