One night as I lay in the grass I heard her voice, deep and rich, rising slowly in the air and wrapping itself around me. With that song in a strange language she communicated to me her loneliness, her melancholy, her quest for a companion in war, on horseback, and in embraces that drive away the wind, the snow, and the cut of a sword. Gazing at the stars, I too began to sing. My song had no words; I followed the intonations of her voice and improvised a tune that made her song stronger and more lovely. Our voices rose, and with them, my soul flew up to the stars. This is Alestries, whispered the ether; this is the heroine who took up residence in your heart before you even met her.

A gentle warmth spread through me: Alestries was not an illusion, she alone was capable of following me in full gallop, in flight, at the speed of light. She alone could slip into my life by way of the stars. I stopped singing and wept in silence. I, the vengeful little girl, the orphan who had crossed the steppes to become an Amazon, I who rested from bloody battles by taking refuge in the legend of Alestries, had just received happiness I was not even seeking: a warrior woman had come to join her sorrow and hope to my own.

I would lose her! Like Salimba, Talaxia, and Tankiasis, like the little girls I had become attached to, like the tribes that had adopted me, she too would disappear and die. Beauty is shortlived on the steppes. The lives I grasped became shooting stars, leaving only darkness in their wake. I dried my tears and curled myself up tightly. As I slept, I heard Tankiasis singing: You are destructible if you persist in seeing good in evil. Reacting to evil turns it to the good. Reacting to good turns it to evil.

Dawn broke, and with it came strength. What of the suffering of separation, what of the pain afforded when the beloved is pierced by arrows… I was determined to be joined with Alestries and to experience with her all the madness of our meeting.

But Alestries was a man! I fled-saddened, furious, and in de-spair-and would have galloped all the way to the ocean had I not been stopped by a river. To us a river is God's revelation: my god had decided to put me to the test, for the greatest good comes from the greatest evil. I was meant to love Alestries despite his body, I was meant to abandon myself to him without counting the time we were granted. Loving is more difficult than waging war: loving is fighting the past and secrets, and everything impossible.

The bolt of light was more dazzling than summer lightning when it struck me, making me tremble to the very tips of my fingers. It knocked the breath out of me, leaving me struggling to compose myself on the inside. Any woman would have been burned out by the flames of a female warrior soul in a man's body. I loved it even more for the suffering it inflicted on me because Talestria, queen of the Amazons, draws strength from pain, making her light shine still brighter, red on the outside and yellow in the center.

Countless men had been decapitated before they could even touch me. This man Alestries was not afraid of me; he held me to him, his hands caressed me to my very marrow, and mine made him moan. The two of us loved each other over and over again until we could no longer see or hear, until his seed mingled with my blood and my seed spilled inside his head.

I was naked; he cannot have failed to notice the scars over my body. He touched the wound deep in the flesh of my left breast, and I sat up with a start. He caught me by the leg and pushed me to the ground, pinning me down by leaping on top of me.

Alestries made a long declaration of which I understood not a single word, but the name Alexander came back again and again. A terrible apprehension chilled my limbs.

"Are you Alexander?" I asked in Persian.

His face lit up; he spoke Persian too. His voice sounded even more solemn in that language.

"We do not know each other," he was saying. "But we have always known each other. There is no point wasting time, all the years spent without you were wasted. No seductions, I hate seductions. No oaths, I hate oaths that are so easily broken. No ceremonies, I have held too many ceremonies. No speeches, I despise the speeches I have given. Nothing official. There is no one here, no one watching us. I give myself to you. You are mine. Alestria, my kingdom is yours. It is proof of my love."

I looked away, uttering not a sound. I wanted to reject him and flee. I had known only treachery and violence from men. Alexander's declaration hurt me: he was lying!

This warrior who had subjugated the world by strength could not know anything of love. He wanted to show off the queen of the Amazons as his proudest trophy on his horse's rump. He was not Alestries, I was wrong. I was about to get up, to gallop off, to exile myself far from him, far from his conquered lands… when he rested his head on my heart. His silence pierced right into me and filled me with joy and sadness. His calloused hands stroked my wounds. He kissed me. I faltered, and regretted giving myself to him the previous day as my arms disobeyed me, my mouth reached for his, and my thighs wrapped around him.

"I have searched all over the world," he said in my ear. "Be my wife."

I gave a hoarse involuntary sound: "Why me?"

"Because everything was written here," he said, stroking the crook of my left breast.

Marrying a man, handing herself over with lowered arms… would be a defeat for the queen of the Amazons, who had never been beaten.

"Alexander and Alestria." He spoke our names gently. "We shall conquer the world and join the sun." The sun!

I, the queen of birds, horses, and grasshoppers, I have people waiting for me: Tania, my sisters, aunts, and girl children. I carry within me the curse of the Amazons, which forbids me to love a man. Marrying Alexander means leaving Siberia, abandoning my kingdom, fleeing with him like every other Amazon in the past who has fallen for a man.

"Come, Alestria! we shall climb mountains and take citadels by storm. We shall fight dragons and monkeys and elephants driven by warriors covered in pearls and diamonds. Be my queen, Alestria. I offer you magnificent lands, thousands of starlit nights, riding alongside one hundred thousand men beneath the sun, in water and sand, through forests and deserts."

Alexander's voice shook me, and I felt I was waking from a long sleep. God had just spoken to me through his words. I should no longer take my revenge on men, I should love the sun! I should lay down my weapons and gallop alongside Alestries!

Alexander's scars rubbed against my own. The man who wanted to conquer the queen of the Amazons held me in his arms, and I had nowhere to hide. He forged himself a path in my belly, worked his way up my blood vessels, found my heart, and broke the wound that acted as my shield. He found his way onto my internal steppes, where Talaxia, Tanikiasis, and Salimba lived along with all the other beauties who had grown immortal through the force of my memory.

Darius, the king of the Persians, had offered me cloth, palaces, mountains, and precious gems. I preferred the wind, storms, blood, and victory promised by Alexander.

For that, for him, I must die and live again!

"Come, Alestria, it shall be for life and for death," he said.

How could he read inside my head? A burning torrent made my legs weightless, flowed through my chest, and spread down my arms. A beam of light struck my head and burst inside my body, transforming itself into the Milky Way. I have no more questions. Alexander has defeated me. I am his.

Fly, birds, fly to the skies! Alestries and Alestria are setting off for the clouds. We shall conquer the world. We shall fertilize its vastness, filling it with the purity of the glacier and the strength of fire.