Sheep, white like the pale undersides of leaves scattered in all directions, shrieking and crying like children in confusion. Dance, she howls at them, Dance, dance or die, but they respond back with nothing but animal noises that clearly mean: No!
Snarling she charges, slicing through air like a mother seal in water, and like a shoal of fish the sheep pelt, merge and separate and flow and flicker. Beside herself with rage and the joy of hate she calls to her sisters—they call back—and pursue—one by one snatching a prize that made a dodge too short or ran too slow—
A sheep made a stupid mistake—it turned and bayed at her, wet red throat trying to give human speech, but then she was upon the animal without hesitation—
Biting kicking pulling rending, flesh like clay between her fingers, raked about like a bundle of fallen leaves, the animal bleeds sweet wine and she howls in delight at the flavor—
If only she could have kept on forever, she would have—endlessly tearing away in this paradise of rage and glee—but then there was something in the east, some blend of light against the horizon, and she could feel her mind tumbling down into sleep—enraged, she dug harder and bit fiercer, but there was no escape from the long tunnel beneath her.
Before darkness enclosed her, Isme’s mind played one last trick: she thought that the sheep she was astride had a human face staring up at her. Memories merged—the sheep, the creatures that peeked into her fever tent, and then one more: the face of Lycander, saying that he still had not found her father, but had not given up searching.
EIGHTEEN.
~
Isme came back to herself slowly, at first thinking she was on the island, holding a new blanket in her arms. It was warm and still wet from the curing process. She huddled over it like a mother bird on a nest, enjoying the warmth while that lasted.
Awareness trickled over her how the bundle remained warm, and was hard in the middle, as though wrapped around a stone. She felt the fur on the outside, yet underneath was smooth softness like skin. Turning the bundle around, she found herself sitting on the ground with the head of someone she knew in her lap.
A scream rose and even without being voiced must have reached to the high Olympian heavens. Her first impulse was to throw the thing away, contaminant that it was, but somehow she clutched the head tighter, unwilling to let it touch the ground. The head was not a contaminating evil thing—it was holy. She was the problem.
Where had this come from? Looking about her gave no answer. Isme was sitting beside a rock outcropping below the city that lay under Delphi. There were no bodies around—living or headless—although she herself was nude and spattered with gore. The memories from the previous night thudded over her like rain.
And so Isme sat and cradled the head like a small child, rocking. She recalled—the turtle in her dream, which had its insides scooped out for strings, or the men on the beach and how their dead eyes had watched her haul their bodies and dig and bury for them, or the far-off dream-memory of her blood father, Orpheus, singing a dirge of love and fate to the sea.
“I’m sorry,” Isme said, but did not know which of them she was speaking to.
At length it occurred to her that she was sitting naked in a field with a decapitated head, and surely the town below Delphi would wake soon and tabulate the damage of the night. The stories her father told never explained what happened to maenads who came back to their senses—was this murder?
Yes, Isme thought, it was, though if people treated it as such she did not know.
At last she rose, wincing at overworked muscles, scratched and sore. Still cradling the head, she began to walk down the mountain, uncertain of her destination, but vaguely remembering there was a stream further into the woods. The dead had to be washed before burial—this much she knew.
She had done this before.
Further on, strewn along were the remains of the other women, nude and splayed and spattered, with blood and mud and who knew what, still lost in their own heads. Some were awake, at least a little. Isme passed an older woman who was humming to the sky.
There was a huddle of women around where the first trespasser had been brought down, and Isme startled—for although there was clearly a human hand, wrist chewed through, lying just outside the pile, so too was there a pair of antlers bloodied and battered, rungs broken. Isme passed them, and they were still as though all dead.
The sound of running water came, faint, among the trees. Isme threaded through the forest, seeking. This was as close as she could find to the ocean—and when she stumbled upon the river, something like a turtle—a land-turtle, she guessed, with claws—lurched from the bank into the water. Isme wanted to call to it...
But she had a feeling it would not answer. It was not her turtle.
Wading into the stream, Isme watched the silt from the creek bed and the flecked blood on her shins merge and melt away. The water was cold. Without hesitation she sank down, holding the head out of the water as her skin pebbled and began to quake from the temperature. Some time passed before her shaking stopped.
The only part of her that was not numb was her fingers, knotted in the still-warm head’s hair. Isme turned the face so that it could see hers. She said, “I want to bathe you, if that’s all right,” and the head did not answer, nor did she expect it to.
Dipping the thing into the stream, then under the surface, she rubbed at the scalp, the cheeks, smoothed the skin. It was steaming when she lifted it from the water.
Now what do I do? She asked it, turning the face back and forth to ensure she had gotten all the filth out. Do I burn you? Dig a hole with my bare hands? There is no Poseidon here who will reclaim you if I don’t do a good enough job. I think you probably belong to Dionysos. But I don’t know how to give you to him and I’m not sure if I would.
After all, she had done the killing, but Isme also felt that Dionysos shared blame.
Or perhaps she merely hoped so, to partly absolve herself. Dionysos was a god, after all. It was like blaming a force of nature—what good would that do? Should wine take the blame, and no woman ever drink away her sorrows ever again? The good was with the bad.
There was, of course, no answer from the head. It was clean now and looked peaceful, eyes shut and the lids paler than they should had been, like it was asleep and dreaming. Perhaps that was what death felt like—in the fields of Asphodel.
“I can’t wail for you,” Isme told it. “I still don’t know how. But I can do the next best thing—and—” she bit her lip, looking at the river, measuring. Would it reach the ocean? Did not all water eventually reach the sea? And Isme said, “This was good enough for my blood father, and so I hope it will be good enough for you.”
Lifting the head, she pressed lips against the brow, feeling the warmth, and then laid it into the current, fingers loosening, and sang as it was carried away:
I am not Orpheus
No songs to raise the dead
But what honor he has
I pass on to you
May you flow to the sea
And there the turtles
Will guide you below
May this song be the payment
That brings you over the river
Where you are going
I will follow soon
Oh, Lycander, Lycander
This is all I can do
I am sorry
When she had finished, feeling the waters of the well of songs within her gone smooth like glass, she could still see the head bobbing in the water. As it went around a bend, she called, “You will not have to see the end of the world!” And left off speaking the thought that trailed behind: Because your world has already ended...
She remained in the stream for some time, how long she did not know. The light through the trees became brighter. But there was no stirring in the woods. And in her own skin she felt prickling heat, as though the water was now warm.
Isme sat in the flow and wondered what she should do. Her father was missing and had
not returned after half a moon of waiting. She had no allies left, since Lycander being gone would arouse suspicions, and besides she should confess. Who knew what would happen to her, then—but surely Kleto would hate her...
Maybe when you kill someone, Isme thought, you are more likely to kill again. I am dangerous, that much is certain—and so I should avoid them for their own sake.
“You know,” said a voice she knew, located somewhere invisibly parallel on the creek bank, “that water is cold and you’re probably going to die if you stay much longer.”
“Good,” said Isme, speaking without thinking.
“It’s your choice, of course,” said the voice in the woods. “But fate has a way of flogging someone when he tries to avoid it. Remember what happened to Oedipus.”
“If Oedipus had just died after he heard his fate,” said Isme, “then none of that tragedy would have happened.”
She did not quite know why she was saying this, because she knew the voice in the woods was right—surely if Oedipus had tried to kill himself, then some other twist of nature would have occurred and he would have ended up in his fate all the same. Indeed, perhaps things could have been worse—if there was anything she had learned from life, from conversing with Apollon, from the revelry with Dionysos, then it was this: things can always become worse.
Perhaps she wanted to argue. To hear herself speak into a void.
“You are fated to understand the end of the world,” said the voice, once again stating fact as if that was all it needed to do, to remind her. “Dying now will not let you do that, so it is impossible for you to die.”
“But I already know the why,” said Isme. “This world is terrible so it died, the end.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the voice, and now it was chiding. “Do you think you’re the first person to regret something? Did you learn nothing from either of your fathers?”
Heaving breath through her, Isme slumped further into the water, all the way over her shoulders. Both her fathers? Yes, they had made terrible mistakes. Epimetheus was responsible for the end of the world of bronze, because he had accepted the gift of Pandora and her damnable urn. And Orpheus—he had sung men back to life, but could not stop himself from turning to look at his bride Eurydice as he led her to the surface. Effectively, he had killed her a second time...
And now he’s a disembodied head, Isme thought, her eyes trailing to the river bend where Lycander had disappeared. Maybe he would indeed make it to the sea. And if so, maybe he would go all the way across to the other side, to Lesbos, where—
Where Orpheus’s shrine is, the thought finished. Isme frowned. Yes, the shrine—the place where her father had wanted to go, rather than Delphi. The place where the God Under the Mountain had said she might learn how to absolve herself of blood guilt.
I need that, she thought, now more than ever. To no longer carry this burden. If I am going to die, then I want to avoid the punishment for murder. Tartarus is real...
And the end of the world is coming.
Another deep breath, and she looked down at her face in the water, how her visage had blue lips. Under the surface, her fingernails had gone grey. When she tried to rise, her joints were not working. She attempted several times, then sank back exhausted.
Isme said, “Well, voice, it looks like you are wrong—and I can die here anyway—unless you or someone you fetch comes to help—”
There was no response from the woods. Isme had long enough to wonder if the thing was playing some kind of game, when the padding of feet came to her numbing ears. Emerging from the brush was Kleto, garbed below the waist, carrying another woven cloth. She shouted: “What are you doing, you idiot? Get out of the water!”
“Can’t,” said Isme, voice feeble, yet Kleto must have heard, because she hiked up the edges of her garment and came splashing to seize Isme and drag her to the bank, shivering the whole way.
Flinging the other cloth over them, they both sat trembling, pressed together, until Isme felt the pain in her toes that signified they had not, indeed, frozen and fallen off.
“Madness,” said Kleto, teeth chattering a bit. “I saw you walk into the woods carrying something, but lost track of you. Then I find you sitting in what should be ice. Plenty of intelligence in that heart of yours, clearly.” Isme only nodded.
When she was done with these insults, Kleto continued, “They’re saying one of the men from the town came down to have a peek at the naked women in the ritual. Idiot caused a riot. Maybe four or five people are dead, plus plenty of animals. Everyone’s upset but those would have been sacrificed to Dionysos today anyway.”
“Do they know who died?” Isme whispered, daring to ask.
“No,” said Kleto, her eyes lowered. Something in her expression was muted. Then she added, “Pelagia is one of them, though.”
Isme had begun to shiver as her body warmed, involuntary, but otherwise would have gone still. Her lungs paused and when she breathed again, gave a great wheeze. She asked, “How do you know?”
“There was a cliff,” said Kleto. Her arms tightened around Isme. “I saw it in the dark, but she didn’t. I don’t think she would have changed course even if she did. She ran right over the edge and fell screaming—but with joy. Like she was flying.”
Isme imagined the image, but in her mind Kleto was wrong—in her mind, in the dark, Pelagia did not fall and instead was rising, up and up, running through air—
“Don’t mourn for her,” said Kleto, fierce, but seemed more than necessary, Isme thought, as though speaking to herself as well. “Pelagia... she had a hard life. I get bad men because I am beautiful: these eyes, my body round like a statue, my hair. But that beauty protects me. Eutropios won’t let anything too bad happen to me. But Pelagia is ordinary. She’s good at the lyre but so are lots of girls. In a few years she’d be sold off as a pornai and that would be her end, because nobody cares what happens to them.”
Isme’s thoughts tumbled like stones down a hillside. Nothing solid.
Kleto shifted in her seat. “Her name wasn’t even Pelagia, did you know? That’s a place name. Some kind of old word for the sea—pelagos. She was from near there, captured or sold, I don’t know. I never got her to tell me her real name. Maybe she didn’t have one.”
“No,” interrupted Isme, finding her voice. “She had a name. We all do.”
Beneath her Kleto stirred, as though surprised. “I suppose so.”
They sat in silence for some time. Isme realized they were both warmed, but neither moving, reluctant to break the embrace. She thought about saying something, perhaps telling Kleto that this was the most she had ever heard her talk, or perhaps confess that she had killed Lycander, simply for honesty’s sake, but when her mouth opened what came out was:
“This world is ending.”
Kleto’s eyelids flickered, remained closed. She said, “I know.”
“You do?” Isme said, surprising words ringing in her ears.
“You talked in fever,” said Kleto. “Mostly nonsense. Lycander thought you were going mad. But Pelagia thought you were recovering from being priestess at Delphi.”
“What else did I say?” said Isme, heart trembling like the wings of a bird.
“About missing your father. How the world was going to end. Being the daughter of Orpheus,” said Kleto. She sighed, shifted. “Mostly something about an island. You kept describing this dream where you were standing on a beach and fog from the sea was rolling in and over the island, and in the fog you saw lots of things.”
“Like what?” said Isme, recalling the dream, which she had many times through her life. She had never dreamed of anywhere but the island. Even when her father told her stories of the mainland, stories of heroes and monsters, she had not dreamed them; instead, she dreamed of her father retelling the stories by the fire.
“Turtles, mostly,” said Kleto, and her lids cracked, the gold peeking through. “You said they swam around the island in the fog and sang like they were people.
”
Isme shivered, though was no longer cold. “But dead people.”
“Yes,” said Kleto. “You kept mentioning something like that.”
And Isme thought back to the old woman at Delphi: All knowledge comes from the underworld, all understanding cycles up from the depths... And pieces of comprehension began to connect together, the long endless body of the Python billowing smoke to bring knowledge, the prophetess of the God Under the Mountain lying in a cavern behind human bones, and across the sea, the head of Orpheus...
Which was dead. A dead thing knew what prophecies to say...
Swallowing without spittle, bracing herself, Isme pulled from Kleto’s grip and shifted away, just enough that their breathing no longer fell into rhythm as though they were the same being. She said, “I have to go. There is somewhere I must be.”
Kleto’s eyes opened fully. She said, “Good. Now that you’re recovered, Eutropios will probably try to keep or sell you. We spent a lot of time and money on you and your father never came to repay us. Pelagia being dead will make him more determined for money.”
“I must,” said Isme. “Over the sea to Lesbos, to Orpheus’s shrine.”
“That is a long journey,” said Kleto. Her eyes had been soft, but now they hardened, and Isme felt reassured, as though Kleto was proving once again that she too was made of stone, just like the other men of iron. She watched Kleto pull herself to her feet, brushing dirt off the cloth around her waist. “Let us begin now, then.”
“Us?” said Isme, seizing on the single word. She rose to her feet as well, feeling her joints protest in exhaustion and cold. “You cannot come—you belong here.”
“I suppose you will make it all by yourself?” said Kleto, flinging her hair back, uncaring that she bared her breasts. “Navigate to the next seaside town, find a ship that won’t sell you at the nearest port, reach Lesbos, get to a shrine and arrange a day to meet your father, all without being kidnapped, raped, and killed?”
Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) Page 23
