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 she 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.”