Alexander and Alestria (13 page)

What does it matter that you have neither clothes nor jewels nor a kingdom? All that is Alexander's is yours: he offers you his army, his cities, his empire! You will lay down your arms, he will wage wars for you.

You will be my companion in my travels and in my life. Together we shall ride to the ends of the earth. All my suffering will be relegated to the past. All your suffering will be erased.

Alestria, I love you! I offer you Alexander, whose beauty is nothing compared to his ability to love. I offer you diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and the most luxurious fabrics to make you the youngest, most beautiful, and most glorious queen on earth.

You were destined for me, Alestria! It is I, the most powerful of men, whom the gods have chosen for you to tear you from the shadows and make you shine in the zenith!

Oh, Alestria, give me your wounds and your weapons. All those who have possessed you and all those you have loved shall be exiled! I have come to take you, to take you away!

Come, Alestria, my love! I came onto this earth for you. Together we shall ride to the firmament. Do not refuse me!

A thousand years, ten thousand years, from now the birds on the steppe will still sing of our meeting: on a moonless night two stars collide, the sky burns and spews out a tempest of flames and lightning. Every legend already written shall be burned, and a new era shall rise up from their ashes!

My name is not Alestria, it is Talestria: the T represents the tribe of Amazons, the women who love horses. I do not know when I was born.

I like red, the color of leaves burned by the sun, the color of blood.

I do not know who my parents were.

On the steppe countless men and women love each other for one night and then part without the promise of meeting again in another life.

On the steppe, every encounter has the intensity of a fleeting moment, for it is as easy to be born as it is to die. Life is as brief as one passing season, spanning one torrential rainstorm, the tiny moment it takes a bird to reach the clouds.

One beauty erases another; they are all ephemeral.

Talestria is queen of the Amazons. I knew that this name, like all other names I had been given, would be short-lived. I wore it like a piece of armor to go into war. One day I would leave it just as I came to it, anonymous and without weapons.

Our tribe was made up of girls without a past, all of them abandoned orphans. Each taken in by the warrior tribe, we in turn became women who feared nothing: cold, war, and famine were the three eagles sent to us by the God of Ice to guide us to the summit of Siberia.

"The greatest good comes through the greatest evil," my aunt used to say.

That is why my life started so badly: a little girl with no name who slipped into every name she was attributed. Her face was dirty, her features hard, her lips wizened with cold and thirst. Her hair, which was never cut, looked like a swallow's nest with locks trailing over her face, hiding her fierce expression. She strayed through the marketplace, her cracked, bleeding hands stealing the occasional piece of fruit or biscuit, or squeezing a goat's udder for a mouthful of milk. She threw stones at children who laughed at her, and hid under carts when dogs chased her, lying in manure and beating their snapping jaws back with a stick. But adults were more dangerous and cruel than dogs, dragging her through the dusty alleyways and whipping her. She suffered their blows without a sob, sometimes even laughing to please them. She wanted to live and to avenge herself; that is why she disguised her rage and chose to appear docile.

She wandered around the marketplace, not knowing where she came from or who her parents were. She let families adopt her, and for a couple of seasons she played the role of a good-natured, servile slave. They would give her a name, a plate, and a blanket that she shared with sheep, calves, and fleas. Then she would run away and escape to the steppes, running through the grass that was taller than she was, diving into rivers and letting the currents carry her off, floating on her back watching clouds and birds go by. At night she shivered, hungry and exhausted, with only the howling of wolves as comfort; she knew how to call to them to warm her and lick her wounds.

A new family came on horseback and took her. One evening, beside the fire, she heard the legend of the Amazons. The following morning at dawn she stole some food and slipped out of the tent. She crossed the steppe on foot, walking into the wind and the snow, following the stars, which sang to her:

My name is Talestria. Talestria, meaning "the joys of combat."

My mother's name was Talaxia, "scarlet feather." I am queen of the girls of Siberia, who thirst for happiness: laughing makes us forget death. I know nothing of tiredness.

I would not weep if my beloved sisters died tomorrow.

Suffering has carved a deep pit in my heart for life to pour its loveliness into.

War is an evil; happiness is my combat.

The girls of Siberia love war; they also love to enjoy themselves and laugh.

Sadness would wash over us after nightfall when, in the middle of a rowdy feast, the girls started to sing. Our god was music; he had engendered words, words had engendered thought, and thought had set women free. Our songs were earthly melodies that had to reach for the skies like birds. I would weep; all the girls would: music reopened our wounds and resuscitated our dead.

War purified us; our enemies' blood wiped from our breasts the memories of little girls crying in despair.

Why was I chosen by the warrior women? Why was I their queen? Why, when my mother took me in, did she appoint me as her heir? Everyone here believed it was my destiny. Everyone except for me.

I bore a scar on my left breast. All Amazons bear a deep welt on one of their breasts to position the leather strap of their bows. Mine was a wound, but I no longer remember how it happened.

I wanted to remember only happy moments from my previous life: running through the market holding steaming hot bread in my hand; jumping up to catch a dragonfly; dancing round a fire while in the shadows eyes watched me and hands clapped out the rhythm as I spread my arms and twirled, flew, reached the very stars.

I, Talestria, was born and became queen the day my mother Talaxia's body was brought back to the camp. In her left breast was an arrow topped with blue and green feathers.

I was brought up by my mother's servant, whom I called my aunt. Her name was Tankiasis, "the fragrance of white chrysanthemum." She was strict and gentle, recounting old legends to me while she rocked me in her arms. The first time I rode a full-sized horse, she made me gallop for days on end. On my first birthday, a year after my mother had died, she gave me more weapons honed for the survival of our tribe: the language of birds, the writing in the stars, the magic of numbers, the gift of healing.

She had a little girl with white skin and golden hair. My mother, queen Talaxia, had told me:

"Tania is your sister; she will be your servant when you are queen. You will make war, and Tania will watch over the flocks. She will raise your child and will be your regent if you die in combat. She will raise a servant for the new queen and will disappear when the two little girls have become women."

Tania was silent and shy, calm but always worrying. She would back away and scream if a frog leaped up, a bird flew off, a snake spat, or a caterpillar was simply too brightly colored. She was haunted by a nightmare and she wore its terror like a tattoo: she saw herself sleeping in a bed, surrounded by soft cushions and glittering cloth, and a white breast came toward her to give her milk. When she tried to look up at the face of the woman nursing her, men loomed into view, slicing sabers through the air. Their bellowing was like the roar of thunder. One of them tore her from the breast and threw her from the window.

As Tankiasis had for Queen Talaxia, Tania and I constituted day and night. Where I was courageous, she was fearful; where I was impulsive, she was cautious; where I advanced, she retreated. In areas where I felt weak, she found her strength. Every queen of Siberia has a servant, a sister, to complement her wisdom and perfect her virtue.

For a queen must never make a mistake.

She is the survival of the tribe of warrior women.

In the terrestrial world, war is an evil. But evil applied to evil forges good.

One night I was woken by muffled screams. The pine trees outside were in flames, and sheep ran hectically past my tent, bleating in fear. Some of my sisters beat drums to warn of the men's attack, while Tankiasis was already launching herself at the warriors with a weapon in each hand. One after another the girls threw themselves into the flames. I would have liked to follow them, but Tania had been given orders to take me to a shelter dug into the ground, and all through the night we listened to the clash of weapons and whinnying horses.

Tankiasis woke us at dawn, covered in blood, wild-eyed, and stinking of warfare.

She took us by the hand and led us to the battlefield, where bushes were still burning and the ground was strewn with bodies. She ordered us to kill any man still alive.

I found a young warrior still breathing; his clothes were lacerated, and his right shoulder was completely missing. He was slumped against his panting horse, gazing at the sky as if it were the most beautiful view. When he saw me coming over, he smiled at me; he had the darkest eyes and a face as pale as a lily. He was so ravishing, with his curly hair and the blood emptying peacefully from his body! I put one knee to the ground and drew my dagger. He stared at me intently, his eyes caressing my face and carving into my heart.

In a flash I sliced his throat: his body twitched, his lips quivered. Little flames flickered and then expired in his horrified eyes. Where was he from? What was his name? What was his horse called? How often had he ridden out across the steppes?

Death is not beautiful, but there is beauty when the warrior spirit leaves a body.

I had killed my first man. I had become a woman. I too was ready to die in battle.

Men, we called them zougouls! I was obsessed with them!

As I walked along the banks of the Iaxarte, close to my mother and holding hands with Tankiasis, I no longer thought of men simply as adults who beat children. Now that I was an Amazon, I had learned to see them as haughty and cunning horsemen.

"When you grow up," Talaxia told me, "you will be stronger than these men."

"Males have no udder to feed their young," Tankiasis added. "They have no bellies to bear young. That is why they constantly chase females to make them bear their progeny."

"Yes," said Talaxia. "They're like walking cuckoos, laying their eggs in other birds' nests."

"Except ours!" Tankiasis laughed. "The girls of Siberia drink magic infusions. They don't lay eggs, they fly away."

Many men approached my mother, and when she spoke to them they were the ones who lowered their eyes in submission. When they fought with her naked, she was the one who forced them to the ground and mounted them.

The wind blew through the doorway, and the moonlight drifted in and out. I was fascinated by men's muscles and swore mine would be like theirs when I grew up. Talaxia was not afraid of a man taller than her; she seized him bodily, handled him roughly, turned him round. With her long hair swinging in the silvery moonbeams, a distant smile playing on her lips and her eyes pinned to the top of the glacier, my mother made the man howl, begging her to love him again.

He had stopped shouting and lay snoring. My mother called me and put my hand on his sex. It was cold and damp, disgusting.

"Our sex is in our heads," my mother told me. "No one can steal it, no one can take it away!"

My head still reeling with the feel of that man's genitals, I wandered among the market stalls with Tania. Boys dressed in blue and saffron cloth, their heads wrapped in turbans, winked and threw flowers at us. The boldest stopped us and tried to talk to us. Tania panicked and dragged me away, not wanting them to touch me, afraid they might bewitch me. She was happier watching monkeys dancing with snakes, but I broke away from her and slipped into the crowd. She ran after me, calling to me as I weaved along alleyways between bustling customers, and hid among hanging carpets and bolts of cloth. Tania was stubborn as a mule and would not give up.

Tania was afraid of men. I simply did not like them.

I was growing, and my breasts filling out. I used my bow a hundred times a day to dig a deep furrow in the wound on my left breast, and the tough scar tissue forming over it meant I could carry ever heavier bows. I chose bigger and bigger horses, compensating for my small stature with the size of my horse and perfecting my own strengths with my own sacred weapons.

Every queen of Siberia, when she reaches maturity, must travel to the land of the volcano, where she is given a gift of black blades forged by our cousins, the whale hunters. Accompanied by my faithful Tania, I covered a huge distance to reach the forest and then the ocean. I was greeted by the Great Mother of the tribe, who had a beard and many tattoos. There was a special ceremony during which she sang, surrounded by dancing women, and called on the spirits, which had indicated their desire to be incarnated in my weapons. Three seasons later, a sun-shaped bludgeon and a moon-shaped sickle were forged and beaten out on the foothills of the volcano. Two warrior souls came down to breathe life into them: the female soul wedded the solar bludgeon, the male soul the lunar sickle. During my time on the shores of that freezing ocean, the sun darkened in the very middle of the day, devoured by the moon.