Jane Yolen - Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

He backed away a step, then moved forward again. “Our father won’t allow it.”

She shivered. “ Your father, not mine.” But she wondered.

Tithonus was silent.

“Your father doesn’t care if our mother lives or dies,” Hippolyta said. “I asked him to help her, and he laughed. Then he threw me in here.”

“He’s—it’s … hard work being king. He doesn’t have time for everybody.” Tithonus’ face got a pinched, closed look.

Hippolyta laughed. “Ha! Not even time for his son’s mother.” Then she realized that he had sounded sad, almost apologetic. Suddenly she understood. In a quieter voice she added, “So he’s got no time for you, either, eh?”

“That’s not true!” Even in the flickering torchlight she could see him flush. His chest was heaving. “Dares—Dares says that things are hard. We’re surrounded by enemies and—” He shut his lips together as if he’d admitted too much. “I just wanted to know about her. About Queen Otrere.”

“What do you want to know?”

The boy leaned forward, whispered eagerly, “What does she look like?”

Hippolyta backed away for a moment, thinking. The father was out of her reach, but not the son. She smiled grimly and went back to the grille. “She’s ten feet tall with big purple eyes. She has snakes for hair, and she eats little boys for breakfast!”

Tithonus’ lower lip quivered, and he disappeared into the blackness. She could hear him trying to stifle his sobs.

Serves him right, Hippolyta thought. But she felt bad. He’d been such an easy target. And he had brought her a pastry.

She called out, “Pssst. Prince. I’m sorry for saying that. Come back tomorrow and bring me two pastries, and I promise I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

He came back into the light, looking a bit whey-faced. “Tomorrow? But tomorrow will be too late.”

She felt a stone in her stomach. “Too late for what?”

“Too late for you,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” The stone in her stomach got heavier.

But he was gone, running off down the corridor as though in fear of his life.

Hippolyta went back to the little pile of straw and sank down onto it. Any impulse to sleep was now gone. She was suddenly and awfully wide awake.

What has Laomedon planned for me? she wondered, remembering the guard’s words: “Scarcely a bite.” Remembering the king saying that he was cursed. Remembering that she had lashed out at him. At a king. In his own country.

I guess I’m going to find out, she thought miserably. And soon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONDEMNED

SHE HADN’T MEANT TO FALL asleep again. She thought she was wide awake. But suddenly the shouts and screams of the other prisoners woke her.

The door to her cell opened slowly, and in came the stiff-legged jailer with a sour look on his face. Behind him a guard stood at the door watching while the jailer thrust a dry crust of bread and a cup of brackish water at Hippolyta.

“Why they even bother …” he began.

She grabbed the bread and water and downed them. “Fattening me up, I suppose,” she said, thinking to get information from him.

He looked startled. “You know?”

She nodded, hoping he would continue.

“Poor girl,” he said solemnly, and took the cup from her.

“Aye,” said the guard, “a waste of a good-looking woman, if you ask me.”

“If you ask me,” the jailer said as he went through the door, “she’s too young by half for what you’re thinking.”

“Too young for what the king’s thinking, too,” the guard replied, shutting the door and locking it.

Well, Hippolyta thought, that was a lot of help.

She now knew enough to be thoroughly frightened without knowing anything at all. But if I must die, I’ll die bravely. Like an Amazon. With that resolve, she sat down again on the dirty straw to calm herself.

She tried to remember the death chant she’d been taught. The one Queen Andromache had composed before the battle in which she’d been slain.

“I come to you, Artemis, with a clean heart,

I come, Ares, ax in my strong right hand.

My bow is strung. It sings my death song.

My arrows are ready for flight.

I come over the mountains, capped with snow,

Past the eagles in their aeries,

Past the far streamers of clouds. …”

But in fact, she was bowless and axless and without her quiver of arrows. What good was singing a warrior’s death song when it was clear that she was going to die badly, eaten by some awful … thing? And without being given the chance to fight.

Besides, she had failed her mother, failed her people.

Ashamed, Hippolyta began to weep.

By midmorning, when Laomedon’s soldiers came for her, Hippolyta had recovered herself. She had even scrubbed her face clean of tears—or at least as clean as she could with the back of her hand—and she was standing up, waiting for the guards.

She’d heard them coming. A Phrygian could have heard them coming! They marched noisily along the corridor, the other prisoners taunting them, and that had given her time to stand tall, shoulders straight, head high. Like an Amazon.

The jailer opened the door, and the soldiers marched in. There were eight of them.

Eight men to one Amazon, she thought. Just about right. They pushed her out of the cell, binding her wrists before her. She walked—no, she strode—ahead of them.

Let them see how an Amazon dies, she thought.

But instead of being taken immediately to a place of execution, she was brought into a courtyard. There a gallery of courtiers had been assembled. All men, she noted with growing anger.

At all the exits bronze-armored soldiers stood guard.

Surely Laomedon doesn’t think I’m that dangerous! she thought with a bitter smile.

Horses had been led from the stables and were even now being hitched to four chariots. Hippolyta recognized hawk-nosed Dares, who was supervising the operation. He glanced over, nodded, and for a moment looked as if he wanted to say something. But then he turned his back and finished the work he was set to do.

Just then there was a stir among the assembled courtiers, a kind of hushed buzz like a hive of honeybees, and the king came through a great door. He was accompanied by an armed escort. Dressed in a luxurious purple robe, he wore a golden crown and enough jewelry around his neck to hang himself. He was handsome and arrogant, every inch the king. Climbing five steps to a wooden throne, he surveyed the scene with languid ease.

The courtiers all clapped, and one man sang out, “The king! The king!”

Hippolyta’s guards dragged her forward until she was directly in front of the throne. The king was seated high enough that she had to look up at an uncomfortable angle in order to look him in the face. She did it despite the discomfort. She didn’t want to give him the pleasure of seeing her bow her head.

A stout, gray-bearded man came from the gallery and cleared his throat.

“Announce the charges, Argeas,” Laomedon commanded.

Argeas cleared his throat again, before saying, “The barbarian girl Hippolyta—”

Hippolyta interrupted. “I’m no barbarian. I’m an Amazon, daughter of Otrere, queen of Themiscyra.”

The gray beard began again. “The Amazon girl Hippolyta is accused of laying hands upon the royal person, threatening the king, and thereby assaulting the safety of Troy.”

“I will show you my bruises, old man,” Hippolyta interrupted, “and then you can decide who has assaulted whom.”