Back at the ad agency Daniela sat for over an hour blankly, her eyes welling up occasionally with tears. She angrily wiped them with the back of her wrist. She was silent at her work table, tapping her drawing pencil impatiently, unproductively. While lost to her thoughts, she began to doodle on a notepad.

She quickly sketched a generic man and woman naked in bed. She indicated a large bulge under the covers on the man . . .

The office phone rang, breaking her reverie. It was Mr. Cuomo. He made one more blatant attempt to see her that evening.

"Perhaps after dinner if you work late," he politely suggested. "Maybe . . . just for a drink?"

Daniela declined again, calmly, without anger, explaining that she was very tired these days. She even told him, quite uncharacteristically, that she had not been sleeping well. Perhaps it was from the pressure at work, she said. She told him she wanted only to return home and finish the ad layout that evening from her house, once and for all. Then just sleep. Again, Mr. Cuomo stubbornly insisted, offering the brief meeting as an opportunity for her to air out her difficulties and perhaps accept some final suggestions about the ad.

While listening to his ineffectual plans for a time and a place, she quickly and angrily began sketching again. The drawing evolved quickly.

There was another man now in the scene, in an expensive suit. He was standing in the doorway of the couple's bedroom. His pants were pulled down around his ankles. There appeared on the page a large butcher knife which floated in the air. The standing man was suddenly holding his groin and screaming out in pain, as if he had just been brutally emasculated by the knife . . .

Daniela impishly smiled at her devious artwork as she declined Mr. Cuomo's futile advances for the last time. He simply directed her back to work and abruptly hung up while she scribbled thick lines over the entire impromptu composition. Anger finally consumed her while ablating the drawing's sentiment with her pencil. She threw the paper with force into the wastebasket. Working reluctantly and spiritlessly for the remainder of the day on the computer, she enhanced the graphics of the lifeless ad, adding fonts and colors to it to make up for its lack of appeal. She finished the project by 3:00 PM.

With great resolve she tidied her large desk, switched off the computer and the overhead light. She practically ran to the elevator for its silent decent into the parking garage. Daniele headed out of the city on the freeway, across the Golden Gate bridge toward Marin County and the Waverly Riding Club. Once there she rapidly changed into her riding clothes, violently saddled Baylor in his stall and stormed out of the stables with him onto the countryside trails at full gallop.

Again, magically, there was a miraculous transition to her character, brought on by the smell of the wild air and deep green surroundings of the countryside north of the great city. She seemed spiritually lifted by the horse, the feral environment, and the slow release of her present and rippling angst. Her reading glasses were now off and her hair was once more loose and bouncing freely to Baylor's gait. She aggressively coaxed him to jump over small rivulets and fallen branches at full gallop as she and the powerful animal warmed up to the ride. Daniela seemed possessed as she reached the same meadow of her last visit at a full run. Both she and her horse were exhausted but fully inspired for a challenge when they entered the pristine clearing, the site of her last but failed ordeal.

* * *

                               (Themiskryra, south of the Black Sea, c.1264 BCE)

With Penthesilea's birth and her addition to the Amazon clan, the society was jubilant. Her mother, Otrera, had been as valiant in childbirth as she was on the battle field, and it was this nobility and strength that later prompted the Greeks to surmise that this genetic line of women had rightfully been initiated by Ares, their own god of war. Penthesilea, it was believed, inherited in total the necessary royal and heroic characteristics given to the generations of Amazons before her.

This new baby girl was a symbol of the future hopes the 'Daughters of the Moon' would maintain as a formidable tribe under Penthesilea's reign someday. This was, of course, if she were to reach the age of her own blood cycles with the moon, accomplish the combat trials of bravery and leadership, and endure the passing into the shadows of her mother, Otrera, when their goddess Artemis ordained that the matriarch leave them in life.

But for now, this newest addition to the 'Daughters' was only an infant. A personality the Greeks would later call 'Penthesilea'-a name which meant "compelling men to mourn." Her birth had been witnessed and celebrated by the existing women's society out on a meadow under the stars. This special little girl who had many cousins, sisters and aunties, would, like the generations before them, play out a pivotal roll in the confluence of history and myth surrounding the mystique of the Amazons.

This proud legacy of her tribe had been celebrated and relived symbolically every winter and summer in a ceremony carried out during the solstices. At night, gathered inside a perimeter of fires, their history was told in the form of singing and poetry-spirited illuminations, recited by the female nomad's elders. The animated storytellers were members of the tribe who remembered and described the contests against males in times of battle and their brutal competition for survival. But they also related, to the delight of the women and girls, the brief moments of that necessary reconciliation with such men for their fleeting part in the clan's reproduction.

The stories told on these nights were mostly tales involving the pitch of battle, when the earliest women of the warrior clan so distinguished themselves in combat and decided to victoriously remain free of men. They related the pivotal chapters of their heritage when the overly-proud Greeks attempted to defeat them with their own heroes and steal away their sisters into captivity. These were the heartbreaking tales of Heracles' treachery to capture the belt of their former queen Hippolyte, and how they had been betrayed by him, ultimately for his greed and fame. It was to recount the events of Theseus' return to Athens with Antiope, another of their queens, whom the king married and kept in his own citadel below the Acropolis. And, of course, there were the accounts of the brave assault the Amazons made upon Athens in retaliation for Antiope's rape. It was their celebrated attack upon the 'white city' for her release at the Attic War.

But on balance, and for pleasurable relief during these evenings of epics, they also described the ephemeral period of stolen joy under the summer moon. It was the festival of an erotic fortnight which their members gleaned from former enemies, only once a year. The women poets reveled in descriptions of this event how the eligible female warriors got to choose the men appealing most to their lust. And how then, as thieves of pleasure, they were able to exhaust their energies with them. This was all in accordance with their sacred tradition to bring back sisters newly ripe with the seeds of their future daughters. All the infant girls would then grow under their collaborative support and training to bless their clan with a new generation of Amazons.

These 'illuminations' were related to the younger members of the society with great emotional import. It was imagistically a vivid element of their education. To the accompaniment of drums, flutes and female voices, testimonials were related and stories of courage and lust told about each other. This event was always to be commemorated for its significance-it allowed the opportunity for them to consciously break away from the idea of men's' domination indefinitely. For on that occasion they had severed all sacred bonds and duties formally ascribed to them as a weaker sex or as property claimed by males. The ritual had continued over time, insuring their survival and presence as a clan still vital and spiritually awake under the moon-lit cover of the heavens.

It was always a passionate night, and one of merriment during these biannual events. The celebration always ended with dancing to the hypnotic rhythm of drums which beat stronger and faster into the night. The younger, more agile warriors would form circles of ten or twelve women who joined hands and would perform the lively steps of the 'solidarity dance.' This they did with much enthusiasm, shrieks of defiance, and contagious laughter. The younger girls, down to the toddlers, would gather in the center of these circles to skip and whirl to the singing and rhythm of their mentors-big sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and friends. All would show them the resolve to continue on their path as spirited, young warriors. It was their education to be protectors of the society they had been born into.

These nights would be remembered as an affirmation of the Amazons' singularity from men, historically, and against great odds. While the women sang out their heart-felt lyrics to the melodies in unison, the little ones clapped their hands to the powerful beat and babbled out the words as best they could:

Celebrate freedom,

O Daughters of the Moon.

Here, where the lights of our past sisters

Illuminate the sky.

Our beauty and grace speak softly

Above the strength of men.

Yet against this enemy

Our minds and wills are stronger.

Like our cousins of the forest

We are cunning, swift and deadly.

The clever fox, the vigilant owl,

The unseen poisonous snake!

Fear it, you who travel near our path,

Both the brightness and darkest of of the moon!

For these are gifts of Artemis to bless and protect us.

And we are her Daughters for eternity!

It was an anthem the girls had to learn early-a code of conduct, and a promise to keep for the rest of their lives. It was the wish of what Penthesilea and her 'Sisters' strived to carry on. What for several generations was communicated in these moving hymns under the night sky. In the light of the fires their voices rose and fell in unity, and their hands were joined in an unbroken circle. Their own language, never written, and now long lost, expressed the sacred sentiments of their clan through such songs:

Trust our endless circle,

O Daughters of the Moon.

And grant our solemn wish

To never be divided-in past or future.

Though our eyes and hands were given us

Each the same as men-

And the morning sun and rain

Shared in this garden,

The food we gather and animals we kill

Are a constant contest for us both.

Yet we must win-heartily, and with grace.

And drink from separate rivers.

From all our sacrifices

On the fields we fall,

A paradise will exist for us

To dance and sing again!

Let us live apart from men—

All the long days and winter nights.

Defending those treasures which they destroy—

Freedom, strength and dignity!

Like the hunting eagle and mother lion,

We shall live with stealth and affection—

Never alone, through solidarity!

Always free, by the silent arrow!

Such singing was their resolve to never end the sisterhood-and to preserve the freedom they maintained through blood and the hard sacrifices of the past. It was a promise to themselves-a commitment to die in battle rather than be the property of men ever again. That was the eternal wish of Penthesilea's clan, and now her own private wish, as she grew into womanhood and prepared to preside over her tribe with their highest praise.

                                                                    * * *

On the University of California, Berkeley campus, Nicasio was standing outside room 3105, Professor Simons' office in Dwinelle Hall at precisely 10:00 PM. Simons, a full professor in the History Department, and a founding faculty member of the California Studies Center at the university during his long career, was respected greatly for his contributions to the research body's historical concerns. He also held a PhD in archaeology and during his earlier years co-chaired that department at Cal, as well. Nicasio had come to know the professor's austere and exacting nature. In the three years working under his direction he never felt totally comfortable with the man, though he respected him for his career and eminent academic reputation.

Nicasio had prepared his presentation for final approval well, and was ready to summarize his evidence. He would support his hypothesis verifying the Drake landing site controversy with new and compelling evidence which his past two years of research yielded. This was a day he had wished to finally come after hard years of struggle. As he held the thick notebook of aerial photographs, drawings and copies of articles under his arm nervously, he knocked on the professor's office door and waited. He looked at his watch and confirmed that he was still a few minutes early.

Wiping the moisture from his forehead, he began to tap nervously on the notebook. His confidence began to rally as he considered just how intensely he had spent the last two years investigating tidal and weather paterns which cyclically exposed the sand bars of Drake's Bay, 30 miles above San Francisco. He was absolutely convinced the locale substantiated Drake's landing point on the North American coast in 1579, and it was at this location where Drake famously and officially claimed the territory "Novo Albion" into the ship's diary for his majesty, Queen Elizabeth I.

Suddenly Professor Simons could be seen ambling briskly down the corridor. He was old, but spry-certainly at some point in his seventh or eighth decade of life. His head was for the most part bald and he wore a bow tie and sported a baggy, wrinkled brown suit which he might have owned since the 1970's. He was carrying an enormous, round-shouldered, leathered briefcase which, due to its weight, caused his body to list to the right. It was a permanent aberration of posture now from so many years of transporting documents and artifacts in the container. He greeted Nicasio formally at the office door, maintaining his legendary, serious demeanor.

The professor quietly unlocked the office and stepped first inside the stuffy, library-smelling room. Nicasio followed, waiting for his cue to sit down. As they faced each other across a cluttered desk, he felt oppressed by the overstocked book shelves that covered every bit of the office's wall space, even up to the high ceilings. The professor seemed distracted and inattentive as he fumbled with some papers of his own-drawings and odd photos he had removed from his satchel. Nicasio began to have the gnawing feeling that the meeting, for which he had prepared so carefully for years, might not go as he had planned.

* * *