Amazon Moon (8 page)

"Dalien, we all grew up in the Greek world where women are silent and submissive. But since I have dwelt in this female citadel, I have been amazed. Maybe your beloved Aristotle should come here and open his eyes."

Dalien was impatient. "This place is an aberration. It is a gross distortion of the natural laws of humankind."

The young aristocrat rose and limped back to the slave quarters. Octos and I sat by the trickling creek, wondering whether the laws of humankind are inherent in nature or imposed by the few at the top for their own benefit.

9

I lost my virginity just before my seventeenth birthday.

After six days in captivity, both Dalien and I could walk haltingly. We ceased using crutches and limped with canes. We were given our first assignment in the fields, pulling weeds among vegetables while armed Amazons supervised. Soaked with sweat, we returned to the slave quarters for dinner.

One evening a small girl approached and told me: "Hella calls you to her bed tonight. You must bathe in the lower pool and go to her chamber."

Although she's an enemy, I tingled with anticipation of my first bedding with a woman. I arrived fresh-scrubbed. The buxom Home Queen looked attractive in the lamp glow. She pulled me onto the pallet beside her.

"I myself will introduce you to your duty in our beds," she said. "Something about you touched me. Your beard has only begun, like chick down. You look like a son I never had."

She removed her tunic, revealing full breasts and ample body. Hot excitement flushed through me. She took my hand and placed it on her breast. With her other hand, she touched my secret part. Almost immediately, I convulsed in a climax that shook my body, leaving me weak, and soaked.

She laughed. "You're an excitable boy. Rest a bit and we will start again."

"This is my first time," I blurted.

She smiled with understanding. "Soon, you will be an experienced lover. You will be called to many beds. You must learn to make women happy. Some of the warriors will place strong demands on you."

In the evening that followed, I nearly swooned from the pleasure of her body, not once but twice more. I felt too weak to dress and hobble back to the slave quarters.

"Sleep against me the rest of the night," she said. It was a slave command I obeyed gladly.

All night I held her voluptuous body. At morning, we woke and shared another lovemaking.

I had entered manhood, as my best friend Rek did years earlier. When I returned to the slave quarters, I felt as if I were floating and couldn't stop smiling.

Dalien glared. "Have you joined the enemy? So soon? After just one night?"

I didn't answer, but fell onto my pallet, exhausted.

Two nights later, Dalien was called to the bed of a young warrior. I could see that he was torn by contradictory feelings.

"I will not be their slave," he said. "I still cannot walk enough to escape. Until then, I will pretend to cooperate. In my mind, it will be as if I am raping a despised enemy."

Next I was summoned by the sturdy woman in charge of brickmaking and house construction. In the midst of our lovemaking, she had a mighty convulsion that left her body shuddering and quivering. She gripped me tight, then soon fell fast asleep, snoring softly. Awake by myself, I realized that it was up to me to decide whether to go or stay. I stayed, nuzzled against her breasts. In the morning she seemed puzzled that I had remained, but said: "Since you're still here, I have further duties for you." She pulled me onto her naked body for a new round of joy.

A few nights later I was called by my first fighting woman, Leeantha, a hard-muscled soldier. She lived in the warrior quarters, in a corner room. She looked at my slight build.

"You are so puny I could break you with one hand. But others say you are good on the pallet."

She pulled off my clothing, then hers, and shoved me down on her bed. She lay back and pulled me atop her.

"I will show you how to give pleasure to a woman," she said, pushing my face downward, past her breasts and belly to her female core. At her instruction, I touched my tongue tip to the small protrusion inside her. She gasped and held her breath. As I continued, she moaned and writhed. Finally she stiffened and screamed, clenching me in her strong arms and legs.

At her scream, another Amazon burst through the door with a drawn sword. She stared at our naked bodies locked together, then roared. She called other warriors to the door and they joined in the laughter.

Strangely, I felt affection for my captors, my enslavers.

* * *

Soon I was called again by Hella, the Home Queen, who treated me with an odd mixture of motherly fondness and wanton lust. Her full body quivered as we writhed and clutched on her pallet. Afterward, as we lay still together in the soft lamplight, I felt that I could speak openly with her.

"My lady, how did you come to this hidden colony?"

She sat up, poured us two cups of wine, and answered quietly:

"I was just fourteen when my father married me to a battle-scarred soldier twice my age. He and I lived in a hut beside an army compound. I tried to make a happy home life for us, but he had little interest. He deemed me a pet to whom he returned when no better entertainment was at hand. Most evenings, he drank with fellow soldiers at a bonfire. Often he was gone on patrol for many days. I was forbidden to leave the hut, except to cook and wash clothing in our small courtyard. I was only a minor possession to my husband.

"When I became pregnant, he made it clear that he wanted a son to be raised proudly as a soldier. I grew apprehensive, fearing that the baby might be a girl, but I hid my concern.

"My delivery day was a nightmare. A midwife came to our hut and helped me through the pain. I felt great relief when the child left my body, but I suffered new alarm when she showed me that it was a girl, a perfect, beautiful, flawless girl. I suckled the baby tenderly and prayed that my husband would accept her.

"He refused. He wouldn't come into the bedchamber and look at her. Instead he ordered the midwife to take her to the waste pit by the riverbank and leave her to die like other unwanted females. My spirit was crushed. Uncontrollable sobs burst from me. I tried to hold onto the baby but the midwife pulled her away and rushed from the house. My husband left to join his soldier friends.

"I sank into misery so severe that I could hardly move. Alone in the hut, I felt desperate and delusional. For hours I was in a stupor. Then I woke abruptly and realized that I must run to the waste pit, find the baby, and suckle her before it was too late. I barely could walk, but I cloaked myself and went to the river, searching for the pit. It was futile. When I finally found the refuse dump, the perfect little girl was dead. I slumped to the ground and wailed.

"In a garden beside the pit, slave women were hoeing vegetables. Two of them came to comfort me. They asked if they should call a male slave to escort me home. Something changed inside me, and I blurted that I never would go home. It was an angry impulse, irrational, because I knew that females cannot survive alone, apart from men's shelters. But my feeling was intense.

"The women looked at each other. They hid me in a shed and brought vegetables for me. At night they returned and told me a deep secret: Across the river, a widow lives in a cottage at the edge of a swamp. Among her flowers, two pots of hanging vines adorn her wall, a covert signal to runaway women. She would hide and feed me a few days, then direct me to another such home, and thence to another, until I finally reached those mysterious rebels, the Amazons.

"The following night, hidden by darkness, I waded the shallow river at a shoal and went to the sanctuary house. Thus I came to the clan of the Amazons. It was many years ago, but I never have regretted my choice."

I hugged Hella tightly. We lay in silence. Within me, I detested the Greek system whereby men decide, almost by whim, whether girls live or die.

* * *

Despite my small frame, the Amazons seemed pleased by me as a bedmate. On the day before the full moon, Eila the priestess came to my workplace in the bean patch and told me that I would play Eros in the ritual before the Aphrodite statue.

"As dusk approaches," she instructed, "you must bathe carefully, then pray to all the gods to purify yourself. Thus you will be prepared and worthy."

I didn't tell her that I ceased praying years ago. But I followed the rest of her orders. Next evening, I limped to the goddess shrine as dusk darkened the valley and the gleaming moon rose like a beacon. Torches flamed beside the wooden platform, splashing golden flickers upon the painted face of Aphrodite and upon the healthy human faces of the women standing in a circle around the sacred tableau.

I was apprehensive that I would be embarrassed to be naked before observers. But when the Eros mask was lowered over my head, a change came over me. I felt anonymous, as if I were invisible, not really present as Melos the scribe. I was Eros, all male, the spirit of masculine lust.

Through the eyeholes, I saw Eila remove her tall headdress and her robe. Glimmering torchlight rippled over her exquisite body. As other Amazons removed my clothing, I felt no embarrassment, only desire.

The nude priestess raised her arms to the Aphrodite statue and chanted: "Queen of love, queen of passion, queen of rapture, queen of ecstasy, queen of the eternal craving of man for woman and woman for man, you are the flame of life."

She donned her Aphrodite mask and reclined on the pallet. I followed, and mounted her. We were violent. She moaned and clawed me. It was over swiftly. Approving murmurs came from the watching Amazons.

Later, as I donned my clothes, I felt lingering ecstasy that made me wonder whether it truly had been a religious experience, despite my uncertainty about gods.

* * *

Soon, it became clear that I was called to women's beds more often than Dalien. As I headed to the bathing pool after dinner to prepare for night duty, he sat before the slave quarters, watching me resentfully.

"Go ahead, traitor," he said with a twisted grin. "You have sold your soul to the enemy."

That night, as I rested again between the large breasts of the Home Queen, I asked:

"My lady, why do the women rarely summon my friend Dalien?"

She eyed me carefully. "We don't feel good with him. You are smaller, and caring, but he is large and strong and full of hate. We can sense it. We don't feel safe with him."

She was completely correct. A few nights later, as Dalien and I lay on our pallets in the slave quarters, he confided to me:

"My leg has healed greatly. I pretend to limp badly, to fool the enemy, so they will not suspect my intent. I have a plan: The next time I am called to a woman's bed, I will wait until she is naked and defenseless, then strangle her silently with my strong hands. I will slip through the darkness to the corral, take a horse, and ride away into the night. When I reach Kavopolis, I can lead warriors back to this secret valley to wipe out the rebels."

A sick feeling surged through me. The mental picture of Litha, Mitha, the Home Queen, the construction leader and all being slashed to death in an attack was horrifying. I stayed silent as my mind raced. I knew that Dalien correctly saw his obligation as a soldier and a Greek patriot. Yet I was dismayed. He was right: I had sold my soul to the enemy.

"Well?" he asked in the dark. "Do you applaud my strategy?"

I weighed my answer carefully. Finally, I told him: "You are a loyal soldier following the code of duty. You will be a hero in Kavopolis, praised in the Assembly. They may promote you to commander."

I barely slept that night. The next day, I felt panic, wondering whether I should betray my friend to the Amazons, or whether I should remain mute until the women I had grown to like were slaughtered. Either choice seemed ghastly. I wavered from hour to hour.

Two evenings later, Dalien was summoned by the War Queen herself. As he left for the bathing pool, he looked at me intently. "Bid me luck," he said.

"Good luck," I said, hiding my inner strife.

All evening I sweated and breathed hard, wavering between my two impossible choices. I couldn't sleep. I was wide awake and still undecided at midnight when I heard sounds approaching. I went to the door with three other slaves, and we saw a gory sight:

Two Amazon warriors dragged Dalien's nude body to the doorway and dumped it, blood still oozing from knife wounds. One of the women announced:

"Slaves, this is the fate of mutineers. Our War Queen suspected that your insolent friend had evil intent, so she stationed us behind a curtain with daggers as a precaution. We saved her from him. If we learn that any of you were his conspirators, you will suffer his fate."

Next morning, all of us slaves were called outside, where Dalien's body still lay in the dirt. Women gathered to watch. It was a grim, tense time. We all stared at the corpse. Somehow, the death of an aristocrat seems more important that the death of a commoner. The War Queen, with purple bruises on her neck, observed silently. Another top warrior declared loudly:

"A slave dared to attack a master. The penalty for such a crime is visible before you. As a warning lesson, the rest of the slaves will receive three lashes."

We were lined up kneeling and each given three stinging cuts on our backs with a tough limb. Then we were forced to drag Dalien's body, toss it in the latrine pit and cover it with dirt. Octos looked at me sardonically.

"What an end for the natural master, the natural ruler."

My grief for my friend, and my pain from the lash welts, were too great for me to share his sarcasm.

For several days afterward, a distrustful silence hovered over the village, and no slaves were summoned for night duty. But gradually the coldness faded and the routine of life resumed.

10

In following days, we slaves sensed concern among the Amazons. They talked to each other in low tones. At first we wondered if they remained upset by Dalien's murder attempt. Then Ankus related what he heard: