Once the announcement of Daniela's job offer was officially made the women settled into drinking tea and sampling the Greek and Turkish deserts which had been brought out by Aisha.

"Well, you can have the remainder of this week to make sure," responded Belinda. We all know you have to break the news to a few people. Some obviously more understanding than others."

Daniela felt that old familiar chill come over her. The one that always seemed to signify some peak moment in her life.

"Yes," Emel said. "And while we're on that subject of 'more understanding people,' we have a little coming-on-board present which might make you a little more popular in some circles."

"What do you mean? Daniela asked. She had no clue as to what such a 'present' might be. Popular in what circles? With whom?"

It was the Stanford Classical Studies professor, Michelle who spoke up. "Look, Daniela, we've known for some time about the work of your boyfriend."

"Nicasio?"

"Yes. And his advisor at Cal . . . Dr. John Simons."

"You have?

"Intelligence, my girl. Remember?"

The women all smiled at the comment.

"Well . . . yes then. Ok. . ."

'You see," Michelle continued. "Sometime ago, I and a few of my female colleagues at Stanford made a remarkable discovery here in California. But it could only have been made working with Emel's and Nefeli's phenomenal finds in Greece and Anatolia. From that research, we were able to eventually locate, down on a remote cliff of Big Sur, the very tomb Professor Simons and Nicasio have been exploring for the past two months. For us it has been almost fourteen years ago that we opened that tomb."

"Oh my gosh! That far back?"

"Yes. It was a direct result of Nefeli's access to Ioannis Fokkas' ship logs on the island of Cephalonia. They were written in Spanish and Greek and from a time around the end of the sixteenth century. Those lost journals became the primary sources that told us Fokkas was commissioned under the name of Juan De Fuca by the Queen of Castile. He was to locate a 'hidden location' on the coast of the newly discovered California."

"Wow. Yes. . . Nefeli told us about that journal while on Andros."

"And under the circumstances of what we were to find there in that grave site, we chose not to go public with the discovery, despite its remarkable history. We also decided to not write it up for all these years. During that period the Sisterhood was building and evolving quietly. Remarkably."

"Of course it would have been a dream," Michelle confirmed, "for any university department or individual academic to receive so much credit."

Daniela nodded. "Being with Nicasio these past five years I can totally understand that. His career is really all about what they are doing there. Especially now. Things are pretty uncertain, he tells me."

"Exactly. But you must also understand that all of us working with the Sisterhood now feel greater rewards applying ourselves to our ancient cause than merely taking any academic glory from it."

"OK, Yes. I see that in all of you. It's something I admire."

"When we located the tomb, you should know," Michelle continued, "it was completely intact. Un-opened for over four-hundred years."

"So incredible."

"The Amazon queen Penthesilea was still at rest in that sarcophagus," Michelle went on. "Her body was completely mummified. It had been over three thousand years since her death on the battlefield of Troy."

"God. . . If only Nicasio and the professor knew this . . . that you women had been to the tomb first. And actually opened it!"

"Well, I'm sure by now Simons does know that." Emel stated. "Or he must be assuming it."

"You think?"

"Yes. We're quite sure about that," she continued. "But he and Nicasio probably still don't know whose tomb it was. Nor who had designed it."

"And it's very obvious to us," Nefeli said, "they don't even realize who it was that delivered Penthesilea's royal personage there. Into her tholos there on the cliff."

"But regardless, she is now with us. Here in her glass tomb at Ephesus West." Nefeli added proudly.

"But . . . how could he know you had been to it before?" Daniela asked, totally perplexed.

"You see," Michelle explained, "I stopped by one day at the site and asked the security detail how the dig was going. I left my university's name purposely as 'Stanford.' Jack Simons must have fainted when he heard that from the guard."

"Cal, you see, Daniela, got the official task of investigating the tomb after it turned up with the Monterey Sheriff's Department several months ago. It was to be a classified dig. Spearheaded by Berkeley through the auspices of the UC Board of Regents.

"Though we had actually done it all . . . years before."

The women all smiled

"That is so amazing!"

"Not really. John Simons is a good historian. Not the best archaeologist. And he was always a bit too competitive in his younger years. I had heard this from colleagues who worked with him on a few California digs our schools collaborated on."

"Oh."

"Like many men in academia, I also heard he didn't relate at all well to women. And he apparently had some tragic issues with the women in his own life.

"I didn't know all this," Daniela remarked sensitively.

"Naturally, Daniela. How could you? So now . . . about your boyfriend."

"Yes? Oh no. What do you also know about him now?"

The women chuckled a little at Daniela's open-faced candor. It was exactly her girlish ambiance which had charmed them all that evening. She feared the women were going to tell her some terrible piece of news that would further change her feelings about Nicasio forever.

Well. . . "Intelligence. Remember?" Michelle posed the rhetorical question for dramatic effect.

The women all laughed out loud, relieving some of Daniela's trepidation.

"Look," Michelle continued lightheartedly, "we only know that he happens to be still much attached to one of our favorite girls . . ."

"Our Aenea_4356," Nefeli beamed.

"Daniela smiled back at hearing her own 'Sisterhood' name once more.

"Ok. But I really don't know where that's going with him these days," Daniela wistfully and confessionally replied. "But anyway. . ."

"Well, if it goes anywhere for you, we want you to have a little something to give this typical enamored young man."

"Typical?"

"Daniela." Emel interjected. "You must understand. We are not 'men-haters.' We understand well that we must share the planet with them. And harmoniously if possible. Many of our society are wives, mothers, and lovers of men. Some of us at this table commune with members of their sex quite positively and regularly."

At least two of the women at the table nodded their heads self-consciously and smiled.

"Though it has never been a concern of this society how our sisters choose to enhance their lives through relationships. All of us here have certainly tasted of the fruit with men, and to different degrees. We still all embrace their contrasting elements with ours, however attractive or repulsive we may find them at times."

"That's right, young lady," Belinda chimed in. "It's completely an individual matter how we wish to fill up our lives with companionship, pleasure and joy. As women we have realized over the centuries that it is intimacy, trust and affection which appeals to us universally, and that can be found among both sexes of our species equally. We all respect those choices you will make with Nicasio or whomever. Both now and in the future."

Daniela was surprised at this open and unexpected attitude.

"Look. Many of the women in the world whom we embrace love and have loved men dearly. And we accept their choices. Our focus is helping all females regardless of their sexual or romantic preferences. It's no different than their religious, national, racial or ethnic persuasions. Some in our organization happen to be gay, bisexual or transsexual, but most are traditionally straight. Many are wives, loving mothers, sisters and grandmothers to men. We do not disfavor men simply for their gender. Our society just believes we can be better stewards of the earth and the people on it when we work freely, independent of men, and synergize our efforts as women into common goals for the their betterment."

"You see, Daniela," Michelle added. "We are simply dissatisfied with the history of governance and the policies throughout history made by men and often with their own interests in mind. And this pertains especially to our treatment by them over the past three millennia."

"So . . . you say you have a gift for him? She asked. "Seriously? And what could that be?"

"Something that will assure his future as a professor," Nefeli interjected. "At any university he wishes."

Daniela was again back in the dark. Like the greater part of her long and eventful day, the evening was still full of immeasurable surprises and unexpected details.

At that point, Michelle dramatically pulled from her handbag a thick manila envelope. It seemed heavy, but delicate the way she was handled it.

"Here, Daniela." she said. "You will probably have no idea what this is. But Nicasio surely will."

"In an instant," Nefeli assured.

"Oh my gosh . . . what is this then?" She took the flat folder in her hands and could immediately tell it held a piece of metal, judging from its weight."

The women all waited for her to open it, as if it were a birthday present.

"Now what is most critical to your historian-significant-other," Nefeli said with excitement in her voice, "is to tell him where this was found." There was an amused look of anticipation on all the women's faces."

Daniela carefully opened the flap of the envelope and slid the contents out. It was a discolored, rectangular bronze plate or plaque, wrapped more carefully in bubble-wrapped plastic sheeting. Placing the greenish metal object on the table in front of her, she could see it was obviously old and weather stained. Its surface had been originally inscribed with writing. Its text was etched in a deep, flamboyant handwritten script. She could not make out many of the words, but certainly ascertained the last two—it was signed, Francis Drake. The date, also written by hand with a flair, was 1579.

"Oh my gosh! So where was this found?" Daniela asked, running her finger over its rough surface.

We took it from beneath Penthesilea's sarcophagus. Inside the tomb. It was easily discovered when we moved the structure while opening it."

Daniela blinked her eyes, trying to comprehend what this all meant for Nicasio, while the Stanford professor thoroughly explained.

"Some time ago we learned that Nicasio's original PhD thesis at Berkeley was to pin-point Sir Francis Drake's historic landing site at a location on the Pacific coast."

"But how did you . . ?"

"Intelligence," Belinda said again, smiling.

"He's apparently been convinced for some time that the location was at Drakes Bay, one of several debated suggestions for centuries, up near Point Reyes, to the north of San Francisco Bay."

"Yes," Daniela explained to them. "He spent two years of research up there to confirm that. He's very proud of his work."

"Well. Nicasio's evidence, if published, may indeed show it was the little cove where Drake and his crew rested and took on water and food for fourteen days in 1579. Though there will always be controversy over that site among historians and Drakeologists."

"You see," Nefeli further explained, "according to Drake's own logs and a later publication he had written about his travels, while being on that phenomenal journey that took him literally around the world, he spent a number of days somewhere on the California coast recuperating before sailing southeast to the Moluccas to complete his circumnavigation in 1580."

"Well, now we know precisely," Michelle beamed. "Where he made at least one historic California landfall in 1579. It wasn't mentioned in his log or journal years later. And that was obviously due to the secrecy of the original mission prescribed by his queen."

"Elizabeth?"

"Yes. That bronze plaque you are holding," she continued, "is a proclamation by Drake on behalf of his Queen, Elizabeth I of England. It also extended to any who should ever find it, that it was he who carried out the orders to deposit the sarcophagus found there into the waiting tomb."

"Oh my gosh! I can't believe this!"

"Well as you can read from the inscription, it was at that very landfall where Drake officially disembarked from his ship, stepped onto the beach and claimed the land for Elizabeth I as "New Albion," The year was indeed 1579 and it is signed in Drake's own hand."

Nefeli quietly commented upon the heavy flat object Daniela held in her hand. "This bronze plate, Daniela, remains a remarkable historical artifact for one reason only. It's Drake's own proof of landing on the 'Isle of California.' Where and when. Nicasio will have no trouble having it chemically tested and its authenticity verified."

"And you are really giving this to him?" She asked, moved almost to tears.

"Well, to bring us closer into the graces of the two of you . . . yes," the Stanford professor established. "You see, we are not eager anymore ourselves for the fame or academic credit from any part of this discovery. We would rather not have the notoriety directed at us over what we found so many years ago and never reported."

"We are far too involved with the effects of that find now," said Nefeli. "And I'm referring to Myrsini's successful birth. The successful cloning of Penthesilea's DNA. It's what we consider as her re-birth. From that event the development of the society seems to have taken off at light speed."

"Yes, I see that now."

"It all began with Emel's meticulously deciphering those Hittite fragments of the lost Greek text of Aethiopis while still a student at Yale. She recovered and translated the verses relating to the Trojan War. It was those details of Penthesilea's death and burial which led us to a significantly shaped stone on the banks of the Scamander River. And it was there we discovered Penthesilea's empty first tomb.

"Yes," added Michelle, "And it was De Fuca's ship logs, brought to light by Nefeli and her student, which helped us then locate her authentic remains on the California cliff. We still seek out no academic credit for these finds and do not wish the publicity of the events to eclipse our work."

"We are just content that Penthesilea is in our hands now and has been miraculously returned to life," she said. "It was no doubt the Amazon queen's wish and . . . the wish of her sisters for this to one day happen. Her mission continues with all of us now."

The chill again could be felt moving up Daniela's lower back to her neck.

"So you are really willing to let Nicasio publish the details of this bronze plate through Berkeley about Drake's true landing site?"

"Precisely," Nefeli answered. And with our blessings."

"It's so ironic, that it's what he set out to prove anyway . . . isn't it?" Emel asked.

Daniela smiled. "It truly is."

"You see," Emel added. It's what I was telling you earlier about myth and history. They are always closer than we know. Sometimes it's just fate that brings them together."

"And sometimes," Nefeli said looking deeply into Daniela's eyes, it's something more. Something we cannot yet understand."

"This whole historical event," added Michelle from Stanford, "as it happened on the California coast, was once inspired by a Spanish romance writer. It has its place in literature, but also in the history books. The story needed to be told. For all generations," she added.

"And now this tale must be recorded for the sake of science and history," Nefeli said. "And especially for those crazy Drake enthusiasts out there. Yes, Nicasio really has an obligation to carry on and publish it."

She looked over at Daniela and held up her wine glass once more.

Belinda did the same, holding it gracefully up in the candlelight with her dark, silver-ringed hand.

"But for us," she said with a hint of weariness in her voice, "we still have a lot of urgent work to do, Daniela, regardless of history or myth."

"Indeed!" Affirmed Emel, and as the host of the dinner meeting, she stood, signaling a conclusion to the proceedings. She spoke directly and lastly to Daniela.

"We welcome you wholeheartedly into our society, Aenea. And we hope this night will remain with you always. It will come sometimes only as a whisper, but that message is clear . . . that you are never alone or powerless in our circle."

Daniela looked back into the eyes of the women she shared the table with. There was no doubt of their sincerity and trust in her.

"You will help us to nurture a whole generation of sisters and daughters the world over," Nefeli added, then leaning over and kissing her maternally on both cheeks.

Daniela felt the emotion rising in her from the entire two days spent at this incomparable place, so removed from the rest of the world. Before stepping away from the table, each of the women embraced her and wished her well. As they silently made their way back to their individual rooms, it was understood that in the morning they would all venture out on separate journeys to keep a certain ancient wish alive.

* * *