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Born in Northern Wales in 1281. While being
brought up, my mother teaches me what a Welsh woman should know;
herbs, cooking, weapons, fighting, politics, etc. My father teaches
me how to be an English woman, how to be proper, how to speak French
and Latin and how to remain silent and "pretty" or as I call it,
dumb and docile. In the late spring of 1293 at the age of 12, a
trader came to my Father's keep. He and his daughter stayed at my
father's manor while on their way to England. The trader, after
hours of conversation, tells me that I have the heart of the Amazon.
At the time, I didn't know what that was. In the late hours of the
night, the trader's daughter finally spoke, and we talked for hours.
She taught me to write in Arabic, her native language. When the
traders where leaving, I decided to join them, as my Father had
planned a marriage for me that I was neither ready for, nor obliged
to take on. The future husband caught me in the stables while
preparing to leave. I explained to him I needed to leave. There is
too much of the world I haven't seen and I have to go to sort out
what I want and need. Though tears welled in his eyes, I turned and
left. |
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I caught up with the merchant on their way back to
their home. We traveled through Europe, and then to Spain. We ended up in
Turkey where I met Lysia. She became my best friend? No, more of a sister.
She invited me to live with her a while, while trying to earn enough money
to travel north. By this time I am fourteen. Lysia decided to leave with
me, without her husband's knowledge, and we went to northern Turkey. Lysia
and I parted company for a while and during our time apart, some time
during the winter season, I became deathly ill. A familiar language,
English, crosses my ears as I lay in the sand. A wealthy woman from "home"
had found me. She had land dealings in this area and the contracts were
written in Arabic. The only familiar language the broker who was selling
the land knew was French, and so, once I was feeling better, the woman,
now known to me as Medb, struck a deal with me. She would pay for a doctor
if I would be a translator for her business dealings. I agreed. I hadn't
wanted to take her money, and this was the best solution. Weeks later,
Medb and I meet again. I had taken a job in a brothel doing henna
decorations for the women there. She asks me to come with her to Russia
where she lives. And so, I go. On the way out of the country, we meet
Lysia coming in. I ask if she might join us. Lysia had been on the run,
being chased by agents of her former husband. She agreed that anywhere out
of his reach would be wonderful. Now I am 16 and I have made a home of the
Eastern world. |
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I have come to know others from my former home land who
have come here seeking peace, family, or just escaping the turmoil of
their lives in the west. Matthew Thompson and his band have aided us on
several occasions as we have them. Medb, Lysia and I have become stronger
and closer friends, sisters even though we all come from different worlds.
Between the three of us, we are formidable trio. Medb owns holdings in her
deceased husbands name through out Europe and Asia, Lysia has herbal and
medicinal skills and is artistic and well versed in the scholars' speak,
and I am an artisan fighter with world views that make most men's hair
stand on end. We have cut a path for all women across fifty nations in all
corners of the known world. I think back now to the stories told me by the
trader about the Amazon women. Warrior scholars they were, dangerous and
beautiful. We have become Amazon by action and choice, if not by
birthright. We do not reject peaceful and loving coexistence with the male
of the species as some of our sisters did before us. We fight for equality
in a time when the word has little meaning for women. Think on this in the
dark of night, when off in the distance you hear the trumpet of elephants
and the tinkling of bells on the wind, we are not far away. The new breed
of Amazon has arrived.
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