The Unrepentant
By the time Diana arrived in Zugarramurdi, October had almost slipped through her fingers, and the brisk wind that greeted her whipped insistently through her long, thick hair until she bound it back into a tight braid. The climate this far north, skirting the Pyrénées along the French border, was strikingly different from that of Andalusia, where she had been only two weeks prior. There, the Mediterranean breezes still had been somewhat warm, the sunshine undeterred; summer had long passed, and yet winter seemed anything but imminent. Here, though, Diana could taste in the crisp air the chill to come, days of grey skies and biting gusts and the first delicate snowflakes drifting lazily downwards. As a demi-goddess, the cold barely impacted her, but the thought of a frosty winter inevitably brought bittersweet memories. Only a year ago, she had danced in the first snowfall on the square in Veld, her breath mingling with Steve's on the frozen air.
Once again, Diana wondered what had really brought her to this tiny, isolated village, cradled in the smooth-rolling hills of Navarre.
The aftermath of the war had taken up an inordinate amount of her energy. Diana was increasingly grateful for her mother's excellent lessons in statecraft as she attended the forging of treaties, the redrawing of national boundaries, the negotiating of reparations. And then there was the strange fact of her newfound celebrity. "Wonder Woman," they were calling her; tabloids wanted photographs, journalists wanted interviews, heads of government wanted reassurance of her goodwill towards their nations. Diana was genuinely interested in all of the people who so craved just one meeting with her, but the extent of their attention did become tiresome, after a while. The smile that spread so naturally across her face became fixed whenever she stepped outside the flat in London that she occupied gratis, at the insistence of the Prime Minister. Only when she retreated to the company of her close friends - of Sammy and Charlie and Chief and the irrepressible Etta Candy - did she feel her public façade relax into something more sincere.
Finally, once the Treaty of Versailles was finally negotiated and signed, and the most overbearing of the immediate postwar fuss over the newly anointed Wonder Woman had subsided, Diana felt she could take leave of London for a short while and not be missed too egregiously.
"Oh?" Etta had inquired when Diana warned her of her pending disappearance over tea and crumpets one July afternoon. "Where to?"
"Something of a personal mission, let's say," Diana had replied cryptically, and Etta had had to be content with nothing more.
Spain had not suffered through the war like the northern countries had, yet in Granada and Seville, they had recognized Diana - and they had recognized the name that Diana posed to them. Rumor had it that her quarry had returned to her home country to escape from the long arm of the victors' laws, but Diana could only guess where in the vast nation she was hiding herself. It took several months of traveling through Andalusia, and then up along the coast to Catalonia, before she finally found a middle-aged linguistics professor in Barcelona, with a slight limp and blue eyes as intense as Steve's had been, who told her that his sister back home in Navarre had just sent him a letter about the recent appearance in their hometown of la bruja.
"The witch?" Diana had clarified.
"Yes," he had answered solemnly. "Or, as we say in my native tongue, sorgin. They say that she keeps to herself, and always wears a headscarf that masks her face, but that she demonstrates great powers. The villagers fear her, but many a child has been cured by her potions. She speaks fluent Basque with barely any accent, they say, although it's clear that her native tongue is Castilian."
"And her name?"
"Ah." The professor had smiled slightly. "Do you know anything about Zugarramurdi, Señorita Diana? Growing up, we learned a local Basque legend about the wicked goddess who lives in the caves surrounding the village. According to the stories, she lies with a dragon to conceive fearful storms, and can be banished with the sign of the cross. They say that her followers, the sorginak, gather at the akelarre every Friday night, to celebrate the witches' sabbath. Fanciful, perhaps, but legends take on a power of their own, you know."
Diana had nodded pensively. The wider world knew that she was a fearsome warrior from an uncharted island, but far fewer knew about her divine status. She wondered if the goddess in question was only a figure of mortal myth, or if she really existed in the privacy of her caves, as tangible as Diana and her Amazon kin.
"This wicked goddess was named Mari Urraca, and that is how the villagers have styled this mysterious, reclusive woman with an aptitude for languages and an even greater aptitude for medicine," the professor had continued. "Now, maybe she is the infamous Isabel Maru, and maybe she is not; but there's only one way for you to discover who the feared Doctor Mari of Zugarramurdi really is."
And so Diana had thanked the professor in Basque (to his delighted astonishment), and continued the next day to Pamplona, from which she had traveled into the remote countryside in the backs of hay carts, or, when necessary, on her own two feet. All the while, she wondered why she was pursuing this path, why she would take herself away from the crucial business of ensuring that peace was kept between the great powers of the world. Why she even cared if Doctor Poison were still alive.
A final mule-pulled wagon brought Diana at long last to the town square of Zugarramurdi, where she thanked the good-natured, ruddy-cheeked farmer holding the reins, and smiled as his team clacked their way along the road out of the village. It was a quiet Monday afternoon, and not a soul was visible on the streets around her. Diana glanced about, then started down a cobblestone pathway, between two uneven rows of whitewashed buildings with red-tiled roofs and unflinchingly square windows that were occasionally adorned by a shallow, wrought-iron balcony. The day was overcast, the white-grey sky stark against the distant rolling hills, but indistinguishable from the walls of the surrounding buildings.
Finally, Diana spied two young women ambling down the street past the local church, and she broadened her strides to catch up with them.
"Excuse me," she said in Basque, and the pair turned. "Could either of you tell me where I might find a Doctor Mari?"
The young women gaped at Diana, wide-eyed. From the similarity of their faces, Diana guessed that they were sisters; and from their expressions, she surmised it wasn't every day that they were approached by a tall, confident stranger with exotic features, who spoke their language with a curious accent and wore comfortable trousers for travel, instead of a skirt. (Thankfully, her sword was reasonably well-hidden under the edge of her cloak.) She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that she was not known here; a town this small in neutral Spain could not have received much news of the war, and even less of its principal players. It was a welcome change, Diana reflected, to be just another strangely attrired traveler in this town, not someone special or noteworthy. She assumed that Doctor Poison - if she were indeed here in Zugarramurdi - must feel the same way.
"This way, if you please," one of young women finally said, dipping into a slight curtsey and then turning to lead Diana in the right direction. Her sister shot Diana one more perplexed glance, then hurried after, leaving Diana to follow in their wake. As they made their way through the town, Diana could see faces in the upper windows of houses cast curious looks at her as she passed; she smiled warmly at every person whose gaze she met, to show that she meant no ill will, and even winked at a tiny boy whom she caught staring at her slack-jawed.
The sisters led Diana to a tiny, one-room house on the outskirts of Zugarramurdi, built with the same whitewashed walls and red-tiled roof as the houses in the village center. Here, though, the shutters of the square windows were closed tight, and the black door looked strangely forbidding.
"This is where she lives, ma'am," said the younger-looking of the two women, dropping into another small curtsey.
"Please, 'Diana' is fine," laughed Diana, bowing slightly to the sisters in return. "And thank you for bringing me here."
The two sisters glanced at each other.
"Ma'am... Diana," the older corrected herself, "you should know that the doctor is... um, somewhat intimidating."
"Oh?" asked Diana, amused.
"She's been very helpful," added the other quickly. "Our mother says she's never seen such a talented herbalist. She's cured all sorts of ailments around the village, even ones that people thought were incurable."
"But no one knows where she came from; she just appeared one day," the older sister added. "One side of her face is horribly burned, but she doesn't really talk to anyone, so no one wants to ask her how it happened, or where she came from, or if the burns and the fact that she's here are connected..."
"Some of the elders in the village think she's a witch," burst out the younger sister.
"Joane!" scolded the older sister.
"They aren't the first," rasped a hoarse voice, and all three women turned to see a small figure, clad all in austere black, standing in the doorway of her house. A headscarf tied under her chin shielded part of her face, but Diana recognized her penetrating dark eyes immediately. The sight of those eyes made something within her surge with emotions born of a sharp memory - fire and rage and grief, and a hatred more intense than any she had ever known.
The sisters gasped in embarrassment, and Joane immediately began to stumble over an apology, but Isabel Maru was paying her no attention. The instant Diana had turned around, the chemist had taken a step backwards in alarm, her eyes widening.
"You," she breathed at Diana.
"Doctor," replied Diana in German, holding up her hands. Her heart was pounding from the unexpected shock of being thrown so vividly back into her battle with Ares. "Please, do not be afraid; I mean you no harm."
Doctor Maru still looked shaken, but she stood her ground even as Diana took a step forward.
"A likely story," she replied in German with a harsh laugh. "You truly expect me to believe that you've tracked me down in this godforsaken village for any reason other than to make me pay for my crimes?"
"Yes," said Diana, taking another step forward.
The two sisters, not understanding a word, watched this exchange in bewildered fascination.
"Leire," whispered Joane, tugging on her older sister's sleeve anxiously, "can we go?"
Leire nodded, but remained fixed to the spot as the beautiful stranger approached the doctor, as slowly and carefully as though the latter was a skittish horse.
"Well, then, why?" asked Doctor Maru, fear finally creeping into her voice. "If you're not here to finish me off, the way you should have in Belgium, then why are you here?"
Why am I here? Diana asked herself. She didn't know the answer.
"I just want to talk to you," she said finally, stopping a pace or two away from the chemist in her doorframe. "Please. Don't turn me away after I've come so far, looking for answers."
So few people had ever made polite requests of Isabel Maru, let alone begged favors of her, that she was taken aback for a moment. After a long hesitation, though, she nodded and stepped back to let Diana into her home, reasoning to herself that it was easier than waiting for the demi-goddess to knock a hole in the wall with one blow of her fist. Diana nodded over her shoulder in acknowledgement to Leire and Joane before turning and entering the small house, and a moment later, the black door closed with a snap, blocking out the two startled girls along with the rest of the world.
The interior of the house was as small as its exterior had appeared, sparsely furnished but extremely tidy. The only clutter visible were the scraps of paper that lay scattered across a table, notes scrawled in several languages and diagrams of what Diana guessed were local plants. A chest by the door gaped open, revealing neat rows of stoppered glass bottles, labeled with chemical formulas written in a tidy script. In one corner was a plain wrought-iron bed covered with a worn patchwork quilt. A black kettle hung over an unlit fireplace, and nestled on the counter next to an ancient-looking sink were a clean ceramic mug and plate, as well as a number of glass vessels that looked suspiciously like beakers.
"It's very nice," said Diana earnestly, turning towards Isabel, who still hovered warily by her closed front door.
A soft snort of derision escaped from Isabel as she reached up and pulled off her headscarf, making her charred left jaw impossible to ignore. A hostile glance towards Diana dared her to stare at the burns.
"You said you wanted answers," she said briefly, hanging the scarf on a peg by the door. "So, what are your questions?"
Diana gave a small shrug.
"I've lived in the world of men for almost a year now," she said. "It continues to astound me with its beauty and its capacity for goodness. And yet there is so much in it that is cruel and wicked."
"And you wanted to study a specimen of the latter category up close?" Isabel bristled.
Diana blinked.
"I just want to understand you," she said simply. "I want to understand why you have done the evil things that you have done. I want to see if you might have chosen a different path, and what that might have been. That way, in the future, others can be helped towards their better natures, and no one else will ever do what you have done."
"Is that so," Isabel scoffed. "You might be unpleasantly surprised."
"Or I might be vindicated," countered Diana optimistically. "You never know."
A mocking smile stretched ghoulishly across Isabel's face.
"Well, good luck, then. You'll need it."
"Thank you," said Diana, determined not to acknowledge to Isabel's sarcasm. "May I?" she added, gesturing to a chair at the table.
Isabel glared, but she nodded. The Amazon sat and traced a finger lightly over the careful sketches on the table as her host watched her warily.
"You're a talented artist," she told the chemist, pulling a sheaf of notes towards her. "And I'm amazed that you've been able to conduct this much chemical analysis on the local plants, without any real laboratory equipment."
"I've made do with less," said Isabel shortly.
Diana studied the detailed diagram before her, a cross-section of a flower whose petals Isabel had lightly shaded with several different gradients of purple.
"Why?" Diana sat back, frowning slightly at Isabel. "Why did you do all of it? A woman with your skills, you could have become a famous physician, a famous teacher..."
"It's not that simple," Isabel snapped.
Diana fell silent. Isabel realized that her hands were shaking.
"It's not that simple," she repeated.
"Then tell me," Diana urged her. "Tell me what I don't understand, and why you did what you did. Why you wasted so much potential to do good in the world, and how someone with your intelligence could let herself fall to such low moral standards."
Isabel Maru was not a tall woman, but she drew herself up to her full height and fixed her guest with a look of pure spite.
"Don't you dare try to shame me for what I did," she hissed. "It was a war, remember? And in a war, people inevitably die. Yes, I killed; what of it? So did you. So did your friends. So did your precious Steve Trevor, and if I had to, I would watch him die all over again, and still not feel the slightest bit of remorse."
Diana knew that the doctor was goading her, but she couldn't suppress the anger that flared within her. She leapt to her feet with a snarl, her hand clenched. Somehow, she mustered the discipline not to actually throw the punch, despite the overwhelming desire to land her fist in the middle of the gloating expression on Isabel's face. Instead, she threw open the door and stormed back out into the streets of the town, her cloak billowing in her wake. Behind her, she heard the latch on Doctor Maru's door click shut.
Leire and Joane had not ventured far up the road, and they both turned to watch Diana as she approached them, still fuming.
"That was a quick interview," Leire commented drily.
"I lost my temper," Diana sighed, simmering down as quickly as she could.
"Old friend?" asked Joane.
"Old... acquaintance," Diana opted, deciding that having to explain "old enemy" would be too complicated.
Leire and Joane exchanged a small smirk.
"What?"
"Nothing, just that Zugarramurdi is a pretty far and indirect trip to make, all to track down a mere acquaintance," Leire pointed out. "It's getting dark already. Do you know yet where you're staying?"
"The local inn, I suppose," Diana shrugged. "Could you point me in the right direction?"
"We can do better than that," scoffed Joane. "Our parents will be more than happy to put you up for the night. Follow us."
And so Diana quite unexpectedly spent the evening in the cozy kitchen of a farmhouse, chatting with her hosts. Leire and Joane's father, a solidly built man with a shock of thick greying hair, was a sheep farmer; his wife was as willowy as her daughters, and she laughingly knocked down her husband's exaggerated boasts to the beautiful stranger as she bustled about the kitchen. Diana had so many questions about this tiny village, but after a delicious meal of sheep milk cheese, blood sausage, and crisp cider, her yawns became more and more frequent. Far earlier than she wished, she accepted Leire and Joane's offer to occupy the bed that the two girls usually shared, leaving them to pull straw-stuffed pallets over to the hearth. As she drifted off to sleep, Diana could hear the sisters whispering and giggling with each other, trying their best not to disturb their visitor. It was a comforting sound. It reminded Diana of being back home in Themyscira.
The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of eggs and bread, Diana found herself again outside Isabel Maru's forbidding black door. She knocked. Isabel opened the door a crack, and then tried to shut it.
"Doctor," Diana insisted, throwing a shoulder against the door so that Isabel could not shut it completely.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" Isabel demanded from the other side of the slab of wood. "I have a new life here. I have a new start. I could quietly live out the rest of my days in this obscure town. If you're really not here to drag me off to some tribunal in Paris or London, then why won't you just let me be?"
"I still don't know," Diana admitted. "But I'm not leaving until I find out."
Isabel pulled the door open, and Diana stumbled inside, off-balance. She straightened up and shook herself as Isabel closed the door.
"You gods," she sneered accusatorially at Diana, crossing her arms defensively. "We mortals really are just playthings to you, aren't we. Has it not occurred to you that I have a finite number of hours to live, and that I might want to spend them doing something other than being interrogated by you?"
Diana said nothing. Eventually, Isabel sighed and went to remove the whistling tea kettle from above the fire. She poured a steaming stream of water into a mug and held it out to Diana.
"Tea?" she asked. "I promise not to live up to my moniker, although I suspect that poison wouldn't kill you, anyway."
Diana accepted the mug gratefully, along with a sachet of herbs that Isabel passed her.
"But where is yours?" she asked.
"I only have one mug," Isabel pointed out.
Diana hesitated, wondering if it would be courteous or rude to hand the mug back.
"Keep it," said Isabel, waving her hand dismissively in Diana's direction. "And don't look at me with pity like that. What would I have to discuss with any of the villagers who came by for tea, anyway? The weather?"
Diana took a small sip of the tea, which was delightfully minty, and set the mug down on the table.
"It's not a sign of weakness to have friends, you know," she said quietly.
"So they say, although your outburst yesterday would speak to the contrary." Isabel warily sat down across from Diana and folded her hands on top of the table. "Well, then, have you figured out your questions for me?"
Diana was looking at some of the notes on the table again. One of them, written in cuneiform, appeared to be a recipe for the tea that she was drinking: an analysis not only of the correct ratios of herbs to one another, but also of the chemical properties that would be released by the hot water to their best effect. She ran her finger lightly over a diagram of menthyl acetate. Isabel had drawn the monoterpene with the sides of its hexagon exactly the same length, so that the figure was beautifully symmetrical.
"Do you miss it?" she asked quietly.
"Do I miss what?" snapped Isabel.
"All of this." Diana nudged the diagram in Isabel's direction.
Isabel stared at her for a long moment, the expression in her eyes impossible to read.
"You know, the god that I was raised to worship was supposedly omniscient," she said finally. "You, on the other hand, seem incapable of divining even the incredibly obvious."
To Diana's surprise, Isabel Maru suddenly blinked sharply, trying to clear her eyes of tears.
"Yes, of course I miss it," she rasped in a soft voice. "How could I not? It was my life. I poured all of my energy into it, all my time. Some might even say that I sold my soul."
"And was it worth it?"
Isabel nodded, her eyes closed.
"Why?"
"You must understand, it was never about power," Isabel explained after a long moment. (Diana registered that the chemist had slipped from the German that she had used upon Diana's arrival into her native Castilian Spanish.) "Or, at least, not in the sense that most of the world understands power. Wars are fought with shows of physical force; whoever can kill the most people with the most efficiency demonstrates greater power. Science isn't like that. We unlock the secrets of the physical universe, one atom at a time, and if we can tame the secrets that we unleash, then that is how we demonstrate power. Someone who saves thousands from the plague with a new medicine is just as powerful as someone who creates a terrible weapon that will kill thousands; both have bent the natural world to their will in equal measure. The secrets that we uncover can do great harm to society, or they can do great good, but that decision is for the politicians and the generals to make, not for us."
"Would you have been just as happy researching medicines to cure the sick?" Diana asked.
"Why not?" Isabel shrugged. "This puzzle or that puzzle; it's all the same to someone whose passion is to solve whatever puzzle is placed before them. Besides, men make such a ridiculous show of being able to kill, when killing is so easy that just about anyone can do it. Giving and sustaining life, on the other hand, requires genuine talent. To create antidotes to any of the gases that I invented - that would have been a real challenge."
For a moment, Isabel allowed herself to gaze at a vision of what her life could have been. Diana waited a moment before bringing her back to reality.
"But?"
"But no one was going to pay me to research medicine, not in the middle of a war," Isabel pointed out. "Everyone was in the killing business throughout those years. What did it matter if my motivations were slightly different than the others'? Ludendorff wanted to win a war to make Germany great. I wanted to win a war to prove that I had pushed my explorations of the effects of chemical gas on the human body to their very limits."
"You didn't have to work for the German Army, though."
"No," Isabel agreed, "but you didn't have to fight for the British, either."
Diana bit her tongue.
"I don't deal in morality or in politics," Isabel continued. "If a scientist had to worry about his or her research being used to kill, then no one would ever create anything. Those American boys who invented the airplane just wanted to realize the eternal human dream of flight. Surely they would have pressed onwards, even if someone had told them along the way that their creation would be used to drop bombs on the enemy lines?"
"There's a difference," Diana insisted. "You signed on specifically to create a new weapon. You knew exactly how it would be used. You knew that it would kill civilians - men and women and children going about their daily lives - and you still made it. What's your excuse?"
Isabel stood to take Diana's empty cup, and for a moment, she loomed over Diana, her scarred face twisted into a scowl.
"My excuse," she rasped in her damaged voice, "is that it's still not as simple as you seem to think, and that I'm as human as anyone else, when it comes to it."
Isabel shooed Diana out of her home shortly thereafter; she insisted that she needed to work, and that Diana had taken up enough of her time that day. Diana knew that she was unlikely to get anything else out of the chemist even if she pressed, so she left willingly and heaved a sigh as she heard the door click shut behind her. The demi-goddess wandered aimlessly through the town, back out towards the farm where she had stayed the previous night. Today, the skies were a blue of a gemlike clarity, with puffy clouds lazily drifting through their midst, but the air was crisp and cool.
When Diana reached the farmhouse, she knocked on the door, and pushed it open to find Leire carding wool at the table inside.
"You're back," Leire commented neutrally. "How did it go?"
"Better, I think." Diana collapsed gracefully into a chair. "I may need to stay another night, though."
"Oh, good," replied Leire. "Joane thinks you're marvelous, and my parents will be delighted."
"I'm glad to hear that I'm not an imposition," Diana smiled. "Can I help with anything? Collecting firewood, perhaps?"
Leire laughed.
"You can't even imagine how my father would scold me if I gave a guest an exhausting job like that!"
"It's no trouble, really." Diana leaned forward. "Although, would you tell me something? Someone told me a legend about a goddess who lives in the caves around this town. Can you point me in the direction of those caves? I'd like to see them for myself."
The cards in Leire's hands slowed to a halt.
"Certainly, I can; but why?" she asked.
"I'm just curious," Diana replied. "I grew up in a part of the world with a lot of caves. I guess you could say that I'm an amateur spelunker by nature."
Leire hesitated, but she then put her cards down and stood so that she could point Diana in the right direction out the window. The Amazon thanked her host and left the house, heading in the indicated direction through the grassy swells of the hills. Leire watched her depart, her brow furrowed, but she then shrugged and sat back down to card the rest of the wool in her basket.
The hills around Zugarramurdi were lush and green from the late October rains. Diana trudged through thick grass and trees with yellowing leaves, up the slopes of the hills towards the mouth of the caves. When she was almost there, she turned to look down on the little village below. So much of her time nowadays was spent in large cities that she had forgotten how breathtaking it was to behold a landscape dominated mostly by nature. She sat down on a rocky outcropping just below the mouth of the caves and pulled her knees up towards her chest, enjoying the deep earthy scent of the land around her and the quiet whisper of the wind through the foliage.
Something stirred in the corner of Diana's eye, and she turned her head to see a small black goat with gnarled horns and yellow eyes meander unconcernedly past her. She stood as it ambled towards the mouth of the cave, and followed it inside.
Clear, cold sunlight filtered unevenly through crevices in the cave, but only the remote corners were so dark that Diana could not keep an eye on her footing. Inside, the air was comfortably chilly, and her footsteps echoed along the length of the cavern, punctuations against the gentle trickle of the stream that ran the caves' length. For the second time since arriving in Zugarramurdi, she was reminded forcibly of home, of the caves carved into the rocky rises of Themyscira, and of the pools of glowing water within them.
She followed the bleats of the goat through the complex until she emerged on the other side.
No sign of Mari Urraca in her natural habitat. Diana exhaled a sigh of mild relief. She wasn't sure that she would enjoy meeting a fellow goddess who inspired such fear among her neighboring mortals. The wind whistled hollowly through the empty caverns.
Behind her, the black goat bleated again. Diana turned and smiled at it as it shot her a significant look and wandered off back down the slope. The Amazon followed, only stopping to pick up the occasional branch as she went. By the time she arrived back down at the farmhouse, she had assembled an impressive armful of firewood that was just short of giving away her divine strength and making her hosts nervous.
By Wednesday, Isabel Maru did not even register surprise when Diana appeared on her doorstep. She merely nodded and let the warrior into her house with a distinct air of resignation.
"Since I'm taking up so much of your time, I thought you could use some supplies," Diana said, setting a basket on the table. (Today, she spoke in Spanish from the moment she arrived.)
Isabel raised her eyebrows as she withdrew from the basket a bottle of fresh cider, a chain of sausage links, a round of cheese, woolen mittens and a matching muffler.
"Thoughtful of you," she said cautiously.
"Well, winter is coming, and your parting salvo yesterday was that you were as human as anyone else," Diana pointed out. "What did you mean by it? What about the choice between right and wrong is not as simple as I think?"
Isabel did not meet Diana's eyes, only began to place the items one by one back into the basket.
"The most outlandish of the reports claim that you grew up on an island inhabited by Amazons, a society composed entirely of warrior women from antiquity," she said at long last. "The very idea is preposterous, and yet I believe it. I would have believed it even if I hadn't seen you do battle with powers that only a god could possess."
Isabel seated herself across the table from Diana, staring down at the scattered pages of her own notes, rather than at the woman who was watching her so intently.
"It's the way you walk, the way you move through the world," Isabel continued. "You've clearly never doubted your own strength and abilities; you've always had confidence that those around you would see you as a person, rather than as a woman. You were trained to command armies, and that fact was never seen as a transgression of any sort. And I'm guessing that, until you aligned yourself with the British Army, you were never told 'no' over and over, simply because of your sex..."
Isabel exhaled slowly.
"You speak in grandiose terms of good and evil," she told Diana. "For us women who have always lived in the world of men, it has always been more a question of survival than of morality. Women have to fight extremely hard to get positions as professors or as researchers, much harder than men do, and it's bad enough for men. I tried playing within the parameters of social acceptability, but my career as a scientist was going nowhere quickly in that framework. I didn't have a whole lot of options. My life boiled down to one choice: to take the military's offer of employment, and pursue my passion as far as it could go; or to let it languish, and to wither into bitterness, aware and resentful of what I could have been. The German Army wanted to win a war, and so it hired me because I was the most valuable scientist it could find, without worrying nearly as much about my being a woman as other institutions did. It provided funding for chemical research that I'd never dreamed of being able to conduct."
"And that research killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people," Diana reminded her.
"Someone would have come up with that formula eventually, if I hadn't," Isabel shrugged. "Like I said, to a scientist, a successful experiment feels more important than all of the riches in the world. I'll confess, I never felt more alive than I did when my tests demonstrated their intended results."
Diana shuddered. Isabel frowned at her.
"You still think I'm a monster."
"I think you lack empathy," replied Diana.
Isabel laughed hoarsely.
"It's difficult to cultivate a sense of empathy when the world has shown you none," she told Diana. "I said that I made the choices that I made because I am human, and what I meant is that I possess the same pride as any other sinful mortal. Yes, I did what I did for science, but also because it gave me status. I had spent my entire life fighting for even a shred of recognition for what I could do, and this was the first time that anyone had ever trusted me with anything important. It was the first time that men took notice of my ideas, for reasons other than to mock me or to try to take credit for my work. It was the first time that men feared me as much as I had always feared them."
Isabel's hands clenched on the top of the table.
"So yes, I had a choice between right and wrong. But I also had a choice between spending my time on earth stifled and downtrodden and utterly forgettable, or to have one glorious moment of public genius that would earn me lasting fame, or perhaps infamy. It wasn't just about right or wrong for me. It was about continuing to die a slow and ignoble death, or else being able to truly live for just one moment."
"And now you'll have to live with the consequences of that one moment for the rest of your life," Diana reminded her.
"Perhaps." Isabel smiled. "But do you truly believe that Icarus spent his final moments regretting that he had ever flown?"
Diana was silent. For a moment, the only audible noises were the wind buffeting the closed shutters on the windows, and the bubbling of a small beaker of amber fluid that Isabel had set over a Bunsen burner on her counter.
"Do you know why this town is famous?" Isabel asked finally.
"I didn't know it was famous," Diana answered with a small smile that Isabel did not return.
"People used to say that there was a witch cult in Zugarramurdi, whose followers met in the surrounding fields for witches' sabbaths," Isabel began.
"The akelarre," Diana nodded. "I've heard the legends."
"But you don't know the history that followed, I take it." Isabel shook her head. "The Spanish Inquisition set up a tribunal in Logroño to 'examine' the accusations of witchcraft coming out of Zugarramurdi, after refugees from the witch trials in Labourd started fleeing across the French border into Navarre. Almost 2,000 people were tortured into confessing their heresy, and into naming others to obtain pardons for their alleged sins. All in all, around 7,000 people were persecuted amidst the hysteria. People were burned at the stake. Others died while being tortured."
"That's horrible."
"That's humanity," Isabel corrected her bitterly. "It likes to punish people who don't fit certain expected molds, who don't hold certain beliefs, who don't belong."
"Well, then, should you be concerned, if the villagers call you a witch?"
Isabel waved a hand scornfully.
"I'm used to it. Besides, sensible people don't instigate witch hunts if they know that the alleged witches have every capability of striking back twice as hard. I'm not one of those skillful but harmless herbalists of the past, who were burned or hung for their uncanny scientific talent. I could probably destroy a town this small, if need be, and the villagers all sense as much, even if they don't know my record. Don't worry, though," she added, noticing the crease of disapproval that had appeared between Diana's eyebrows. "I like the people who live here, as much as I've ever liked any community. I'd choose to quietly slip away before I had to harm any of them."
"I suppose I should feel comforted," Diana remarked. "Even if you're stubbornly defensive about your actions from the war, at least you seem to be mildly reformed."
Isabel rolled her eyes.
"Whatever you've been told, I'm not actually a psychopath," she explained. "I don't have an insatiable need to commit violence against others. It's just been a requirement of my job, in the past; it doesn't mean that I make a regular practice of it. As a warrior who doesn't go about killing people arbitrarily during times of peace, you should understand," she added to the Amazon.
Diana laughed softly, nodding in acknowledgement. And the corners of Isabel Maru's mouth quirked upwards, too.
"Tell me about witches," Diana asked Leire and Joane that evening. The girls' parents had already gone to bed, and Diana had just folded up a blanket and laid it on the floor next to the pallets on which her younger hosts were temporarily sleeping.
The sisters exchanged a glance as their guest gracefully dropped onto the floor next to them. Diana stretched herself out on the folded blanket on her stomach, propping her chin on her hands so that she could continue to smile inquisitively at the girls.
"Leire has this theory that you're here to track down witches, like they did 300 years ago," Joane blurted.
"You weren't supposed to tell her that, stupid," Leire sighed, swatting at her sister in exasperation.
"Well?" Joane asked as she batted back at Leire's hand, staring wide-eyed at Diana.
The Amazon shrugged.
"I can't say I know enough about witches to know if that's what I'm doing," she confessed.
"Is Doctor Mari a witch?" Joane squeaked.
"Joane, she just said that she doesn't know enough about witches to know if Doctor Mari is a witch," Leire scolded her younger sister.
"So...?" Diana prompted them.
"You explain," Joane whispered, nudging Leire with her shoulder.
"Fine, then," Leire huffed. "Witches are evil beings, usually women, who make pacts with the Devil and get unnatural powers, as a result."
"What kind of pacts?" Diana asked. "And what kind of powers?"
"They sell their souls," Leire replied. "They swear to serve the Devil and do his will. They fly through the air to witches' sabbaths where they meet with the Devil and engage in all sorts of obscene and blasphemous behavior that I won't describe to you. And, in exchange, they gain the ability to cast ruin and misfortune down upon people they don't like."
"Using magic, like potions," Joane added significantly.
"So, this Devil, he will inevitably ask the witches to do bad things to other people?" Diana clarified.
The sisters stared.
"Yes, of course," Leire said. "That's the point of the Devil."
"I see," said Diana. "And they have to do his bidding."
"That's the point of the pact," Leire reminded her.
Diana nodded. A deal is a promise, and a promise is unbreakable.
"Does it make any difference if the witches don't enter their pacts with the Devil of their own volition?" she asked after a moment.
"I'm sorry?" Leire asked, confused.
"Let's say there's an extenuating circumstance, and a woman feels she has to enter into a pact with the Devil, maybe because she's run out of other options to protect herself or someone she cares about, and it seems like witchcraft is the only way to do that. Is she still seen as equally evil?"
"I'm not sure," Leire answered after a long moment. "Probably?"
"Definitely," Joane corrected her. "Because serving the Devil is idolatry, and that's banned by two of the Ten Commandments."
"Fair enough," Leire conceded. "Good Christians certainly aren't allowed to worship any false gods from pagan religions."
Diana stifled a snort of laughter by pretending to sneeze.
"So committing evil acts makes a witch herself evil, even if she got into the business of committing evil acts for less sinister reasons?" she asked.
"Well, she's only evil as long as she refuses to repent and change her ways," Leire explained. "That was the whole point of the Inquisition, you know: to force witches and heretics, and also Jews and Muslims who hadn't really converted, to actually accept the faith and stick to it."
"Very interesting," said Diana genuinely, her expression pensive. "Well, thank you for the explanation."
"So do you know if Doctor Mari is a witch?" Joane asked, at the exact same moment that Leire asked, "So are there no witches where you come from?"
"No," Diana replied to both questions simultaneously, as she pushed herself to her feet and picked up the blanket on which she had been lying. "But I don't want to wake your parents with our talking, so explanations will have to wait until later. For now, good night to both of you."
When their guest had retreated back into their bedroom, Leire nudged Joane.
"She didn't know that the Devil is evil!" Leire hissed. "That can't be a good sign."
"I think she's fine," yawned Joane. "Just because she doesn't know the Bible and is possibly an idolator, doesn't mean that she's going to hurt us. She hasn't blown up the house yet, right?"
"Not yet," Leire pointed out.
"You're the one who thinks she's here to hunt witches," Joane reminded her sister.
"Well, I'm re-evaluating," Leire snapped. "Maybe the reason she doesn't think that Doctor Mari is a witch is because she's a witch."
"Mmm, well, Doctor Mari gives me the creeps, but I still think that Diana is wonderful," Joane declared, flopping backwards onto her pallet and pulling her covers up to her neck. "And you're silly to think that Diana's a witch, Leire. Can you imagine her doing anyone or anything harm?"
"There's always a possibility," grumbled Leire.
"Well," Joane yawned again, "I'm not even going to bother entertaining the thought. I mean, think about it: The first attribute of being a witch is flight, and it's certainly not like Diana can fly."
Isabel was not at home when Diana knocked on her door on Thursday. Diana waited for a few minutes in the street, unsure of whether to go search for the doctor, or to stay where she was. Her indecision quickly became moot when Isabel finally appeared in the distance, a basket slung over her arm.
"You're still here," she commented to Diana as she approached.
"I'm still gathering answers," Diana replied. "Should I come back later?"
"No," Isabel said as she unlocked her door and pushed it open. "I won't be going out again today."
"Is everything all right?" Diana asked, glancing at the basket that Isabel carried, which was filled with bloodied bandages and small bottles of medicines.
"I think so. The carpenter's son nearly cut his arm off. I've disinfected the wound, stopped the bleeding, and sewn him up as best I could. And I've given him something to make him sleep for the rest of the day. He should be fine, if he's learned his lesson about using his father's tools without permission."
Isabel set her basket down on her table and turned to face Diana.
"So, you still aren't through with your inquisition into my crimes?"
"Not yet, no," Diana answered.
"I do hope you're not just here with more of the same accusations," Isabel sniffed. "I'm getting rather tired of your constantly demanding, 'What have you done to the world, Isabel Maru? How could you have been so heartless?' I already gave you my reasons for doing what I did; you don't have to like them, but they are what they are."
"I began there because I needed to begin somewhere," Diana admitted. "But I'm only just figuring out the real questions that I came to Zugarramurdi to ask. And, funnily enough, most of them are questions for myself."
Isabel slowly took a seat, folding her hands patiently as she watched the Amazon try to articulate her thoughts.
"When I arrived here, I thought that my questions all revolved around how to prevent anyone else from following in your footsteps," Diana finally said. "I was only looking to the future, trying to learn from your mistakes. I wanted to know what drove you, so that I could dissuade others from feeling that same dangerous motivation. I used to think that that was all that it would take to safeguard humanity. I used to think that that was all that it would take to save the world."
Isabel continued to fix Diana with a silent, critical gaze.
"But, like you said, it's not so simple. The more I talked to you, the more I realized that my questions weren't so much about the future as they were about you. What still drives you forward? Could you be redeemed from the path you've chosen? Why should I care, so long as you stay here, harmless? Why do I still feel that you shouldn't be punished in the way that the law says you should be? What was it that stopped me from killing you in Belgium?"
Diana had begun pacing restlessly back and forth as she spoke, as if she could herd her thoughts into a straight and orderly line. Isabel sat motionless, watching her.
"My friends explained to me last night what a witch is," Diana continued. "She's a woman who sells her soul to gain power that she can't attain on her own. You said that you sold your soul to science, but I think you sold it to Ludendorff, when he convinced you that this was the only way out, that you would never become a great scientist without his help."
"You keep giving him too much credit," Isabel scoffed. "First the god of war, now the Devil? Really, he was quite an ordinary man, when all was said and done."
"Well, any pact that you had with him is long broken, and now you are free," Diana explained eagerly. "You can spend the rest of your life using your skills to help others. You can return to the path of goodness forever."
Isabel shook her head.
"Oh, Wonder Woman," she sighed. "Almost a year, and you still overestimate the justice of the world of men."
"What don't I understand?" Diana challenged her.
Isabel looked down at her hands for a moment.
"It's ironic, you know, that you're named for the goddess of the moon," she remarked. "The moon, which produces no light of its own, and merely reflects what light it can get from the sun. Beautiful, but fragile. Much like women have been throughout much of history, I suppose."
She looked up at Diana.
"You obviously follow a different set of laws than the rest of us, in all senses of the phrase. But those of us who are still bound by the laws of society will have to keep on making Faustian bargains with men to access even a sliver of light to reflect."
"You don't have to make any such bargains," Diana pointed out. "You could stay here forever, and continue healing the sick and the injured, and not have to answer to anyone but yourself."
"I could," Isabel agreed, smiling bitterly. "That's true. I'd bore myself into an extraordinarily self-sufficient premature grave."
"Then come back with me," Diana urged her. "I'll vouch for you before the League of Nations; I'll make sure that you're not prosecuted for what happened during the war. We could find some way to set you up with your own laboratory..."
"And I would still be shunned by the rest of the scientific community," Isabel finished. "I might have fancier equipment, but I would be no better off than I am here. Worse off, perhaps, since at least in Zugarramurdi, I am a social pariah on the basis of fear, rather than hate."
Diana took a breath to rebut Isabel's arguments, but the chemist pressed on.
"Besides, everything that you've just proposed would put me in your debt, more egregiously than I was ever beholden to Ludendorff. I would be even more reliant on someone else's light to shine. And when the next conflict arose, and your allies invariably needed new weapons, I would be in no better position than I was with the Germans. Even if I begged not to be drawn back into the killing business, they would be able to leverage against me any possible hope of ever again doing research, not to mention my previous crimes and the fact that I should be either imprisoned or dead. In such a situation, it would be sheer stupidity to say no."
"So you honestly think that you could be seduced or blackmailed back into a life like the one that you led during the war?" Diana asked, incredulous.
"Why not?" Isabel shrugged. "It's quite possible."
Diana sighed in frustration and stopped her pacing a few steps away from Isabel.
"Do you know why else I came here?" Diana ranted. "It's because hatred is such a heavy burden to bear. This war has drained so much from everyone, so much, and I wanted to lighten my own load just a little. I came here because I wanted to stop others from becoming like you, but I also came here because I needed to forgive you. It won't bring Steve back, but it would help me move on. And now you won't give me any reassurance that you've changed; you won't express remorse for having killed someone I loved, and so many others besides; and you're making every effort to confuse my sense of right and wrong. Why are you doing this, Doctor? Why can't you just repent and make it easy for me to forgive you? Why can't you want to be good?"
Diana fell silent, her breathing as labored as if she had just skidded to a halt from a sprint. Isabel had kept her attention focused on her hands throughout this latter part of Diana's tirade, but she finally turned her glance towards the exercised Amazon.
"You know, I too have wondered every single day of the past year, why you didn't kill me," she said conversationally. "I certainly would have deserved it. I might even have been relieved."
"You were weeping," Diana replied wearily. "I pitied you, even though I didn't know why, at the time."
"I was weeping," Isabel agreed. "But it wasn't because I feared you. Nor because I felt much remorse for my sins, I have to confess. You must understand, I had spent my whole life believing that I would never be enough because I was a woman - and then suddenly, there you were. It was the most beautiful and terrifying sight that I had ever seen. You were everything I had always wished I could be. You radiated power, bright as a star. All unapologetic, self-generated light. I thought, in that moment, that I would have followed you to the end of the universe. And I wept because I knew that, if I had tried, you would have rejected me, too."
Diana opened her mouth to protest, but quickly closed it. Had Isabel Maru approached her so soon after that battle in Belgium, so soon after she had raced through the streets of Veld in a futile search for survivors, so soon after Steve's heroic sacrifice, Diana almost certainly would have scorned her. Mercy, after all, did not automatically translate into acceptance.
"I know that you want me to say that I'm sorry for what I did," Isabel continued. "And I will say this: I'm sorry for having killed so many innocents. I probably deserve to be punished for that. But I cannot recant in the way you want me to. I can't simply swear that I will change my ways, and never again pose any harm to anyone. You are asking me to promise to give up science if my only options for pursuing it take me down a dangerous path, to forswear my raison d'être if the world continues to be as cruel a place as it is. Well, Diana of Themyscira, I recommend that you continue trying to save the world from itself. To make it easier for women to generate their own light, without needing to predicate professional success on moral compromise. To make it safer for someone like me to be who I am. Because I will continue to be myself, even if no one else approves, and even if I will never fit in or be accepted. It will be as rocky and as lonely of a path as it has always been, but at least it will be a path that I have chosen. I owe myself that much."
Isabel shut her eyes, and a single tear streaked from beneath her eyelid, slithering down her cheek to mingle with the burns next to her mouth. And Diana suddenly understood the questions that she should have been asking all along.
"What has the world done to you, Isabel Maru?" she said quietly. "How could it have been so heartless?"
She took a few steps forward and knelt down next to Isabel's chair.
"Haven't I told you enough times over the past few days not to pity me?" Isabel grumbled, sniffing her tears back. "You made the mistake of doing so once, and that's the only reason we're both in this mess."
"You said that the world had shown you very little empathy," Diana reminded her. "You said that you admired the fact that I went through life expecting people to see me as a person, not as a woman. I look at you, Doctor, and I see someone who has had to hide her own humanity to survive in this unjust world, hidden it so completely for so long that she has almost forgotten where it is. I see someone who learned long ago not to trust anyone, who has been kicked down by society so many times that she has begun to see herself as nothing more than the useful but completely inanimate tool that the German Army praised her for being. I also see someone who deserves to have friends, someone who deserves to excel in her career, someone who deserves to be recognized for her brilliance."
Isabel was no longer trying to hold back her tears. They coursed silently down her face, and after a long moment, she exhaled a long, slow, shuddering sigh.
"I don't want you to have to reject the core of who you are," Diana went on. "The world needs brilliant scientists. But what I do want is for you to reconnect with the humanity that you've had to keep buried for so long. I don't know how to change society so that it's more fair. I don't know if it will ever be possible for you to research chemistry entirely on your own terms, with sponsors who have full faith in you and respect you as a fellow human being with morals and boundaries. But you've clearly been unhappy for such a long time, and that's just as much because of things that have little to do with the practice of science. You've convinced yourself that no one could possibly care about you as a human being, simply because you refuse to conform to society's model of what a worthwhile person supposedly does and looks like and wants. You have to trust that you are enough, as you are, and that others will care, if you'll let them."
"Why should I?" Isabel hissed in a quavering voice. "They never have, and I have no reason to expect that they will."
"You can't forge meaningful human connections if you don't meet others halfway, Isabel," Diana told her, taking her hands. "I look at you, and I see a person. A woman, yes, and a chemist; but first and foremost a person, as worthy of human kindness as any other. You may not believe me intellectually, but I'm asking you to trust me, and trust comes from the heart."
Under most normal circumstances, Isabel would have retreated into the protective shell in which she had lived for so many years. Under most normal circumstances, she would have scornfully replied that the heart is nothing more than a muscular pump and has absolutely nothing to do with hormone-triggered emotions. Under most normal circumstances, Isabel would have laughed in the face of anyone - anyone - who knew what she had done during the war, but still tried to claim that they saw her as anything other than a war criminal, or a mass murderer, or a freak or a psychopath or a witch.
But Isabel believed Diana. She trusted Diana.
The realization made her gasp. It was as if some dam that had been holding back years and years of emotions had been breached by this one small offering of kindness. For so long, Isabel had felt nothing but self-doubt and anger and hatred. She had forgotten the comfort of compassion's warm embrace. She had forgotten how cleansing it could feel to wash one's anger and regret away in a flood of cathartic tears.
Isabel sobbed, softly at first, and then harder than she could ever remember having sobbed. When the Amazon put her arms around the chemist's shaking frame, Isabel did not push her away. Instead, she let Diana draw her near and hold her close while Isabel grieved.
And somewhere, in the very back of her disoriented mind, Isabel noted the irony of the entire situation: It had taken the intervention of a demi-goddess to remind her of what it meant to be human.
By the time Diana awoke late the next day, Isabel was gone.
At first, Diana assumed that the chemist had merely stepped out for another house call. But all of Isabel's careful sketches had been swept off the now-bare table, and her beaker-like glassware no longer cluttered the counter by the sink. The Bunsen burner had been packed away, and the fireplace sat cold and empty. Small bottles of medicine remained in the chest by the door, now grouped into tidy clusters and labeled with the names of the villagers who would need them. (Diana wondered vaguely if Isabel, in an effort to ensure that her getaway would be unhindered, had slipped her something from the chest the previous night to make Diana sleep so soundly.)
Isabel Maru was by no means a loud or messy person, and yet Diana felt her absence acutely. The vitality seemed to have been sucked out of her little home, which now seemed too sterile and empty and quiet. The Amazon sat on the worn patchwork quilt that still covered Isabel's bed, listening to thunder rumble in the distance and hoping vaguely that Isabel would not be caught outside in the worst of the rain. Finally, she collected from the table the few sachets of mint tea that Isabel had left for her there, and she exited the little building, closing the door carefully behind her.
The storm had rent the dark sky by the time Diana wandered back to her hosts' farmhouse, and she arrived on the doorstep soaked to the bone.
"Dear heavens," gasped Joane when Diana entered. "You'll catch your death out there in a tempest like this! Come, sit down by the fire."
"Thank you," replied Diana, wiping rainwater from her face. "Do you always get storms this intense in autumn?"
"This one seems particularly bad," Joane confirmed, frowning at the uncooperative weather.
"Well, it is Friday, and All Hallows' Eve, at that," Leire reminded her, crossing herself. "Between the witches' sabbath on the akelarre and the souls of the dead flitting about, we shouldn't be surprised that the weather is so awful."
(Diana had not disappeared spontaneously upon the sign of the cross being made. Leire took note and thus was satisfied that her guest was, in fact, most likely not a witch, even if probably an idolator and undoubtedly unconventional.)
"Well, hopefully it will clear up soon," Diana sighed, staring fretfully out the window.
"Does this mean you're leaving?" Joane asked unhappily.
"Yes." Diana smiled at her young friend. "You've been so kind to me, and I can't thank your family enough. But it's time for me to go home. I've been away for too long."
"Did you ever get what it was you wanted from Doctor Mari?" Leire asked.
"And do you know now if she's a witch?" Joane added.
Diana smiled.
"Yes, and no," she replied cryptically to both questions simultaneously, in a way that made the sisters understand that they would get no further answer from her.
Leire studied Diana carefully.
"She's disappeared, hasn't she?" she asked.
Diana nodded.
Joane cast an alarmed look at her sister.
"I suspect she's left the area, permanently," Diana clarified for Joane's sake.
"Do you know where she's gone?" Joane asked.
To figure out how to generate her own light, Diana thought to herself, but she only shook her head.
"And you're going to follow her?" Leire pressed.
"No," said Diana.
She still didn't completely understand Isabel Maru, not by any stretch of the imagination. But she knew that the doctor would not have left if she did not need space and time with which to process things. Diana was anything but an inconspicuous figure, and she knew that Isabel would figure out how to contact her, if necessary. More importantly, she also now trusted that Isabel could and would swallow her pride and do so.
"Why was she here?" Joane asked. "Do you know?"
"Hiding," Diana answered.
"Hiding?!" Leire repeated, in turn alarmed. "From what?"
"From many things," Diana sighed, "but mostly from herself."
"Hm." Leire did not look convinced by this explanation, but she seemed mollified by the fact that Diana was not a witch, and by Diana's reassurance that the mysterious doctor was gone for good. "Well, hopefully she's hidden herself well out of the storm, by this point."
Diana nodded in agreement. For some reason, she liked the notion of Isabel waiting out the storm in the caves above Zugarramurdi, hopefully undisturbed by any legendary deities or their followers. But wherever she was, no matter how harsh the conditions, Diana had no doubt that the chemist would survive. After all, Doctor Isabel Maru had a lifetime of practice fighting and surviving.
But Diana now understood that it wasn't enough simply to survive, that society would not be safe for - or safe from - the Doctor Poisons of the world until it gave them room to flourish on their own terms.
Can you possibly forgive me? Isabel had whispered the previous night, her tear-streaked scarred left cheek tucked against Diana's neck as the Amazon held her.
Diana knew that she would never be able to forgive Isabel's actions. She knew that her dreams would still be haunted by the hazy fog of noxious gas winding through the tight, cobblestone streets of Veld. She knew that a small part of her would mourn Steve Trevor for as long as she lived. But Diana knew what her answer was, regardless.
It was not the closure that Diana had been expecting out of this whole experience. But it was a sort of closure, nonetheless.
The rain outside pelted down relentlessly, illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning. The storm showed no signs of letting up. Somewhere in the distance, the bell tower of the church chimed the hour, and Diana was reminded once more of how fleeting the lives of mortals were. There was so much work to be done, and no power on earth could give her more time.
By the time the family went to bed, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Diana told Leire and Joane that they should take their room back, and she sat watching the fire, mesmerized by the flames and their diminishment into glowing embers, until the sound of the clock striking midnight jolted her back to the present. It was now November 1919. The war had ended a year ago this month.
Diana quietly pulled on her traveling clothes and packed her few belongings, then said a silent word of thanks to her sleeping hosts as she stood in their darkened living room. With barely any noise, she unlatched the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind her.
The night air was chilled and damp, and Diana pulled her cloak a little tighter around her shoulders. The black silhouettes of the surrounding hills loomed against the glitter of the starry night sky; the moon was completely hidden in shadow. Diana trudged quietly across the slick, muddy road, stopping only at the path towards the mouths of the caves. After a moment of indecision, she shook herself and continued onwards.
Finally, when she knew that she was out of sight of any of the little houses of Zugarramurdi, Diana took a deep breath, leapt into the air, and flew.
Author's Note: I really don't know much about Basque culture and history, and there is regrettably little online in English on the Basque witch trials of the early 1600s, so I apologize for any cultural/historical aspects of in this fic that have been grossly oversimplified or misrepresented. If any readers have actually been to the Witch Museum in Zugarramurdi, and would like to add suggestions for edits or recommendations of resources, please do leave a comment, since I'd love to learn more.
Also, although it continues to explore some of the themes of my previous Doctor Poison fic, Gift,this entire narrative actually came about very much by accident, in that I wrote Leire and Joane into a different story and realized that they were entirely wrong for that plot, but I wanted to keep playing with them and with Zugarramurdi. This not being part of any formal Doctor Poison redemption arc, I don't currently have any plans for a sequel. But if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to toss them my way, and I'll certainly give you credit if any stick and turn into a full-fledged story!