Silver Stranger

I wanted to hurl my phone into the street, where cars sped by in a blur of exhaust and chrome. I imagined the glass cracking, the metal wrenched apart, the screen blinking frantically in its dying sputters as it split apart. The tires would roll over it, uncaring, just as the cars and the people passed by, uncaring. I squeezed my phone tighter, feeling the edges of the case press into the meat of my palm. The cost of replacing it would outweigh the momentary satisfaction of watching it break apart. Instead, gripping my phone in one hand and my work bag in the other, I turned away from the road and descended the grimy steps down to the subway. 

The city really liked to suck the soul out of you. As if the grind of daily life wasn’t enough to wear anyone down, at the end of the day you had to descend underground, into a tunnel of stale air and grungy concrete where you did your best to ignore the press of humanity and mindlessly wait your turn to squeeze into a dingy metal tube which would take you part of the way home. And on a day like today, when every person I interacted with seemed an insufferable jerk, it was enough to make me want to scream. 

As I wormed my way through the throngs crowding the edges of the platform, I briefly glanced at the dark hole of the tracks. For a moment I considered dropping my phone onto the tracks. That kind of instant obliteration of his words might be some form of consolation. Sorry, I could never see you as a woman…not in that way. 

Instead, I stepped around a blank-faced man in a suit holding a briefcase and avoided an overflowing trashcan decorated with pink and white blobs of old chewing gum. There was a spot up just ahead, nearer the center of the platform, that had a little more open space. I glanced up at the screen above my head. My line would arrive in 4 minutes, supposedly. Amazing how such a small amount of time felt like an eternity down here. 

As I squeezed past another group of businessmen, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a young woman passing by. Blond hair so light it was almost white, partially pulled back in a crown of braids, which was further accentuated by what had seemed like pieces of branches or maybe tiny horns of antler. There were plenty of strange people who showed up at subway stations in the city. But as she passed, she was followed by a scent like the forest under a wide open sky, something so out of place here in this underground subway station which smelled of concrete, cigarette smoke, and human exhaustion. Perhaps it was the oddity of the smell of fresh air that compelled me to do what I never did–stop and turn and look back. 

The young woman had not gone very far, instantly recognizable by the fall of her white-blond hair and the crown of braids and branches woven into it. Her clothes were even stranger. I did not know how else to describe it but as a short, flowing tunic combined with almost knee-high laced leather boots. 

As I watched, the woman paused, looking almost like a deer poised to bound away. And then she turned back to look at me. In that moment, it was as if the world caught its breath. I knew in reality it was the shifting air before the arrival of the train–my line. But a shiver ran down my spine–the thrill of a moment in which one knows life is about to change. The woman turned, her long hair swinging over her shoulder as she did so. And then she looked right back at me, locking gazes with me. She raised one eyebrow at me, half-smiling. A question asked. In return I narrowed my eyes, taking one step closer. It was the strangest thing, a feeling as if I knew her, or I was…supposed to know her? Impossible–she stood out from the crowd the way a little speck of glitter might in a pile of dust. If I had ever met her before, I’m pretty sure I would remember. 

She was the one to approach. Instantly I flushed. Where were my manners? Where was my city savvy, for that matter? Alyssa, we don’t stare at strangers, I chided myself. 

“I apologize,” I said to the woman, my words coming out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“But you did,” she said, with a wry smile. “Stare, that is.”

I groaned inwardly. What had I done? I’d insulted this girl, and now I had to have a drawn out conversation with her. I’d probably miss my train as well. 

She laughed. “You don’t see wrongly. I do stand out. To some people, at least.” She flashed a smile at me. “I’m Diana.”

“Sorry. Diana.” I said with a bob of my head. “I meant no offense. Apologies again.”

She tilted her head, squinting at me. She hummed in consideration. “Perhaps you would know me better by another name,” she said. “...Artemis?”

I blinked at her. “Oh. Like the…? Like the goddess?”

She stood a little straighter at that, like someone pleased. “Yes. Like that.”

I chuckled nervously in response, not sure what to say. She stepped closer. 

“Well…uh…nice to meet you…Artemis,” I said, falteringly. 

She nodded towards my right hand, which was still clutching my phone in a fist as if it were a soda can I was attempting to crush. I loosened my grasp.

“It’s nothing,” I muttered, turning away. 

“Was it a man?” She asked, her tone pointed. She gave a little scoffing laugh. “No, I should rather say, was it a … boy?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning away. “It’s not important.”  

She caught my chin as I moved away, gripping it lightly between her thumb and forefinger. Her fingers were slightly cold, but soft against my chin. I inhaled sharply from the shock of the sudden touch. Looking down at her arm, I saw she wore a bracelet close around her wrist, a band of silvery stars. Gently, but firmly, she turned my face back towards hers, until we were almost nose to nose. 

Meeting her eyes again was like abruptly plunging into a cold pool–sudden, startling, and with a feeling of coming awake for the first time in a long while. She searched my face, her gaze piercing. She stared into my eyes, as if she could read the thoughts in the back of my head like a book. 

“He hurt you,” she said in a low tone, not quite a whisper. 

And then. “How dare he!” There was real fury in her voice. 

My eyes began to prickle with the early formation of tears. 

“I was…mistaken.” I said, also not quite in a whisper. “I thought…” I took a shaky half-breath. “I thought he was interested in…me. That I…” My chin began to tremble, still caught in her grasp. “That I meant something to him. That I…mattered…to him.” 

My throat convulsed, trying to swallow back the lump of grief that had formed there. 

“I was…wrong. I don’t.” Another shaky breath. “I don’t matter to him. I…I never do. To…any…any of them.”

Her expression grew fierce. “All men are fools,” she said, her voice low and rough with anger. “You are worth far more than the little attention they can give.”

She dropped her hand from my face and stepped back. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled at me, again searching my face, this time from afar. Finally she leaned close again, like a conspirator about to share a secret plan. 

“Do you want something more? Something far different than all this?” She waved her arm to indicate the subway station, and perhaps the city above and beyond it. 

I exhaled a laugh. Did I want something different? Something different than feeling like a wilted weed poking up from a crack in the sidewalk that perked up every time new footsteps came close, only to get crushed beneath another heel? Something different from a daily life of stretching on my tiptoes to be just a little bit taller beneath the looming skyscrapers from which the city looked down on me? Something different from a routine of gray concrete and dull fluorescent lightbulbs? 

“Yeah,” I said. “I do want something more than this.”

Her whole face relaxed at my answer, a satisfied smile lighting up her expression. “Then join me,” she said. “And my huntresses.” 

“Your huntresses?”

“Yes,” she said, pulling out a silver medallion from some pocket in her tunic. “I warn you though, you must forsake men and be devoted to our creed.”

She pressed the medallion into my hand. It was the thickness of a nickel and the size of my palm. It displayed a deer with branching antlers in between which a crescent moon hung. “This is our creed,” she said. “To love the wild earth and to see it free again, to be loyal above all to one another, our fellow huntresses, to fight for and protect our sisters, all women, and to hunt down injustice and see the world rid of it.” She nodded towards the medallion in my hand. “If you are ever ready to commit to such a life, to follow such a creed, and to join me and my huntresses, swear to it over that token and you will become one of us.” 

A commotion in the station broke out behind me, the noise of some struggle. I looked over my shoulder to see a young woman trying to break free from the grip of an older man whose arm was around her shoulder. 

Before I could say a word, Artemis had drawn her bow. (Since when did she have a bow with her?). In the blink of an eye she loosed a silvery arrow that sliced through the air. It struck the man square in the chest and then burst into a scatter of silver. The man instantly released the woman and doubled over, retching onto the pavement. The crowd moved away from him with sounds of disgust, and the woman disappeared onto the newly arrived subway train. 

When I looked back, Artemis was gone. I looked around the station, but she had vanished, as if she had never been there at all. 

But I still held the silver medallion in my hand.

I watched the train leave in a rush of musty air. The man, still hunched over, stumbled up the stairs out of the station. 

I looked at my phone, now pinched between my thumb and forefinger as I tried to hold it and my bag in one hand. A piece of a foil wrapper skidded past my shoes along the gritty platform floor. I glanced around then–at young men slouched against the stairway wall, and businessmen trying not to let their briefcases touch the ground, and women tugging at the hems of their skirts and shifting their weight from foot to foot, trying to find relief from the pinch of their heels. 

I was done. I moved to the edge of the platform, staring at the dirt-streaked tracks.

I dropped my phone into the dark gap just beyond my shoes. I heard the plink as it bounced off the closest metal rail. 

I closed my hand over the silver medallion. “I swear my devotion to the creed of Artemis and her huntresses,” I said, aloud.

A great rush of wind ripped through the tunnel. Instinctively I took a step back, expecting the clatter of a train to quickly follow. 

But no train came. And the wind did not smell of the funk of underground tunnels, but of pine and woodsmoke. And instead, the walls began to peel off in strips, like curls of paint being ripped away. The people faded away like ink being washed away by rain. The wind grew so strong that I had to turn my face away to catch my breath, my hair falling into my face and blinding my sight. 

When it had passed, I opened my eyes to a forest under a night sky. Fireflies blinked among long, swaying grasses and white lilies bloomed like pale stars under dark-leafed trees. In the sky hung the bright sliver of a crescent moon. And there, standing among a grove of trees was a stag shining with starlight and a white wolf and between them–Artemis. In one hand she held a gleaming silver bow. The antlers that had once looked like twigs stuck into the crown of braids now branched out like a crown and a diadem of stars and moon encircled her head. She smiled at me. 

“Well,” she said. “That was quick.” She smiled. “Welcome to the Grove.”

She turned to the east, and I saw a crackling campfire, smoke drifting up towards the sky. A group of women circled it, and they stood as I approached. Although they clearly came from various different backgrounds, they all wore a short, flowing tunic with leather boots and carried a bow. The design of each bow was different, and each woman handled it with care and ease–clearly a precious but familiar tool for each of them. 

“Your sisters-in-arms,” Artemis said to me, holding out a hand toward the circle. And then to the women standing around the campfire, “Say hello to our new huntress, Alyssa Edgewater.”

And then they gathered around me, clapping me on the back, crushing my shoulders with strong-armed hugs, and introducing themselves to me one after the other. Margaret, with a tangle of fiery hair. Precious, with gold paint shimmering warmly on her brown skin. Kat, with a sleeve of tattoos swirling up her right arm. Daiyu, who gripped my hand so tightly I thought for a moment the bones might break. Eliza, who had braided pink flowers into her hair. Right now these women were little more than names and faces to me, a group of about 15 or so. But I could tell they all had stories. They too had chosen something different, a hunt I didn’t fully understand yet. 

“You have the spark inside you,” Precious said to me. “I can tell.”

Artemis approached, holding a bow carved from a deep red-brown wood highlighted with swirls of silver. 

“Are you ready, Alyssa?” she said. “This is when everything changes. A different life.”

I reached out and gripped the bow, wrapping my fingers tightly around the wood. Only a little while ago I had been clutching my phone in this hand, wanting to crush everything to pieces. I didn’t know if I was truly ready, or if I knew quite what I had committed myself to, but I wanted this something new. Already I felt at home with these women who had been strangers only moments ago. 

Artemis smiled, a sliver of a crescent moon. “Welcome to the Hunt. The world awaits.”