Jane Yolen - Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

When they saw Themiscyra in the 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.