Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons (21 page)

“Protect our people by all means,” said Otrere, “but not by making war upon our neighbors for no reason other than your desire for battle.”

It was clear from the way the crowd listened to her that Otrere’s authority over the Amazons had been fully restored. Valasca and her small band of followers turned away and left the square. Only Molpadia, her face screwed up in anger, looked back.

“Come, Tithonus,” said Otrere with a smile, “let’s go into the palace, where you and your sister can tell me all about your adventures.”

The boy’s face lit up. “Oh, yes, there’s lots to tell,” he said.

Hippolyta laughed. “I hope you don’t have much else to do today, Mother. This could take quite some time.”

D
ID THE HEROIC AGE
, the Age of Heroes, really exist?

Yes and no.

No, there was not a time when the gods took part in human battles, nor were there gryphons flying about deserted cities or sea monsters scouring the countryside because of a curse.

But yes, there was once a rich and powerful civilization in Greece that we call Mycenae, where each city was a separate state with its own king but where the people were united by a single language. There was a thriving culture too, many days’ ride to the east near the Black Sea (which was then called the Euxine Sea), though there is no evidence of the city we call Themiscyra or a nation of women.

However, in that same time period there was a real Troy. Legend has it that in a continuing attempt to get rid of the sea monster, King Laomedon tied his own daughter, Hermione, to the rock as a sacrifice. Hercules showed up in his travels and offered to kill the monster and save the girl. All he wanted in exchange was a set of fabulous horses that Laomedon owned. Laomedon agreed, but when Hercules did the deed, Laomedon refused to pay him. Hercules proceeded on with his journey but returned a few years later and captured Troy. He killed Laomedon and all his sons except Tithonus, who had long ago disappeared into Ethiopia, some said as consort to the goddess of the dawn, and Podarces. Hermione ransomed her brother Podarces, who thereafter was known as Priam, which means “ransomed.” When the Trojan War began, a force of Amazons, led by Queen Penthesilea, came to the aid of the Trojans under King Priam. During the long war the Amazon queen and her followers were all slain, as was King Priam and his son, Hector. There was a real Troy and a real war, but the rest is probably legend.

Folk stories about a tribe of warrior women called Amazons living in the area of the Caucasus (then called the Rhipaean Mountains) were told and retold by the Greeks. The foundation of many towns—Smyrna, Ephesus, Paphos among them—is attributed to them. Legends said that two rebel Scythian princes had founded a town that became the birthplace of the Amazon race. A number of famous heroes—like Bellerophon, who tamed the flying horse Pegasus, and even the mighty Hercules—were said to have fought against the Amazons. In fact it is related that one of Hercules’ famous twelve labors was to bring back the girdle (belt) belonging to the Amazon queen Hippolyta, a belt reputedly given to her by her father, Ares, the god of war. We know from one version of these tales that Hippolyta and her sister Melanippe were killed in the fight. In other versions, only Melanippe dies. And in the stories about Theseus, the great hero who slew the Gorgon Medusa, there is one in which he carries off Antiope, the peacemaker, to be his bride. Hippolyta then tracks them down and lays siege to his city. Antiope and Molpadia both die in that battle, and Hippolyta supposedly retires to the city of Megara, where she dies some time later of grief.

Stories. Legends. Tales.

But a woman—even a mythic hero—must have a childhood and adolescence that foretell her future deeds. We know little about the Amazon queen called Hippolyta beside the stories of her battles with Bellerophon, Hercules, and Theseus. We know from these stories only that she was heroic, brave, headstrong, loyal to her family, and beloved as a great leader.

Archaeologists and folklorists tell us more. The Amazons were presumably the founders of the town of Themiscyra in a country on the River Thermodon. Their principal pursuits were hunting and agriculture. They were ruled by two queens, one for defense and one for domestic affairs. When the Amazons rode to war, they carried ivy-shaped shields and double-bladed battle-axes. But they were not the single-minded warriors that so many tales would have us believe. They also produced artistic treasures that were sought after by many of their trading neighbors.

For some four hundred years (1000-600 B.C.), they ruled parts of Asia Minor along the shores of the Black Sea. But Plutarch (among others) reported that the Amazons invaded Athens. History mixing with fiction.

One of the most persistent beliefs about the Amazons was that they surgically removed their right breasts, in order to make it easier to draw the bow and throw the javelin. But scholars no longer believe this, as there is no evidence in Greek art that shows the Amazons as mutilated women. Usually they are shown on horseback, often bare-breasted, sometimes in Scythian dress—a tight fur tunic, a cloak of many folds, a fur cap. However, there is an even more persistent belief: that the Amazons had children with men from surrounding tribes, or with their own male captives or slaves, and kept only the daughters of those unions, returning any sons to the tribe of origin or sometimes killing or crippling the boys. Is it true? Is any of it true? We can only guess. That is what a historical fantasy story is, after all, a well-told guess.

We have taken the Hippolyta of the legends and tales and projected her backward, using what archaeologists have told us about the civilization she would have inhabited if she had been a real young woman.

Or a young hero.

Jane:
When we began the first of the four Young Heroes books,
Odysseus in the Serpent Maze
, we were quickly heads down in the thirteenth century BCE. I remember feeling amazed each time we swam up to the surface, where we were using computers to write the books, not scrolls, and sending emails back and forth, even when we were living in the same country.

And look where we are now: We have cell phones that can take us from point A to point B and take and send photographs from any location; we have twitters and tweets and more. Does all this technology make it even harder to get into the Heroic Age mindset?

Bob:
When I try to think about being in a “mindset,” my mind goes completely blank. To give an answer worth reading, I would just have to make something up. In other words, lie.

Jane:
Well, after all, lying is what we do professionally—in other words, telling stories.

Bob:
I’ll give you the truth. Having written stories that span more than two thousand years, I’ll say that there is no mindset for each period. There is only a storytelling mindset, which is about plot and character.

Jane:
Absolutely. The story tells us where we are. Though I have to say, Plot Man, that I would have been well lost in the past without your compass, and your background in the classics. While we can both do the necessary research for details, you are the one who Finds Us a Plot. Me, I am the Follow-Your-Characters-and-Shout-at-Them-to-Slow-Down-and-Wait-for-Me kind of writer.

How do
you
invent plot?

Bob
: You’ll remember that we reached a point early in the
Odysseus
novel where Odysseus and his friends are lost at sea in a small boat. It took us quite a while to decide what would happen next: that they would come upon a ship, but one that appeared to be deserted.

It was asking questions about that ship that unfolded the plot for the rest of the book:
Why is the ship deserted? Who built it? Where did it come from?
Once we had answered those questions, the rest of the book almost wrote itself.

OK, it’s not that easy—but it was something like that.

Jane
: So, if you are stuck without a plot, ask questions! It’s a bit like being lost without a compass or a GPS. But you can find your way if you turn to the nearest friendly resident and are not afraid to ask questions.

Now that I have that handle on plotting . . . you may have talked your way out of being my cowriter, Bob!

The thing is, though, when we have two of us working on the same short stories (and we’ve done a bunch of those) as well as novels (four Young Heroes, four Scottish novels), we always come to a place where two heads really
are
better than one. And sometimes, when we can get your wife, Debby, in on our plotting sessions, the three of us come up with enough plot twists and turns to write a dozen more books. So look out, world!

I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison’s birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!

We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army’s secret radio.

When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.

I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book,
Owl Moon
—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.

And I am still writing.

I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in
Newsweek
close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.

The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are
Owl Moon
,
The Devil’s Arithmetic
, and
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I’ve also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called
Once Upon a Time
.

These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like
Wild Wings
and
Color Me a Rhyme.

And I am still writing.

Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don’t shine!

Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children’s book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.

And yes—I am still writing.

At a Yolen cousins reunion as a child, holding up a photograph of myself. In the photo, I am about one year old, maybe two.