“My name is Noll—Olivière, as I said, Woodcarver’s daughter. I don’t know why I’m here exactly.”
Avery scoffed. “The woodcarver’s daughter? I’m the woodcarver, and I have no children, much to my delight.”
I cocked my head. “And Ailill?”
“He’s my brother, not my son. Do I look old enough to have a child that grown?”
I looked her over, bathed in the violet light. I supposed, as much as I kept comparing her to Alvilda, she wasn’t as old as my friend. She was perhaps more Elfriede’s or my age, although her hardened stance and the muscles that rippled over her arms despite her small stature seemed to indicate a much more weighty life than ours.
“You didn’t really answer my question,” said Avery coldly.
“I’m a different woodcarver’s daughter, obviously,” I said, trying to meet ice with ice. “I trained under Alvilda the lady carver and observed the work of Gideon, my father.”
Avery tensed. “Your father works?”
The grip I had on my elbows loosened. “Yes. Doesn’t yours?”
Avery cackled. “No man works. And my father, whom I thank the skies is now dead, was the most indolent of all.”
I shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “And your mother?”
Avery glared at me. “Dead as well. But in her case, I thank the skies for the end of her suffering. She wasn’t sturdy enough for this world. And she was far too beautiful. That makes you stand out too much.”
She thanks the skies, but not the goddess. But what love have I for the first goddess myself?
I nodded, thinking of the women grabbed by the men during my day in the stocks. Instinctively, I swept tendrils of hair over my ears, thinking of the hungry looks to which I had already been victim due to their discrepancy. I looked at Avery. She was pretty in her own way, but I wondered if she purposefully kept a sour look on her face to distort her features.
“My mother is not well,” I said. “But even before her illness, she never had to work like the women here. And Father’s always eager to help her with the housework.”
Avery came a few paces closer, her gaze fixed down on me. “Then you are definitely not of this land,” she said. “I don’t know how you crossed the mountains or what exactly there is that lies beyond. All I want to know is if you can take us back with you.”
I swallowed and glanced guiltily at the cavern pool behind her.
The chorus of voices calling my name was but a whisper now. “Olivière.”
I watched Avery to see if she wondered why the cave echoed my name, but she didn’t move. Her eyes betrayed hearing nothing but the undying echo of the trickle of water.
Can I, alone, hear it? Do the voices call only to me? The chorus of voices had led me here, and they were no longer shouting my name, demanding me to come. They whispered, letting me know I could go home, but the pool didn’t want me to go just yet. But I do. How can I stay here, when Mother is ill?
“No,” I replied.
Avery sighed and stared hungrily at the ax I had propped against the spike. “Then there’s only one hope for us.”
I followed her gaze and asked a question I had wondered since I first entered this dream version of the village. “Why don’t the women fight back? The men seem open to a surprise attack.” It felt appropriate to have a real battle here, a battle like that from stories, where there was such wrongdoing.
Avery scoffed and picked up my ax, turning it backward and forward in her hands. “I cannot rouse enough of them. The men seem lazy—and they are—but they have quick reflexes and brute strength. Our only advantages are in our numbers and the men’s smugness. But most of the women will not even entertain the idea of revolution. They’re too scared.”
“But surely they can see that with enough of us and a directed attack, the men will fall.”
Avery smiled. “Us? So you’ll help us?”
“Of course!” I lied.
Avery put the ax down and leaned on it, much like the men did with their swords. “Perhaps you’re not so bad, outsider. Then there is just one more thing you’ll need to know. The men of this village have a gift in their blood.”
“A gift?” I asked. “Like Ailill’s healing?”
Avery nodded. “They all can heal. But you’ll only find little boys willing to use it for our aid before they get too corrupted and their hearts turn black. In their lives of luxury, men have little need for healing for themselves. If you want a man to die, you need to take him by surprise so he and his companions won’t be able to heal him in time.”
She spoke of killing a person like it was a possibility, like people would ever think to do that outside of play and stories. Perhaps I’m living a story right now.
She sighed and leaned the ax back on the rock. “Let’s go chop down a tree. I’m sure you’ll find it relieves a lot of tension.”
It probably would. But this wasn’t my fight.
As soon as she disappeared into the darkness, I dove back into the pool.