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

not stay the entire night. When the tide began to empty, they would be drawn along, as though the sea was a net and they were caught in its grasp. Isme would watch them until the little humps of their shells were indistinguishable from the waves. Then she would turn and trudge back to her father’s cave, between the mounds of men whose names she did not know but who had doubtless heard her song.

Yet, this night as she walked to the cave there was a strange noise behind her.

Isme would not have noticed it, except that she knew every sound on the island and this matched one of her own: footsteps. But odd footsteps, which echoed her own strides, as though someone was walking step by step along with her without being quite in sync. She and her father had done this sometimes as practice in hunting.

But her father was not here.

Pausing, Isme heard the echo-steps stop as well. She stood in the woods and considered. Must be imagining things. Even if there was a man in the woods, someone who had not died on the beach, or perhaps someone who she had thought dead and buried but had been wrong and he had dug himself out and come back—even then, such a person could not make these footsteps. People needed much practice and to know each other’s sort of walk.

When did I last sleep? Isme wondered. She felt as if time had been strange ever since she had seen all of the shadows on the beach. Circular. Like if she turned around and walked back, she would find them all there again, unburied, waiting for her.

Oh, she thought, Kalliope—If only time had stopped earlier. It could have halted with the turtles arriving at the first full moon and then none of this would have ever happened. Maybe that was what the end of the world was, the cessation of time.

I must sleep, thought Isme. I must. And she began to walk again.

The echoing footsteps started again as well. Isme wove her way through the trees and told herself this was just her tired brain mixing sounds in the empty night air.

She reached the top of the hills and was beginning the descent to her father’s cave when these echoing footsteps began to chafe her ears. But this time, when she stopped, the sounds did not halt immediately. They continued for a few extra steps.

If this is a trick of my mind, Isme thought, I’m being cruel to myself tonight.

Still, she could not resist calling out: “Who are you? Why are you following me?”

Obviously, Isme expected no answer. All her life, only she and her father had lived on this island; there were no neighbors. Her father had specifically chosen this place because of the isolation. She had never met anyone else—alive, that was.

Yet behind her in the woods came a voice: “You know why.”

Isme drew in breath. And—without thinking—without knowing she was lifting her own feet—she fled—faster than she had ever run—toward the watcher stones—

Trees blurred to long streaks of gray—she could not hear those feet echoing behind her—she only heard her own lungs, gasp, gasp—and under those breaths the thud of something in her torso that sounded like the beat of a drum, lower than her heart, as though her heart had fallen further down into her insides—

Isme reached where she knew the circle of the watcher stones was and an extra burst of speed sent her toppling over the line. Inside. Safe. Invisible—only people who knew the cave was there already could cross the line, unless invited—

But she was not thinking. She was on hands and knees scrambling toward the fire pit and the staves she had oiled and set out to dry earlier that morning.

Grabbing one of the walking sticks, hardly able to hold it for all her own trembling, and rolling over to her buttocks—Isme brandished the stick and threatened.

But there was nothing at the treeline, no figure standing and watching or hunting for her now that she was invisible. Only the trees, swaying in the breeze with sighs.

Isme felt the thudding in her stomach slowing. Not because she was no longer frightened, but only that it was simply not possible to maintain that level of strain. Instead, she sank into awareness, the alertness of a hunt, waiting to see if an animal would emerge where she had heard rustling in the bushes.

Sure enough, there came a sound from the woods. Footsteps. They were light, airy, as if whatever was walking was not much heavier than Isme herself.

Yet nothing emerged from amongst the branches. The noises, the footsteps, if that was what they were—they stopped just outside the line of the watcher stones.

The staff in her hands was heavy. Holding it ready made her limbs strain with effort. Isme’s chores had her in good shape, but she was still not completely recovered from lifting and dragging the men up off the beach, then to back down to the beach, digging pits for them, and putting soil overtop to blot them out from the sky.

Still, Isme did not lower the stick. She was not foolish enough to deny her senses. She had heard a voice in the woods and now something—even if she could not see what—was standing before the circle. A man or a nature spirit or even a god.

Isme waited for it to speak again, but there was only silence. At last, she said: “What are you? What are you doing here—” and she stuttered, “What do you want?”

Truthfully, the voice should not have been able to respond to her. Isme was inside the circle of the watcher stones. But, like it was standing mere feet away, the voice replied.

“I know what you’ve done. You should have obeyed your father—then none of this would have happened and those men would be alive and I would not be here.”

In a wild moment, without thinking, Isme denied everything: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.