Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons Page 11

  He grabbed on to her hand again, and she could feel both his eagerness and fear in the sweaty palm. Jostling their way through the mob, they climbed the temple steps till they stood right below the queen.

  “Mother!” Hippolyta cried again.

  Otrere didn’t look around. But this close it was clear that the queen too was affected, for she was praying wildly to the sky.

  “Mother,” Hippolyta choked out the single word, and then was struck dumb.

  At last Otrere turned and looked directly at Hippolyta. Her eyes were reddened, weary; her full lower lip quivered. “Weep, my daughter, weep for us all,” she said. “There is nothing left but sorrow now. They are all dead. All. All dead.”

  Pale and frightened, Tithonus stepped out from behind Hippolyta and went up the steps till he stood next to the queen. He reached out a tentative hand and lightly touched her disheveled hair. She didn’t seem to notice the touch or to recognize that there was a boy on the steps of the temple, so lost was she in misery.

  Hippolyta started to sink down onto the step when she felt a small hand tugging on her arm. “Hippolyta, Hippolyta, look at me,” cried Tithonus. He sounded very far away. “Remember that you’re a warrior.”

  Hippolyta drew a forearm across her eyes, wiping away the tears.

  “You saved me from the monster. Remember?”

  She took a deep breath to steady herself.

  “You took me from the well. Remember?”

  She stood on trembling legs.

  “You beat the old man at quarterstaffs. Remember?”

  She looked at him, though tears still trembled in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Tithonus, I do remember.”

  “Then get us out of here!”

  She looked at Tithonus and saw the expectation in his face. He was trying his best to be brave. She would have to try hers.

  “Yes,” she said. “There has to be something I can do.”

  “There is,” said a strange voice.

  Hippolyta turned quickly and saw old Demonassa standing in the portico of the temple. There was no trace of grief or distress in her face. Hippolyta was surprised she hadn’t recognized the old woman’s voice.

  “Who’s that?” whispered Tithonus.

  “The priestess of Artemis,” Hippolyta replied. “The one who helped me get your brother to Troy.” She was about to address Demonassa when the old woman raised a hand to silence her.

  “Always we return to the beginning,” the old woman said, gesturing about. “So many lessons must be learned over and over. What was then is now. The past repeats. Arimaspa comes to Themiscyra.” Her voice rose easily above the lamentations of the distraught women.

  Confused, Hippolyta shook her head. “What do you mean, Demonassa—the past repeats? And what has Arimaspa to do with what is happening here? Is this Artemis’ curse? I thought that the curse was supposed to mean death, but no one here has actually died.”

  The old woman turned away and pushed open the heavy door of the temple with one wrinkled hand. She waved Hippolyta to follow her into the dimly lit interior.

  Hippolyta started forward, and Tithonus was right beside her.

  Demonassa looked back and raised a finger in warning. “The boy stays outside.”

  Tithonus gasped. “Don’t leave me alone, Hippolyta,” he pleaded.

  “Wait here,” she said reassuringly. “I’ll come back for you very soon. I swear it. Nothing will happen to you here.”

  Tithonus sank down against the temple wall and pulled his knees up to his chin, as if he were trying to shrink out of sight.

  Then Hippolyta followed Demonassa inside, and the door slammed shut behind her. The wind from the closing door made the flames in the little oil lamps dance about. Strange and awful shadows like monstrous winged beings pranced around the room.

  Hippolyta began to shake, her hands and shoulders trembling.

  “You see what has happened to your sisters?” Demonassa said suddenly, her voice hard. “They brought their queen into my temple to put her on trial for her life. But Queen Otrere’s followers came after them, and for the first time Amazons drew their weapons against each other. In here. In my temple! And you, child, were the cause of it all.”

  The old priestess pointed an accusing finger at Hippolyta, and her voice echoed eerily off the temple walls.

  “I—I did only what my mother asked me to,” Hippolyta responded, “what you asked me to do. To bring the child to his father. How could that be the cause of this?” The excuse sounded weak in her own ears. Better to accept the responsibility for her own act than to put it upon someone else’s shoulders. She was about to say so when Demonassa stopped her with a wave of her hand.

  “Because you thought more of your mother than of me, valued her more than the welfare of the Amazon race, set her word above the laws of the gods, all that you see here in Themiscyra has happened,” Demonassa’s voice boomed out, and suddenly, as she spoke, she began to change, her features melting and running like candle wax in a hot flame.

  Astonished, Hippolyta watched as Demonassa grew younger—younger and taller. In seconds the aged priestess was gone, and in her place stood a young woman whose face shone with a savage beauty. A bearskin cloak covered one shoulder, and pelts and claws decorated her belt. Over her back was slung a bow; a long knife hung at her side. She stared hard at Hippolyta, and her eyes were like the half-moon, filled with darkness and light all at once.

  Hippolyta knew her and was afraid. “Artemis!” she gasped, and fell to her knees.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE GODDESS SPEAKS

  SHRUGGING HER SHOULDERS and flexing her sun-bronzed arms, Artemis frowned. “That old woman’s shape has left a stiffness in my limbs. Still, the disguise served its purpose. Of all the Amazons, only you know that I am here in your midst.”

  A tremor ran down Hippolyta’s back. It was well known that Artemis spoke to her followers through oracles. But to visit in the flesh …

  “You do me great honor, goddess,” Hippolyta stammered. “I am not worthy.”

  “No, you’re not,” the goddess agreed. “None of you are.”

  Hippolyta swallowed hard, not daring to look up.

  Artemis continued. “In times past the Amazons have been my greatest pride, my brave and unconquered warriors. Women of strength and dignity. But look at them now!”

  Startled, Hippolyta said, “But wasn’t it you who did this to them, Artemis?” Then she bit her lip. How could she be so stupid, to speak that way to a goddess?

  Artemis laughed, but there was no delight in the sound. “No, child, not my doing, but my brother, Apollo’s. He of the long memory. Years ago, some Amazons wronged him. I had to make a pact to keep him from destroying your entire race. I swore then that should you ever break my laws—and I did not believe such a thing possible—I would see that the Amazons lost all their warrior courage, becoming weak and grief-stricken as in days of old.”

  “But, goddess, then you admit you …” Hippolyta began.

  The goddess glared. “Admit? To a mortal? What is there to admit? You Amazons brought this punishment on yourselves. I expected more from Otrere and much, much more from you, Hippolyta.”

  Awed as she was by the goddess, Hippolyta instantly defended her mother. “My mother acted out of mercy,” she protested, “mercy for an innocent child.” Only after she had spoken did she wonder why the goddess had expected much more from her than from the queen.

  She risked a glance up and saw that Artemis was pacing the floor like a beast caught in a cage.

  “Mercy carries a heavy price for warriors. Don’t you see that?” the goddess said. “Even now Dares is paying heavily for trying to help you, betrayed by one of his own men. And Laomedon’s son will pay more still. Hippolyta, look at your own people. Do you see what they have become?”

  “I see it, but I don’t understand it,” Hippolyta said.

  Artemis took a deep breath and seemed to draw all the light of the lamps insi
de her. Her eyes and skin began to glow. “By breaking the ancient pact, the Amazons have become again what they once were: a helpless band of women. And so they shall remain until this curse is lifted.”

  “But I thought the curse was about death and this is—” Suddenly Hippolyta recalled Demonassa’s saying that the gods always spoke in riddles, never straight on. “This … curse. Am I the one fated to lift it?”

  “You can try,” Artemis said. “But you can do nothing here. The curse can only be lifted in the birthplace of the Amazons, in the lost city of Arimaspa. Find the city, and you find the temple where the first blood pact was made, where women became warriors and cast off the chains of passion and grief that had bound them for so many aeons.”

  “Is there any chance that I will succeed?”

  Artemis laughed again, a short bark of a laugh, without a bit of mirth. “A person’s fate is not written in stone by the gods. Only you can write it as you live it.”

  “Oh,” Hippolyta said, not sure whether she was relieved by what the goddess said.

  “Come to me.”

  Artemis’ tone of command was so sharp Hippolyta hurried to her side, and the goddess led her to the plain stone altar in the center of the temple.

  “Here you offer your tributes to me,” said Artemis. “Wine, corn, a kid, or a lamb. And here the second son of your mother should have been offered as well.”

  “I have brought another in his place,” Hippolyta said, wondering why saying it made her feel so awful. “His name is Tithonus. He’s also a son of Laomedon.”

  “He is not an acceptable sacrifice here,” the goddess said.

  Hippolyta let out a great breath, thinking: Now we are free of one another, brother. She was surprised at how relieved she felt.

  Artemis gestured down to the altar by her feet. “Do you know what was placed here when this temple was founded?”

  Hippolyta shook her head.

  The goddess bent down and lifted up the great stone as easily as if it were a mere pebble. Hippolyta caught her breath, and at the sound Artemis smiled. “The things of this earthly world are of no weight to an Olympian,” she said, setting the stone aside. “Now look.”

  Beneath the altar was a stone carving depicting a swordswoman battling a monstrous winged lion. The monster hovered in the air over the woman’s head, grinning with terrible teeth and raking her with sharp talons while she stabbed upward with her sword.

  “Do you recognize the beast?” Artemis asked.

  Hippolyta shook her head again.

  “It’s called a gryphon, one of the sacred monsters of Apollo.”

  “What has this gryphon to do with me?” Hippolyta asked.

  “Mortal memories are so short,” said Artemis scornfully. Sparks of light flashed like stars in the midnight of her hair. “And mortal minds so foolish.”

  Hippolyta suddenly remembered what her mother had told her about the gods. That sometimes the only way to get their attention was to make them angry.

  “Perhaps we mortals wouldn’t be so foolish if you didn’t hide so much from us,” she said.

  Artemis swung around and fixed her with an awful gaze. Hippolyta’s heart was pounding, but she stood firm. If Artemis decided to put an arrow through her heart, trying to run away wouldn’t do much good.

  Instead of a punishment, Artemis smiled. “You’re a true Amazon indeed,” she said. “The daughter of greatness. There may be hope yet for your people. But for that you must go to Arimaspa.”

  “I don’t know where Arimaspa is,” said Hippolyta.

  “No, I don’t expect you do.” The goddess chuckled and folded her arms. “Arimaspa lies to the north and east, beyond Colchis, at the foot of the Rhipaean Mountains.” As she spoke, Artemis stared at the far wall of the temple, as if she could see right through the stone all the way to those far-off peaks.

  “It could take me weeks to get there,” Hippolyta objected. “What will become of my people in that time? They can’t live like this. They haven’t the spirit even to feed themselves.”

  Artemis turned and looked down at Hippolyta. “I’ll sustain them, even in their grief. But only for as long as it takes you to make your journey.”

  “Thank you,” whispered Hippolyta, thinking there was something more she needed to ask and not knowing what it was.

  “Take the sacrifice with you,” the goddess said. “He will be needed in Arimaspa.”

  Hippolyta gasped, lowered her eyes for a moment, and when she raised them again, Artemis was gone.

  For the longest time Hippolyta could not move. Her mind was no longer full of the tidal wave of grief, but there was a different pain now, like a sharp thorn in her heart.

  But at last, as the little oil lamps flickered out one by one, she knew she couldn’t remain in the darkened temple. Pushing through the heavy door, she emerged, blinking, into the light of day.

  Tithonus was still slumped against the wall. He’d wrapped his arms around his head so that they covered his eyes and ears, blocking off the awful scenes of misery and madness around him. Sitting so still, he looked small and young and vulnerable.

  Hippolyta touched him gently on the shoulder, and he glanced up with moist eyes, pathetically glad to see her. “What have you been doing?” he asked. “What’s happened to that old woman?”

  “She’s gone. She was—” Hippolyta checked herself. It would do no good explaining that she’d just been talking to a goddess without sounding as if she’d lost her wits. Besides, she didn’t want to explain everything the goddess had told her. Certainly not about the sacrifice at Arimaspa.

  “We’re leaving the city, Tithonus,” she said. “Right now.”

  “Thank the gods!” he exclaimed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back out and that I’d have to stay here till I died.”

  Why does he have to talk of dying now? she thought. Her fingers clenched the handle of the ax.

  “I told you I’d come back for you,” Hippolyta retorted in a brittle voice. “You have to believe what I tell you.

  “I do,” he answered quickly. “I really do. Only when you’re afraid … it’s hard to remember promises.” He gulped.

  “Well, remember this: We’re both going to do something to save our mother.”

  “Mother!” He turned and looked over at Otrere, who was still standing on the top step, looking at the sky. “Can I tell her good-bye?”

  “Yes,” Hippolyta said. “That’s exactly what you should do. And then we’ll go.”

  Tithonus ran back and embraced the standing woman. She was so utterly absorbed in her nameless grief, she was completely unaware of his farewell.

  As they rode away from Themiscyra, the boy behind holding on around her waist, Hippolyta thought about sacrifice. Easier to do it before you know the person’s name, she thought. Before his face is burned into your heart.

  Then she remembered what Artemis had said. Mercy was a warrior’s undoing. If she opened her heart to mercy, it could mean the end of the Amazon race.

  “Where are we going?” Tithonus asked.

  “To the city where the Amazons began.”

  “But I should really go back to Troy,” Tithonus said. “I have to face Father sometime.”

  Hippolyta took a deep breath and steeled herself for what she needed to say. She half turned in the saddle to speak to him directly. She owed him that. “Tithonus, I can’t make this journey by myself. And Artemis—Artemis’ priestess said that it would take both of us to stop the madness in Themiscyra. Both of us to lift the curse that has befallen my people.”

  Tithonus’ face brightened. “Really? You really need me?”

  Hippolyta nodded. “It’s for your mother’s—our mother’s—sake.”

  Tithonus chewed his lip. “But after we finish at Arimaspa, then I can go home?”

  “Yes,” said Hippolyta, hating herself for the half lie, for she would only be bringing his body back. “After Arimaspa, I’ll take you home to Troy.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN />
  AN ENEMY SOLDIER

  HIPPOLYTA URGED THE horse eastward as fast as it would go. As the animal galloped along, both she and Tithonus fell into the steady, hypnotic rhythm. The sound of the hooves thudding on the grass, the wind in their ears, made conversation difficult.

  Tithonus went for whole minutes at a time without saying anything. Mostly when he did speak, he simply asked questions, which he framed in three or four different ways. “Where are we going?” he would say. “Are we going far?” And then: “Will it take long where we’re going? What is the name again of the place where we’re going?” Then he’d lapse back into a long silence.

  Hippolyta ignored him, trying to focus instead on the tasks ahead. Arimaspa! she thought, trying to remember all that she knew of it.

  She knew it was the place where the first Amazon queens had lived. Where a pair of arrogant princes had stolen gold belonging to the gods. She knew the women had left that cursed place and wandered for many years till settling at last in Themiscyra and the other Amazon towns.

  But it had been foretold by Apollo that a second son grown to manhood would summon the Amazons to their deaths.

  Well, Tithonus was the first son, not the second, and he was not yet full grown.

  Artemis had also said that in Arimaspa the first blood pact had been made, and there Hippolyta would make that pact anew.

  We can do it, she thought with fierce determination.

  We.

  Tithonus and I.

  Suddenly she felt as if she had a bronze dagger in her heart.

  Would Tithonus understand when the time came for him to be killed? The Trojans had been willing enough to sacrifice her for their own city’s sake.

  Whatever we face in Arimaspa, she concluded, will be worth it to save my people. Worth it to me, at least.

  She did not want to think about what it was worth to the boy.

  Hippolyta decided the best route was to go directly to the southern coast of the Euxine Sea and follow the coastline until they reached the border of Colchis. There they would swing south, skirting the actual country, for the Colchians were a suspicious people. It was said they jealously guarded some great treasure gifted to them by the gods. She smiled crookedly. Rather like the Trojans and their precious statue of Athena.