Shan Sa - Alexander and Alestria

An army appeared on the horizon: warriors in helmets raising their bows. The women around me could not contain their joy. Ania was heading up our little troop, and she galloped toward them like an arrow. The soldiers threw their helmets in the air, dropped from their horses, and ran toward Alestria. As they jostled to touch my wife's legs and feet, I realized they were actually young women. Alestria jumped down, and the girls milled round her, kissing her and raising her high in the air. Then they followed her over to my carriage and peered at me curiously, touching my hair and shoulders and chattering with excitement. They picked up my monkey, who struggled to break free, screaming in fear. This made the girls laugh, and their laughter washed through me like a warm current. My every muscle relaxed, and first I smiled, then drew my lips right open and burst out laughing.

"Alexander is laughing!" Ania cried in Persian. "He has recovered!"

Alestria ran over to me, looked at me, and wept with joy.

Alestria's tribe lived to the rhythm of good pastureland. The girls rose with the dawn and went to sleep when the sun set. They shared all forms of manual work and took turns putting on armor to fight as warriors. They laughed and sang a great deal. They gave Nicea a small horse and taught him to gallop, and they trained some gray mice to make a circus for my entertainment. On feast days they gathered round the campfire in the evenings and drank alcohol made from flower roots; then they became even more cheerful and playful, dancing like will-o'-the-wisps. I joined in their games and gradually regained the use of my hands. By concentrating on every note, I managed a form of singing and pronounced a few simple words.

On our travels we found little girls abandoned by their parents, while young warrior women with barely a wrinkle on their faces would leave us to go and die. These young women knew from the stars when the end had come for them. They took a potion that numbed them to pain and left on horseback without telling anyone. When the horse returned to camp alone a few days later, it signaled a period of mourning. Ania explained that the Amazon would ride until she saw a river, then she would dismount and lie down on the bank. She would let vultures and other scavengers eat her body while her soul rose up to the skies to become a star.

And so it was that, reading the constellation in the vault of the sky, Alestria decided to take me on a journey. Spring had come round again. We set off, following the wild geese, with Alestria riding beside me, Ania driving my chariot, and Nicea on my shoulder. Every morning the reddening sun rose, and every evening the moon waxed larger. We came across a whole army of caribou with massive antlers, hundreds of thousands of them, surging toward the north. Our little stream joined that great river, and it bore us along in its frenetic galloping.

The tall grasses disappeared, succeeded by dry earth covered in pebbles and bare rock. A dark line of trees stretched out on the horizon. Still surrounded by the caribou, which never stopped to rest, we penetrated deep into a forest of pine, tall and upright as lances. A few days later some warriors blocked our way. They had black hair adorned with feathers and wore animal skins sewn with shells.

Alestria went over toward them and came back to me with a beaming smile on her face.

"The Great Mother is expecting us!" she cried. "She read in the stars that the queen had returned with the king."

Caribou led up ahead and followed on behind, while these new warriors escorted us. Having crossed a wide, shallow river,

I came for the first time to the land of the volcano, where birds and stags came to drink and sing their song. The Great Mother, queen of the People of the Volcano, came to greet us in a chariot pulled by dogs with blue and yellow eyes. She led us through her kingdom, a series of villages scattered about a vast plain that sloped down toward the ocean.

The sea wind whipped up blue-black waves, and on the horizon, I could see a chain of white glaciers. A flock of birds wheeled above, calling, then diving down into the water and reappearing with fish in their beaks. All at once gray monsters with great wide jaws emerged from the waves, spewing jets of water that shimmered with rainbows as they fell back down.

The People of the Volcano constituted a tribe governed by the Great Mother. They elected their queen from among the women who had had many children, who had, in turn, produced many grandchildren. Unlike the Amazons, who disliked old age, the People of the Volcano only trusted those who reached a great age. The Great Mother had blue tattoos on her cheeks and a beard on her chin. Alestria told me that the women of the volcano lived a long time; hence their wisdom and their gift for reading the stars. But the Great Mother did not decide anything: every full moon she held feasting during which the village chiefs would have their discussions. She would put in a word only if there were disagreements.

We waited for winter to return and cover the ocean with thick ice; then we spread grease over our bodies and wrapped ourselves in warm furs. We packed away our tents and utensils onto the sleds pulled by dogs. With the Great Mother up at the front and the entire tribe behind her, we launched ourselves onto that white continent, facing into the wind and the snow.

As we slid on, I forgot to count off the days. The sun had disappeared behind the glaciers and no longer rose. Beams of green, orange, purple, and white light carved through that endless night, tearing open the black sky. Wolves howled in the distance, setting off furious barking competitions among the dogs. Nicea wriggled beneath my coat and shrieked with them.

White bears sitting on blocks of ice watched us pass. Silvery foxes flitted across the snow and hid behind large white rocks. The People of the Volcano hunted hares and creatures with thick fatty skin and bristly mustaches and that, when glimpsed in the distance, looked like mermaids.

A black volcano with a glowering red summit loomed through the misty darkness. Soon I could make out its lava flow: scarlet waves and crimson sparks edging down its flanks and spilling into the sea. We camped on the red and black rock, dotted with patches of snow. The men set to work extracting blocks of metal from mines and transporting them to the foot of the volcano. On the other side, where the earth's blood flowed, a series of reservoirs had been dug into the slopes as well as canals to deflect the lava. By opening successive sluice gates, the People of the Volcano made the incandescent flows run over metal positioned in the upper reservoirs. They directed the molten metal toward reservoirs lower down, and these in turn spewed the red-hot liquid into molds in the shape of swords, bludgeons, and sickles.

The women gathered the tarnished black blades, beat them out, and dunked them in the snow. The Great Mother led these ceremonies, invoking the souls of warriors of the glacier to be incarnated into these weapons, which grew light, razor-sharp, and indestructible. So it was that the Amazon girls had been able to fight men since time immemorial. So it was that Alestria had broken through Alexander's shield when we confronted each other for the first time.

We returned to the land mass when spring came round again.

The Great Mother pronounced an oracle, and the men started cutting down pine trees and building boats. The women went down onto the beach and dug in the sand with their weapons, creating a wide channel sloping up the beach. The gray whales, great floating islands bearing whole populations of shellfish and seaweed on their backs, resurfaced and dazed us with their wailing song. Summer returned, and caribou spread throughout the kingdom. On the day singled out by the God of Ice, the men launched their vessels on the sea. In among the whales they found the queen with red and yellow markings, and they threw spears and stones at her.