“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 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.