I grabbed his hand gently, but he tore it away.
“I think you should come with me,” I said.
Ailill shook his head and stumbled back toward the rose bush from which he had first appeared in the garden.
I heard a loud ruckus coming from the entryway beyond the garden door. Voices, whispers, screams, and gasps. The thunderous clomping of the hooves of horses from outside.
“Ailill, come with me! Hurry!” I shouted.
Ailill shot out from the rose bush to my side. We joined the bewildered rush of fleeing women, the men still shoving and pulling them this way and that.
As we climbed into a black carriage, I caught a brief glimpse of Ailill’s face in the moonlight. His eyes were wide with terror. He had seen a monster.
“We strike tonight!” I shouted. “Before the rest of the men have time to think about what might happen with all of the women gathered here in the commune.”
I stood before a roaring bonfire in the middle of the commune, still clad in my white gown and black shawl. All of the women and girls of the village crowded in a circle around me. Some still clung to each other, but quite a few more than usual now seemed ready to stand on their own.
Avery stood beside me with a few of the potential rebels. Ailill still wept into the folds of his sister’s skirt, while one of his free hands clutched Livia’s beside him.
“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?”