She listened to the waves coming in for high tide around noon. She abandoned the leaf shade when clouds rolled in toward evening. She trod on an anthill and was stung, but only noticed the welts later when she collapsed for the night.
On the end of the third day she became aware that she was not, in fact, the only creature left alive in the whole world, when at sunset she spotted the flickering fires of civilization in the distance. And she realized one more thing:
Her throat was moving—she was humming to herself.
~
When Isme emerged into the town, a woman who saw her shrieked aloud, and a man came running, only to pause and stare when Isme approached. As Isme passed, the man called out asking what she wanted. All she said was, “Orpheus,” and the man pointed, flabbergasted, at the top of a hill.
There, in the morning light, Isme saw the bleached-white bone of a shrine.
Nodding thanks to save her voice, Isme walked on. She did not question how she was on Lesbos, or whether she was on the island the entire time with the bronze men, or how she had survived these last few days—especially how she had lived past Kleto. All she knew now was there were answers to be found and she was nearly arrived.
People startled when they spotted her, moved out of her way. She became aware of her appearance; hair cut short like a boy but clearly a young woman, breast exposed from the one shoulder of her chiton torn and gone. Her skin dark from the sun but still showing scrapes and bruises, crusted with mud, bare feet welted.
And above all Isme knew that the look in her eyes was that of someone who would tear open anyone who tried to so much as speak to her—and this, she supposed, was Kleto’s influence, her ghost pacing alongside her before entering the world below.
The trail to the shrine of Orpheus was long and steep, like Delphi, and Isme spared only a moment to contemplate how holy places were so often on mountains.
When she arrived, the courtyard had a small gathering of people, and there was a priest—dressed shining white, beard curled, speaking something that Isme did not care to hear. She was tired of intermediaries—she, who had seen the gods, had grown up under the care of a Titan, was going to speak to her father’s head directly.
The crowd dodged out of her way. The priest said something as she approached, but Isme merely stepped to his left and strode through the open doors into the gloom of the building. Then the man was shouting, following her, but somehow he knew well enough not to touch her. Compared to Delphi, this was a small building, and Isme reached the back soon enough.
Sitting on a pedestal was a head—and in the gloom Isme opened her mouth, ready to say, Hello, Father—but then her eyes adjusted. Dazed, she reached forward, and the touch of the head was not flesh, neither cold nor warm, but only that of stone.
Turning to the furious priest, Isme asked, “Where is Orpheus?”
“Right here, you foolish and insolent girl,” the priest snarled back, blustering in his overlarge robe, “And how dare you touch him, you wretched escaped slave—”
“No,” Isme interrupted, surprised at the strength of her voice. “This is a statue.”
“What did you expect?” the priest snorted, anger simmered down to annoyance, seemingly having concluded she was simple in the head. “All gods are statues.”
Isme thought of everything she now knew, and then without bothering another word turned and left the temple. There was nothing to be found here.
~
There was nowhere else to go. Her feet carried her down.
Again the villagers fled around her as Isme walked to the outskirts and down the hillside. She reached the sea as the sun was burning bronze in the western sky.
A few fishermen walked past, carrying a rickety old boat under their armpits, but they spared her only ominous glances as she sank to her knees in the sand. Soon enough she was alone with only the receding tide before her.
“Grandmother,” Isme whispered, “Your son is missing. What do I do now?”
A long silence to fill the void she found forming within her. The sea gurgled, beat against the shore, but hesitantly, drawing back further and further, drawn up and away by the pale light of the moon now peering over the horizon again.
She felt the song as it bubbled up, and tried to swallow it back down, afraid for what would happen to her voice, but the song would not be denied:
Let every night turn like this
Until the end of this world
And then let every night then
Turn also like this, once again.
The words were soft on the abused tissues of her throat, and she finished unharmed. Isme was grateful to Kalliope again. Then, as she watched the moon emerge and separate from the sea, something else came in the glimmer on the waves:
A little round shape, bobbling up from the receding surf.
Isme stared. The sea stared back.
Set into the roundness were two more round orbs, which glowed like coals, like softer versions of the fire that burned through Kleto’s eyes. The coals winked as the sea blinked. And Isme, recognizing her friend, held still, waiting to see more.
Behind the first sphere came others, bubbling up like dead men floating in water, and then they all advanced at once, as though they and the sea were all one creature.
Only when the first of them emerged from the spray and then began to struggle forward did Isme realize:
She was singing, but without words—just one long, high note—
But no, a second understanding followed the heels of the first, that song was not herself. The song came from something else—something out in the water...
Was it the turtles? She sat still until the first of them reached her knees, snuffing and tonguing her torn and abraded skin, stinging her with salt water. But the creature was silent, as always.
“Then what is it?” Isme whispered, bending slowly to ask the blinking turtle. “What is singing? Can you please tell me?”
The creature did nothing but breathe, but those furthest out, not yet beached, pulled back into the receding waves. Isme watched them vanish into the sea, and then reappear, but bobbling along with them was something smaller, round, and furry, wet hair splayed out in the ocean spray. The single note of song came louder as it emerged, and faltered only when the wave spat it onto the sand.
Then Isme was on her feet, running, heels and toes digging divots in sand, turtle heads extending and craning to watch her pass.
The note was so soft that Isme was surprised she could hear it, but once she had noticed the sound she could almost hear nothing else. Kneeling, knees smarting from the salt in the waves as they pushed back up around her, spray spattering her face, she reached out, cradled the thing, and turned it to face her.
Dark hair, contrast to Apollon—perhaps they shared Kalliope’s features. And as Isme gazed upon the head of Orpheus, she saw it bore a face much like her own—there was the same button-like nose, the cheekbones, the lips. If she had glanced into a pond and seen this face staring back at her then she would not have given it a second thought, it was so much like her own reflection.
Isme gazed for a long time in wonder.
Still the note emerged from between those cold lips, and being held did not seem to change the song. The eyelids were closed, as if sleeping and dreaming.
“Hello, Father,” Isme told it. “I am Isme, your child, come to ask your oracle.”
On the note carried, unbroken, her words were nothing.
Isme tried again, with different words. Nothing made any difference. She asked politely, she demanded, she pleaded. Still the note carried on. The eyes shut. And Isme began to consider the idea that perhaps there was no oracle from Orpheus’s head after all; perhaps this was just an idle tale told by mainlander men, who heard the song and then assumed more significance than it possessed.
But my father Epimetheus wanted to come here, Isme thought. So there must be something. I just don’t know how to ask him properly for a prophecy, perhaps.
The uncontainable note gave her an idea. Keeping her voice low, Isme sang,
Father, blood father, I come here
Seeking help and asking advice
I am Isme, adopted by Epimetheus
Fated to see the end of the world.
She hardly breathed when the eyes before her own opened, blue and sharp like the summer sky. The head worked its lips, as though untangling the tongue, then sang:
I have waited for you
These thirteen summers
Longing to speak to one
I unknowingly left behind.
And then a smile—just a small lift of the edges of those lips, hardly noticeable in the moonlight, but Isme did not believe she had imagined the gesture. She felt something like sobbing rise up in her, though she remained silent like the turtles that were now gathering around her, patting her skin with their lips and flippers.
She managed the next words clear enough:
Father Orpheus, king of song,
Why are you here in the sea,
Instead of within your temple
Speaking prophecies to men?
The head sang a response:
My child, there is no escape
From the desires of men,
They demand good songs
And deny all the bad ones.
When a prophet speaks true,
He is blamed for being honest.
When a prophet speaks lies,
He is rewarded as faithful—
But within him, his heart burns.
Some choose not to prophesy,
Others bear the shame and lie,
Still others speak in riddles.
But I, just as I lived, speak only
What I find within, and no more.
So I am cast from my shrine
And thrown here as trash,
In my place a stone head
That speaks of nothing,
Which men prefer to hear.
This is my warning, child—
Fear knowledge, always,
For fear begets respect.
Tell nothing to no man
Unless he truly deserves it.
Be always prepared to have
Your own words a snare
Used against you by friends
Who asked for your advice.
Men do not want the truth—
For if they did, they would
Need no prophet to speak,
Since truth is before them.
Even now, my answer to you
Is something you already knew.
For you also are a prophet,
My child born after death.
The last words of the song were like a blow, and Isme shuddered, the turtles shivering with her. Steadying herself, her mind tracked through all of her other questions she had wanted to ask, and she realized that while the head would be patient, would answer, she did indeed already know the answers well enough—
Is Epimetheus alive? No. Could the end of this world be averted? No. Did I do the right thing by rejecting both Apollon and Dionysos? And that answer gave her a spell of giddiness—for it was Yes.
But there were some questions, Isme realized, that she did not know the answer, and no matter how she searched she could not find inspiration. She sang,
Father, I know many things,
But not everything, not now—
And I beg answers to questions
I cannot stop asking each day.
Why will this world come to end,
And how soon will the end come?
What will the new world be like?
Will there be a revolt among gods,
Olympus fall and cease like Titans?
Swallowing, throat beginning to ache, she added the last and most important:
And can I absolve this blood guilt—
This terrible weight of death
I carry on my shoulders, a murderer
Who intended no wrong, although
Intent is not as important as result.
The head was silent for a moment, which Isme recognized as composing. She realized that it, too, contained a well of song—as she did. Finally it sang:
My child, this world will end soon and late,
As measured by who does the measuring.
First there will be wars, and death, and men
Will forget how to write, to read, but not to sing
Of great Troy, the walls coming down,
And the rage of Achilles son of Themis.
When wars end and farming begins again,
Then a poet will write the story for all time.
After that there will be a great conqueror,
Ranging to the far ends of the world,
Who will weep to see the place where
The sun rises, and realize all is now his.
Troy will rise again, under a new name,
Standards unfurled to war across the sea,
And conquest, on islands yet unnamed.
Great men vie for kingship, one succeeds.
Only then will this world end with one last death—
Darkness, and an earthquake, the signs—
The whole world will groan in torment,
And die in agony as well. Then dead men
Will dimly see a great light among them,
And what we call nature will be reversed—
The dead will be first, and birth to life come
After. For many will become the new men,
The men of the new race and new god
Who supplant the Olympians, forever—
Just as the Olympians undid the Titans.
And the war between these shall be terrible,
Such that if the earth were not dead,
It would have died a second time again.
Many will cross between the two sides,
Seeking forgiveness or revenge for wrongs
Committed and received, guilty and absolved.
But one side forgives, the other only words.
No long peace established, for like men,
Olympus will forever be reviving from death,
And striving to regain their thrones above,
All to no avail, except the struggle continue.
Thus shall the old dead world drift on,
Until it too follows the same as the men,
Moving from death to life: such is paradise,
The last of all worlds and the only one
Which will be better than what came before.
At last the head fell silent, and Isme could taste blood in her mouth, realized she had bitten her tongue to stop from screaming, to save what of her voice she had left. For as the song continued she had heard what she thought no man should ever hear—
Gaea, the great mother, be killed and lie dead?
Olympians, like the Titans, falling to their doom?
Endless war between the dead and living?
Men born dead and coming to life after?
Some kind of life after one died?
It all seemed impossible. Isme’s mind tried to track through the song, having already memorized the words, but she could not make it cohere. This could not be what she was seeking, she realized. She was supposed to understand why the world was ending—what was the cause, and how, and why? But this was no answer. Just a list of events before and after the coming end, not the ‘why’ of the how.
And yet the song seemed complete. If she asked again, Isme knew, she would only receive the same song repeated.
But she had one question still unanswered, although it had been asked. Her voice was low, words scraping the insides of her throat, becoming raw once more:
Father, your song is confusing,
But I will do my best to understand.
Yet I still must know—how to absolve
Myself, my blood guilt, in this new
World of death, and life somehow,
Can I ever succeed before the end?
And the head sang:
>
My child, the answer was there
In my song, and yet, unheard—
For you are not ready to listen.
Much more will you come to know
Over the years, many years,
Until you are ready to die—
For death is the price for knowledge.
So now you must go down below—
Seek audience of the queen of Hades
And from there find only the answer
That you for now are ready to hear.
Isme opened her mouth, but there was no song she could think of. This demand, to enter the kingdom of the dead, seemed impossible—and yet she knew from stories, there were men who did the deed, who went down and came back up. Herakles, who had gone twice, once for Cerberus and then for holy Alcestis...
And you as well, my blood father, Isme thought, tilting the head in her hands, watching the way its pupils moved in their sockets as she did, never breaking its gaze from her face. The head did not need to blink, because it was not a living thing.
If the dead came back to life, Isme wondered, would they look like you, my blood father? Have you already undergone this transformation?
Realizing she had no choice but to accept this journey, Isme nodded. There was that small smile again—the head was pleased.
Now, my daughter, shared with Epimetheus,
Your task is to bring the stories to the next world,
Raised with afterthought, you shall be the hinge
That swings the door shut on our world to the next.
Go below and learn your fate, your absolution,
But bring with you a single flower—and a song—
And the dreams of your home, your island,
Where the center of your being lies, a heart
For all your wanderings, a place of waiting.
And I bid you the best, my child beyond death—
Everyone Should Eat His Own Turtle (A Greek Myth Novel) Page 28
