Lori Devoti - Amazon Ink

I set down my cup. “This is Dana. We met the other day on my trip”-I glanced at Harmony’s door-“to Illinois.”

“Oh.”

“Dana’s expecting…”

Mother’s eyes started to glaze. Baby talk was not her thing. “A boy,” I finished.

“Oh!” She dropped the towel on the floor, and pinned me with a look. “You didn’t?”

“I didn’t do anything. Dana just…” I switched my gaze to the pregnant girl who was busy bending to retrieve the towel. She hadn’t exactly told me why she was here. I could guess…already had, but with Mother staring me down, I wasn’t placing words in Dana’s mouth.

Mother turned to watch the girl too. Apparently unaware of our surveillance, Dana turned in a circle, the towel held out in front of her. Finally she stopped.

“Is there…do you have…?” She held out the towel.

Realizing she was looking for a place to deposit the soiled cloth, I nodded to a small pile of dishrags and towels that had accumulated in a corner near the door. “In the basement. Just throw it over there.”

Looking unsure and slightly disapproving, Dana tossed the towel on the pile, then went to wash her hands.

“Dana,” I said, giving Mother a give me a chance look. “Why are you here?”

She turned, surprised. “Where else could I go? I knew you’d know what to do. What my options are.”

“Options for what?” Harmony bumped into the table, her pink backpack slung over one shoulder and a fresh coat of lip gloss on her lips.

I was going to have to start belling my family.

“Hi.” Dana smiled as if she’d just baked a perfect soufflé-at least I imagined that was what would produce such a euphoric expression. I didn’t have much insight into the mind of a hearth-keeper. “You must be Harmony. I’ve heard so much about you.”

She had? From who?

“You have? From who?” my daughter parroted my thoughts.

I was curious, but I didn’t want to hear her answer in front of my still innocent-to-the-existence-of-Amazons daughter.

“Dana’s your cousin,” I blurted out.

“Really?” Shock, then joy flowed over Harmony’s teenage body. “I didn’t know we had family outside of…” She graced Mother and me with a grudging look. I assumed Bubbe was included in the less than enthusiastic pronouncement.

“Distant cousin,” I added. “Dana found us on one of those genealogy sites online.” I flapped my hand randomly. “She’s just traveling through.”

“Oh.” My daughter’s face fell.

I hadn’t realized not having other family had left such a hole in her existence. Unfortunately for her, Dana was not going to be the answer to this apparent lack. Just as soon as I could get Dana settled down and thinking straight, she was heading back to northern Illinois or one of the other safe camps. Maybe realizing she didn’t have to go back to Alcippe would be enough to get her on the road.

She said she was having a boy but, according to what everyone had told me, in the millennia since Ares and Otrera had hooked up and the first Amazon was born, I was the only one who’d had an unwaverable need to raise a male child myself.

Why would Dana be the second? And if she was, it didn’t really involve me or my family, did it?

“Actually, I’m moving to Madison,” Dana announced, her fingers wrapped around a mass of pie dough, like a bride holding a bouquet.

A squeal erupted from Harmony.

Apparently urged on by my daughter’s enthusiastic response, Dana continued, “And I’m having a baby!”

“Oh.” Harmony turned, eyes huge in her face, and stared at me. I grabbed a granola bar from a drawer and shoved it into her hand.

“Better get to school.”

“But the bus-”

“Walk slow.” With a shove, I sent her on her way.

With Harmony safely on her way, I turned back to a confused-looking Dana.

“Did I…?” Dana started.

“In the human world teens having babies, especially unmarried teens, is not reason to celebrate.”

“But I’m…”

“I know-twenty-two.” I shoved my fingers into my hair.

Dana dropped the pie dough and beat a fast retreat from the room, brushing past an intrigued-looking Bubbe on her way.

Crap, all over again.

Without pausing to explain, I rushed after the upset hearth-keeper. She’d swung left and disappeared inside the door to one of the many rooms we didn’t actually use for anything besides storing dust.

I followed her.

She was standing next to the window, her palm pressed against the glass and loud sobs lifting her breasts.

“Dana.” I took a step in.

She turned further toward the outside view, hiding her face.

“I didn’t mean…it’s just…” I sucked at this. “Harmony doesn’t know we’re Amazons,” I finally blurted.

That got her attention. Her face jerked toward me. “She doesn’t? How can’t she know she’s an Amazon? It’s who she is.”

A throb was beginning in the area of my left temple. I lay two fingers against the spot. “She’s not an Amazon; she’s Harmony.”

Dana blinked, her blue eyes clouding with confusion. “But isn’t she your-”

“I mean, she is an Amazon, but I didn’t raise her as one and she doesn’t know about the Amazons, and I want her to be herself first.” Why did this all make a lot more sense when I said it to myself or my argumentative mother and grandmother? Saying it to Dana’s sweet, bewildered stare made it all sound…idiotic.

“She doesn’t know what she is? She hasn’t trained? Or apprenticed?”

Horror now. Great.

“No. I mean, there isn’t any reason…girls here…” I was blathering. Finally, I gave it up and grabbed Dana by the hand instead. “The point is, you can’t just say things around Harmony that you might back at camp.”

“But I am pregnant.”

I sighed.

“And I’m not giving him up. Alcippe wants me to, but I’m not. You understand that, right? You know how I feel?” Her hand shook in mine, as if her entire body was shaking with barely contained emotion.

“Of course I do, but-”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, and I just met you, but all the Amazons know who you are and what you did. A bunch of us always said if this”-she looked down at her stomach-“happened to us, we’d be brave like you. That we wouldn’t let anyone take our baby from us-even if he was a boy.

“But I’m not strong. Not like you. If you send me back there, I’ll give in. I know I will, and I’ll hate myself for the rest of my life.” Her shoulders heaved in a display more filled with drama than what I’d seen come out of Harmony in her entire fourteen years of life.

That was when I knew I was in trouble.

While Dana finished herpie, Mother agreed to help me carry her bags upstairs.

“Which room did you give her?” Mother asked.

“The one by yours.” I jerked a bag out of the compact’s rear seat and hurled it toward my loving parent.

“When’s the baby due?”

“Eight months give or take, and before you ask, no, I’m not switching with you. We have thick walls. You’ll be fine.”

Mother grunted, and I didn’t think it was from the weight of the duffel.

She looped her arm through the handles of three more bags. “Does Alcippe know?”

“That she’s pregnant? Yes. That she’s here?” I shrugged.

Mother shot me a look. “She isn’t going to like it.”

“See, a silver lining already.” I stacked another duffel onto Mother’s pile and started chugging up the sidewalk toward the front door. Mother passed me in two strides. I did a jog step to catch up, but only managed to drop two of the duffels I was attempting to warrior-handle onto the ground.