The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier Page A

you’re not supposed to think. So you must learn to think nothing. Never let them know who you are. Can you do that?”
    I was so frightened by her intensity I nearly started crying. “But I’m not an Amazon—”
    “Shush!” Granny squeezed my shoulders so hard it hurt. “Never say that word aloud. You mustn’t even think it. Do you understand?” Only then, when she saw that all I could manage was a tearful nod, she cradled my head with her hands and said, more softly, “You are brave. I have high hopes for you. Don’t disappoint me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

    LAKE TRITONIS
    M YRINA AND LILLI SPENT ALL AFTERNOON ON THE FISHING BOAT, punting along the swampy coastline and checking traps that were mostly empty. But in the hour of evening calm, just as Myrina began to fear they would be spending the night on the water, circled by monstrous serpents, the men finally pulled into a cove rimmed with beach huts.
    After their long, solitary wanderings, the sight of busy men and women filled Myrina with joy and apprehension all at once. Their mother had always maintained the people living by the sea were the friendliest of all, but then, she had also spoken of clear blue water and sandy beaches—none of which had turned out to be true. In reality, the hue of the sea was a muddy green, and the water in the cove was a stagnant soup of bird feathers and rotting seaweed.
    Once their boat had been pulled ashore and its meager catch handed off to a woman with a large basket, one of the fishermen gestured for Myrina and Lilli to follow him, all the while smiling and nodding, as if to assure them of his good intentions. He took them to see an elderly man in a long red cloak who sat with straight-backed dignity on a straw mat in front of a hut, eating nuts from a glazed bowl. Guessing the man was a village elder, Myrina knelt down with Lilli in the sprinkle of nutshells at his feet.
    “Greetings to you,” she said, in her own language. When he didnot reply, she repeated the greeting in the three other languages she knew—the Old Language, the Language of the Mountain People, and the Nomad Language. None of her earlier attempts had worked with the fishermen on the boat, but when she spoke now in the tongue of the desert nomads, the man brought his weatherworn hands together in excitement.
    “You speak the words of the camel people!”
    “Only a little,” said Myrina. “How do you know the camel people?”
    “They came here to trade.” The man waved a gaunt arm in the air around him, as if to indicate that things had changed, and not for the better. “There was good trading here when the river ran strong. But no more.”
    Although Lilli had never learned the Nomad Language, she seemed to instinctively understand what the man was saying, and they sat for a moment in silence, sharing his distress. Then the man offered both girls a drink of water from a calabash and said, in a tone of business, “Now it is your time to talk. How may I help you young women?”
    “We are on our way to see the Moon Goddess,” began Myrina. “In the big city. My sister was blinded by a fever, but we are hopeful she will be cured.”
    “I am sorry for your sister.” The man shook his head with regret. “Many, many people journey to the Moon Goddess. She is very busy.”
    “Even so,” said Myrina, “we should like to see her.”
    The man looked a little annoyed, then shrugged and threw up his hands as if to say he had done what he could. “It is not far. I will tell you the way, but first you must eat and sleep.”
    I N THE HOUR BEFORE sunrise, hovering on the threshold of the waking world, Myrina sensed the sleeping bodies around her, heard the soft whispers of mothers, and for a moment thought she was back home.
    Over there in the corner, she imagined, lay her older sister, Lana, with the new baby snuggled tightly under her arm. And here, right here against her chest, lay Lilli, warm and cuddly and sweet….
    The stench brought Myrina back to