Preveza, a region in the Epirus periphery of Greece’s western coast, is an unassuming province dominated by forest and wild, knoll-knotted grassland. On one such hillside, overlooking the glorious Mediterranean blue of the Ionian Sea and close to the city of Parga, there is a ruined temple. Inside this temple, past the stippling of shadows and slats of sunlight filtering through the splintered walls, and past the vines and the ancient greenery that seek to reclaim the earth from man’s artful masonry as it ever does, there is a high, narrow chamber. And in this chamber, among the dust and the haze, an improbably ancient woman brews tea.

The hunched old crone is expecting a guest. And before long, this guest – uninvited, unsuspecting, but as inevitable as tide and snow – will duly arrive.

For all the importance of what had come before, this is where things truly begin…

BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS

By Meriades Rai

Diana of the Amazons passed carefully through the Preveza temple, her lithe body trembling not through fear or fatigue but through an instinctive alertness that roused every muscle. She navigated the remains of a collapsed foyer and several truncated flights of steps that seemed to flow haphazardly this way and that with no real purpose of direction, and then finally a wide hallway lined with bronze statues that had long since relinquished their artistic features to corrosion. At the neck of the hallway, just before the chamber that she instinctively recognized as her ultimate destination, she paused and allowed one hand to drift to the golden lasso looped and clipped to the belt at her hip. Her violet eyes narrowed and her breathing shallowed.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” a female voice declared, brusquely. “Tea doesn’t stay hot forever, you know.”

Diana scowled, then stepped forward. Enough light cascaded down through the spoiled roof overhead to illuminate a table and chairs arranged in the center of the room, and a decrepit old woman who busied herself with a gas-lit stove and pots and cups, pouring a dark liquid into two of the latter. The crone was stout, heaviest about the chest and waist, and stooped to boot. She had lank gray hair and leathery skin, and was shrouded in colorless sackcloth. She was also blind, her features marked only by wrinkled craters where her eyes should have been. Nevertheless, at Diana’s entrance she turned and smiled as if able to observe her all the same.

“Well, well,” the crone breathed. “A young and pretty one, make no mistake. The Eye didn’t do you justice, my sweet…”

Diana glanced briefly at her surroundings, then returned her attention to the old woman once she’d determined there was no immediate danger lying in wait.

“Who are you?” she asked, warily. “And why have you brought me here?”

The crone cackled. “To the point then, hmm? Well, my dear, my full name is Ettahcandei, but you can call me Etta. And I haven’t summoned you, to be clear. I merely occupy the location that you – like those before you – are intuitively drawn to upon your arrival in this new world… the world beyond the Island.”

The Island. Diana’s fingertips moved a little closer to her lasso, even as she inwardly bemoaned her lot and wished that she had a trusty sword to hand instead. “You know of Themiscyra?” she asked. “Interesting.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. The first person I meet, and you know. Isn’t the whole point of a hidden island is that it’s supposed to be a secret…?”

“Only to those who aren’t Amazons.”

Diana frowned, then gasped.

“Wait. Ettahcandei, you said? I… know that name. It’s a name from the legends, from before I was modeled from the sacred clay of the twin rivers. You were the incorrigible itinerant, the first Amazon to leave Themiscyra for the world beyond—”

The blind woman laughed softly. “Hardly the first, my sweet,” she murmured. “But anything to make the legends more dramatic and significant, yes? At any rate, I am she. Anditinerant is a far more romantic and accepting title than the one my sisters branded me with back then, let me tell you. But that was a long, long time ago, and even the oldest wounds have the capacity to heal, apparently.”

“They do still refer to you in cruder terms, actually. I was being polite.”

“Something that doesn’t come especially easy to you?”

Etta cackled to herself and offered Diana tea, and the younger woman accepted, rather dazed.

“As you can see,” the crone continued, “the Amazon heritage doesn’t desert you completely when you abandon your roots, but a girl does become more… susceptible to the ravages of time. I used to be pretty like you. Once. But the world turns, and turns, and this is what becomes of us. Perhaps you should ask yourself, my dear, what it is that makes Themiscyra the paradise we claim it to be, and why those who seek to cross its magical borders are deemed pariahs. Is it envy on the part of those who wouldn’t countenance such desertion?”

Diana’s scowl returned. “I have taken leave on a mission of great importance.”

“Oh? How proud, how proud…”

Diana sipped her tea and grimaced at the acrid taste. Too late, she wondered if she should have drunk at all and admonished herself. This was an unfamiliar world, and a potentially dangerous one; she needed to be less trustworthy, more on guard. She glanced at Etta and saw the older woman smiling at her, benign enough but also oddly sinister, perhaps due to the absence of eyes.

“In my time I’ve encountered several of our sisters, each setting out on her own personal pilgrimage, with their own mission,” Etta explained. “New to the world beyond, they’re drawn here by forces they don’t fully understand, and which remain a mystery to me also. I know only to offer guidance and aid in whatever ways I can. Perhaps you thought youwere truly the first, and that your predecessors – myself included – were just campfire tales?”

Diana said nothing, clearly uncomfortable to be confronted so directly. Etta cackled again and nodded, as if this answered her question. This young one, she was evidently more at ease in the arts of combat than conversation: the heritage of an Amazon race driven to distraction by their own indolence, these regal warriors with no true foe to war against.

“You’ll find this world strange,” Etta said, “especially these modern times. These humans, they’re evolving at a staggering rate, and the advancements in the past century alone truly leave me dazzled. You’ll require certain… items if you want to fit in. Documents, credentials, enough to forge a new identity that can stand up to scrutiny. I can provide you with all that.”

“A new identity?”

“A disguise, of sorts. After all, you don’t want that scene on the beach this morning to be repeated too often, believe me…”

Diana flinched, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How… did you know about that? You weren’t there.”

Etta set down her cup of tea, remaining placid despite the aggressive tone her guest had adopted. She reached slowly into the folds of her sackcloth then, and when she withdrew her wizened hand she was holding a spherical object that pulsed with a gentle inner glow.

“The Eye of Graeae,” she crooned. “Sight beyond sight, and the gateway to enlightenment. This is how I watch, my dear. How I understand this modern life, regardless of how rapidly progress marches on. I observed your arrival through the Eye, saw how you emerged from the ocean like a freshly formed pearl of beauty an hour or so after the sun had risen. I saw the witnesses, milling fisherfolk startled by your appearance but then gathering their wits enough to capture your likeness on their pocket-sized technological wonders. Cell phones, they call them; and raspberries or blackcurrants, or somesuch thing. You have much to learn about telecommunications, my dear, and the human fascination with broadcasting images across the planet at remarkable speeds. In times past it was so easy to maintain one’s privacy, to keep secrets. Not any more. Even as we speak, your existence is being shared and discussed upon the web of wires that now ensnare every corner of the civilized globe.”

Diana grit her teeth, frustrated. She’d been aware that her arrival in the world beyond Themiscyra had been observed earlier that day, but Etta’s explanations held no meaning for her. “I don’t understand a word you just said,” she snapped. “That Eye—”

“Is not for you. It belongs to me. But I can share with you a fraction of its glory, as I have done over the years with those who have come before…”

Etta tapped at the Eye then, with the long, yellowing nail of her forefinger, and a sliver of crystal not unlike a slice of citrus fruit detached from the whole. She reached forward but Diana shied away, causing the older woman to tut. Diana stilled, flushing, and admonished herself for being so chary of a blind crone. Etta pressed the crystal sliver to the golden tiara Diana wore upon her forehead, and instantly there was a hiss and shimmer of ancient magic. Diana recoiled again, then swooned as a sudden rush of images assailed her, stabbing into her forebrain like a rain of needles.

She saw – and more importantly comprehended – so much in those next few minutes. Cell phones, as Etta had correctly called them, and also televisions, computers, satellites, machines, factories, vehicles, mechanics, language, politics, the principles of scientific and cultural theory—

No!

Diana exhaled a noise of genuine anguish and fell backwards, her body weak and her brain pulsing in her skull. Too much. Too much, too quickly. As she recovered, forcing herself to stand tall and strong once more despite her debilitation, she became aware of her brief omniscience fading as swiftly as it had swelled moments before – but something of it, some wretched tickling in her frontal lobe, remained.

“There,” Etta sighed. “Now, now. It’s not pleasant, I admit. But it’s all up there now,” she smiled, tapping her own temple, “and it’ll come back to you whenever you need it. It’s a necessary evil, dear. Education. You can’t grow up in a cloistered environment like our homeland and then expect to function in an alien outer world without some help, you see?”

Diana glowered, thoroughly unimpressed. She flecked her tongue at some bitter aftertaste, and it wasn’t just from the tea. She raised her hand to her tiara—

More images.

A city. A place of learning. Tall buildings, stone and steel and glass. Books. People. So many books, so many people.

Cars. Laughter. Money. Grass. Avenues. Signs.

One sign in particular: The EDEN Project, Celestial City.

A woman. A woman with red hair and green eyes, slipping back and forth among the trees.

Someone screaming. Green mist.

A girl, with blonde hair and sad, serious eyes.

Ice. Snow. The air itself, freezing. People dying. The witch, come crawling, come dancing, with winter in her hair and her lips and her heart.

Someone in the shadows. Someone with bright, hungry eyes. Someone snarling.

And guns. Two people with guns.

Why, Ms. Parker, you look positively sinful this fine day…

Diana gasped, convulsing, and this time she pitched forward. Etta moved to steady her but Diana cast her aside, her anger expelled from the back of her throat in a wordless rush.

“It does affect some of us like that,” the crone said, with maddening insouciance. “Flashbacks? Or flashforwards? The mind, it gets confused. That Circlet of yours, is it blessed perhaps? I should have asked outright, but I never considered… yes, that would be it, blessed by Athena no doubt. Well, no wonder…”

Diana’s head shot up, her eyes alarmingly dark and her lips curled in a snarl. “That hurt,” she hissed. “And you are seriously beginning to annoy me.”

“Oh. And you seemed like such a pleasant girl.”

“Don’t you believe it.”

Diana’s gaze traveled to the Eye in Etta’s hand, her mouth tightening. “You want to know why I’m here?” she asked. “That mission I mentioned, why I left Themiscyra? The magic field that protects the Island, that keeps it hidden… it’s failing. I need to find out why.”

“You say that as if I would care.”

“Don’t you? The Amazons are still your people, our home—”

“They are not my people!” Etta suddenly hissed, recoiling. “The things they did to me, the things they’ve done to others… you think our sisters some manner of angels? You think them benign? Benevolent? Fair? You are wrong, child. Desperately, violently wrong… and whatever the current plight of the Island, it is not my affair.”

Etta followed Diana’s gaze, then withdrew her hand, making to tuck the Eye back into the folds of her cloak. Diana’s hand shot out and grabbed her about her scrawny wrist.

“That could help me,” she said, coldly. “If a little sliver can turn my head inside out, help me understand the outer world, then the whole thing could surely be the answer. You see, Etta? Even blind, you must see.”

The crone began to panic. “No. No! The Eye’s mine. It’s all I have. You can’t—”

“I’m not going to take it away from you, for Hera’s sake. But if you just let me use it—”

“No!”

Etta twisted away from the younger woman’s grasp with surprising dexterity, and then with equally astonishing strength hurled her backwards, her wrinkled face rippling and distorting into a façade of pure wrath. “This is how you repay my hospitality?” she roared, raising one fist above her head and spreading her spindle fingers. “You are young and rash, sister. Arrogant! You need to learn your place!”

Sparks of pure magic crackled about the crone’s withered flesh, and in response a storm of whirling dust and stone splinters began to whorl and cut and puncture the aged air of the ruined temple. The crumbling walls groaned and shook, the flagstones shifted underfoot like creeping skin, and overhead the faint shafts of sunlight began to wither like the peel of rotting fruit.

In the hallway beyond the chamber where Ettahcandei had brewed tea and awaited her guest, there came the sudden sound of movement: shrieking metal joints, the thudding of old, dead hearts in bronze cages, and then the slow but inexorable thrumthrASH-thrumthrASH– thrumthrASH of footsteps and heavy limbs shredding undergrowth.

Diana turned slowly, her expression veering between contrite and exasperated, but with flitting eyes that betrayed an uncharacteristic fear.

The statues were awake. Enlivened by ancient Amazon magic, they were coming for her.

Diana scowled. Her mother had always said her reckless temper would cause her all manner of problems, and as usual she was right…

NEXT ISSUE: “The Rise Of The Argonauts…”