"I’m not seeing it anymore. Have you lost the image?" Cori asked Marta.

     "Yep," Marta confirmed. "But I stored it on my computer so we can look at it again later if we need to."

     "So, think you can find out any information on who the ghost might be?" Cori asked, already knowing what her friend would say.

     "A need for knowledge? Not a problem! I’ll email you when I have something," Marta replied, barely able to hide her excitement over the unfolding adventure.

     "Great!" Cori told her friend. "Mom’s on her way back with lunch. You know how ghost hunting makes me hungry! Catch you later," she said as she ended the call.

     Dr. Denton arrived with sandwiches and chips. She sat down on the sand next to her daughter.

     "You and Marta been busy?" Dr. Denton asked, nodding toward the Pink Diamond Girls cap and camera on Cori’s head.

     "We sure have. But I’m not sure exactly what it was we saw," Cori told her mother.

     "Well, what did it look like?" her mom asked, unwrapping a sandwich.

     "It’s hard to describe," Cori replied. "Let me see if I can show you." Cori began to dig into the sand, making a pile out of it.

     "Let’s see. It was like this," Cori said as she tried to form the sand into a shape. "Sort of floating over the water."

     Dr. Denton tilted her head to one side, then the other. She walked around the sand pile and stared at it as she ate her lunch.

     "You saw a hamster floating in a hot air balloon over the ocean?" she asked.

     "Don’t you know a ghost when you see one?" Cori replied, upset at her lack of artist skills.

     "Oh, a ghost floating in a hot air balloon!" Dr. Denton said jokingly, not trying too hard at being helpful.

     "It just needs a little work," Cori said as she began to reshape the sand.

     "You work on it, honey. I’ll go get us some drinks," she told her daughter. "Be right back."

     Cori’s computer beeped an incoming message.

     Email
     From Marta
     To Cori

     I did some quick web surfing. Our ghost sure looked like some sort of ancient warrior. After doing just a little research, I have already decided that history hasn’t given women their due as conquering warriors! Most of the time, women fought because they wanted to help defend their homes and families. Other times, they fought because the men were gone, either dead or off hunting food. The women had no choice but to fight. But, some tribes were led by women who created their own armies. WOMEN ONLY need apply!

     Africa had thousands of female warriors. Their leaders were women, usually the queen of the tribe.

     In 1624, when the king of Angola died, his sister became queen. Her name was Nzingha. Well, first thing, the ruler of Portugal broke his treaty with the country of Angola. I guess he thought that, since the king was dead and a woman was ruler, the country would be easy to invade. When the Portuguese army arrived, Queen Nzingha was ready. Her army, made up of mostly women, fought the invaders for eleven years! Of course, during that time, the queen’s army was also fighting and conquering other African kingdoms. This made her kingdom huge and much harder for the Portuguese to defeat. They finally gave up. In 1635, they ran on back to Portugal. Queen Nzingha enjoyed her victory and vast empire until the old age of 81.

     Also in the 1600s, the African warrior-queen Mussasa led her warriors to so many victories, her empire covered most of the Congo! When she died, her daughter took over her mother’s kingdom.

     Cool, huh?
     Marta


     Ring! Ring!

     "The Ghost Hunter," Cori laughed into the phone. "Couldn’t wait for me to call you, huh?"

     "Not when there are ghosts to hunt," Marta laughed back.

     "The stuff about women warriors was cool," Cori said. "This ghost sure looks like someone I wouldn’t want to fight!"

     "These women warriors all have one thing in common. It didn’t matter where they lived or who they were fighting for or against, they were usually called Amazons. There were lots of other Amazon warriors in Africa," Marta continued about the Amazon queens. "One queen named Egee led an army of women into Libya and Asia. She warred against the king of Troy in Greece. After defeating the army, she killed the king and took all the royal gold and jewels. But, on the way back home to Africa, her ships got caught in a storm. She and her ships of loot ended up on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea."

     "Well, guess that could be our ghost," Cori thought out loud. "She is wearing animal skins like an African warrior might. And, she probably died in a storm at sea. That would explain her popping up over the waves. But it sure would be a long journey from the Mediterranean Sea in the Eastern Hemisphere, across the Atlantic Ocean and around to the Pacific Ocean in the Western Hemisphere."

     "Guess she needed the best ghost hunter she could find," laughed Marta. "No distance too far to go for the best!"

     "Thanks," Cori said, trying to be modest. "But, ghosts don’t usually leave home — whether it’s the house where they lived, battlefields where they fought or the ship that sank their bodies to the bottom of the ocean. When Mom came back with lunch, I tried to show her what the ghost looked like…"

     "What did you show her?" Marta asked.

     "I made a sand sculpture. See?" Cori said proudly, dipping her head to point the camera toward the sand sculpture. "What do you think?"

     Marta laughed as the image streamed onto her computer screen.

     "That bad?" Cori asked, staring at the pile of sand.

     "Let’s just say… you have a gift. It’s seeing ghosts. Leave the artistic stuff for someone else," Marta told her friend.

     "Ok. I’m giving up sand sculpting. Email me the image of the ghost so Mom can look at it," Cori gave in.

     "I’m sending it right now," Marta said. "That may help your mom figure out who our ghost is."

     Cori looked out over the waves lapping on the beach.

     "I’m sure she can," Cori said. "But, for right now, I think I better DUCK!"