“Our Lord Apollon,” said the old woman. There was no reverence in her voice, which Isme found strange because she always tried to speak with reverence to the gods herself, and yet this priestess spoke about Apollon as though he was an ingredient for dinner.
She did not ponder this long, because the old woman jerked her head and strode away. With the impossible grip on her arms, the burly men forced Isme to follow. They moved further into the temple, where there was a column-set door with an arch and gold-inlaid symbols that radiated like sunbeams. Isme knew that Apollon was associated with the sun—and perhaps this was the sacred inner sanctum of the temple.
Isme held her breath as she was pulled through the threshold—but on the other side was not a room, just another threshold. This time the doorway was a mouth made of uncut stone. Isme knew caves well. Her time on the island with her father had taught her a great deal about which caves were good and which poor. There was a sweetness coming from this cave, a moist scent of something rotting, which would have caused her to reject it. Anyone who slept in such a cave would die on the damp cold nights. But now she had little choice and was dragged through.
She expected to be enveloped in darkness. And yet somehow was not—there were little carvings of window nooks and the sides of the upper ceilings of the cave, and from them spilled light the same as in the temple proper. They had walked forward for some time before Isme realized that this was unusual—for although gradual, she could feel the uneven plunge of the floor, knew they were descending down into the pit of the earth. And yet the sunlight from outside did not wane. Even though it was sunset above.
Dampness of the air grew until Isme was reminded of before a summer storm: heavy with water that her lungs rejected as she breathed. The sickly sweet smell was becoming overpowering. She felt her nose wrinkle but could not manage to sneeze. Something indeed was rotting here in the underground.
Up ahead, the cave turned. The old woman paused and Isme, too.
“What you see will seem alarming,” said the old woman. “But do not be afraid. Lord Apollon is the god of light and reason, of logic, order. Fear has no place here, especially with his own granddaughter visiting her home once again.”
This brought up so many questions Isme felt she would burst. “If you know that I am daughter to Orpheus, and so granddaughter of great Apollon, why have you treated me this way?”
When the old woman turned back to look at her, Isme saw just the slightest flicker of surprise present. Then the old woman turned evaluative, speculative. She said, “I did not expect that you would know where you came from. Who told you?”
“My father did,” said Isme, she realized this must be the wrong thing to say—for a look of rage shaded over on the old woman’s face, though was quickly hidden. Isme had spent too long with the caravan of Lycander and Kleto not to recognize:
The old woman was acting. Hiding something.
“I see,” said the woman. “Then you are ready for your service.”
Isme tried to think, but all she could blurt out was, “What?”
And the old woman smiled. “So he did not tell you everything.”
She waved to the men. They released Isme, who for the briefest flash considered running back down the tunnel. Impossible, of course. She would be caught long before she reached the surface, and the door still barred the way out. But there was something else—something lingering from the old woman’s claim...
My father did tell me everything, Isme thought, rejecting the old woman’s statement. But she was also recalling that night after the storm, how her father had first explained why he had not told her of her origins. He had only told her then because she had killed those men. It was necessary for her to know. But if she had not killed them—when would he have told her? Would he have?
Of course he would, Isme told herself. My father has always been good to me.
When the old woman beckoned, Isme hesitated—long enough for the woman to say, “You think you know who you are, where you come from, who to trust. But what if there was more? Something you did not know but could. If you will but turn this corner and speak to who is waiting for you, all questions will be answered.”
Isme frowned. She rubbed at her bruised arms, considered, said, “That’s not possible. There’s always another question. How could something answer everything?”
“This is Delphi,” said the old woman.
And Isme inclined her head, taking the rebuke. She had somehow forgotten, in all this, where she was and who she was with. Her mind was now already racing around the corner, but she approached cautiously, on the balls of her feet, waiting to be grabbed again, but the old woman made no move. Isme approached the turn and let her eyes carry her around the bend.
The sweetened air was the worst yet. Isme felt her stomach inverting within her, turning inside-out. At first, she focused on the cave: the ceiling leaped high, so far that Isme could not see the other end even with the odd light from the window-nooks.
Then her eyes refocused. She saw what was directly ahead—but that was hardly any better. She stood before a curved wall that did not reach the cavern ceiling, made of inset tiles layered over each other, but with smoke pouring from the cracks between. This smoke filtered down through the air, spilling over her ankles as she walked closer, puzzled, shivering from the cold on her feet.
The wall had eyes. But wrongly tilted, with their corners pointing toward ground and ceiling. They were round and glossy and stared as she made her way around the curve of the tiled wall, encountering four great white spikes stabbed out of an alcove while the wall continued.
Only then did Isme realize: it was a serpent. An enormous creature with a skull as broad as two men lying flat on the ground with their feet touching, head lying on its side, its mouth open to reveal the long dark tunnel of a throat, teeth halfway emerged.
Dead. That was the smell; the soft parts had rotted away, leaving only this hardened shell still lingering with the scent of death.
Isme gawped, unable to comprehend what such a snake was doing under the shrine. Then clarity filtered through her, all the stories of her father, and she asked,
“Is this the great Python, which Apollon killed to create Delphi?”
“So you know the story,” said the old woman, a small distance from Isme, who watched as the old woman reached out and touched the tiles—the scales—from which the smoke seeped around the corners. There was an oddness to the reverence as the woman stroked the wall, Isme thought, like someone handling something holy but not at all moved by the experience. Mere formality.
“This is where priestesses of Delphi learn their prophecies,” said the old woman.
Turning to the snake, aware that she and the old woman were now alone—only not alone, thought Isme, for even while those guards did not follow, the voice from the woods is still here, must be... she resisted the urge to turn about and look.
The serpent was a good distraction. Isme said, “I don’t understand. Why would the Python remain down here? And why would priestesses of Apollon need to visit in order to learn the words to speak from Delphi? Surely Apollon speaks to them.”
“No,” said the old woman, “Apollon has left the Python here to speak to us.” And, when she saw that Isme did not understand, she said, “All knowledge cycles from the underworld. The dead bring what little they know down to the depths, and then from drinking the waters of the river Lethe, they forget and Lethe remembers. The waters of Lethe seep up from the deepest parts of earth, bringing up knowledge among the living—where we can see and find it.”
Her sharp eyes—the sort that reminded Isme of Kleto—stared down at the smoke billowing about their ankles. And Isme thought then of everything she knew...
What was knowledge, anyway? She had always thought it some ephemeral thing, but now reconsidered. If the priestesses of Delphi received knowledge here, from this dead Python, then she knew: somehow, it was in the mists, the coldness on her feet...
Can knowledge
have a physical form? Isme pondered. She gazed down at the waves of fog at her ankles, saw what looked like a miniature and vaporous sea. Yes, she concluded—if knowledge has a body, then of course it would look like the ocean.
But she said, “But that cannot be. This is Delphi, which belongs to Apollon—he is the lord of light and song, of order and reason. He is not associated with the underworld. If anyone is, that would be Lord Hermes, who guides the dead to their rest.”
“You think small,” said the old woman. “If you mark a wheel, as the wheel spins the mark will eventually reach the ground again. Lord Apollon is not united with the underworld, but he is part of a long chain that extends down to the Kindly One and back up again. And thus knowledge passes up to Lord Apollon—and us.”
Isme considered these words and recalled the prophecy from the God Under the Mountain: If you go to Delphi, you will find death underneath. She and her father had assumed this meant that Isme, a mortal, would die. Yet here was death before her, eyes staring out.
Perhaps she and her father had been wrong. How could they have known that the prophecy merely referenced something already dead? Isme knew well enough that she knew very little—and her father was Epimetheus, the afterthought. He would not know how to predict the future when he was so consumed by the past. Neither of them were adept at deciphering prophecy.
How could Isme die here, even if they had been correct in their fears? The old woman may have been strong for her age, but Isme could feel the wiry muscles under her own skin. Without the guards she was not in any danger. Physically, at least.
Feeling some boldness strike up within her like a flame that caught coconut strands, or perhaps that was merely contempt for her own curiosity and the mysterious airs that the woman in this temple put on—Isme said, “Why did you bring me here?”
“Direct, I see,” said the old woman. There was something approving in her voice, but so slight that Isme did not dare trust her own evaluation of this. “When seeking knowledge, as Lord Apollon teaches us, it is best to lay out directly and in clear language what the goal is or could be. Reason operates within defined limits.”
As Isme processed this, the old woman turned from the snake to evaluate her. Isme felt as though this inspection was important, but she was unsure whether she wanted to pass—or not.
At last, the old woman said, “Now is where you choose. Do you want to go on trusting that you know everything—or do you want to know for sure? Either way leads to a road that you cannot go back from. You can go across the sea to find a shrine where another dead thing will speak to you. Or you can go straight to the source of all shrines here, at Delphi, and have every question answered.”
Isme weighted options, found she could not stop staring at the eyes of the Python, but in the back of her mind was the knowledge that she, too, was being watched. Except her watcher was invisible.
What had the voice from the woods said, earlier? That if she sought her father, she would start an unbreakable chain of events. And she realized: no matter what that was true.
Yet rearing up with in her was a hunger—not for food or drink but coming instead from a place deeper than her stomach.
She often felt this way when her father told her stories, and it caused her to pepper him with questions, why did Hercules do this? Why does Hera treat Io this way? Why did not Daedalus make the wings with string instead of wax and so save his son Icarus? Why did Prometheus steal fire for men—even though, as god of foresight, he had to know what was going to happen to him?
Her father had not been able to answer that one.
But often, he could answer many of the others. And the curious effect of this hunger was that it could not be satisfied: in fact, feeding it just a little would result in Isme’s hunger growing further. If she let it, the hunger would trail behind her all day and she would only cease to think about it when sleep interrupted her.
Rather like the voice from the woods, thought Isme, and wondered whether it was listening, but only a little. She knew that it was keeping its word and following her everywhere.
Resisting the hunger felt foolish, because she was inside Delphi—which seemed willing to answer all sorts of questions. Isme refocused her eyes outside of herself and back on the old woman, and found those pale eyes gazing back at her, contemplative.
Isme said, “How do I ask my questions and get my answers?”
This seemed the question that the old woman had waited for. Isme saw those pale eyes lower, a tilt of the head indicating the floor beneath Isme’s feet, which could not be seen and only felt because of all of the fog roiling over her ankles. The knowledge was right there, at her own feet, and here she was asking for instruction.
Isme hesitated, waiting to see if she would be given some sort of rules, but the woman did not seem interested in explaining. Perhaps she knew well enough that Isme understood her answer and speaking would only delay the inevitable.
Crouching from where she stood, Isme felt lightheaded as she approached level with the ground. Just at the rim of the mist, where the first drafts of it became visible, she hesitated. She might be doing something she would regret later. Isme had many things now that she regretted and recognized the little warning in the back of her mind whenever she was about to do another regretful thing.
This is the mist of the dead, she thought. It comes up from the underworld—this Python brings it—and I as a living person do not understand. But the priestess of Apollon comes here with this corpse to read these mists, and returns to the surface with words everyone has trouble understanding. What does this mist do to her?
What could it do to me?
Perhaps breathing in this mist will be the end of me. It is mist of death after all—
And a new thought: but the world is ending, and I will live to find out the reason why, and then die. Perhaps this is what the old woman in the cave of the God Under the Mountain meant: perhaps this mist is everywhere at all temples of prophecy, even with the head of my birth-father Orpheus. He must be dead and emitting this mist...
Can fear turn me away from learning all of the answers to so many questions?
She must have hovered there, mind turning circles for too long, because the voice of the old woman broke through her thoughts.
“Do not be so hesitant, Isme daughter of Orpheus.” And, seeing that Isme had raised her eyes, the old woman made a faint smile. “The mist will reveal things that you do not know, as much about yourself as anything else. Only knowing who you truly are will allow you to discover the truth of everything else.”
The words on the column rose before Isme: KNOW THYSELF.
But I do know myself, she thought. Maybe not as much as I could, the little details, but the deepest part of who I am is true: I am Isme, daughter of Epimetheus, and I live on my island waiting for the end of the world. Nothing can ever change that.
Even in her dreams, sleep as deep as it could go, Isme had done nothing but dream of her island. Sometimes she wondered why she did not dream of the stories that her father told and she so loved—instead, she dreamed of him telling her the stories on the island.
And sometimes she dreamed of looking out across the ocean, which rippled with vapors that came up onto the land—and she felt as though the island was the center of the earth. Even in sleep she was indeed Isme, daughter of Epimetheus.
Thinking this filled her with relief. She directed her attention back to the mist, observed the swirling patterns, ripples eddying around her ankles like her feet were stones thrown into smooth water. The vapor was like the waves of the sea. If knowledge had a physical form, Isme thought, of course it would be the sea.
The sea is dangerous, she thought, but beautiful. And has my friends, the turtles.
She ducked her head down into the mist and breathed deep—
FIFTEEN.
~
She was underwater, pulled along by current, lungs full to bursting and ballooning her up, up, up—until she breached the surface—
&nb
sp; Gasping, Isme swirled about, trying to find where she was. She had been in a cave—was still in a cave—had been with a snake and an old woman—neither of them here—and had been breathing mist—but now there was only water—
A low glow of light below her feet, oddly blue-green like the waters of the sea reflecting noon sunlight, and yet there was no sun above her, just the arch of the cave dotted with stalactite spears. Like the water itself was a source of light and life.
And suddenly Isme knew where she was: the well of songs in her own soul.
Wonder swirled through her, how something she had only ever seen in her mind’s eye could now be surrounding her, embracing her, and yet she was here. This all seemed so simple and real.
The water was warm, clean like no water Isme had ever before swum in, free of grime and the small bugs or bits of kelp that floated everywhere. Yet buoyant as she was, she knew that she would tire eventually, and began to scan for the walls of the cavern, hoping to find some ledge or shore she could climb onto. The upside-down bowl shape of the cave showed no entrances or exits. Glancing down, she found that there was no end to the depths under her.
When she swam forward, hoping to reach one of the walls for a closer inspection and maybe a ledge, she found that no matter how far she paddled, the cavern walls seemed no closer. Perhaps she was in a bigger cave than she thought.
All of this is inside me, Isme thought. How big the gap between her body and soul was...
It was as if the well of songs was as large as the whole world.
Only when her limbs began to truly tire, and she began to wonder whether it was possible to drown in the depths of her own well of songs—did Isme hear the voice. Invisible as it was, at first she thought it was that of the voice from the woods, and found herself somehow unsurprised that it could follow her even to here—
“My daughter,” said the voice, “Lift up your hand and I will bring you to me.”
Thinking on these words, Isme realized that the voice was not the same as the one from the woods, despite invisibility. She could think of nothing else but to reach—
Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) Page 18
