by Amy McNulty
“Thank the goddess water is always free,” said the woman in front of me to her man.
“Yes, darling.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault the payments at the quarry have decreased.” The woman bit her lip and traced a finger over the man’s chest. “How can the foreman forget where he got the copper to pay everyone from when people weren’t buying stone for building materials? How does he expect to replenish it with more copper if he can’t pay the men enough to dig it up?”
“We’ll find more.” The man took the woman’s hand in his. “We all have our goddesses to take care of. So many of the men have children—”
“Thank the goddess we haven’t yet had any.” The woman smiled, but just barely. She didn’t seem thankful at all. “I don’t mean … Don’t get it into your head that I don’t want any. Because I do. It’s just … ” Her voice quieted as she played with her man’s shirt. “I’d hate for them to be so hungry now, along with us. Someday it’ll get better. We can welcome them then.”
Someday it’ll get better. It won’t.
The bucket fell out of my hands and clattered to the ground. The coupling in front of me tore their gazes from each other just long enough to glower at me, but I didn’t care. I crouched beside the bucket and hugged my knees to my chest.
They don’t remember the lord. They don’t realize it was him who kept this village running. I didn’t even realize it was him, really. How could I? He never even came down to the village. He never spoke with the people directly. How could I have known he helped so many?
How could I have known what I was doing, when I yearned for my own freedom?
“Hey. Hey. Do you want some water or don’t you?” The woman behind me kicked at my back lightly.
I saw the line that had formed behind me and realized I was some distance from the well and it was my turn. I didn’t know how long I must have been lost in my thoughts. “Yes,” I said, quietly, thinking of the men in the commune.
Every muscle ached as I dipped the bucket down with the rope to the well and pulled it back upward.
They all knew. Before they forgot him. They all wanted me to Return to him, to keep him happy because he was their best customer.
Because he kept this village going.
***
A couple of weeks later, I laid on the ground in my shack, telling my thoughts to quiet for once so that I might sleep and enjoy a brief moment of peace from my waking dream.
“Because you bring us water. And scraps. And for the rose.”
A gruff voice. I struggled to open at least one eye, but my eyelids were heavy, and it strained me more than it should have. I blinked to bring the streaming moonlight into focus. A black figure stood in the doorway.
I shot up from my pile of hay on the ground. My heart beat harder, stronger.
And then I recognized Jaron standing before me.
It wasn’t the lord. He was gone, and he’d taken everything I knew with him. My life was gone. I felt the violence of a torment that would not break, even across the jagged surface of my heart.
Jaron must have recognized the feeling in my face, for he was soon crouching before me with both hands extended.
He held a sheathed blade. Does he even know what’s in his hands?
Before I could stop myself, I grabbed it from him, pulling it out of harm’s way and removing the blade by the hilt. It sparkled with a violet glow that felt all too familiar. “Elgar? How … ”
“Don’t know what it is. Maybe a carving tool. Found it in a tree hollow in the woods,” croaked Jaron tersely. “When cutting wood for Alvilda. Years ago. She would not take it.”
Years ago? Of course. I just have to leave it there for him to find, all these countless years later.
I felt a stirring in my heart that wasn’t quite like the pain it had known for the past month. It was mixed with great sorrow for Jaron and the truth of the longing I knew he felt even now for Alvilda.
I sheathed the sword and squeezed Jaron’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Jaron’s mask bobbed, and he stood up. He left the shack just as quietly as he had entered it.
I pulled out the sword, gripped my hair into a tail behind me, and sliced it off close to my scalp. Now that I was alone, I was free to be myself. There would be nothing about me for anyone to make pretty.
***
I brushed aside the last of the branches that blocked the cavern’s entrance from view. Elgar, my blade, had summoned me here. The sheath hung from my waist, and I rested my hand comfortably over Elgar’s hilt. I couldn’t walk through this life anymore. My parents were gone. My sister and the man I’d loved were lost in each other completely. The lord had vanished, but he left behind a feeling of emptiness in my chest each time I thought of his face—and I hated myself for that. I didn’t want the burden of remembering him. If my heart was empty after I had slain the heartless monster, I would let the blade and the violet glow guide me to where I would stop him from hurting others in the first place.
I was the elf queen—and I was nobody’s goddess.
Elgar proved the key to getting back through the violet sphere, as I’d guessed. This time when I resurfaced, I knew immediately it had worked, even though I had no reason to believe the cavern was any different.
But there was an ax against a nearby rock. As I grabbed it, I noticed Elgar and its sheath were missing from my waist. The memory of the lord taking the blade away with him to the castle surfaced, more real than I had let myself believe it to be all these long, long months.
There’s no going back now. Not without getting the blade back. Somehow I knew this, even though the pool had taken me back once without it. But that was just as well. I had no place to go back to.
When I exited the cave, dripping wet with water, I came face to face with Avery. She looked at me like a piece of animal dung she had stepped in. “I almost went back in to see what was keeping you. Did you fall in that pool?”
“I … ” I studied Avery’s face. “How long was I gone?”
“What are you talking about?” Avery raised an eyebrow. “Just a few minutes. Did you lose consciousness?”
I shook my head.
“What did you do to your hair? Did you lop it off with the ax?”
I fingered my shorn tresses. So that change made it through the journey. To Avery, I’d walked into the cavern with long hair and walked out with short. It might have drawn attention away from the changes to my clothing—not that my dresses looked very different. But my back was missing the terrible sewing job Avery had done long ago. “Yeah … it was getting in the way.”
“If you say so. The men will love that.” Avery shrugged. “And maybe next time save the swim until after you’ve worked up a sweat.”
We worked for hours. I felt almost as if I’d never been gone. As if my home was the dream. This felt so natural, so real. Like I didn’t have anything terrible behind or before me, just the whack, whack, whack of the ax. I wondered how we were going to carry all of the wood back to the village without a wheelbarrow, and whether we’d bring it back to the commune or to a workshop I hadn’t yet seen, but Avery said not to worry about it. Some days she just felled the tree and left the collecting for another day’s labor. She was far enough ahead in her work that the men didn’t care how she paced herself.
It took us most of the day, and my muscles ached for Ailill’s touch by the end, but we brought a tree down with a thunderous crash and a surge of pride and exaltation. We hugged each other in triumph as the ground shook. For a moment, I remembered the times I looked at the castle in that other life. My spine tingled.
Back at the commune, Avery guided me into her shack, which she shared with more women and girls than ought to be able fit inside.
“Sorry,” I said as I nearly fell onto a woman nursing an infant on the ground.
The woman looked as if she were staring into the eyes of a monster.
I crouched down to face her, and s
he backed up as far as she could, practically willing the strength to knock down the wall of the shack so she could back away even farther.
“She’s darling.” I tried my best to put on a smile and pointed to her baby. “What’s her name?”
Avery grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me upward. “It’s a boy,” she said. “He won’t be named until he’s weaned and sent home to his father. Only the girls stay with us and get our names.”
I let Avery guide me to a small open corner of the shack across the way. The nursing woman sighed with relief as I left, letting a small smile work itself onto her face as she looked down at her baby.
Avery crossed her legs, sat down on the ground, and tugged at my hand for me to do the same. There was really only room enough for one of us, but I grabbed my knees tightly to my chest and did my best to cram onto the little free floor space anyway.
“You have to separate those likely to fight from the weak,” she whispered. “The ones likely to fight have fire in their eyes.”
That’s right. You promised to help lead a rebellion, not take on the lord by yourself. But that was even better. I’d have help. I’d stop him for certain this time. Maybe life would be different when I got home. Maybe Jurij would never have found the goddess in anyone.
There was no flame in the eyes of the women and girls around me, not like in the men back home. But I soon understood what Avery meant. Most of the women and girls huddled together, crying softly, staring blankly, or looking ready to fall over dead. In the three other corners of the room were the biggest and the strongest—which meant nothing compared to a healthy woman back home—leaning or standing against the wall, nodding over at me as I looked.
“It’s not enough,” I whispered back. “We’ve got to get them all—or at least most of them—to fight.”
Avery snorted. “We’ve been trying for years.”
“But there are more willing, right? In the other shacks?”
Avery shrugged. “A fair few more. But not even a tenth of our total number.”
Two women and a girl sitting on either side of us looked over uncomfortably. They tried to back away as best they could, but their space was limited. Avery shot each of them a look. “Cower and hide, like you always do! It won’t change anything!”
The few whispers and moans in the room stopped. Avery stood, heated, looking down on all of the women gathered.
“You heard me,” she said, her voice quiet, but her tone strong. “We’re the men’s slaves and all of you—every last one of you—is the reason why the men think they own us.”
“Don’t give us trouble,” croaked an older woman from across the room. “Just let us have peace.”
It was my turn to jump upward. “You don’t have peace!” Avery and the women in the corners seemed pleasantly surprised. The two who had been sitting stood to join us.
“I’ve come to help you!” I looked at some of the nearest faces, felt the pain and fear radiating from their eyes. “You called for me, in your hearts, I know it. You’ve suffered. Where I come from, it’s the women who bring the men to their knees! It’s the women who give the orders! Women don’t have the power to heal, just the same as the women here—but we have something more powerful than that. We have a choice! And you have a choice! You can choose to be miserable, to give your daughters the same shoddy echo of a life that you enjoy, to labor and birth and die, or you can choose to fight!” I was lifting some of the sentiment from the lord’s blessing. But what more suitable time was there than this?
The women gasped. Some hid their faces. The women standing in the corners gave a delighted cry, raising their fists into the air.
The euphoria spreading throughout my body came crashing to a halt.
“What is going on here, women?”
The sitting women screamed or buried their faces deeper into each other’s bosoms. Those in the corners slunk back down to the ground. I faced the entryway and saw Goncalo. Behind him stood a few more men, their hands locked tightly onto a number of bedraggled women.
Avery cut in front of me and bowed, immediately lowering her head to the ground. “Just trying to liven spirits with a few stories, sir.”
Goncalo scoffed. “No need to sharpen dull minds with stories in the commune, woman.” He grunted and waved his hand forward. The other men pushed the women they were holding forward into the shack and let them go. Instead of catching one another, they tripped and fell and screamed, trying in vain to move out of each other’s way.
“His Lordship is done with these,” spoke Goncalo.
The men started moving about the commune, not caring if they stepped on a hand, foot, or leg. They shoved women over, grabbing their faces, slapping through their clothing at chests and backsides. Some molested women were ripped upward into the men’s grasps.
Avery tensed in front of me. She crouched down and stuck her hands out behind her, grabbing at my bodice and trying to pull me down with her. I followed, but I hadn’t yet reached the ground when Goncalo spoke.
“You cut your hair?” He spat. “How unseemly. But you won’t hide that way.” I dared to lift my head slightly and saw he was pointing directly at me. “That one’s coming with us,” he said.
Avery rolled around to face me, pretending she was falling forward against me in the ruckus of the men moving about the shack.
“Find Ailill,” she whispered.
“Are you coming?” I asked.
“No, they can’t take me to the lord,” she replied. “He won’t speak—Ailill. But find him.”
Before I could ask why, two sets of hands seized me and dragged me across cowering women and out into the night.
I recognized the black carriages straight away. However, the black horses that pulled them shook their tails and stomped their feet, unlike the ghastly horses I had seen before. I thought that we would all be shoved inside the carriages as I’d always been, but the men instead dragged us to the back of the last carriage in the procession and bound our hands together before hooking the rope on the hitch. Then they piled into and on top of the carriages and cracked a whip. The horses trotted away. We stumbled after them.
Some of the women fell straight away.
“Keep up!” I whisper-shouted. “Keep up or the pain will be worse!”
The fallen women grimaced and pushed themselves up.
We continued to stumble as we headed up the dirt road and through the village. A few women fell, but I was never among them. I kept coaching the other women to stand up, to keep up, to ignore the leering eyes and the whistles of the men we passed along the way. By the time we broke free of the heart of the village, the other women and I had gotten used to each other’s rhythms, and we trotted evenly in a straight line.
We continued over the hilltops, maintaining our grit and determination not to fall even then, and broke through the woods in a single formation. The central dirt road through the woods made for easy travel after the ups and downs of the hills. And before we knew it, we were there—at the castle. I was still not used to looking at it so freely. Its spires seemed less menacing now, even if I knew what lay ahead was sure to be worse than what was inside the castle when I’d lived there. But it was still so large, even larger so close. It loomed tall above us, threatening to swallow us up.
The carriages stopped before the large open doors. Fire and candlelight poured forth freely from inside. Roaring laughter and music filled our ears. Men came back to cut the rope loose from the carriage. Goncalo walked down the line, inspecting each of us. I noticed too late that it was I alone who still faced forward. He was drawn instantly to me.
“You all seem more sound than the women usually are after this journey.” He grabbed me by the chin again and peered down at me. He needn’t have bothered. I wouldn’t have let his gaze intimidate me into looking away.
“I thought I heard you saying something to the others as we traveled,” he said.
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “I just told them to keep up
, so we wouldn’t all be dragged down by ones who fell.”
Goncalo’s lips trembled.
“Sir,” I added, too late.
He smacked my cheek with the back of his hand.
“Good,” he sneered. “Then you are all well enough to entertain us straight away this evening.”
The women gasped, and more than one sent a surge of loathing in my direction.
Goncalo finally released my face. “Freshen them up!”
A series of women, old or scarred or altogether plain, came out from the castle. They bowed slightly and then grabbed our rope by the lead, like we were livestock to be pulled onward.
We were dragged upstairs, and more than one woman stumbled and fell this time, whether from exhaustion or just to spite me, I didn’t know. But the women not bound by ropes didn’t stop.
***
Without a word, the castle women freed our hands and got to work making us over. They washed us from head to foot, put us in slips and dresses, and combed and styled our hair. I was outfitted in a white gown, not unlike the one I had worn that day so, so long ago for the chess game in the garden. The one difference was the black shawl the old woman in charge of me draped over my shoulders.
I had a strange feeling about the old woman. She said nothing, did nothing that would make me think “crazy old crone,” but her large, dark brown eyes had been burned into my memory. I couldn’t help but think of Ingrith.
The woman made one perceptible noise, a disgruntled sigh when she picked up the brush and took hold of my cropped hair. Her hands went to work, brushing what little hair I had left. In the end, she managed to make my jumble of locks look presentable—even attractive—which defeated my purpose for cutting my hair in the first place. She finished the job by wetting the tendrils that caressed my cheeks and pulling them back, tucking a fresh red rose from a vase on the vanity behind my left ear.
