by Amy McNulty
“You have seen what I can do!” I said. “In my village, each woman commands the man who longs for her.” I laughed. “But here, the men long for every woman! I can tell the men to do as we please!”
And I had. On the way back to the commune, I’d knocked on the carriage door and ordered the guard men to go door to door in the village, bringing forth any woman or girl taken for the night to be set free and sent back to the commune. Remembering Alvilda’s words about my passed message to Master Tailor, I ordered the guards to tell any questioning man they encountered that I had ordered these women set free.
And they had been.
“So why don’t you order the men to slit their throats now?” barked one of the standing women. “If your words carry such power?”
“I could … ” To tell the truth, the idea was unsettling, even if these men were not the men I knew from my village.
Avery shook her head. “No. We do this with our own hands.” She shot me a sideways glance. “And rely on Olivière only if things go sour.”
I smiled and turned back to the crowd. “I know you’re scared. But I heard your voices calling me. I came from beyond the mountains.” It was true, after a fashion. “I’m here to show you that you can fight, that you have the power to end this nightmare! I know what it’s like to live without love. I know better than any other could. Never more! Never more should you labor and birth and die!”
A number of women raised their fists and shouted.
“Who’s with us?” I screamed.
More and more women raised their fists and shouted.
Avery cupped her hands over her mouth. “Just don’t forget to leave a few for breeding!”
Laughter broke the last of the tension that held tightly on to the crowd.
Avery grinned and placed her hands on her hips, satisfied. “Let’s go!”
The women shouted and screamed.
“Olivière,” Livia spoke quietly beside me. “Not all of us are able to go.”
I looked at Livia, her face covered in wrinkles. My gaze fell upon a few women still with child or nursing and the little girls in the crowd. Some were still scared and moved nervously to the outside of our circle.
“If you don’t feel you can fight with us, do whatever will keep you safest during our battle.”
Ailill dropped hold of Livia’s hand and Avery’s skirt and took off down the dirt path eastward.
***
“Where did Ailill go?” I asked Avery as she strode to a tool shed in the commune and ripped the doors open. She started pulling out axes, knives, pitchforks, and hoes and passed them down to her comrades, who spread them throughout the crowd of women.
She shrugged. The furor coursing throughout her body was too strong for her to bother with the safety of her brother, even if he was the only one of the two she could possibly love.
“If he’s smart, he’ll head to that cavern we went to earlier,” she said. “I’ve shown it to him before.”
I nodded, the nausea rising from my stomach slightly cooled. But still, I felt uneasy. “Why didn’t Ailill heal your mother?”
Avery grimaced and picked up her ax and gouge from the tool shed, the last weapons that remained inside. She turned them over in her hand hungrily. “He tried. She was too far gone.”
“Does their power not work on all wounds and illnesses?”
“The deeper the wound or illness, the longer it will take and the more power it requires to save someone. He would have had a better chance with a serious illness, but it would take all of his power, and it would take a long time. Tear a person into too many pieces too quickly, and no man has the power required to heal all the wounds in time to save them.”
I felt sick at the thought of Ailill weeping before his fallen mother. What did she mean, too many pieces? Had he removed her hands and feet? Her arms and legs? Did her small, innocent child—a boy who still had a heart—stand there, watching the blood pooling around the last recognizable pieces of her body until she vanished, free of her pain at last?
I’ll never forgive him. Never. I don’t care what role he played in my village. I had the sudden urge to fight.
“That’s useful to know.” I pulled Elgar from its sheath and held it before me, allowing the moonlight to heighten its violet glow. “We’ll have to make sure we don’t leave behind too few pieces.”
Avery grinned.
***
We strode through the woods down the dirt path, my mob of women and I. Avery stood beside me, her ax raised high in the air, a battle cry escaping her lips every few moments. Every time we encountered a man between the commune and the castle, I ordered him to go inside a building and stay there until a woman came for him. I told him he was never to hurt a woman again. And I ordered him to pass along my message to any man or boy he came across in the future.
No, we would save our bloodlust for the castle. At least at first.
As we passed the area where I always broke off for the cavern, I sent my best wishes in that direction, hoping Ailill had done as Avery had said and that he was out of harm’s way.
We left the last of the trees behind us, and Avery and I stepped forward. Avery lifted her gouge in the air to signal the mob to stop behind us.
Goncalo and his usual group of men snapped out of their lazy conversations and looked at us. They seemed surprised to meet with so many pairs of defiant eyes.
Goncalo fumbled with the back of his belt and pulled out his whip. As if a whip had a chance against a blade and an ax.
“What are you women doing?” he barked.
I smiled. “We’re changing how things work around here.”
Goncalo scoffed. “I’d like to see you try.” He cracked his whip on the ground.
“Whip yourself,” I said, devouring both words with my tongue.
Goncalo did as bidden, whipping the weapon across his legs. He yowled in pain. The men behind him murmured, pulling out their blades shakily and pointing them toward us.
“Settle down,” Goncalo said to his men. “My fault. A rare mistake.”
“Whip the man next to you,” I said.
Goncalo did as bidden. The man jumped back and screamed. Blood dripped from an open wound on his arm. He lifted his other hand and pressed it over the wound, letting a violet glow pour forth. He looked at Goncalo with the confusion of an obedient dog kicked by its master. The crowd of women behind me burst into laughter.
Goncalo picked up his whip and strode toward me. The veins on his forehead throbbed to life, distorting his otherwise flawless features. “You insolent woman.”
“Let us pass,” I commanded. “All of you.”
They could wait. It was time to say goodbye once and for all to the lord in black.
The men shuffled sideways, clearing the path before us to the castle door. More than one seemed lost in thought; others, like Goncalo, shook and trembled, doing their best to fight the orders given. But they couldn’t move until my entire mob had passed through the door.
As the last woman stepped inside, Goncalo and the other men forced their way through the crowd, shoving women as they went.
I parted my lips to speak a command, but Avery thrust out her hand to cover my mouth.
“They’ll get what’s coming to them,” she said coldly. “For now, let them think they have the upper hand.”
I wondered how they would explain the whip and the way they let us pass. Perhaps they wouldn’t be willing to admit that they had been dumbfounded and obedient at a woman’s words.
“What is going on here?”
The lord entered the grand entryway from the inner garden door. I wondered briefly if he had been looking for me there. Had my orders muddled his memory, caused him to remember leaving me last at the end of our chess game? The door shut behind him, but that large crack I had noticed the first time I ventured inside the castle was present even then, and a trickle of moonlight fled into the foyer. The fire still burned brightly in the open dining room hall, but there was no
longer any music, no longer any laughter.
“Lord Elric,” spattered Goncalo. “There are women walking freely out of the commune, disrespecting men, waving around those playthings—”
The lord lifted a tired hand. “Enough, Goncalo. I can see.”
Goncalo’s face burned darker, and he took his place standing behind the lord. His hand still gripped the whip’s handle and not the blade at his hips. He would regret the choice later.
The other men were not so sure of themselves. Many of them drew their swords as they gathered around the lord and Goncalo, and the rest tensed their hands on their hilts uncomfortably.
The lord put his hands on his hips. “The question is why are these women here?”
I put Elgar back into its sheath so that I could mimic his stance, the one that had always stirred rage inside of me.
“We come bearing a message,” I said. “And it’s for all men, not just for you, Elric.”
The lord raised an eyebrow. “You have never been one for courtesy, Olivière. I believe you are addressing your lord.”
“I have no reason to give courtesy where there is none owed.”
The lord laughed. “As disdainful as ever, woman—Olivière.”
He looked puzzled. I smiled. He hadn’t intended to speak my name aloud. I had ordered him to address me by my name, after all, even if I didn’t know at the time what I was doing. “One day you will surely beg to forget my name, Elric.”
Goncalo surged forward, cracking his whip. “You insufferable woman—”
The lord halted him with a wave of his hand.
“No, please,” said the lord. “Let her speak. She went to the trouble of bringing all of her friends for a visit. Let us hear their message, and then we can be done with this mess and punish the lot of them.”
The last of the men who had not yet drawn their swords did so. The women shook their tools. I caught Avery’s eye beside me. She nodded and began slinking away from me, between Goncalo and one of the other men.
I drew Elgar again and pointed it toward the lord, closing the space between us. It bothered me that he didn’t move, and his guards didn’t stir from their posts. I stopped just a few paces from the lord, Elgar looming dangerously close to his abdomen. He looked amused.
“In your arrogance,” I began, “you have treated the women of the village as your slaves. You have worked them to the bone while the men sit on their asses. You have plucked them from the commune at will, treating them like your playthings, all of you—fathering children like it was no greater deal than siring cattle.”
I turned my eyes from the lord and let them wander over the rest of the men in the castle. I recognized a few from my day in the stocks. Those last few words would be especially suited to them.
I continued. “But you will learn what love is, and you will respect the power women can have over you. For where I come from, it is women who have the freedom to do as they will, and the men have no choice but to follow them.”
The lord tapped his fingers against his elbow impatiently. Behind me, the women started shouting and spreading throughout the room. Many stared straight into the guards’ faces, willing them to melt.
Still the men didn’t strike. My blood boiled.
“I will not let you forget what you have done!” I cried. “What I say will be done by any man who has ever felt longing toward me.”
A flash of pain marred the lord’s stunning features, but only for a moment. The women continued to circle the room.
I felt moved by the lord’s sadness, as I had the only time I had seen him before all of this, when he was drained of color. But then I thought of Avery, Livia, and the other women of this village. I thought, too, of Ailill watching his mother die, using his healing in vain on a woman chopped into pieces. I thought of the lord’s disdain and lust for me in my version of the village, the twisted game he played with my comatose mother, his plotting and planning to match his power over mine, blow for blow. I knew what I had to do. I would not let him die this day. He had to suffer, to know firsthand what he inflicted upon those around him. I only hoped I could word it so that I would win in the end, so I could enjoy watching him vanish that day in what I now knew to be his future—with one direct look from my eyes.
Yes. It’s clear now. Things have to be this way. I felt as if a force unseen took over me.
“Men of this village!” The words flowed so easily. The curse that had shaped my life tumbled out of me. “Love only one woman each and treat her as the goddess she is. Leave no woman without a man to worship her. Obey your goddess’s commands, pine for her heart and body and suffer if she will not Return her love to you. Win her heart with obedience and affection to enjoy a small reprieve from your torment. Fail to feel the Returning of her affections, and rot away for the rest of your wretched existence.”
There was a strange stirring throughout the room. The men cocked their heads, as if lost in a dream. The already lax grips on their swords grew even laxer.
The lord’s face flew into a fury. His expression contorted with something I guessed to be pain, his eyes rolling backward in his head.
I smiled. “But I have a special command for the lord of this castle. Do not find your goddess for a lifetime after a lifetime and more. Until then, keep no living company in your castle, not even the company of living, breathing horses with which to ease your loneliness. Live the lives of many men, leaving a mere shadow of each life behind to keep you company and to remind you of how long you have suffered.
“And don’t think that a pretty face will abet you, Your Lordship, in your quest to win your goddess’s heart. All of you men, lord and guards, villagers and tormentors, cover your faces now, cover your faces always, or crumble under the eyes of the women around you and vanish forever as if you had never existed. Find sanctuary from this command only in the blood relations who know you are no more than breeding stock and among all women only once you have earned the love of your goddess, no sooner than when she ages from girl to woman.”
The last words had not yet left my mouth when I saw the tip of the gouge jutting through the lord’s chest. It dripped with blood, spilling drops on the stone floor. Lord Elric fell forward without a sound. Before he could hit the ground, he vanished, and it was the leather clothing, wide-brimmed hat, and golden bangle that broke the silence, clattering like the crash of thunder that would start an avalanche.
Avery stood behind where the lord had been, her mouth contorted into a look of primal lust. She licked her lips, raised both her ax and her bloody gouge, and shouted out a cry that reverberated across the castle walls. The other women joined in, running forward while shaking their axes, hoes, and pitchforks at the ceiling.
Lord Elric had been stabbed, perhaps dead before I gave my command to the lord of the castle. But I had spoken all of the command aloud before I could stop my wayward tongue.
But this wasn’t what I’d meant to do.
The spell was cast.
The castle roared to life. A halo of violet light spread across the land and the ground shook.
As I fought to stand steady, my eyes darted about the entryway frantically, falling at last upon the small figure peeking through the crack in the door to the garden. The dark eye that locked on to mine was wide and frightened.
Ailill. Who I could see so clearly now would grow up to be striking—perhaps more striking than his brother. Who was now the lord of the village and had been the moment Avery’s gouge had struck the killing blow to their brother Elric. Who would now bear the brunt of my curse.
Who would one day love me.
No, he already loved me, in his childlike way. And that was all the more reason why my words would hold him prisoner, now and forever.
A flicker and then a flame burst to life in that small dark eye.
I felt ill.
I sheathed Elgar, knowing I would never draw blood with the blade. It was no more meant for slaying monsters than the tree branch I had once called by the same name.
Full of pride at myself and my power, like I had been as a child, I was just pretending at battle. I hadn’t meant for this to happen. The cavern pool had called me to a dismal time, and I was just following the example of the first goddess.
No. The truth was too plain.
I was the first goddess.
I dashed across the short distance between myself and the garden doorway, shoving aside women, dodging spears, watching as the guards screamed and fell and vanished one after another. A man who didn’t fall prey to an ax, a hoe, or a pitchfork melted into thin air with no injury, banished from existence simply by the look of a woman’s eyes upon his face. Goncalo stumbled and turned around to avoid one woman’s stab only to come face to face with my stare. His eyes widened, the newfound flame within snuffed out, and he was gone.
A sour taste rose high within my throat. I ran through where Goncalo had been and ripped the shawl off of my shoulders. I have to cover him. I have to teach him to keep his face from women who don’t love him.
I almost stopped right there, realizing what I was thinking. But I knew I had to move on, that covering him was the right thing to do.
That he would be safe from my eyes, if not safe from the eyes of anyone else but his sisters’.
After a lifetime, I reached the door, my hands running wildly over the coarse wood until I gripped the iron handle. Pulling it open the smallest amount I could afford, I slipped inside and slammed the door shut behind me.
Ailill stepped back from me as I entered, tears flowing freely from his firelit eyes, his hands shoved forward weakly to block me. Ignoring his attempt to keep me from him, I flung the black shawl over his head and dragged him behind the nearest rose bush. Squeezed tightly between the wall and the blooms, we both got pricked and scratched and gouged by the roses’ pointed thorns.
I crouched down to my knees to match Ailill’s small height and shifted the shawl so that I could see his face, which I cupped in both hands with as much force and tenderness as I could inject. His chest expanded and contracted rapidly. The look of terror on his face felt worse than any blow that had been inflicted to my body.