Emel brought Daniela to a point in the library where the extensive walls were literally covered with shelves containing file of records.

"These are the profiles of the women who now make up the greater Penthesilea Sisterhood," she told her. "There are upwards of twenty million active females committed to the society at present. And that number grows daily."

"Oh my gosh!" was Daniela's response.

"Where we are going with this progress is truly phenomenal. We see it on every front. All the areas women have been fighting for. And just how all this will play out for a more joyous and healthy world will be determined over the next several months and years through the leadership and control of the organization. Naturally we will adhere to its basic premise of equality and independence for women."

Daniela nodded her head, feeling the weight and power and gravity of the movement in that room.

"Your division of public relations will be critical as the world comes to know us better, Daniela. We are moving from the shadows more into the light. And our history, our aims, and our willingness to stay focused and inventive will have to be articulated well. The public will have to accept us, but at the same time realize that we will hold up our commitment to a beneficial force in the world."

She walked with Daniela closer to the door to the chamber where Penthesilea's former remains lay, hermetically sealed.

"You should be aware of one more detail which is highly secure. It is a fact we determined about Penthesilea when we were scrutinizing her biologically for Myrsini's creation and her development as a possible reproductive clone."

Daniela could not even imagine what this newly revealed detail this could be.

"You see, when examining the body of Penthesilea, her wounds, her cause of death and her overall physical condition, we also determined something which never was expected and thus far not in any myth about her. Even from the lost texts of the Aethiopis, there was made no mention about what we had discovered regarding Penthesilea in all the tragic details of her brief stand at the Trojan War."

Daniela wondered intensively. What could this possibly be?

"It turns out that at the time our Amazon Queen and her twelve warriors came to the gates of Troy to assist the Trojans, and redeem Penthesilea of her personal sin . . . that time she was to exit history. She was in fact, two months pregnant."

Daniela was in total shock at hearing this.

"Apparently the summer months before her decision to go into battle, she had participated in the Amazon's annual reproductive festival, where a number of the younger, more fertile women would attempt to become inseminated to complete their reproductive duties to the clan. It is our belief, medically, that had she survived her ordeal at Troy, she would have returned to Themiskyra alive and healthy and most likely would have contributed to her society a child that following spring. A princess, as we have determined it would have been a girl."

"I don't know what to say, Emel . . . That is so sad."

"Yes and how this will someday affect our future genetic capacity to bring Penthesilea's complete essence back into the world will only be someday further determined. You will keep this knowledge a secret, I trust, as with everything else I have told you this morning. That is until such time that it may become necessary to reveal it."

"Yes. I certainly will."

The sound of Emel's cell phone suddenly went off in her hand as the two women stood facing each other. She answered it immediately and signaled that she urgently needed to get back to the house to attend to a video call.

Watching her walk away and being left in the library archive facility alone gave Daniela a curious feeling of direct participation amid that incomparable world. It galvanized her sense of cause and her long-awaited reason for being. Walking toward the rear door of Penthesilea's modern day crypt, she felt fearless to be in her presence once more. She in fact now felt she knew this enigmatic woman—as a friend for life. She was compelled to stand before her, once more in reverence, this women whose simple quest had inspired so much recent energy and changes in the world.

As she opened the door to the small chamber, she felt the cool dry air of the controlled atmosphere greet her. And as the door closed unseen behind her, she noted the absence of any sounds. It was indeed a tomb—a silent resting place not unlike the others the young Amazon queen had spent some three thousand years in one structure or another.

Daniela gathered her courage to press the button and activate the opaque glass sarcophagus top which covered the Amazon queen's remains. This she did this a small electric motor whirred to expose her age-darkened body back into sight.

Daniela felt unafraid as she looked onto Penthesilea's face with more courage and understanding. She could see clearly the cheekbones of a fair and once attractive face. She imagined how Achilles mourned at that moment he removed her helmet and faced the full force of her beauty. The removal of her lethal threat in death transformed her in his eyes to a woman more capable of his conquering. In her repose she was suddenly more reminiscent of the woman he wished her to be. Unthreatening and inviting. It was his sudden recognition of this queen's beauty, reveled to him through the curious removal of her helmet, which once and for all captivated his lust and attraction.

As Daniela looked down into Penthesilea's resting place, there were traces of her hair still on her scalp which yielded the sun streaked tones of mountain honey. She tried with her eyes closed to picture the young warrior riding forcefully over the windy plains, her bow and quiver bouncing at her side.

She opened her eyes once more and perused the horrid tissue damage to Penthesilea's sunken eye, where she had been brutally desecrated by Thesitis' spear point. There had been such drama at her death that day, such file history and a myth to be inspired and returned to in her in those last hours.

Suddenly, Daniel felt a strange sensation. It was like she was not alone. She instinctively turned around and found Myrsini's young and supple face close to hers. It startled Daniela greatly, causing her to step back and her heart to beat wildly. The young girl was motionless and had perhaps been behind her for some time. Daniela looked into her face closely and tried to diffuse her own fear by speaking.

" . . . Hello Myrsini. I thought I was . . . alone in here."

"I know," the young girl said in a strangely casual manner.

"Do you know who this is?"

Daniela looked down at the remains once more.

"Yes," Myrsini said. "It's Penthesilea, body. The warrior queen of the Amazons."

"And . . . do you come in here to see her sometimes?"

Daniela could see a remarkable similarity in the curvature of the girl's cheekbones and the same arc of the skull. There was a shocking parity of hair color between them as well.

"No. Not as much as you might think. I mean . . . considering her relationship to me."

"So . . . do you know about that relationship?"

"Oh yes. Of course I do." The girl smiled proudly.

"And . . . you understand then . . . who you really are?"

"Yes. I understand that completely."  The girl now smiled back at her.

"What does that all mean to you, Myrsini?"

"It means I must be . . . the future," she said surprisingly. "And a leader of women someday. Strong. As the Amazons once were."

"And can you do that?"

"I already am one," she said smiling again. "An Amazon. Because I'm . . . her," she said in a chilling, child's voice.

The sprightly girl then unexpectedly winked at Daniela  expressively. She then turned and bounded out of the small glass room as silently as she had entered it.

As Daniela left the glass enclosure behind her, she looked out the open library doorway to the sweeping grounds of Ephesus West. She knew her own life would never be the same once she passed through those gardens and walls to begin her new work. To what extent that would eclipse or alter the complexities of her future as a woman—as the continued lover of Nicasio—even possibly one day as a mother herself, she was far from certain. There was only one illuminated certainty as she watched from afar the young Myrsini, skipping with grace and energy back toward the house. And this was that the world for all women was in the midst of a dynamic transformation.

It was all begun so long ago, she reflected. And now it danced robustly again on the feet of a child, and through the rebirth of a long-cherished wish.

* * *

End of The Penthesilea's Wish saga.

_______________________

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