I drew right up to her to cave her head in; she pushed me back to slit my throat. I opened my arms wide to threaten her; she lunged her lance and drove in her sword; I threw myself forward, she withdrew; I withdrew, she advanced. She hurled herself at me with both weapons drawn like an eagle's steely talons. I fell backward, twisting my sickle around her sword and jabbing her lance with my bludgeon. The sky and our weapons spun in confusion, and in the flashing of those blades her eyes shone, sometimes with fury, sometimes with a smile.
Who are you? Are you that little girl with lily-white skin who ran through the market stalls with me and who was enslaved by the leopard hunters? Are you the little girl with green eyes who shared her gourd of milk with me for one whole summer?
The warrior seemed to hear the questions buzzing inside my head. Her iridescent eyes communicated gusts of unspoken words to me, and those words homed in on the wound on my breast, hurting me.
I sat back up and struck out again. She pushed my arms apart with hers, and our wrists touched. "If you love me," I told her inside my head, "put down your weapons!"
Our labored breath mingled, our pulses raced in time, sweat gleamed on our brows and formed beads on our cheeks.
"Lower your weapons, love me!" I ordered her, still in my head.
She moved quickly.
"No." She rebelled.
My bludgeon broke her lance. Her sword struck my breastplate, which roared loudly. The earth was trembling, the sky breaking open. I was overwhelmed with joy: She's mine! She will be wild with love for me!
I feigned weakness, inciting her to follow me and drawing her away from her tribe. I escaped Tania, who watched over me jealously, and we rode for days on end, the warrior woman never letting me out of her sight. She followed me, her desire roaring within her, the constant thud of her horse's hooves in the grass, an echo of her body's impatience. The birds flying up in front of my horse, the grass bending aside to let us pass, the clouds drawing closer to protect us from the sun… everything sang in chorus: Talestria! I am coming with you. I am yours!
One night as I lay in the grass I heard her voice, deep and rich, rising slowly in the air and wrapping itself around me. With that song in a strange language she communicated to me her loneliness, her melancholy, her quest for a companion in war, on horseback, and in embraces that drive away the wind, the snow, and the cut of a sword. Gazing at the stars, I too began to sing. My song had no words; I followed the intonations of her voice and improvised a tune that made her song stronger and more lovely. Our voices rose, and with them, my soul flew up to the stars. This is Alestries, whispered the ether; this is the heroine who took up residence in your heart before you even met her.
A gentle warmth spread through me: Alestries was not an illusion, she alone was capable of following me in full gallop, in flight, at the speed of light. She alone could slip into my life by way of the stars. I stopped singing and wept in silence. I, the vengeful little girl, the orphan who had crossed the steppes to become an Amazon, I who rested from bloody battles by taking refuge in the legend of Alestries, had just received happiness I was not even seeking: a warrior woman had come to join her sorrow and hope to my own.
I would lose her! Like Salimba, Talaxia, and Tankiasis, like the little girls I had become attached to, like the tribes that had adopted me, she too would disappear and die. Beauty is shortlived on the steppes. The lives I grasped became shooting stars, leaving only darkness in their wake. I dried my tears and curled myself up tightly. As I slept, I heard Tankiasis singing: You are destructible if you persist in seeing good in evil. Reacting to evil turns it to the good. Reacting to good turns it to evil.
Dawn broke, and with it came strength. What of the suffering of separation, what of the pain afforded when the beloved is pierced by arrows… I was determined to be joined with Alestries and to experience with her all the madness of our meeting.
But Alestries was a man! I fled-saddened, furious, and in de-spair-and would have galloped all the way to the ocean had I not been stopped by a river. To us a river is God's revelation: my god had decided to put me to the test, for the greatest good comes from the greatest evil. I was meant to love Alestries despite his body, I was meant to abandon myself to him without counting the time we were granted. Loving is more difficult than waging war: loving is fighting the past and secrets, and everything impossible.
The bolt of light was more dazzling than summer lightning when it struck me, making me tremble to the very tips of my fingers. It knocked the breath out of me, leaving me struggling to compose myself on the inside. Any woman would have been burned out by the flames of a female warrior soul in a man's body. I loved it even more for the suffering it inflicted on me because Talestria, queen of the Amazons, draws strength from pain, making her light shine still brighter, red on the outside and yellow in the center.
Countless men had been decapitated before they could even touch me. This man Alestries was not afraid of me; he held me to him, his hands caressed me to my very marrow, and mine made him moan. The two of us loved each other over and over again until we could no longer see or hear, until his seed mingled with my blood and my seed spilled inside his head.
I was naked; he cannot have failed to notice the scars over my body. He touched the wound deep in the flesh of my left breast, and I sat up with a start. He caught me by the leg and pushed me to the ground, pinning me down by leaping on top of me.
Alestries made a long declaration of which I understood not a single word, but the name Alexander came back again and again. A terrible apprehension chilled my limbs.
"Are you Alexander?" I asked in Persian.
His face lit up; he spoke Persian too. His voice sounded even more solemn in that language.
"We do not know each other," he was saying. "But we have always known each other. There is no point wasting time, all the years spent without you were wasted. No seductions, I hate seductions. No oaths, I hate oaths that are so easily broken. No ceremonies, I have held too many ceremonies. No speeches, I despise the speeches I have given. Nothing official. There is no one here, no one watching us. I give myself to you. You are mine. Alestria, my kingdom is yours. It is proof of my love."
I looked away, uttering not a sound. I wanted to reject him and flee. I had known only treachery and violence from men. Alexander's declaration hurt me: he was lying!
This warrior who had subjugated the world by strength could not know anything of love. He wanted to show off the queen of the Amazons as his proudest trophy on his horse's rump. He was not Alestries, I was wrong. I was about to get up, to gallop off, to exile myself far from him, far from his conquered lands… when he rested his head on my heart. His silence pierced right into me and filled me with joy and sadness. His calloused hands stroked my wounds. He kissed me. I faltered, and regretted giving myself to him the previous day as my arms disobeyed me, my mouth reached for his, and my thighs wrapped around him.