Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

Molpadia told her.
    “The just follow their hearts,” Hippolyta answered, still holding Molpadia’s wrist with her left hand.
    “Ha! You haven’t the spirit of a true warrior. Don’t hold me. Fight me! Fight—if you are to have the name of Amazon.”
    All the while they challenged each other, Hippolyta’s other hand had been desperately trying to find her own knife in its sheath. Instead it found Molpadia’s quiver of arrows, slid halfway down her side.
    “Amazons are much more than brute fighters,” Hippolyta whispered, desperate to keep the conversation going so as not to alert Molpadia to what she was doing.
    “What else are we, coward?” Molpadia cried.
    Snatching an arrow from the quiver, Hippolyta held it firmly. “Smart fighters!” she said, jabbing upward with her last bit of strength and striking Molpadia in the shoulder with the arrow point. Then she fell back, exhausted, onto the ground.
    Molpadia screamed, staggered upward, pulled the arrow out, and flung it away. Shoulder bleeding freely, she turned and scrambled over to where the baby lay on the hillside. Crouching over him, she held up her knife.
    “I sacrifice you to Artemis, as our laws and history demand,” she cried.
    At Molpadia’s cry, Hippolyta sat up. She remembered her mother’s voice saying, “Keep the child safe.” But he was long footsteps away. How could she possibly reach the child in time?
    In the moonlight Molpadia’s knife blade glinted.
    Then Hippolyta saw, to one side, a figure moving swiftly from beneath the protection of the trees. “Goddess!” Hippolyta breathed in surprise, and Molpadia looked up from her bloody task.
    Before she could see what it was Hippolyta had seen, the haft of a spear cracked across the back of her skull, and she dropped without a sound. The knife slipped from her fingers.
    Orithya stood over her, spear in hand. “That should keep her quiet till daylight. She’ll have an awful headache come dawn.”
    “Praise the goddess you got here in time,” Hippolyta said.
    “Oh, I’ve been here for a while, little sister, but you were doing just fine. I saw no need to intrude.” She grinned.
    Hippolyta went over and picked up the baby. He had slept through the entire thing. “Molpadia was really going to kill him.”
    “And you next, I suspect. I was really saving you, not him. Otherwise Mother would never have forgiven me.”
    Hippolyta held out the baby to Orithya, but the older girl took a step back as if afraid any contact with the boy child might carry a curse.
    “You know,” she said in a tight voice, “it would be best for all if he just fell into the river.”
    “I swore to Mother that I’d keep him safe,” Hippolyta said.
    “Then wherever you’re going, go swiftly. And don’t—” She held up her hand. “Don’t tell me where. The less I know, the better. And now I’d better get back to the sacrifice.” Her mouth twisted oddly. “Or whatever it will be now. Valasca is sure to miss Molpadia, her little yellow-haired pet. It would be bad for me if we’re both found missing.” She helped Hippolyta mount the mare.
    “Thank you, sister. May the goddess bless you,” Hippolyta said, looking at her sister’s familiar face shining through the hard mask of soldiery.
    “Here,” Orithya said suddenly. “Take this.” She slipped the serpent bracelet off her arm.
    “But that’s your Long Mission bracelet. I don’t deserve one yet.”
    “You may need it on your journey,” Orithya said. “For I guess that journey will be longer and more dangerous than any Mission a young Amazon gets to take.”
    “But what will you do if they ask you about it?”
    Orithya grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll have a bracelet. It’s Molpadia who’ll have some explaining to do. Now go.”
    Hippolyta grabbed the rope reins and pulled the mare’s head around till she was facing west. Then over her shoulder she called to her sister, “I don’t know what would have become of me