She opened a green enamel box that she kept by her bed, then hesitated. She had never been to see the Oracle, but Diana knew she was dangerous. She could see deep into an Amazon’s heart and far into the future. In the smoke from her ritual fire, she tracked thousands of lives over thousands of years, watching the way the currents moved and what could be done to alter their courses. Access to her predictions always came with a steep cost. The most essential thing was to approach with an offering that would please her, something personal, essential to the supplicant.
The green enamel box held Diana’s most cherished objects. She shoved the whole thing into her pack and ran down the stairs. She’d been pocketing food throughout the feast, but she stopped at the kitchen for a skin full of hot mulled wine. Though the kitchens were always a tangle of clatter and chaos, today the staff worked with grim determination and strange smells rose in billows of steam from the cook pots.
“Willow bark,” said one of the cooks as Diana peeked beneath a lid. “We’re extracting salicylic acid to help bring the fevers down.” She handed over the goatskin. “You tell Maeve we hope she feels better soon.”
All Diana said was “Thank you.” She didn’t want to add to her list of lies for the day.
The city streets were full of bustle and clamor as people ran back and forth with food, medicine, and supplies to shore up buildings damaged by the quakes. Diana pulled up her hood. She knew she should be at the center of it all, helping, but if her suspicions about Alia were right, then the only solution was to get her off the island as quickly as she could.
A glance at the harbor told her that stealing a boat would be close to impossible. The wind had risen to a full gale, and the sky had gone the color of slate. The docks were crawling with Amazons trying to secure the fleet before the storm descended in full force.
Diana took the eastern road out of the city, the most direct path to the Oracle’s temple. It was bordered by groves of olive trees, and once she’d entered their shelter, she broke into a run, setting the fastest pace she dared.
Soon she left the olives behind, traversing vineyards and tidy rows of peach trees clustered with fruit, then passed into the low hills that bordered the marsh at the center of the island.
The closer Diana drew to the marsh, the more her unease grew. The marsh lay in the shadow of Mount Ptolema and was the only place on the island that existed in a state of near-permanent shade. She had never ventured inside. There were stories of Amazons entering its depths to visit the Oracle and emerging weeping or completely mad. When Clarissa had sought an audience at the temple, she’d returned to the city gibbering and shaking, the blood vessels in both of her eyes broken, her nails bitten down to ragged stumps. She’d never spoken of what she’d seen, but to this day, Clarissa—a hardened soldier who liked to ride into battle armed with nothing but an axe and her courage—still slept with a lit lantern beside her bed.
Diana shivered as she entered the shadows of the marsh trees, draped in veils of moss like funeral-goers, the gnarled masses of their exposed roots reflecting sinister shapes in the murky waters. She could hear no sounds of the approaching storm, no familiar birdsong, not even the wind. The marsh had its own black music: the lap and splash of the water as something with a ridged back broke its surface and vanished with the flick of a long tail, the scuttle of insects, whispers that rose and fell without reason. Diana heard her name spoken, a chill breath at her ear. But when she turned, heart pounding, no one was there. She glimpsed something with long, hairy legs skittering over a nearby branch and quickened her steps.
Diana kept heading what she hoped was due east, farther into the marsh as the gloom deepened. She was sure now that something was following her, maybe several things. She could hear the rustle of their creeping legs above her. To her left, she could see the glint of what might be shiny black eyes between drooping swags of gray lace moss.
There is nothing to be afraid of here, she told herself, and she could almost hear the swamp’s low, gurgling laugh.
With a shudder, she pushed through a curtain of vines bound together by milky clusters of cobwebs and stopped. She had imagined the Oracle’s temple would be like the domed buildings in her history books, but now she was confronted with a dense thicket of tree roots, a woven barricade of branches that stretched as high and wide as a fortress wall. It was hard to tell if it had been constructed or if it had simply grown up out of the swamp. At its center was an opening, a gaping mouth of darkness deeper and blacker than any starless sky. From it emanated a low, discordant hum, the hungry murmur of a hive, a hornet’s nest ready to crack open.
Diana gathered her courage, adjusted her pack, and stepped onto a path of wet black stones that led to the entry, leaping from one to the next across water the dull gray of a clouded mirror, her sandals slipping over their glossy backs.
The air near the entrance felt strangely thick. It lay heavy against her skin, damp and unpleasantly warm, wet as an animal’s lolling tongue. She lit the lantern hanging from her pack, took a shallow breath, and stepped inside.
Instantly, the lamp went out. Diana heard whispering behind her and turned to see the roots knotting closed over the mouth of the tunnel. She lunged for the entrance, but it was too late. She was alone in the dark.
Her heart set a jackrabbit pace in her chest. Over the vibrating insect hum, she could hear the vines and roots shifting around her, and she was suddenly sure they would simply close in, trapping her in the tangled wall forever.
She forced herself to shuffle forward, hands held out before her. Her mother wouldn’t be afraid of a few branches. Tek would probably give those roots one withering look and they’d literally wither.
The hum grew louder and more human, a sighing, keening sound that rose and fell like a child’s weeping. I’m not afraid. I am an Amazon and have nothing to fear from this island. But this place felt older than the island. It felt older than everything.
Gradually, she realized the tunnel was sloping upward and that she could see the dim shapes of her hands, the woven-root texture of the walls. Somewhere up ahead, there was light.
The tunnel gave way to a round room, its ceiling open to the sky. It had been late afternoon when Diana set out, but the sky she was looking at now was black and full of stars. She panicked, wondering if she’d somehow lost time in the tunnel, and then she realized that the constellations above her were all wrong. Whatever sky she was seeing, it was not her own.
The bramble walls held torches alight with silver flames that gave no heat, and a moat of clear water ringed the room’s perimeter. At its center, on a perfectly flat circle of stone, a cloaked woman sat beside a bronze brazier hanging from a tripod by a delicate chain. In it, a proper fire burned vibrant orange, sending a plume of smoke into the star-strewn sky.
The woman rose and her hood fell back, revealing coppery hair, freckled skin.
“Maeve!” Diana cried.
The Oracle’s face shifted. She was a wide-eyed child, then a wizened crone, then Hippolyta with amethysts in her ears. She was a monster with black fangs and eyes like opals, then a glowing beauty, her straight nose and full mouth framed by a golden helm. She stepped forward; the shadows shifted. She was Tek now, but Tek as touched by age, dark skin lined, gray at her temples. Diana wanted nothing more than to turn and run. She stayed where she was.
“Daughter of Earth,” said the Oracle. “Make your offering.”
Diana willed herself not to flinch. Daughter of Earth. Born of clay. Had the Oracle meant those words as an insult? It didn’t matter. Diana had come here with a purpose.