Isme closed her eyes, tried not to let her head dip forward. Within her there was great strains pulling in opposite directions—in her mind’s eye she saw the disembodied head with its mouth moving, found herself not wanting to hear such terrible music, and under that was longing to hear such music that was against nature...
“And finally,” Apollon whispered, gently, “love is what destroyed Prometheus.”
Isme’s eyes flew open. She barely caught a glimpse of Apollon’s face, the look unreadable. He said, “Prometheus, god of foresight, saw his own fate if he disobeyed the orders of Zeus. But why then did he steal fire? For the sake of men, whom he loved.” And Apollon crouched, “Even now, he holds within him the power to remove fire from the hands of men, freeing himself. If he merely had the thought, then man would be unable to bring fire forth. So what keeps him chained on the mountain? Love.”
This seemed so terrible that Isme put her hands over her ears, smearing them to her eyes, half-ready to claw her own organs out. With her grip on the rock gone, she began to slide down the tunnel again, but slowly, feeling her skin upbraided by stone.
She did not look at him, waited for him to respond or to press harder and make her truly crumble, but neither happened. At last, in a small voice, she whispered, “Why are you trying to drive me to despair?”
“I am not,” said Apollon. Isme flinched, did not open her eyes.
“When you think you are important and that your life matters,” continued Apollon, “The thought that your life does not matter, that nothing matters, sounds like giving in to despair. But the truth is the opposite. If you truly accept your lack of purpose, and the world’s meaninglessness, then there is no reason to despair because there is nothing to despair for. It’s like wailing over the fate of something that never existed.”
But I do exist, Isme wanted to say—her throat was not working.
“Despair—happiness—these are things that small minds think and feel,” said Apollon. “But within us there is two minds: a mind that feels and a mind that observes the first mind feeling. The first mind comes from the body. The second comes from the soul. And now that you are Apollonis again, your second mind will grow stronger and you will no longer be ruled by the whims of the first.”
That did not sound so bad. This thought came to Isme at the heels of his statement, and was followed quickly by the idea that if she merely observed emotions instead of feeling them, then she would no longer feel sadness like this, and underneath that was the longing: to never feel guilt about those sailors ever again.
Even as she thought this, a worry rose: what about her father?
If she accepted this transformation—and the feeling of her back, being scraped raw even through the animal hide of her clothes as she was dragged down, showed that she was falling up further—Isme could not imagine ever having anyone but her father at the center of her life. Even if what Apollon said was true, and she had not been exposed as an infant nor saved by her grandmother Kalliope, and Epimetheus had stolen her—
He was good to me all my life, Isme thought. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to reach for the well of souls within her and ask: Goddess Kalliope, what should I do?
But there was no answer. And she remembered. There was no well of souls within her because she was already in the well of souls. Tilting her head up she repeated the prayer, hoping that directing her words towards the water would work—
The sound was so slight that at first she thought it came from imagination, but it came again and again and she realized it was not quiet, just far away. The sound of her name coming from her father’s voice repeatedly, as though he was frantic.
Isme, her father called. Isme, you are so far above I can hardly see you. I was looking for you everywhere down on earth but now I see you are far beyond that into the realm of the gods—I’ve been calling and calling but you aren’t listening!
I hear you now, Isme responded. Father—Apollon is here, he gave me something to drink and says I will become priestess of Delphi. I don’t know what to do.
Were you an ordinary mortal you would have no choice, said Epimetheus. But you have within you many gods—not just Apollon from Orpheus but also from your mother the maenad and myself and your grandmother, Kalliope. Listen to another of them if you don’t like the one who is currently trying to control your fate.
I would prefer to listen to you, Isme said. But even as she thought this she was already reaching up—or down—back towards the well of souls, calling out for her grandmother. She lifted her hands above her head and caught another ridge without any trouble, the shape of her now weighed nothing. Opening her eyes she saw Apollon was frowning, first at her and then in the abstract, and she knew that somehow the god had noticed she was talking with someone else.
“I will not tolerate interference,” said Apollon. He flexed his wrist, which extended outward from itself into a golden bow that he now gripped. And Isme remembered: Apollon was not just lord of reason, sunshine, and song—but also of poison.
Yet he held no arrow.
She had only a moment. That was enough—Isme felt the understanding of what she should do well up within her, like her own question to Kalliope had already made it down to the well and echoed back to herself. The muscles in her arms bunched and heaved as she pulled herself into a crouch, placing her feet against the walls of the tunnel, and she leapt—
The walls of the cave swirled around her and she fell down again—like a thrown stone—like a bird diving—face-first down toward the well of songs at the center of her being. The world had inverted back to down being down and up being up—
She passed her father, how, she did not know—but all at once her feet were slapping against rock as she fled—and he ran by her, big burly arms raised to strike. She knew then that she was being pursued—that Apollon—whose sister Artemis was the huntress and who had killed the Python—was not yet willing to give up his quarry—
Then she was stepping on sharp things—the cave floor no longer powdery but filled with little stones in the edges of bone, animals in pieces—femurs, teeth, ribs lined in rows, the arrows of spines—and there was the skull of what had to be a human child, so familiar but Isme’s mind did not quite catch the significance—
Light at the end of the tunnel. Her breath dry at the back of her throat. Isme emerged blinking into the sunlight and found that she was at the top of Mount Parnassus, coming from the cave mouth she had visited the previous night to hear the prophecy from the God Under the Mountain.
Below her was Delphi, glistening in the evening sun, an assembly of upright bones. Isme could not think to question how she had ended up here, of all places, but she knew that she was no longer trapped in her own well of songs, and had succeeded in what so few had ever done—escaped Apollon, son of Zeus. She tried not to think of all the women who had done the same before, and how badly each of them had fared after... turned into trees, cursed with prophetic foresight that nobody would believe...
Behind her, the sound of footsteps. Familiar.
A small thrill of exhilaration still trembling in her limbs, Isme turned to look back into the cave, expecting her father to follow her out; surely he was not so foolish to do much but merely distract one of the twelve Olympians. They had both escaped—
But nobody behind her. A moment’s pause, and understanding: of course there was audible footsteps belonging to invisible feet coming from behind. Of course.
And Isme realized, then, that what Apollon had said was true: love was the god-killer, and her father Epimetheus was going to die of his love for her.
SIXTEEN.
~
All night Isme sat outside the cave. Waiting to see what would emerge from the mouth of the God Under the Mountain. Perhaps Apollon would, perhaps the old woman—whether the one prophetess or the other, or perhaps they were the same—or the Python’s shade, demanding that Isme return to the mist.
She was waiting for her father.
Time moved on,
though she did not feel as though time meant much of anything. The moon emerged at the east just ahead of the rays of the sun—and Isme sat thinking of the beach, but not of the nights of the turtles or with the sailors, instead about all the other moments. She recalled good days of rain and sun—and of her mind’s eye she dove into the water, swam out far, and turned back to look at the shore. Her father was a small dot standing on the sand, one stick arm waving out to her.
I do not know if he is dead are not, she argued with herself. The conviction that Epimetheus was gone was as strong as ever, but she had taken to rejecting it. After all, Epimetheus was a Titan—a primordial god. He should be an immortal thing.
But this was Apollon. One of the twelve Olympians. Perhaps second only to Zeus.
At last the circling of her thoughts, turning in upon themselves to attack different pieces of her mind—all seemed unbearable. Rising to her feet, Isme felt herself sway even though there was no breeze. She had to do something.
Turning back to the cave, she approached like it was a wild animal. The dark mouth opened wide as she moved closer. She paused before the entrance and tried to think about what reentering might mean. Perhaps her father was even now walking towards the exit, towards her, and would be furious if he met her inside. He had just risked his life. Or perhaps he was hurt and needed help.
She tried not to think about the third option.
The dark innards of the cave loomed before her. She could feel the difference in the soil beneath her feet, the ground outside warmed by the sun and the floor of the cave cool. The mist from the dead Python had been so cold. Was that what death was like? One day she would find out. Perhaps if she went in now—
She had a choice to make, but Isme found herself suddenly angry, not so much at Apollon or her father, but merely at choice itself. Why must living be so difficult? Stories always featured people who either knew what to do or would soon receive revelation. Why was her own story so hard to navigate?
Perhaps she would have gone into the cave further, maybe even to ask this question—to her father, or Apollon, or the God Under the Mountain, or even herself—but then in the darkness she saw a shape—a moving shadow, creeping against a wall that already had no light and should have been completely dark—
Except this thing was darker than dark—it was not human. Nor was it the voice from the woods—which was invisible... and Isme heard an indrawn breath that was not her own.
Isme did not pause to question what it was. She was already running down the side of the mountain, the scabs on her feet reopening—leaving a bloodied trail—perhaps one that her father would follow.
~
How she managed to run so far without falling and beating herself to death on the stone cliffside, Isme later wondered. At last she stopped only at the outskirts of Delphi, where a small grove of twisted wild olives provided her nominal cover.
If she was worried about Apollon being inside the cave, she knew she should be doubly worried about his presence at the temple of Delphi, where all those people had followed as she was dragged into the temple itself. Yet when she peered around the trees, the only people that were standing were the statues, silent and still.
“That can’t be,” she said, and only realized she was talking aloud to herself when the voice from the woods replied, startling her,
“What do you mean?”
And Isme said, “I was just here. All those people did not have time to leave and go back down the mountain before now. How is it the temple is empty?”
“It isn’t empty,” said the voice.
“I know that,” said Isme crossly, “But those are just statues. Not real people.”
“Are they?” said the voice, and rather than argue Isme fixed herself on the distant figures. Perhaps she had been mistaken and people from the city were there after all—
With her new attention Isme saw that the figures were indeed moving, like that of people standing at attention, shifting weight from foot to foot. Yet she began to notice that despite these familiar movements they were still not normal men. Some were too large, others too small. Odd proportions, like squat heads on over-wide shoulders and forearms long enough to drape the knuckles on the ground. But the statues were alive.
What are they? The question was nearly at her lips, contained within the space between her teeth and the walls of her mouth, but Isme swallowed it. She understood that she actually did not want to know the answer. Instead she asked, “How do I pass?”
“If you go to the left of the temple,” said the voice from the woods, answering, “you will miss them entirely. And you will meet someone who you know.”
Hesitating, Isme asked, “Someone who I want to meet?”
“That depends,” said the voice from the woods. “Who we want to meet, and when and where and how, depends entirely on our circumstances and choices.”
Unhelpful as ever, Isme thought, feeling her bleeding feet throb. Isme had good callused feet that would have been impervious to almost everything except the sharp bones in that cave. She did not look down, did not want to see her own wounds.
Someone she might want to meet—she thought of her father. And walked on.
~
She saw him at a distance, and first his shape divided her in two: for he was both familiar and not. As she approached cautiously, gazing at his back, it came to her that he should have been astride some kind of animal, and that was when she realized who he was—before she even truly realized that he was a man.
“Lycander!” Isme called, and the boy-man turned his face to her. She was within an easy stone’s toss and approaching as she said, “What are you doing here?”
“What am I—?” Lycander said, and something in his tone told Isme that while he was happy to see her he was also surprised—and somehow relieved. “I was here to see the temple one more time... we will leave in a few days after Dionysos has his due.”
She halted beside him, and as she spoke, she watched his eyes taking her in, from the new ragged rips in her hair down across her scraped and torn animal hides, all the way to her bloodied feet which were now swollen with abuse. By the time his eyes reached the ground he was frowning, and she wondered he if he was even listening as she said, “What do you mean—Dionysos? This is Delphi and Apollon’s time on earth.”
Lycander said, “Isme, the six days of Apollon are over. Delphi ended for the year.”
She waited for Lycander’s face to break back into a smile as he said, Did you like that? Am I not a great actor? Because what he was describing was impossible—and yet he seemed entirely sincere. She could not think of anything to say—how does one try to correct someone that only a short time had passed, not six days—and with everything in her head all she could think to do was stare.
Lycander’s face darkened—not even his acting could hide that from Isme. But he did not seem angry with her. He lifted a hand behind her back, but not touching her, just hovering, and with the other he gestured down the mountainside to the city below Delphi. “Come. When a woman is hurt, she should be with other women.”
~
One reason Isme was so reluctant to sit off her feet was because she knew the moment she let them rest, the pain from her wounds would arrive. But she could not keep walking on them forever, especially when she entered the women’s tent and found Pelagia and Kleto there, the both startling at her arrival.
Pelagia said, “Isme—you’re back—you’re all right—your feet!”
And then Isme was leapt upon and practically wrestled to the ground so that the other woman could take a look. Without a word Kleto, who was on her knees, huddled closer and inspected the other foot while Pelagia took one and complained.
“I don’t see how you could be walking on these—you wild women must be some kind of animal without pain—I’ve got to get some wine and bandage these up—” Like a hungry fox leaping, Pelagia hurtled upright and dashed out of the tent for supplies.
Alone now with Kleto, Isme waited for her
to say something. But Kleto’s golden eyes were still lowered and soundlessly she picked at one of the open gashes between Isme’s toes. What had been numb before seemed to have come alive. Isme flinched.
Kleto paused, though from caution or satisfaction at having caused the reaction, Isme did not know. Finally, Kleto spoke: “Did your song save you again?”
Isme could have said a lot of things—perhaps tried to obey her father and deny everything once again. But settled for honesty. “No. My father did.”
At that Kleto’s eyes, luminous, raised to Isme’s face and studied the expression there. She seemed without Isme speaking to interpret that there was more to the story than just Isme’s one statement. She said, lowly, “Then you fought back.”
And Isme saw her lip had healed. There was only the smallest fleck of blood in the corner of one of her eyes, like she had gotten struck across the face again and had re-healed to this point. Isme thought, Six days for the Temple at Delphi to open every year—and realized that Lycander had not been lying on the mountainside.
She said, “Choices were made for me and I had to unmake them.”
Kleto looked satisfied.
~
Apparently there was a three day pause as the ceremonies of Apollon at Delphi ended before the ceremonies of Dionysos in the valley began. Isme spent these days in the tent, her feet tended morning and night. The second day she woke feeling heat on her brow, creeping amongst her heels and toes and calluses, prickling. She asked that her feet should be washed with water but was told that was unclean. Instead they kept pouring wine, which smarted every time, and caused her scabs to crack.
“I can get olive oil instead,” Pelagia said when Isme complained.
Periodically Lycander would stick his head into the tent, looking strangely like some kind of upside-down creature, or at least Isme thought from her perspective lying prone with fever. Each time he was answered by Pelagia shrieking and Kleto’s cold warning, “Men who gaze into women’s tents are never satisfied in bed.”
Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) Page 20
