The Treasure of the Amazon

She would need more than one dress before I got her home, and we'd both need at least one suitcase of clothing or we'd cause suspicion when we went through Customs in New York. Iana was all wide eyes and smiles as she looked over the meager supply of dresses in the shop. Like any woman, she had to look at them all and then spend a while deciding. When we walked out of the shop, she was wearing a red dress that formed around her curves, and she blushed as men stared at her.

"Why men Iana long look?"

I chuckled.

"Because you're so beautiful."

"Beautiful is what?"

I put my arm around her and pulled her close.

"Beautiful is what a woman is when every man who sees her wishes he were with her."

Iana stroked my chest.

"Iana Ahbaht want only, other men want never."

During the voyage to New York, I began writing down what I'd experienced. My thoughts were to publish a paper describing the unique civilization I'd discovered and devising some theories about it's origin and why it had remained hidden. Iana's story of the origin of her people became my primary theory. She said the women of the village had come to the Amazon from a place where the sun was born after a great battle with men from that place.

They had come in large canoes and the journey had been long and hard. Because it was men they'd fought, the women had determined to form a society where no men were allowed to live. Men were only permitted for the purpose of impregnating the women, and after serving that purpose, were killed and eaten to show the women considered men to be little more than breeding animals.

She also began teaching me a little of the language spoken there, and once I heard it spoken slowly, I realized there was a strong flavor of the Greek language imbedded in the sounds.

I'd read the story of the Amazon warriors as written by Herodotus. These warriors were women, tall in stature and fierce in battle. They were defeated by the Greeks, and afterwards, those female warriors who were still alive were loaded onto Greek ships for transport back to Athens. According to Herodotus, the Amazons had attacked the ship's crews while at sea and after taking command of the ships, had sailed them to Scythia.

The story of Herodotus was generally considered to be only myth, but when Iana told me the story of the origin of her people, I realized Herodotus was probably being truthful, but mistaken about where the Amazon warriors took at least one of the ships. It would indeed be a difficult journey from Greece through the Straits of Gibralter and then to Brazil, but a similar journey had been made many times by the slavers in the late 1700's and early 1800's.

They would sail from England to Africa, trade their goods for black slaves, and then take the shortest route to the Americas, that being the narrowest stretch of ocean between Africa and Brazil. They would then sail north up the coast to trade the slaves for sugar, molasses and tobacco, and then sail back to England. It wasn't a great stretch of the imagination to believe the Amazon warriors might have taken the same route. The reason the slavers chose the path between Africa and Brazil was because the ocean currents were favorable. If the Amazon's could navigate a ship, they would have quickly figured that out.

Iana was even more afraid when we landed in New York. She hardly said a word as I navigated us through customs. She did have to answer a few questions from the customs agent and we had rehearsed her answers. I was still concerned about her speech, but when the customs agent saw she was from Brazil, he didn't seem all that surprised by how she spoke English. After Customs was done with us we walked out of the building with Iana holding my hand for dear life. I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take us to the train station where I purchased passage to Knoxville, Tennessee in a Pullman car. I wanted to hide Iana as much as possible, not because I didn't want to be seen with her, but because I needed to protect her. Iana was seeing things she'd never even imagined, and she was often terrified by what she saw.

At my parent's home, there were more questions, of course, but my parents took an instant liking to Iana, I think because she was the daughter they weren't able to have. I invented another story to explain her poor English. I told them Iana was the daughter of an Englishman and his Portuguese wife. Her father was elderly when she was born, and had passed away while she was still a baby. Her Portuguese mother didn't know English very well, but had taught Iana as much as she could and I had been furthering her education.

In my story, I said Iana and I had been married by a Nazarene missionary in the village where she grew up. My father didn't care much for the Nazarene religion, and asked if we would consent to another marriage in their Methodist church.

Iana was as beautiful as ever in her cream-colored dress. My mother balked at a white wedding gown because girls who weren't virgins weren't suppose to wear white, so she helped Iana pick out the cream one. I didn't care and neither did Iana. She listened to the preacher, and then said "I do" when I squeezed her hand, just like we'd rehearsed.

I still felt the need to protect Iana, but I would have to have an income at some point. Because I hadn't needed to ship several crates of artifacts from Brazil as I'd planned, I had enough savings to tide us over for perhaps a year, but after that, we'd need money. Archeology would take me away from her, so I thought about getting a regular job, but that would mean leaving Iana alone during most of the day, and she wasn't yet able to cope with much without me.

We also needed a place to live, and after some thought, I used half my savings to buy a small house in the mountains about thirty miles from Knoxville. It was remote and had no electricity, but that wouldn't matter to Iana, and by being remote, it would make unwanted visitors a slim possibility. We moved into the house a month after we arrived in Knoxville.

As for an income, I thought if I was able to publish the work I'd already begun, I could possibly begin lecturing at the local university. I would get paid, not a lot, but still paid, and it wouldn't require me to leave Iana alone every day. I finished writing the paper and included my theory that Iana's people were the same Amazon warriors from Herodotus' time.

I took the manuscript to my old advisor at the college and asked him to read it and then tell me what he thought. He asked me to give him a week and then come back.

His answer wasn't at all what I'd expected. I'd anticipated either "Interesting and should create some discussion", or maybe even, "This is tripe not fit for any serious consideration". I'd heard both from him when I was in his classes. Instead, he looked at me and smiled.

"I knew you had potential when you were a student. I thought that potential would be as an archeologist. I never dreamed it would be as a writer of novels. This was so captivating I couldn't put it down. I hope you don't mind, but I sent it to my publisher and he wants to speak with you as soon as possible."

It was published as a novel, complete with a drawing of a half-naked woman with a bow, arrows, and spear standing in the jungle on the front cover. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but the initial payment I received and the royalty contract I signed would take care of Iana and I for at least a year if the book sold reasonably well. I also accepted another check, this time an advance for another story about my Amazon women warriors. Iana helped me write that one, just as she did the next three and is currently helping with the sixth.

She's sitting there right now, proof reading the last chapter I've finished. Once she learned what the little scribbles meant, I bought her some children's books to read. She finished them all in a week, so I bought her more books of a more advanced level. After six months and books that were at the high school level, Iana was reading my English literature texts from college and there was only one other activity she enjoyed more than reading.

Up until she told me she was pregnant - well, what she said was, "Ahbaht Iana baby here" and pointed to her stomach - we made love every day. After that, it was still almost every day until she got so large it became uncomfortable for her.

A month after our son Robby was born, she snuggled up to me and whispered, "Iana want baby make again". We have three now, though they've all left home. Robby is an engineer, Mark is working on his Phd in Archeology, and Brianna is happily married to a doctor. I've always thought it funny that Iana can't say the "r" sound, but the names she picked for all three have r's in them. To her, Robby is "Ahbby", Mark is "Mahk", and Briana is "Bahiana".

Iana is past her time to have more, but she still likes trying. Almost every day, she'll come up behind me, push her breasts into the back of my head and whisper, "I think Ahbaht needs to ahest. Come ahest with Iana." I know we aren't going to rest, but I still stand up and walk to the bedroom with her. I figure I can rest when I die, but I can only have Iana while I'm still alive.

As you can see from that last, reading also helped her learn to speak English much better. If she spoke to you today, you'd just think she has a strange accent because she still can't make the "r" sound.

Even though Iana is perfectly capable of doing most things by herself now, she still doesn't like going shopping alone. She doesn't like doing anything alone for that matter. She's happiest when she's with me, and I'm happiest when I'm with her. I expected to find a treasure of artifacts in Brazil. Instead, I found a treasure far more valuable to me than all the artifacts I could ever have discovered.

I can only hope my tale has spurred some young mind to think about finding that city of women warriors and studying them. It would probably only be possible if that mind is female, but unlike when I was in college, many women seem to be entering the field now. A young woman might be able to gain the trust of the Highest Highest, and learn more of their history and current way of life.

As for me, after this novel which I've titled, "Iana And The Forgotten Queendom", I have a contract for another. That one will be about a man who is captured by the women warriors of the Amazon. The Highest Highest is going to fall in love with him and go against the centuries-old tradition of eating him after he services all the Highest. That sin will cause the tribe to plot her overthrow, and she and the man will escape the city for a better life. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the middle yet, but Iana will help me with that.

She's smiling at me right now, so I might as well stop typing. I know what that smile means. My treasure wants to feel treasured again.