Wonder Woman: The Official Movie Novelization, Page 2

  Queen Hippolyta nodded, unable to completely hide a smile. “Let’s get you back to school before another tutor quits.”

  She’s not mad, Diana thought. I think she’s actually pretty impressed. She decided to push a little bit. “But, Mother… don’t you think it’s time to start my training?”

  Her mother pulled her up, sat her on the front of the saddle, and embraced her. Diana was certain that her mother was going to agree. Finally.

  Just then Antiope came riding up to meet them with Artemis at her side. Diana figured that Antiope would stick up for her. After all, her aunt had seen her mimicking her battle moves perfectly.

  Well, almost perfectly.

  When she caught the general’s eye, she brightened and blurted out, “Antiope thinks I’m ready.”

  “Does she?” Hippolyta said, turning a measured gaze onto the island’s military leader.

  Antiope approached the queen’s steed, head lowered out of deference. Raising her gaze to meet Hippolyta’s, she said, “I could begin showing her some things…”

  Yes! Diana exulted. Yes, yes, yes!

  The queen’s silence in response to the offer was deafening. Her horse shied a bit, sidestepping, and she reined it in. Still, silence was not a “no.” Maybe she was thinking it over.

  “She should at least be able to defend herself,” Antiope persisted. That was right, absolutely right.

  “From whom?”

  Monkeys in the forest, Diana thought of replying, although she had never actually seen a monkey in the forest. Or anywhere, for that matter. Peacocks, then. Evil peacocks. We have a lot of peacocks.

  “In the event of an invasion,” Antiope said with conviction.

  Spartans!

  “Isn’t that why I have the greatest warrior in our history leading an entire army, General?” the queen asked with the same tone of voice she used while pointing out to Diana that muddy arms and legs did not belong in the bed of a princess when the bathing pool was nearby. Or that surely vegetables were just as important to a growing body as honey cakes.

  Antiope said, “I pray a day will never come where she has to fight, but you know that a scorpion must sting, a wolf must hunt…”

  “She’s a child. The only child on the island. Please, let her be so.” The queen’s words were gentle but firm. Diana wanted to groan with frustration. Still, like any good Amazon, she wasn’t about to give up without a fight.

  “But, Mother,” she protested.

  “There will be no training,” Hippolyta declared, closing the discussion. Then the queen effortlessly swung Diana around behind her on the saddle and told her horse to go. As the mount obeyed—because who didn’t obey Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons?—Diana turned and looked back at Antiope. The general’s quick, confident nod seemed not just a goodbye, but a covert reassurance. Diana raised her brows. Did it mean she would help her train?

  Then mother and daughter headed to the prison of very old wars and lists of dates that had nothing to do with now. But perhaps there was hope after all?

  * * *

  Night. The gentle crashing of the waves; fireflies and wishing stars; the hoot of an owl.

  The night watch was set, the moon was out, and Diana couldn’t help but fidget as her mother brushed her hair. She kept thinking about Antiope’s quick nod. Training, battling, victory! Being a real Amazon and not everybody’s favorite (and only) baby. Antiope was going to make it happen, and soon.

  She fidgeted some more, barely able to keep still. There was absolutely no way she would be able to sleep tonight. She would toss and turn as if she were on a boat. Her bed in the palace was set into the wall, in a carved alcove that had always reminded her of a cross between a shield and a seashell. The polished stone of the floor gleamed, reflecting candlelight and fires in braziers in niches. Most nights she loved this ritual, sitting in her lovely bed while her mother tended her, then snuggling up to dream of forthcoming battles and adventures. But tonight was another matter.

  “What if I promised to be careful?” Diana pleaded.

  The queen smoothed Diana’s hair, fingers lingering among the strands. “It’s time to sleep,” she said tenderly.

  There had to be some way Diana could convince her. “What if I didn’t use a sword?”

  “Fighting doesn’t make you a hero.”

  Her mother was missing the point entirely. Or maybe not quite entirely. It would be lovely to be a hero. But it would be even lovelier to go into close combat with Artemis.

  “Just a shield then. No sharp edges.”

  Hippolyta gazed at Diana with a gentle but earnest expression as Diana lay back on her pillow. “Diana,” she said, “you are the most precious thing in this world to me. I wished for you so much, so I sculpted you from clay myself and begged Zeus to give you life.”

  Diana huffed and pulled the covers up to her chin. “You’ve told me that story.” Still, it was a very nice story.

  “Then I will tell you a new one. One of our people, and my days of battle,” Hippolyta said.

  Diana’s face lit up. Her mother’s prowess in battle was legendary. She was the fiercest Amazon on the entire island—even fiercer than Antiope.

  She sat up as her mother crossed to a table, picking up what appeared to be a large leather folder embossed with metal that had been lying beside a candle. Hippolyta came back to the bed. The folder was exquisitely decorated with an intricate design that reminded Diana of Antiope’s tiara. She watched carefully as her mother prepared to open it.

  For her part, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, mother of the only child on Themyscira, wondered—as she had so often before—if she was doing the right thing. To successfully guide and guard her people, a Queen must appear sure of herself. The mantle of authority, no matter how heavy, hung on her shoulders alone. She had led her people out of bondage so very long ago, and they still looked to her for leadership and guidance. Zeus had willed it so. But she and Zeus had also willed other things…

  She frowned at Diana’s show of misplaced interest—dreaming of glory as any young warrior would, unaware of the terrible toll that true war took on life and spirit. Time to make her aware, then. “So you will finally understand… why war is nothing to hope for.”

  Then the Queen opened the cover, revealing a stylized triptych of images against shimmering backdrops. At the top of one panel the magnificent Gods and Goddesses looked down from the lofty heavens of Mt. Olympus, their mysterious domain swaddled in clouds and mist. All praise to the Gods, givers of music, art, harmony, and love.

  “Long ago,” Hippolyta said, “when time was new, and all of history was still a dream, the Gods ruled the Earth, Zeus king among them.” He reigned supreme, the giver of life. The father of all.

  Diana waited for the good part.

  “Zeus created beings over which the Gods would rule,” the queen told her. “Beings born in his image—fair and good, strong and passionate. He called his creation ‘man.’”

  Against a lush landscape of forest, field, and pasture, men, women, and children took form. They carried baskets of food and smiled at one another. Some lounged together on the earth, savoring the gifts of the Gods.

  “And mankind was good,” Hippolyta continued.

  Diana was enchanted. The women looked like Amazons. The men resembled women somewhat, but there were marked differences. She would like to meet a man one day. But there were none on their island—and no other children, either. Just her. But like the Amazons, these people appeared to be very happy, strong, and confident.

  “But one of the Gods grew envious of Zeus’s love for mankind,” Hippolyta continued, “and sought to corrupt his creation.”

  Above, on Olympus, a shadowy figure in a horned helmet loomed from dark gray clouds, menacingly surveying the humans below. “This was Ares, the God of War. Ares poisoned men’s hearts with suspicion, vengeance, and rage. He turned them against one another,” Hippolyta continued.

  Diana’s eyes widened as she watched groups of peopl
e clump together, turning into armies. Then the armies turned on each other, until all the little Amazon could see was an enormous battlefield littered with the dying and the dead. It would be a shocking thing to show any child, but this was her child; Hippolyta was sorry for this assault on her blissful innocence. Childhood must be left behind, but not yet.

  Please, not yet.

  “And war ravaged the earth,” Hippolyta said.

  * * *

  Ares was our enemy. That’s why our tradition is to train constantly, because that’s how we beat him. And if he ever came back, we’d beat him again, Diana recited to herself, as she tiptoed from her bedchamber once again, sneaking past her guards and a strolling peacock and slipping into the stone chamber where Antiope waited for her. It had been a week now, and her mother didn’t suspect a thing. She felt a tiny flicker of guilt, but it was dwarfed by the joy of learning how to fight. What had Aunt Antiope said? A scorpion had to sting, a wolf to hunt… and a little girl to grow up.

  This time Antiope had brought swords. She put Diana through her paces, making a thrust, watching closely as Diana mimicked her action. Nodding. Moving on to the next thrust. Then a parry. A slow-motion battle. I’m going to save everybody.

  Little princess, big dreams.

  * * *

  Each night, Diana trained with Antiope. And each evening, Diana’s mother continued the story of Ares.

  “So the Gods created us, the Amazons, to influence man’s heart with love and restore peace to the earth.”

  Greek warriors, men, and women looked on as Diana’s mother Hippolyta, and Antiope, Eliana, Artemis, Phillipus, and all the other Amazons rose out of the sea, full-grown. The Greeks were awestruck by the majesty of her mother and all her perfect, strong, loving subjects. The bringers not of war, but of harmony.

  “For a brief time, there was peace, even a unity among us all in the world,” Hippolyta said.

  * * *

  “But it did not last,” Antiope told Diana, taking up the story at their next training session. Sharing a breather—and, in truth, Diana was a bit sore and tired—they had built a campfire together, and Diana stared into the flames as Antiope described how Ares’ army of men took up arms against the Amazons. He knew that they stood between him and the endless war he had promised to inspire in Zeus’s human children, and he was determined to take the Amazons out of the equation.

  Of course, since she was Queen, Ares had singled out Hippolyta—her brave mother taking on an army of men! Hippolyta had fought well, but under Ares’s influence, the human warriors overpowered the Amazons and put them in chains. As Antiope spoke, Diana could see the followers of the God of War dragging her mother and all the Amazons out of a burning city. Her captive mother marched in the lead, head held high.

  “Your mother, the Amazon Queen, led a revolt that freed us all from enslavement,” Antiope said, describing the action—Hippolyta swinging her sword, a wild cheetah lunging and biting beside her. Diana had never seen her mother in her war-queen role, and her heart quickened at the thought.

  “When Zeus led the Gods to our defense, Ares killed them, one by one,” Antiope said, “until only Zeus himself remained.”

  Then in the story, Hippolyta broke the chains between her bracelets. It took Diana a minute to realize what Antiope was telling her: That Ares had killed all the gods, but in the end, he had not defeated the Amazons.

  The Amazons are the only force on Earth that could stand up to him. Pride welled inside Diana. And if anyone tries to attack the human beings again, we’ll protect them, just like we did before.

  * * *

  She asked her mother to tell the story over and over again, listening, pondering, etching it on her heart:

  “While Zeus used the last of his power to stop Ares…”

  Back in her bedchamber, Diana pictured the two Gods fighting and clashing in the eye of a massive storm, each at the edge of death. Zeus threw a thunderbolt—his last—hitting Ares.

  “ …striking him with such a blow, the God of War was forced to retreat. But Zeus knew Ares might one day return to finish his mission—an endless war where mankind will finally destroy themselves and us with them.”

  Ares was swallowed up by darkness next, and Diana darted a glance at the shadows in the room. She imagined the courage it had required for the Amazons to take on a God, the sheer strength they had garnered to defeat him. I want to be an Amazon like that. But she was not. Not yet.

  * * *

  Zeus had created a retreat for the Amazons, a heaven on Earth. Curls of stone and mountainous towers rose into the mists as valleys plunged toward a cerulean sea. Waterfalls both gentle and mighty tumbled into grottos of stalactites and artesian pools and splashed land bridges dotted with flowers; clear streams burbled through lush green fields and cliffs from which sprang homes and meeting halls hewn from golden rock and whitest marble. Sheltered bowls of land had been formed into arenas and the amphitheater where plays and poetry festivals were held. Pines towered; tiny birds nested. Gentle ocean waves lapped the beaches. Curling vines and feathered ferns softened the soaring columns of stone, the large council chamber, and the warlike appearance of the military garrisons. She saw it all with new eyes—the eyes of a protective warrior cherishing her homeland and vowing to keep each precious blade of grass, each grain of sand, as pristine and untouched as it was at this moment.

  As if to underscore her oath, at their next training session, she got in a few extra-powerful licks with her sword—to her aunt’s surprise and satisfaction.

  “But in the event that he did,” Antiope said, picking up the thread of the story at Diana’s urging, “Zeus left us a weapon, one powerful enough to kill a God. To destroy Ares before he could destroy mankind and us… with an endless war.”

  An endless war. It was a difficult thing to imagine, a war without end. In truth, for Diana, it was hard to imagine a war at all.

  But at night, with soothing words, her mother attempted to quiet her restive mind: “With Zeus’s dying breath, he created this island to shield us from the outside world. Somewhere Ares could not find us. And all has been quiet ever since.”

  Because of us, Diana thought, as she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  One morning, after breaking their fast with meat, figs, olives, and barley bread dipped in honey, mother and daughter mounted horses and surveyed Hippolyta’s domain. The day was warm, the sky bright and clear as it met the deep blue water. The Queen often rode the hills and valleys of Themyscira so that all could see her and know that she was there to protect and defend them.

  Together they gazed out to sea and Diana tried to imagine what it had been like for the Amazons to rise from the waves fully formed. Her mother had never been a little girl. She had known everything forever. She didn’t know what it was like to have to learn things. At least, that was what Diana guessed. The stories of Ares and his wars filled her with endless questions as she tried to comprehend a struggle she had never known, a foe she had never seen. All these years later, Mnemosyne’s seeming obsession with Greeks and Spartans made sense.

  “We give thanks to the Gods for this paradise,” Hippolyta said, oblivious of the churnings of her daughter’s inquisitive mind as she raised her open palms to the memory of Mt. Olympus.

  “And the Godkiller?” Diana asked, unable to keep from seizing this thinnest of openings into the subject. They had given thanks to the Gods for the Godkiller, too. She was sure Antiope had told her that.

  For a moment, Hippolyta drew back, her lips parting in surprise. She said carefully, “The Godkiller?”

  “Yes,” Diana said. “The weapon that is strong enough to kill a God. Can I see it, Mother?”

  A strange expression washed over her mother’s face. She studied Diana hard; then her mouth curled downward as if she were sad. Something seemed to go out of her—that she was not so much making a choice as admitting some kind of defeat.

  Together mother and daughter rode their mounts up Themyscira’s tall
est hillside, heading towards the stone keep on its peak. The armory was a high tower that seemed to morph from a mountain into a building, as did many of the curving buildings on the vast island. A single window like a God’s eye overlooked both land and surrounding sea. Diana held her reins taut in eagerness.

  Behind them rode the queen’s guards, horse tack jingling, leather creaking. They stopped their horses at the courtyard at the foot of the tower and dismounted onto the flagging.

  The armory gate was made of heavy iron, spiked with spearheads, and locked from the outside. Diana stuck her face between the bars. Inside it was very dark and smelled of damp and the sea. The chief guard unlocked the gate and entered before them, lighting a series of torches along the walls as she went. Diana followed her mother down the bleak tunnel. Ahead there was a rectangle of light. It got brighter and brighter as they neared it.

  They stepped from the tunnel into an open-air courtyard.

  “The Gods gave us many gifts. One day you’ll know them all. This is where we keep them,” Hippolyta told her.

  In the center of the courtyard, protected by spirals of curving metal, an ornately crafted sword gleamed. The double-dragon hilt and ancient runes etched into the blade caught the light. She reached out and reverently touched it. In this moment, she felt as if Zeus’s hand lay in hers.

  “The Godkiller,” she said in awe. “It’s beautiful.”

  Hippolyta watched her carefully.

  “Who would wield it?” Diana asked.

  “I pray it will never be called to arms. But only the fiercest among us ever could… and that is not you, Diana.”

  With that, the queen reached out, took hold of Diana’s wrist, and pulled her hand away from the sword. Diana was abashed.

  “So you see, you are safe. And there is nothing for you to concern yourself with.”

  But it was everything Diana wanted to concern herself with. She knew what she felt inside when she saw the others fight. How it made her heart pound to realize that she could do it too. With this weapon in her hand …

  Someday I will show you what I can do, she thought.