Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

by Jane Yolen

  Tithonus came forward reluctantly and took Hippolyta’s hand. She pulled him up with a grunt. It was like dragging up a sackful of vegetables.

  “And this is safe?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly. She wasn’t certain if he was shaking from fear, cold, or the fact that the horse had started to prance about with an uncertain rider on its back.

  “Yes, it’s safe. Just put your arms around my waist.”

  Tithonus threw both arms around her and held on so tightly, she could hardly breathe.

  “Try to relax a bit,” Hippolyta said. “We aren’t exactly galloping. Yet.”

  Tithonus slowly loosened his hold, but every time the horse made an unexpected movement, he squeezed Hippolyta so hard she gasped out loud.

  “This is going to be an awfully long trip,” Hippolyta muttered.

  Behind her, his head resting on her back, Tithonus nodded.

  Remembering what the old man said about going home, she turned the horse’s nose east and north. If it got her home sooner, she’d say a prayer for the old man’s safety.

  It turned out that Tithonus was more trouble than baby Podarces had been.

  Yes, he could feed himself.

  And wash himself.

  And he didn’t need to be changed.

  But he wouldn’t shut up.

  All day long he asked endless questions. Hippolyta gave him as many answers as she could stand, all the while avoiding the full story of why she had come to Troy.

  “What does Queen Otrere look like?”

  “She has copper-colored hair and large amber eyes. Like you.”

  “Not like you, though.”

  “No, I probably look like my father.”

  “I don’t look like my father,” Tithonus said. “That’s why he hates me.”

  “He hates you?”

  “Well, he doesn’t exactly hate me. But he doesn’t like me, either. Do you think she’ll like me?”

  “I don’t know. I expect she’ll like you as much as I do.”

  He chewed on that for a while. Then he started up again.

  “What are the Amazons really like?”

  “Like warriors.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then who does the washing?”

  “We have servants. We have slaves.”

  “Is my mother a warrior?”

  “She’s a queen. But not the warrior queen. The peace queen.”

  Another one to chew over.

  When he finally stopped asking questions, Hippolyta was relieved.

  But only for a moment.

  Then he began talking endlessly about Troy: about his father, his sisters, his old nurse, Dares, the stories he’d heard the bards sing at the palace.

  Hippolyta tried to keep a rein on her temper, but when he started talking about how soft his bed was in Troy and how many servants he had, it was more than she could take.

  “Tithonus,” she said through gritted teeth, “if you don’t close your mouth, a woodpecker will fly in and make its nest there.” It was something her mother often said to Antiope.

  “That’s silly,” Tithonus answered. “There are no woodpeckers around here. There are no trees.”

  “Then if you don’t shut up, I’ll find some other bird and stuff it in there!” Hippolyta threatened.

  The boy fell silent for a full three seconds, then said, “I think we should stop and rest for a while, Hippolyta. All this riding is making you cranky. I knew we’d have been better off with a chariot. A person doesn’t get cranky in a chariot.”

  “A person does who’s tied up and carted off to be a monster’s dinner,” she said in a tight voice.

  That quieted him.

  Hippolyta had to fight hard to stifle her desire to shove him off the horse and leave him lying in the dust. Let him try to find his way back to Troy without being eaten by a bear, she thought. Let him try to get there without being taken by brigands!

  But each time she felt that way she reminded herself that she needed him as much as he needed her.

  “It’s getting dark,” she said finally. “We might as well stop for the night.”

  She showed him how to gather kindling for the fire, and he took to the task eagerly, as if it were some sort of game. He did such a good job she even let him strike a spark from the two pieces of flint she found in the old man’s pack.

  “Stay here,” she commanded. “Watch the fire and the horse.”

  She was so relieved to be away from him for a little while she almost missed the trio of pigeons with the makeshift bow she’d fashioned for herself. In fact she only got two of them.

  But two, she thought, are enough.

  Once they’d eaten, Hippolyta lay back on the brown grass. It was the most relaxed she’d felt in days.

  “I think food tastes even better out-of-doors,” said Tithonus. “When I get back to Troy, I think I’ll go outside to eat instead of having my meals in the banqueting halls.”

  Let him dream about his banquets, Hippolyta thought. He’s never going to see Troy again.

  “My father likes having huge banquets,” Tithonus recalled, “with six or seven courses. And music. And dancing girls.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he has plenty of dancing girls,” Hippolyta remarked disdainfully

  “You don’t like my father, do you?” Tithonus said.

  “Do I have any reason to?”

  “I suppose not.” He said it carefully. Then burst out with “But what about your own father? The one you look like.”

  “Amazons don’t care about their fathers,” Hippolyta replied brusquely. “In fact I don’t even know who he is.”

  “Then how do you know you look like him?”

  “I don’t. I just know I’m the only one of Mother’s daughters who doesn’t look like her.”

  “Don’t you want to find out who your father is?” Tithonus’ voice fell to a whisper, as if afraid to even ask the question.

  “Well, I know it isn’t Laomedon,” Hippolyta replied tightly. “Because he said he’d met my mother only twice. That’s once for you and once for baby Podarces.”

  But Tithonus wouldn’t let the matter rest there. “Do you think your father might be a king, though?”

  She sighed and turned over onto her stomach. “What does it matter if he’s a king or a commoner? He’s just a man—and all of them are alike.”

  “That’s not true,” Tithonus said thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’m anything like my father. He likes ordering people around and fighting wars. I’d rather stay home and listen to the storytellers. I don’t think I want to be king if it means fighting.”

  Hippolyta thought: I should just tell him he needn’t worry about becoming king. That would shut him up.

  “It’s late, Tithonus.” She yawned. “Get some sleep. You can start talking again in the morning.” She flipped over on her back, and before he could think of an answer, she was fast asleep.

  Two weeks’ travel brought them into the land of the Amazons, a lot more quickly than the trip to Troy.

  “My country,” Hippolyta said, expansively waving her right arm and thinking about the old man’s promise. Go easily and go well, old warrior, she thought.

  “What’s that?” Tithonus asked, pointing to the gleaming river winding its way north.

  “We call it the River Thermodon,” Hippolyta said. But even as she spoke, something troubled her.

  “This land of yours is very quiet,” Tithonus commented.

  “We’re a quiet people,” she told him.

  But he’d put his finger on what had been bothering her. They’d encountered no Amazon scouting parties, no Amazon hunters, no Amazon travelers for mile upon mile.

  The lack of anyone’s trailing them or questioning them or greeting them bothered Hippolyta. It was like a sliver of broken nail on a finger: raw and worrying but not actually deadly. She thought about it on and off until they got closer to the city.

  When they saw Themiscyra in t
he distance, there was no one working in the fields.

  “It shouldn’t be this quiet,” Hippolyta murmured. She could feel the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, a sure sign of danger in the road ahead. Her fingers stroked the edge of the ax at her side. She wondered: Could some enemy have swept across our land while I’ve been gone? Then she looked again at the countryside but this time carefully.

  Unlikely, she thought. There was no sign of a battle. There was no sign of any destruction.

  “Maybe there’s a festival going on and everybody’s stopped working for the day,” Tithonus suggested.

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Hippolyta. Strange how she suddenly, desperately wanted Tithonus to be right. “A festival.”

  But it was not First Planting nor was it Harvesttime. It was not the solstice, either, when the days grew shorter or longer. It could not be a celebration of a new daughter, for when she’d left, no one who was carrying a child had been near term. The Festival of Founding, in which they celebrated Themiscyra’s beginnings, was not for many passages of the moon yet.

  What other festivals are there? she wondered.

  “That would be fun, arriving during a festival,” Tithonus enthused.

  “Be quiet!” Hippolyta suddenly told him. “Listen.”

  She thought at first she was hearing the wind keening through the trees. But the trees were still, and there was no wind.

  “That’s a funny noise,” said Tithonus. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hippolyta replied.

  But she did. It was the sound of weeping voices. And they were coming from Themiscyra.

  “Well,” the boy said, “what do you think it is?”

  She was afraid to think. She could only act. She urged the horse forward with her heels.

  They followed the dirt road until they came to the wall around the city. Surprisingly, there were no sentries at the gate, no one patrolling the palisade.

  It’s as if the gods had reached down and plucked every Amazon but me from the earth, she thought.

  The keening noise from inside the city was louder now and even more unsettling. It was like a wild mourning cry after battle.

  The horse began to grow nervous, whinnying and stamping and trying to veer away from the town.

  “We’d better get off before he throws us,” said Hippolyta, skinning one foot over the horse’s back and dropping down. She turned to help Tithonus dismount. Then she tethered the animal to a post and patted it gently to calm it.

  Tithonus shivered. “I don’t think it’s a festival,” he muttered.

  Hippolyta didn’t respond.

  They passed through the gateway and onto the empty, narrow streets. All at once a woman came stumbling out of one of the houses and ran up the street toward them. Her cheeks were streaked with tear tracks; her face was pale and haggard. She was pulling at her hair in a frenzy of anguish as she ran. She’d actually torn out hunks of it, for there were clumps in her hand.

  Tithonus darted behind Hippolyta and hid there.

  Hippolyta was hardly less afraid than he, but she stood her ground. She thought the woman looked familiar, though she couldn’t put a name to her. Perhaps a servant in the palace or some woodworker who’d fashioned a new table for the temple recently.

  “Dead, oh, all of them dead!” the disheveled woman wailed, and seized Hippolyta by the shoulders. “What will become of us now?” The woman stared into her face with wide, bloodshot eyes. Her voice shriveled to a husky sob. “Dead. Dead. All of them dead.”

  Releasing her hold, the woman sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

  Hippolyta was torn between the impulse to comfort this madwoman and the impulse to run away before the madness took a dangerous turn.

  “Who’s dead?” she asked. “Is Queen Otrere safe?”

  The woman gave no answer but wept into her hands.

  “What’s wrong?” Tithonus asked in a small voice.

  “I don’t know,” Hippolyta replied. “Stay close to me, and we’ll find out.”

  “I think we should go back,” Tithonus said. “While we still can. Listen, Hippolyta.”

  They both listened. The great keening filled the city and threatened to overwhelm them.

  “This is a place full of ghosts,” Tithonus cried.

  “This is Themiscyra, not Tartarus,” Hippolyta said, turning to face him. “Not the land of the dead. Come on, boy. Don’t you want to be a brave warrior like your father?”

  Tithonus looked down at the ground. “No,” he said in a near whisper.

  “Then be a brave warrior like your sister,” she said, taking his hand. “Like me.”

  She led him down the street toward the center of Themiscyra. As soon as they entered the main avenue, she felt his fingers tighten convulsively around hers.

  Here was where the sound was coming from. Along the road, slumping in doorways, leaning against walls, draped over the fountain unheeding the water in their faces, were scores of Amazons. Like the deranged woman by the gate, these Amazons were wailing, hair unbound, garments disordered and torn.

  Again and again the same words recurred like a dirge: “They are dead, all of them dead. What is to become of us now?”

  Hippolyta recognized most of the faces, and that only made things worse. Women she had seen dressed for battle or riding boldly off on the hunt were now weak and helpless, their spirits broken by some dreadful calamity.

  Was this the promised curse, she wondered, the result of her mother’s refusal to kill her infant son?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tithonus pleaded. “This is an awful place.”

  “No,” Hippolyta insisted. “Not until we understand what’s going on. These are my people, but at the same time, they aren’t. True Amazons would never act like this. We have to find the queen. My mother. Your mother. She’ll tell us what’s happening here.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THEMISCYRA’S CURSE

  THE NEARER THEY DREW to the center of Themiscyra, the more crowded the avenue became. They were jostled on every side by grieving Amazons, who were too distracted to notice them. The din of the women’s lamentations was overwhelming.

  “What are they all crying about?” Tithonus asked. “I don’t see anybody dead.” He was pressed up against Hippolyta’s side, and without thinking, she placed a protective arm around him.

  “I don’t know,” Hippolyta said, almost shouting to be heard above the loud sobs. “Maybe they’re under some kind of spell.”

  A sudden dizziness swept over her, and she leaned on Tithonus’ shoulder.

  “Oof,” she exhaled. It was as if the unnamed grief engulfing the others had begun washing over her as well.

  “What is it, Hippolyta?” the boy asked, looking up at her.

  “Must think,” she said. “Must remember my purpose.” She was speaking to herself as much as to him. But the grief was coming in waves now, a great tide of it. She felt as if she were drowning.

  At that very moment a girl her own age slouched down the street, shoulders bowed down with misery.

  “Phoebe!” Hippolyta whispered.

  “What’s a Phoebe?” Tithonus asked.

  It was all Hippolyta could do to nod her head in Phoebe’s direction. “Her. Barracks mate,” she managed to say.

  Phoebe was sobbing aloud. The front of her robe was soaked through with tears; her eyes were rimmed with red. She looked as though she’d been crying for days. Perhaps she had.

  The thought made Hippolyta shudder, and she clung to Tithonus.

  As if the touch lent him strength, Tithonus cried out to the weeping girl, “Phoebe! Phoebe!” His voice cracked as it sang out over the chorus of weeping women.

  Hearing her name, Phoebe looked up for a moment and then, still crying, came closer.

  Hippolyta reached out and touched her sleeve. “Phoebe,” she croaked, “it’s me, Hippolyta. What’s happened here? Where’s my mother? Where are my sisters?”

  T
he girl’s chest heaved with grief, and she had to fight to catch her breath. “They came,” she gasped. “They killed everyone.”

  “But—but—no one is dead,” Hippolyta insisted, though there seemed to be a stone in her own heart weighing so heavily it hurt to speak. “Who came? Whom did they kill?”

  “They came. Everyone is dead.” Phoebe howled. “All of them. What are we to do now?”

  She buried her face in Hippolyta’s shoulder and sobbed.

  Hippolyta pulled herself away and, still leaning heavily on Tithonus, continued on down the street. It felt as if they’d fallen into a river and he were holding her head above the water. She was grateful to him and angry in equal measure. He seemed unaffected by the grief. The anger kept her from drowning in the grief.

  As they neared the center of the settlement, the mournful chorus grew louder still. At last they reached the great square. Here the madness seemed at its worst, for the square was packed from one end to the other with women rending their garments, groaning aloud, and tearing out their own hair.

  “They sound,” Tithonus said, “like screeching cranes.”

  Hippolyta had to clench her hands into fists till the nails drew blood. Otherwise she, too, would have been ripping at her clothes and grabbing handfuls of hair from her own head.

  On the far side of the square stood the temple of Artemis atop a set of graceful stairs. The temple was a simple stone structure with a domed roof and fluted pillars. Carved into the lintel over the doorway were the symbols of the goddess: bow, moon, bear. A solitary figure, her back to them, waited on the topmost step, eyes turned toward the heavens. The purple border of her royal robe was visible even at this distance.

  “Mother!” Hippolyta cried out, astonished to find Otrere out of prison. “Mother, I’ve returned!”

  Her voice was drowned out by the shrill lamentations of the Amazons in the square. Otrere showed no sign of having heard her.

  “Is that her?” Tithonus cried. “Is that my mother?” For a moment his excitement overcame his fear. He loosened his grip on Hippolyta and strained for a better view of the queen.

  “If anyone here still has her wits, it will be Mother. The guards must have let her out in their confusion,” said Hippolyta. “Come, Tithonus.”