Free Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons by Jane Yolen Page B

son. She smiled grimly and went back to the grille. “She’s ten feet tall with big purple eyes. She has snakes for hair, and she eats little boys for breakfast!”
    Tithonus’ lower lip quivered, and he disappeared into the blackness. She could hear him trying to stifle his sobs.
    Serves him right, Hippolyta thought. But she felt bad. He’d been such an easy target. And he had brought her a pastry.
    She called out, “Pssst. Prince. I’m sorry for saying that. Come back tomorrow and bring me two pastries, and I promise I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
    He came back into the light, looking a bit whey-faced. “Tomorrow? But tomorrow will be too late.”
    She felt a stone in her stomach. “Too late for what?”
    “Too late for you,” he whispered.
    “What do you mean?” The stone in her stomach got heavier.
    But he was gone, running off down the corridor as though in fear of his life.
    Hippolyta went back to the little pile of straw and sank down onto it. Any impulse to sleep was now gone. She was suddenly and awfully wide awake.
    What has Laomedon planned for me? she wondered, remembering the guard’s words: “Scarcely a bite.” Remembering the king saying that he was cursed. Remembering that she had lashed out at him. At a king. In his own country.
    I guess I’m going to find out, she thought miserably. And soon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONDEMNED
    S HE HADN’T MEANT TO FALL asleep again. She thought she was wide awake. But suddenly the shouts and screams of the other prisoners woke her.
    The door to her cell opened slowly, and in came the stiff-legged jailer with a sour look on his face. Behind him a guard stood at the door watching while the jailer thrust a dry crust of bread and a cup of brackish water at Hippolyta.
    “Why they even bother …” he began.
    She grabbed the bread and water and downed them. “Fattening me up, I suppose,” she said, thinking to get information from him.
    He looked startled. “You know?”
    She nodded, hoping he would continue.
    “Poor girl,” he said solemnly, and took the cup from her.
    “Aye,” said the guard, “a waste of a good-looking woman, if you ask me.”
    “If you ask me,” the jailer said as he went through the door, “she’s too young by half for what you’re thinking.”
    “Too young for what the king’s thinking, too,” the guard replied, shutting the door and locking it.
    Well, Hippolyta thought, that was a lot of help.
    She now knew enough to be thoroughly frightened without knowing anything at all. But if I must die, I’ll die bravely. Like an Amazon. With that resolve, she sat down again on the dirty straw to calm herself.
    She tried to remember the death chant she’d been taught. The one Queen Andromache had composed before the battle in which she’d been slain.
    “I come to you, Artemis, with a clean heart,
    I come, Ares, ax in my strong right hand.
    My bow is strung. It sings my death song.
    My arrows are ready for flight.
    I come over the mountains, capped with snow,
    Past the eagles in their aeries,
    Past the far streamers of clouds. …”
    But in fact, she was bowless and axless and without her quiver of arrows. What good was singing a warrior’s death song when it was clear that she was going to die badly, eaten by some awful … thing? And without being given the chance to fight.
    Besides, she had failed her mother, failed her people.
    Ashamed, Hippolyta began to weep.
    By midmorning, when Laomedon’s soldiers came for her, Hippolyta had recovered herself. She had even scrubbed her face clean of tears—or at least as clean as she could with the back of her hand—and she was standing up, waiting for the guards.
    She’d heard them coming. A Phrygian could have heard them coming! They marched noisily along the corridor, the other prisoners taunting them, and that had given her time to stand tall, shoulders straight, head high. Like an Amazon.
    The jailer opened the door, and the soldiers marched in. There were eight of