My mother is dying, and I’m lost in a dream.
Most of the women went out to work in the fields or the quarry. Some piled crops into wheelbarrows and strained to push them into the heart of the village, toward the marketplace and the castle. Some of the women went into the village first thing in the morning, their arms full of tools. A rolling pin. A sewing box.
A gouge and a chisel. Alvilda.
Men would sometimes stumble their way into the commune, either intoxicated or merely bold and hungry. They’d enter a shack, or just grab the nearest woman and take off with her, back up the dirt path to the better homes within the village. Some of the men were laughing, some angry. Some were old, others could be no older than fifteen. Every woman looked terrified. Most of the men let their gaze fall over me in the stocks briefly, a few reaching out to caress my ear as they passed. Some would say things I couldn’t hear. One licked his lips and smiled wickedly. I didn’t fight back. I was too weak to care.
My throat burned with thirst. And my arms, tongue, and back ached with a feeling stronger than the ache of my heart all these past few months.
No one had attended to my wounds, and I felt my energy draining with each breath. From time to time, I would slip blissfully into unconsciousness, but I would wake again what seemed like moments later, my stomach growling and my head pounding. The sun felt hot and heavy over my head and at last, after what felt like days, I fell asleep and did not wake for quite some time.
***
My eyelids fluttered open. It was nighttime and the full moon had begun waning, but light from moonbeams lit the commune. The dying embers of a fire cast shadows over the empty area in the center. No one stirred.
I heard a rustle behind me and realized that my back no longer stung. It felt warm and soothed as the ache was leeched from deep within me. My eyes grazed the ground and saw my shadow; I was being bathed in a violet glow.
A moan leaped from my lips, and I craned my neck as much as the stocks would let me. A small figure moved in the dark, the violet glow surging and receding with its movements.
“Who’s there?” My lips cracked, and my tongue bled again.
The figure jumped.
After a moment, it crawled forward. A little boy.
Jurij.
No. I had never seen Jurij unmasked so young. I had never seen any boy so young unmasked. He was seven or eight years at the most. Unless it was a trick of the night, his skin was even darker than a grown man’s.
The boy lifted his hands toward my face, and the violet light fled outward from his fingers. My tongue strengthened, my lips moistened, and the sting on my cheeks receded. I even stopped feeling thirst and was no longer bothered by hunger.
I closed my eyes and bathed in the warmth of the light, hesitant to open them even after I felt the light fade. And then I remembered. I was home, but not home. I’d seen this boy’s face, and he was all right. No men hid in this place that was and was not my village. My eyes flew open.
“Thank you,” I said. The words were not enough. He had ended all of my pain.
The boy nodded and fell backward to sit on the ground. He stared at me, questioning.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“His name is Ailill,” said a woman’s voice that stirred something joyous in my heart.
A tall, dark woman strode into my sight. I recognized her as one of the few women who had stood alone in front of the fire the night previous. Her features were unfamiliar, her face too young, but I saw a trace of my friend Alvilda in her expression.
“My name is Avery,” she said. “And I want to know where you come from.”
It was hurting my neck to look up at her from the stocks, so I let my head fall and focused instead on the boy on the ground. He tensed a bit at my gaze and pulled himself over to Avery, hugging her leg and burying his face within the folds of her apron.
“How did he heal me?” I asked.
Avery crouched in front of me, careful not to disturb Ailill much in her decent. She swept him into the crux of her arm.
“I’m the one asking questions,” she said.
“I … I don’t know how to explain where I come from. Other than I don’t come from here.”
“Obviously,” scoffed Avery. “Despite what men think, we’re not stupid. All of us knew immediately you had never been in the commune before, that you weren’t one of our members who had run off, stolen a sword, and lopped off her ears. But few of the men care to remember our faces, so it’s no surprise that not a single one noticed that you were new.”
These were not men. At least, they weren’t the men I knew. I tensed, thinking of the whip and the muzzle. The stocks and my stolen sword. And Lord Elric. “Will you alert them?”