The trial of the gauntlet – Part 1

Please forgive any grammar mistakes! this is literally my first time writing – its a slow story but I promise to make it steamy eventually :p Feedback is much appreciated 🙂

I looked around at the lush green forest around me, scarcely able to believe how much my life had changed in the span of a few moons. I grew up in a human city that belonged to Earth and from a young age, I realised I would never fit in. From the countless foster homes, juvenile detention centres, jails cells and never-ending brawls, life was chaos. But the past has a way of changing, which brings me to my present…

I was never supposed to be on that flight, but a seat had opened up last minute. Counting my blessings, I leaped at the chance to find new beginnings and hopefully somewhere to lie low – while the legal heat died down. We were flying over endless waves of blue when the plane jolted. I remember the stillness, not the fear, the stillness. I recall thinking ‘this is the end, I wonder where I’ll go’, as we crashed.

The next few days were a blur, floating in the sea, alive funnily enough. I couldn’t say the same for the pilot or the rest of the two hundred souls aboard. Why I survived that day I learnt later but it was perhaps the most pivotal point in my own life. The shores I landed on were soft, sand caressed my skin, waves lapped my battered body and a pair of gleaming sandals crossed my sight.

That was the day I met Dyane, leader of the warrior caste of the Amazonian people, legendry in her glory of battles. She was tall and strong with beautiful blond hair tied back neatly. She was probably in her early to mid forties but honestly all Amazonians looked a little ageless to me. She and a small scouting party found me that day and took me back to the village where I met their Queen. Now that was a woman one does not easily forget! She was the very definition of beauty, despite being possibly a head less tall than Dyane she stood with the grace and ease born of royalty. Dressed in a simple flowing blue robe she took my breath away with that piercing blue gaze. Unlike Dyane’s hawk eyes the Queen was more tempered but I had the distinct impression those cobalt blues would turn into frost blues if push came to shove!

They were both honestly good-looking despite being old enough to be my mothers. In the end it turns out they were bonded mates. Being in the room with the both of them one could certainly feel the damned heat! Honestly, if all Amazonian couples were like this it was no wonder they were surrounded by the ocean – cold baths would certainly come in handy in this female paradise.

At any rate, they healed me, they let me be a part of them and when I asked them why, their benevolent and beautiful Queen, Her Majesty, the Lady Shyann smiled serenely at me and said “To our shores come only those who belong my child, to each is given what they are owed”

Puzzled I asked her “what do you mean?”

Dyane growled, at my lack of manners no doubt, but I rolled my eyes.

The Queen laid her arm gently on Dyane and calmed her, then taking a deep breath she smiled at me “my dear, our shores are open to all, the mist that surrounds our island protects us from harm but opens to those who would call this home. Sometimes those who are city born like you find themselves on our shores, because somewhere along the way, your lines have been touched by the Goddess”

“ohm” I murmured, this was not what I expected…maybe the whole island was filled with lunatics?

The Queens gaze sharpened almost as though she sensed my thought as she continued “To each new sister we offer 12 full moons to stay, to settle, and during this time before the final moon reaches its peak she must undertake the gauntlet”

“the what now?” I asked, did they want me to find some metal glove?? Did I land in some mad women island, sigh!

Dyane spoke now “the gauntlet is the gift of the Goddess Artemis; every new sister has 12 moons to undertake it. At the end of the city are two protected gates, they open for one reason and one reason alone – the gauntlet”

Lady Shyann continued “when the sister feels she is ready to connect to the Goddess, ready to take up her role as a sister of Amazonia, she enters the gates. From sun-up to sun-down each will undergo their own test. No two gauntlets are ever the same and each experience is sacred”

“ok, so its like a citizenship test…what do you get in the end?” I asked

Dyane groaned at my description while Lady Shyann laughed “You get a caste my child. Normally if you are born in Amazon the gauntlet is run in the years between your thirteenth and eighteenth birthdays. Often the children belongs to the same caste as the parents. When a child comes out of the gauntlet they are blessed with a unique sigil placed on their body in a place of their choosing. This is Artemis’s gift to her children. The sigils of the year are all revealed to the tribe on the twelfth and final moon of the year wherein the children are formally accepted into their caste houses.”

“So what if you know you don’t get one of these tattoos?” I questioned them both

“if you weren’t sick I’d smack you! This is the Queen! One does not snap out questions without due respect and deference! Do they not teach you any manners in the city??!” Dyane snapped, as I rolled my eyes.

The Queen once again calmed her lover and continued “To each is given what they are owed my child, you come out with a sigil and a caste house or you don’t come out at all”

At that I swallowed hard, so now I had a twelve-month sentence that could end in death or some sort of crazy life-long caste.

I sighed as I looked around the village, trying to break the remnants of that old memory from when I first came here. The Amazon village was what most would call breath-taking. An island of lush green forestation surround by the ocean, the village sat at the central most part of the land. Small huts and homes sat along the way where the Amazonians lived canopied and protected by the trees. However, all the pathways led into one central arena and this was the heart blood of the city. The massive courtyard separated into a large audience chamber where the queen openly addressed the entire population. Similarly, other spaces gave way around the island with hidden routes and passages marking the garrison, training camps, healing houses and other key areas. In the midst of all this on seven corners sat the notorious gauntlets. Now a gauntlet is not what we would traditionally assume it to be. Nooo, the Amazonian word gauntlet meant gift. A gift from the Goddess, she who hunts, sees, heals, protects and rules. She who bestows and takes, she who loves and hates, she who is the mother to us all. The Lady Artemis, Goddess of Amazons, Goddess to all living creatures. The supreme mother, maiden and crone.

I chuckled remembering my initial reaction when I learnt of this historical deviations. But hey, to each their own beliefs…or so I thought at any rate.

The gauntlets in the city square were seven flags that stood in front like sentries. Each flag rose up in a building in different places around the city representing the main house of each caste, also known simply as the caste house. Each gauntlet represented a caste house.

The golden banner with an olive branch circling the midst of an arrow represented the ruling house, Shyann’s caste. Next was a crimson banner with an axe and sword crossed representing the warrior house, Dyane’s caste. A green banner with a single dew drop held leaf, marked the house of home-makers, skilled in culinary and building crafts. In blue, a pair of wings wrapped around a white rose stem, called out to the house of healers. In orange, two hands interlinked represented new life and the house of the mothers, the caretakers and the bards. In Silver, with a flame lit, stood the house of the priestesses, the caretakers of Artemis. The final house was a black banner with a simple milky white orb, but the flag did not fly because the line of that caste house had died over seven hundred years ago.

Sighing I turned away and stared at the moon, my last week before the twelfth full moon would rise, marking my arrival in a full cycle and I had yet to complete the damned goddess forsaken gauntlet.