Amazon Moon by James A. Haught Page B

a caravan, they were allowed to choose whether to join the band of female rebels or be liberated on their own, to go wherever they wished. The freed females usually became Amazons, because they feared the prospect of being alone on foot, defenseless in a strange land.
    "Slowly the culture of our community grew, with bold women warriors making raids and capturing wounded male slaves, while other women under the Home Queen tended the village."
    Hella, the Home Queen, joined the record-telling: "Most of us have heard Greek tales of rebel women called Amazons, and we heard rumors that other hidden colonies of Amazons exist, but we never met any sisters-at-arms."
    Saria resumed with a derisive laugh: "Once, among caravan loot, we found a wagon full of bowls painted with scenes of Greek warriors killing Amazons. We used the bowls for javelin practice until all were shattered."
    This account of the origin of the Amazon hideaway was pinned outside the Home Queen's front door, where my pupils read it aloud as part of their training.
     

12
    Next the council ordered me to record testimonies of various Amazons. I listened to the women and wrote the following personal tales:
    ALETHA
    "My mother was a consecrated woman among hundreds in the great Aphrodite temple at Corinth. I grew up among the sacred prostitutes who offered their bodies in service to the gods. Men came in droves, many of them sailors bringing cargoes to the Corinth port, and paid to share joy with temple women in the shrine's curtained alcoves.
    "When I was thirteen, I too was pledged to serve men in behalf of the gods. I was young and comely, and was chosen many, many times, often bedding as many as ten visitors per day. I earned great sums for the temple.
    "Slowly an awareness grew in me. The priests said all the money was for the gods, but the deities didn't spend it. Only the priests did, living like kings on the profits from our bodies. I began to see them as bordello operators. We consecrated women were little more than their whores. I came to think that gods had nothing to do with the temple.
    "Occasionally we were ordered to join an orgy with priests, who gave us jewels and called us their pets. By then I saw religion as a scheme for money, sex and power over others.
    "From other temple prostitutes, I learned of the two vines that guide runaway women to the Amazons. With another young consecrate, my best friend, I fled one rainy night, carrying bags of food. We reached a riverbank and thought we had succeeded in escaping. But we heard slave-hunters pursuing with dogs. My friend was cornered by the tracking dogs. She was shoved down into the dirt, bound hand and foot, and carried away. But I jumped into the stream, swam across, hid under foliage, and eluded detection.
    "At night I followed the secret route of the two vines, and today I am a proud Amazon."
    RACHA
    "As the only black-skinned Amazon, I am unique in the group. The War Queen always chooses me to slip up behind caravan guards in the night, nearly invisible. It is a mission I have performed often.
    "I am a Nubian from the upper Nile Valley. As a child I was happy in our village—until armed slave traders raided one day when I was eleven. They killed everyone who resisted capture. I saw my father felled by arrows as he fought back with a spear. My mother, brothers, sisters and I, along with many other villagers, were bound together and herded into a barge that floated down the Nile. At a port near the delta, we were separated and stowed in the cargo holds of ships heading for slave markets.
    "I was brought to Greece and sent to a camp of slaves digging iron ore at a pit north of Delphi. Many of us wore yokes on our shoulders, carrying wooden buckets of ore from the pit to waiting wagons. Years of the gruelling work made me stronger, tougher, harder—and determined to break free. From older slave women, I heard of the two vines that mark the secret pathway.
    "We women bathed each evening in a creek by