Chapter Ninety-Five
When I returned to the camp, the bodies had been wrapped in thin sheets and the graves dug on the west side of the land, on a gentle hill that offered a view of Themiscyra. It was a place we would pass often on the way to battle and offered us plenty of opportunities to pay the dead our respects.
“Is all prepared?” I asked. Items were laid by the sides of the graves, awaiting my approval.
All the women had weapons, although a bridle was placed next to Safak as well.
I stared at her grave, feeling a sting of guilt.
I paid her my respects, then moved to the next two bodies.
They were both older women, one from Oreia, the other from Ninniya.
The hand of the latter had escaped from its cloth swaddling, and as I went to cover it again, I noticed something on her wrist, a pattern in dark ink—a tattoo.
“From one of the Gargareans,” Althea told me. “The pair formed a friendship during her time there. He did this for her the day before we left.”
I stared at the pattern of triangles and thought of the Phrygians, with their bodies covered in such markings. I thought too of Cleon, with the lines of ink beneath his skin that I had traced time and time again.
“Did any of us see how this was done?” I asked Althea.
She shrugged. “I do not know. I suspect so. Several more women have the same.”
“Then find them and send them to me. I will get this same pattern on my skin, out of respect.”
Althea nodded, though she remained by my side.
“Find them now. I do not require your presence here.”
She parted her lips, only to close them again, and without further question, she began the walk down the hill. As I stood there in solitude, only one woman and one grave remained. Thalassa.
Other than Morsimus, I do not believe I ever despised someone as fiercely as I had despised Thalassa.
Not only for weeks or moons but for years after Melitta’s death.
I blamed her for every death we had suffered that night, every woman we had lost to the hands of our husbands.
But my blame had been selfish, a distraction from the self-loathing and guilt that I piled on myself.
Now, years later, I understood. Perhaps she had acted partly for herself, but her husband had told her the other women would be spared if she confessed.
That only I needed to die that night. Who would not choose the life of one over the lives of many?
To her, I had been an acceptable loss compared to the lives of those she had known for so much longer.
How could I of all people harbor anger toward her for that?
The sun was melting into the clouds, staining them with deep fuchsia, as I stood there and watched, letting time roll over me as tides roll across the sand.
I knew women were watching from a distance.
Those whom I had asked Althea to retrieve were waiting for me.
Others too, for I had said we would begin the celebrations at sunset, and the colored streaks that filled the sky marked the moment.
Soon I would go to them, and we would pay our respects to the lost Amazons through dancing and feasting.
But first I needed to give Thalassa the apology in death that I had never given her in life.
Slipping my most treasured bow off my back, that first one made by Hirtus’s hands, I lowered it into the ground and placed it across her chest. Then I turned to the women.
“Let us light the pyre,” I said.
* * *
We threw poppies into the flames. The aromatic ribbons of smoke drifted upward, darkening the air as they lightened the mind. By the time darkness fell, the dead were buried, and the women were singing as they danced.
As I had requested, with the use of a needle and black ash, Boryana marked my skin with the pattern worn by the deceased, using the same steady hand with which she had sewn so many garments.
Afterward, I asked her to create a second image on my wrist, that of a sunburst. For besides Althea, only the sun god, Helios, who saw all, knew where my daughter lay.
I was not the only woman who chose to adorn herself so.
Safak’s friends had the outline of a horse etched on their bodies in remembrance of their friend.
Damaris chose a knife for Thalassa. While Boryana worked, Damaris recounted to those around us the tale of that first hunt we had been on together after our husbands’ demise and how Thalassa had spun the knife through the air and killed a stag.
Others chose simple patterns and shapes for their tattoos, some to honor the dead, some to honor the land and the gods.
The first rays of dawn were threatening the darkness when, with the dull sting from the long-finished needle still throbbing in my arm, I moved away from the dancing and closer to the water.
My goal had been solitude, for a moment of contemplation.
But I had barely placed my toes in the foam when Damaris came and stood beside me.
As she took a place with her feet in the water an arm’s length away from me, I thought of the last words Thalassa had spoken.
I recalled how she had told me, in her furious anger, that Damaris had loved me before she had even truly known me.
That she had felt such affection from those earliest days.
They were not words I could unhear, nor did I know if I wanted to.
But I wondered if I had known before. Had I known Damaris loved me when she had followed me blindly?
Did I know she loved me when I had not chosen her to be present at the birth and death of my daughter?
I longed to believe that I could not have been so cruel, but I cannot be certain.
Still, Thalassa’s accusations rang true.
“Damaris, I am sorry—” I began, only for her to look at me.
“There is no need, Otrera. You did what you thought was best.”
“What I thought was best was wrong.”
“Perhaps. We will never know.”
Together we gazed out at the sea. In the distance, large waves were rolling toward the shore, yet by the time they reached us, they were nothing more than ripples.
Is that what mortal lives are like, I sometimes wonder.
Those great moments that seem so insurmountable when we face them, slowly fading to nothing with time.
I had turned to face Damaris when I saw him there, standing in front of the city, his shadow cast by the rising sun.
It was my expression that caused Damaris to turn and see him.
“Must you go to him now?” she said. There should have been no question in her tone. He was a god, and he was waiting.
“I must,” I said, then cast one final look at those waves. “Keep the others here. Finish the night. Honor the women.”
“We would do nothing else,” she said. “But if you need us, even against the god of war, we will come.”
“I know.”