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

by H. C. Southwark

  Grandmother Kalliope, if a song can save us, let it come to me....

  Yet there is no answer. Just her own voice: I promise, I promise...

  Kleto’s face was hard to describe. Perhaps she was angry, or resigned—of these, Isme found that she preferred anger. She would rather Kleto howl and claw at her than give up, much as though the story of Procne and Philomel has bled into them both. She watches as Kleto reaches some kind of decision.

  Kleto stands tall. She holds the knife high, like a torch, a priestess at an altar. Every man in the room leans away, as if she is calling down lightning.

  Kleto scans the room, looking into each face, which blanches as she observes it. Then she tilts her hand holding the knife like the point is an arrow, just the tip striking in a straight line toward one of the men, holding herself still as a statue so everyone in the room can see that he has been chosen.

  Isme sees that it is the man who had captured her and Pelagia in the forest, although of course she doubts that Kleto knows.

  “Go sit on the table,” Kleto says, a low order.

  The men waver in indecision, tied to the one chosen by Kleto: will he agree and join the performance, or rebel? Isme feels the coolness in the room again, knowing that if this man chooses wrong, then the performance will be over, Kleto’s spell broken, and then the story of Procne and Philomel truly will be enacted, on Isme and Kleto and Pelagia themselves. She wonders what Kleto was thinking, letting a robber make the decision about their fates.

  Except that was always the case, she realized. If the men had not been willing to hear Kleto’s performance, had not been convinced that she was going to entertain them, then this illusion of control would never have come in the first place, because the men would have simply destroyed the three of them by now.

  But the man is willing. Perhaps for him this is just another moment of amusement, albeit an unusual one. He probably spends his life hiding on the sides of roads, swatting at bugs in ditches, standing on rocky outcrops and straining eyes for the sign of other people, who he does not regard as people, but rather as forms of spoil, the human shape meaning nothing but money. No connections, no friendships, no father to teach him how to light fires in different ways and to scold him when he relies on a cheating method. All he has left is amusement—and this is amusing.

  He sits a little too close to Pelagia, who flinches. She glances across the room at Kleto, a question in her eyes, and Kleto nods at her. Isme can only wonder what instruction that nod contains.

  Then Pelagia begins to strum again, a light and airy tune like something that would call up the morning. Isme is reminded of the island birds who sing at sunrise.

  Kleto moves so that she is standing in front of the man sitting, blocking Isme from his direct line of sight. And she sings:

  My husband, darling Tereus,

  Bringer of light and joy—

  I have for you a great ceremony

  Practiced by my people.

  Will you not send away

  All the servants, so we may partake?

  We skipped it, realized Isme. We skipped what happened to Itys, Procne and Tereus’s son.

  Around her the men are snickering, and no wonder because Kleto is brandishing her knife, then openly hiding it behind her back, in an exaggerated way that shows the audience what she is doing. They do not seem to think the story is out of joint—or perhaps they realize that something has been intentionally hidden from them, the same way that Procne is hiding her knife from Tereus. Something that will be revealed soon: they are like little children clapping because they just cannot wait to find out what their gift is.

  Kleto does not glance back at Isme, but instead prances to the man drafted into playing Tereus. Isme sees only one hesitation from him, a slight shift back as he seems to remember that she has a weapon, but then when she reaches out a hand and strokes the air around his arm, playfully, he smiles and chortles along. Isme can tell that some of the men are jealous of his position.

  Then Kleto climbs back atop the table, giving only a jerk of her head to Isme, directing her to hold still. Isme wishes that she had something, some kind of object that she could throw in this man’s face just like Philomel in the story. She will have to make do with air and determination.

  Kleto sings how Procne prepares food for Tereus, and as she does the words melt into many different meanings, her gestures becoming sharp and sensuous in turn, basic cooking pantomimes mixed with crude innuendo. The men are laughing and cheering as she holds out her hand like a fist and pumps the air as though turning a spit and roasting meat. Sitting at her feet, her pretend husband looks increasingly amused.

  Smiling down at him, Kleto nudges him with her foot. She says, breaking routine, “Well, husband-in-a-play, I made all this meal for you, aren’t you going to eat it?”

  The man raises his eyebrows, and she begins to pantomime the act of eating. There are calls from the audience to play along, Don’t disappoint her, I’ll take your place if you’re not hungry, and then he joins in, pretending to eat the leg of an animal. Behind him Kleto twirls her knife and make several stabbing gestures toward his head in midair, over exaggerated, and the men roar with delight.

  What goodwill they had toward Tereus, admiration of his crafty lie and that he has kept Philomel for himself, is all gone—they have no loyalty to him now.

  Then Kleto sings:

  Tereus eats his fill and praises Procne,

  Wonderful cooked meat, my dear wife,

  Now where is Itys, our sweet boy?

  Fetch him—fetch him—fetch him now

  To share in his parents’ celebrations!

  “Well,” she ends, foot nudging the man, “Do you want your son, husband?”

  Playing his part faithfully, now, the man smiles and gestures and Isme can barely hear, through the noise of the audience, as he says something in the affirmative.

  “But he is already here!” calls Kleto, sweet-tongued, and she glances just so at Isme before she begins to sing—and Isme knows what she must do, pretends to be carrying something as she rushes out toward the man—

  In storms Philomel!

  Blood across her face!

  Blood in her mouth!

  Blood stains her hands!

  She throws the head

  Of Tereus’s son—

  Right into the father’s lap!

  Yet Isme does not aim for the man’s lap—she charges, flings her hands into the man’s eyes, and in that moment her momentum slams into him, and Kleto has him by the arm and hair, and even Pelagia has thrown down the lyre, ending the song in a crash of all the notes played wrong—

  They pull him atop the table and Kleto has the knife under his jaw, Isme has his hands, Pelagia clutching his left arm. The look on his face is comical—

  “Enough!” Kleto shouts. The men in the crowd have fallen silent. “We have one of you—now let us go, or else be one man less!”

  A long pause like this was still part of the performance, the audience digesting a new twist in the tale. The hearth crackling is all that can be heard.

  Then the men begin to snigger. There is no outright laughter, but Isme believes that this is not because they do not find the scene funny, but rather because they simply do not find it funny enough. When she glances at their captive’s face, he looks resigned.

  Just for an eyeblink, Isme thinks she sees Kleto realize—they are going to die.

  When the women do not release the man, one of the crowd speaks up, calling, “You cannot think that would work—we’re a den of thieves. Finish your prancing, woman, and then kill him, or don’t, you’ll end the same. Poor robbers we would be if every time a woman pulled knives on one of us, we let her go.”

  Another added, in back, “Makes the tale more exciting, I say!”

  And another: “Do to him what Procne and Philomel did to Tereus! I want to see!”

  A chorus of jeering, now, and Isme’s untuned ears pick up the cry of Do it, Do it, Do it, Unless you’re too
scared to tell it properly...

  —and she thinks that maybe Kleto will. Kleto will kill this man and spill his blood all through Pelagia’s dark hair.

  Certainly Kleto grips the knife harder; Isme can see her knuckles flex, fingers adjusting. Isme thinks: That is not the right way to hold a knife for slaughter—you won’t hit the main artery like that—

  And then she realizes what she was considering, and closes her eyes. In her mind she is tracking back the days as though walking in muddied sand, only a few days ago—when they were there, lying on the beach. What sort of men had they been? Sailors—or perhaps pirates, sea robbers, same as this man still under her own grip now.

  Isme had killed them. With nothing but words. A song—but not meant for them. The song was for the turtles. They were never supposed to hear me...

  It was an accident, Isme thinks. I didn’t mean to. I never would have, if I’d known.

  Yet now she was here and she knew. Was she going to participate now?

  Opening her eyes, Isme thinks: He brought this on himself. He’s the one who robs and kills. And not by accident. But only if there was some other way—

  If only men did not rob and kill at all. If only there was a song for that—

  If I was Orpheus, Isme thought, that is what I would sing. That is how I would sway men’s hearts. She saw that the man had his eyes closed, waiting, Pelagia trembling, Kleto caught and indecisive, the men in the crowd jeering, and thought: If only there was a way, a song or a story to show them how horrible this all is, and how we should all never be this cruel in the first place—

  Then maybe the world would not need to end. The men of iron could be flesh again. Another golden age. Perhaps, when this world ends, the new world could be...

  And just like that, the well in her seemed to open.

  Down, and down, and down—so fell Isme’s mind, and the well within her was not only deeper then she thought, or rushing faster then she had felt only a few moments ago, but it was not a well at all: it was the sea itself, Isme realized, and if it was a sea, then there doubtless had to be turtles.

  There were always turtles, even when she could not see them.

  Words clamored in her ears, coming from this ocean, drowning out the sounds of the room, the men jeering, and then Kleto wavering, realizing she could not do what her vicious heart wanted, not now that the choice was before her and the performance was reality—her hand lowering, knife glinting like sun against waves—

  And the man scrambling, falling off the table and crawling underneath to his fellows, who kick at him, are booing, hooting, shouting their disapproval—they had wanted the blood—they had wanted to see how the story would end—

  I can give them that ending, Isme thought.

  Pelagia half-crawls to Kleto’s knees, Kleto standing like a beaten and weathered tree with only its last root keeping it upright, gazing out into the crowd of men who are still shouting, building themselves up into a rage, just a hair from surging forward and beating and mauling and doing far worse—

  Then Isme rises to her own height, feeling the words pushing at her insides, finds herself afraid that the syllables will come out too quickly in a rush and burst her like an over-full water bladder. This time, the prayer that she gives to grandmother Kalliope is:

  Let me not be crushed by your song, O Grandmother—

  And Isme sings:

  This is not how the story ends

  Or the fires of Tereus’s hall die.

  Round he chased Philomel and Procne,

  Screaming a wild cry

  To call upon Furies who did not listen

  But hid and waited for the tempest to end.

  The first notes from her throat 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, eye
s 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.”