Previously in Wonder Woman…

Hidden from the world is the island of Themiscyra, home to the Amazons of old, and guardians of the Gateway to Tartarus. Legend tells that should a man set foot on the shores of Themiscyra that the Gateway would fly open, heralding a new dark age on Earth. For thousands of years an immortal sisterhood has watched the Gateway until the present when without explanation the mystic barrier started to crack.

In search of a champion to remedy their plight, Queen Hippolyta determined a competition of skill and speed. From it emerged her daughter, Diana; a child born to Themyscira, sculpted from clay and given life by the goddess Hera. With determination and sorrow Diana left her native land on a quest, never to return again, and in doing so became a heroine to all humanity known as Wonder Woman.

Having learned of her mother’s death at the hands of the amazon Asteria, Diana travels to the shores where she first entered the world of men, and laments growing up as a princess under the queen, Hippolyta.

Eulogy

Part II

By Miranda Sparks

By the fourth day Diana could tolerate rest no longer. Her young body craved movement. Though doing so meant going against Trifine’s wishes. 

“Stay. It’s for your own good,” she said. “You’re not well,” and “drink this. You need your strength.”

The soup wasn’t very flavorful, despite Trifine’s assurances that it was rich with protein. 

“Everything a growing girl needs,” she said, and Diana accepted, because what choice did she have? She couldn’t feed herself in her current state.

It never stayed down for long; never had a chance to digest, but her surrogate was always there, spoon feeding her, making sure her belly was never completely empty. And no matter how sick the girl became, she was quick to clean it up.

“Whatever you need, I’ll be there,” Trifine said. “And when you’re better I’ll show you my secret garden. It’ll be all worth it. Trust me!”

And she did, because there was no reason not to trust her. Trifine was an inhabitant of paradise, a sister. She was blessed by the gods with life everlasting, same as every person she’d ever met.

Not to mention that Trifine was kind. She fussed over Diana, plaited her hair, sang songs and coddled her. Her affection was relentless, and the girl couldn’t fault her for that.

It was minutes after Trifine had left that Diana rolled from the bed. No amount of pain would keep her from the outside world. She was a child, and lived for the sunshine – to move, to run, regardless of the shackles of circumstance.

The sun had never been so bright, or so it seemed to her young eyes. Yet she pressed on, finding a sense of balance in a world much larger than she remembered.

Every few steps she stopped, either to catch her breath or to settle her stomach. Was this what death felt like? Deer and boar hobbled the same way before hunters brought them a swift end.

Diana laughed. ‘My meat would taste terrible,’ she thought. Her head spun so fast she almost lost her way.

Almost.

Her eyes adjusted to the day, and Diana followed gravity’s lead down an unbeaten path of foliage. Where it led was anybody’s guess. How she’d get back was a problem for later.

Maybe, she thought, she’d find Trifine’s garden and sneak a peek. She’d heard so many stories about flowers, colors, sensations and smells. Not normally the kind of thing that Diana thought all that much about, but Trifine spoke about them with such enthusiasm.

It had barely been half a mile, and the afternoon was waning. The girl who was once so eager to take on the world was exhausted, like she’d just scaled a mountain.

A moment’s rest, she told herself – then she’d start the journey back.

Then she remembered her mother. If Trifine was worried, then Hippolyta worried a thousand times more. Whatever guilt she held to she swallowed, for Diana couldn’t stand the thought of going back home before her adventure was done.

“Just until I see the garden,” she reasoned. Then she would task Trifine with seeing her safely back to the palace.

The air carried a chill, and Diana was suddenly weak. Her knees fell, then the rest of her, into dry leaves. 

Getting out of bed had been a mistake. Her sneaking away would have long been realised, and Trifine would be angry to say the least. Diana didn’t know which was worse.

If Trifine was anything like her mother, one bark could turn away an invading fleet. Or so she imagined.

She clawed through the dirt, searching for which way was up. The momentum of the Earth was against her, threatening to toss the girl into space. It was enough to make her heave for the hundredth time.

So it was that for the first time Diana was lost beyond her limit. She’d crashed into the proverbial wall many times before, but she’d never been stranded like this, unable to help herself.

What was she to do?

Suddenly she was no longer a young woman, but a little girl again, desperate for someone to cling to. A guardian, an aunt – her mother. If this was some ploy by the fates to humble her, she no longer cared. All she knew at that moment was need.

“Diana!”

The call was distant. It was not Trifine. But what did that matter? It was a lifeline!

She screamed, but only managed a whimper. Her lungs were too shallow, then of all times! Diana choked, desperate for air enough to fuel her cry. Despair nipped at her heels, but the girl wouldn’t give; not until her last!

Then a hand snatched her mouth, just as it had days before. It pulled Diana behind a tree with greater ease than it had before, and prompted her to silence.

The soldiers trudged through the wilds, oblivious to her presence. Diana fought to reach them, but instead could only listen.

“I almost hope to find her bloody carcass at the bottom of a revene,” said one.

“You don’t mean that, Asteria,” said the other.

“I don’t wish her a brutal death; not one of great suffering,” continued the first, “but Hera help us. What a relief it would be to no longer endure that mewling, entitled brat!”

The other soldier scoffed. “I remembered a time when you adored our princess.”

“When she was a babe,” Asteria said. “Were she to have remained an eternal infant I would delight in her company. But her screams become less endearing with age. I tell you, sister, the novelty of a child among us grows stale.”

Diana was still. Was that what they thought of her? Her sisters! Fellow amazons! She knew they had private thoughts, many they would never dare speak to her face, but for them to run so dark was more than she imagined.

Did her mother feel the same? Diana had tested her patience more than once in recent times, and was fast becoming accustomed to the restrained grimace of disapproval; not just from Hippolyta, but Antiope and Phillipus as well.

Perhaps, she thought, that the love had vanished from their hearts, and it was only through obligation that they gave affection. It was just as plausible a thought as any.

“Stay with me,” Trifine whispered. “You will never need for love in my arms.”

What a sweet promise, and one crafted to sate the girl’s yearning. Perhaps the fates had led her to the hermit for a reason, and that her illness was the proving grounds of a stranger’s intent.

Diana could have a new mother, removed from the one who’d grown cold.

All that changed, however, when she caught the scent from Trifine’s satchel. She’d discarded it when snatching Diana, and let the content she’d collected fall out. It smelled faintly of the herb broth she’d been feeding her these past days, to ‘settle’ her stomach. But upon seeing the leaves Diana knew they were something else entirely.

Through a surge of panic she found the strength to pull away from the woman, though not the strength to remain on her feet.

“Is this what you’ve been feeding me?” she asked.

Trifine didn’t have to answer.

Mistletoe. Diana had seen the pictures in her studies, but never seen it in the wild – never smelled it or tasted it, until now. She’d been eating it for days, complicit in her own poisoning.

One look was all it took to see the truth on the hermit’s face. This was no mistake. All she had done was by design.

It was the shock that froze Diana in place; shock that anyone was capable of such deliberate harm. She’d heard the stories of jealousy, of malice, though they were the property of a world she’d never touched. Amazons didn’t do these things, especially to each other!

All humanity dripped from Trifine as she narrowed on the girl. “All I wanted was to love you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have lied, but… you would have left me. I couldn’t allow that.”

“You-you poisoned me!” Diana spat.

If the fact bothered Trifine, it didn’t show.

The hermit leered, snapping Diana back to her body. Freezing failed; she would have to fly to save herself, no matter her condition.

There were moments as she ran that Diana prayed for death; not because she no longer valued her life, but to end the suffering built over days. The poison, the pain, now the desperate chase – she could hardly remember what it was to be free and happy, despite the shortness of time. All she wanted was to stop.

Her breath was still short. Her head swam, and her limbs ached, to say nothing of a belly in perpetual freefall. The twigs pressing the bottoms of her feet were the least of her pains, but remained no less an impediment to her progress.

She didn’t look back. Trifine might be in the distance or two steps behind, but she dared not take the risk. It was life or death, just as it was in the epics.

Would they tell stories of Diana, daughter of Hippolyta? Perhaps, if she survived.

She ran and she ran, bereft of her usual swiftness, her body betrayed by exhaustion. With every breath her chest expanded until burning.

With vision clouded by tears and agony, Diana did not recognise the stone structure from the trees. She collided with force enough to knock the wind out of her, and fell over the barrier, down, down, into darkness. Terror flashed before her.

Diana struck the ground. A veritable knife of bone stabbed through her leg, plunging the girl to new levels of pain.

“Hera,” she whimpered. “Hera help me…”

There was no time to tend her wounds, let alone fashion a splint. She could no longer walk, let alone run.

Perhaps, she dared to think, it would be better to be found; by Trifine, Asteria, whoever could help. 

She cried out from the bottom of the well, barely catching daylight from the portal above. With a whole body she could have climbed the way, but now she needed others. Alone was often the best company, but an unreliable companion in a crisis.

“Help me! Somebody, please!”

Diana wept. What a pathetic child she was.

She didn’t wait long before rescue was upon her. A head appeared in the mouth of the well. It was a woman who was not Trifine.

“Princess! Is that you?”

Thank Hera!

“Help me,” Diana sobbed. “I broke my leg!”

Oh, the shame of it. She could hear her mother consoling her long ago, telling her that things were alright, that people were there to support each other. But to have lost the ability to stand, to carry herself from harm, was more than she could bear.

“We’re coming to get you!” called the soldier, who disappeared from view. She would be back, Diana hoped; though her trust in the goodness of others was as wounded as her leg.

It took all she had to swallow her pride, to trust again, to know by choice her mother’s guards served honorably. Diana was their princess, her safety their duty.

She whispered a prayer to Hera, begging the goddess to lend strength to her rescuers.

Sounds of stone collapsing against stone echoed in the darkness. Diana started. The well was dry, but how deep did it run? She froze, informed by instinct that danger would pass if she was still enough.

The shadow stopped. “You’ve hurt yourself,” it gasped.

Trifine! How’d she find her way into this pit?

The hermit plied her tone with concern, as though she weren’t the reason for Diana’s troubles. She even dared to be shocked when the girl pulled away from her.

“And after all I’ve given you,” she seethed.

Trifine snatched her arm without the accustomed tenderness, and dragged the girl along the moss covered ground. She covered the girl’s mouth, and had no care for the pain she caused the broken limb.

“You’re a willful, unappreciative child,” she snapped, “but I forgive you. I’m your mother. That’s what mother’s do, because children don’t know any better.”

But she was a far cry from Hippolyta. Diana would have told her so, had she the freedom. Instead she bit down, sinking her teeth into Trifine’s palm until she tasted copper. Pain for pain, giving her room enough to squirm from her hold.

Diana hit the cold, mossy floor. She couldn’t run, only scream.

“Help!”

The sting of Trifine’s hand echoed through her cheek and down the passage. It was a shock, enough to rattle her, but a trifle next to the throbbing in her leg.

“You petulant little…” Trifine collected her anger. “Can’t you see? I’m doing this because I love you!”

Love. What did she know about love?

Diana crawled away, but not fast enough. There was no escape. She’d seen the desperation of quarry on their last; she never thought it would happen to her.

A woosh cut through the air and ended with a wet thud. Trifine stopped, tilting on the precipice of an unseen ledge. She collapsed to her knees. Wood rattled against stone. The girl needn’t have sight to recognise the spear in Trifine’s gut.

She looked back, barely making out the human shape in the far off day. The soldier plodded down the hall, knocked Trifine over with a sandal to the chest, and broke the staff off near the base.

“A wound like that takes a while to bleed out.” Asteria said. “You may yet live.”

Diana shivered. What strange fate it was that this woman who resented her was to be her salvation. She was silent, not even daring to thank her, lest words shift Asteria’s mood.

The soldier lifted Diana into her arms, taking special care to ease pressure on her leg. It was a practical consideration more than a compassionate one.

“Stay,” Asteria barked to Trifine. “Or don’t. You won’t get far. You’ll either land in a cell or die. I don’t care which.”

A cold sentiment, which young Diana couldn’t parse. Misguided though she was, Trifine had the semblance of a heart. 

Didn’t she?

It was a long ride back to the palace, though Diana was only conscious for part of it. The incident had taken its toll, and one she would feel for a long time to come, even in the light of amazon healing.

She rode side saddle, her leg in a splint, her head against the leather breastplate of a soldier whose name she’d forgotten. It was the first time in days she’d felt truly safe, but she was only aware after the fact.

In hindsight she should have known that Trifine was less wholesome than she appeared. The stories of their people were rife with figures whose ambition was all-consuming.

By dusk they arrived at the outskirts of town. Word travelled ahead, summoning Hippolyta to wait for them. Her stately manner was a ruin, fraught by hours of sleepless worry; more than she’d spent on any of her sisters, through even the bloodiest of campaigns.

Diana hardly recognised her.

“My daughter!”

Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons – she who’d sculpted an infant out of clay and humbled herself to Hera to give her life – collapsed by the saddle, and clung to the girl for all of her strength. She wept, and she wept, like a woman gone mad, overcome with any number of emotions, and of such volume her body struggled to contain them.

The princess, though weakened, held her just as tight. All the longing inside her rushed to the surface, no longer masked by frustration.

This, she remembered, was what love felt like.

Diana was always a child of unique circumstance. She, unlike most children, was not born from the belly of another. Yet despite never sharing a body with Hippolyta, the two remained as close as mother and daughter could be.

She stirred, suddenly aware of the much larger arm draped over her side. She knew who it belonged to before she opened her eyes. Her being in the Queen’s chambers removed all doubt.

It was good to be home. Better still since her stomach settled and other senses came right. Her leg was a little stiff, but the after effects of the healer’s work would pass by week’s end.

Diana pulled the arm closer around her, and nestled back into the arc of Hippolyta. Nobody else could occupy this space, try as they might. If she wasn’t sure of it before, she was at that moment. What they shared was more than the presence of a warm body.

Hippolyta murmured, then started to wake. She needn’t have been facing Diana to know she was smiling.

“Good morning, my cherub.”

The sun shone over the balcony, but whether it was morning had yet to be determined.

Such attention had been stifling in recent months, but Diana revelled in it. This was normal, this was good, and she would never take it for granted again.

“I have my own bed, you know,” she teased.

“You were gone for so long,” said the Queen. “I couldn’t bear to be apart from you for longer. I’m sorry if that was selfish of me.” Guilt weighed heavy in her tone, as though to hold her child was some kind of a sin.

Diana pressed closer to her; as close as she could manage, and clung to Hippolyta’s arm as though her life depended on it. She held onto love, though was too bashful to acknowledge it aloud. 

The queen eased and kissed the back of her daughter’s curls.

“Growing up is not so simple a thing,” Hippolyta said. “It’s been so long, I scarcely remember what it was like to be your age. Thirsty for freedom, eager to taste the fruits of the world. And how oppressive it must feel when someone tells you not to.”

Her words had all the rings of a confession.

Diana smirked. “And I thought I was dramatic,” she said.

The girl bounced, practically hurling herself atop her mother, and snuggled into her breast. After her ordeal, she had more than enough energy to spend.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Diana said. “I’m just glad to be home.”

There would be more words, but later. All that mattered was that two were one again, and would cling until the moment was firm in their memory.

Greece, Present Day:

“That’s only the third time I’ve shared that story,” Diana said. “First to my mother, then to Phillipus and Antiope. After that the entire island knew.”

Steve smiled a soft smile. “I’m honored to hear it.”

He meant that in spite of himself. Diana noted the effort to engage, to believe, even though the story was fantastic. Could she blame his skepticism? The only proof she had of an island of amazons was her own presence, for all that was worth.

And, skeptical though Steve was, at least he didn’t treat her like a fool. That would have been salt in a wound of loneliness. Diana could tolerate this, and still call him friend; and a dear friend at that.

She stared into the crackling fire, lost between incandescent tongues lashing the air. It was as though the fire itself held her memory, which was more vivid than it ever had been.

Perhaps it was the lariat of truth warming her side, activating history so that she lived it again in the telling. Such things were in the realm of possibility.

The ocean breeze swept over the cliff, prompting a shiver from the colonel. Diana might have been cold as well, but her thoughts were miles away. It wasn’t until Steve fed a blanket around her shoulders that she found reality.

“Sounds like she loved you a whole lot.”

“She did,” Diana said. A fresh stream of tears ran down her cheeks.

He took her hand and squeezed. “And you loved her right back,” Steve told her. “She knew that. She had to. I don’t care what kind of a little hellraiser you were. You wear your heart on your sleeve, and love bleeds out of you like nobody’s business. For her, doubly so.”

She regarded him for a moment, and the bottle from his hands. Hera help him, he’d downed half of it already.

“You’re drunk,” Diana teased.

“So? Doesn’t mean I’m a liar. This here is my lasso of truth.”

She didn’t need to consult the perfect to know he was genuine, and for that she was thankful. Diana embraced him, and kissed his cheek. Thank the gods for friends to cherish.

Stealing a swig for herself Diana meandered toward the cliff’s edge and set down on her knees. She closed her eyes and opened her arms to the elements to feel the gods move through them.

And so she sang, with all the feeling in her heart.

“O Hera, blessed among the gods;
Athena, most wise and brave;
Artemis, swift and virtuous;
Aphrodite, from whom all affections blossom;
I thank you for the gift of Hippolyta,
queen, warrior, beloved mother,
who in your honor shaped the lives of countless others.
May you judge her spirit with compassion,
and lead her to Elysium.”

Diana lifted her head, and reached for the purse tucked to her belt. From it she removed two coins, American silver dollars, the nearest equivalent she could produce for the ferryman. She cast them into the ocean, and she wept.

As curious as he was, Steve turned away. Perhaps Diana cared, or maybe she didn’t, but the words were not for his ears. This was a conversation between her and eternity.

“Please let her know she will be remembered, for all my days and beyond,” she said.

Only a cold god would refuse her.

NEXT ISSUE: Diana searches for the meaning behind her visions, when a new villain arrives in Dr. Poison. Don’t miss ‘A Touch of Death’ part one!