Chapter FIfty-Eight
Silence enveloped us, broken only by the whistling of the wind as it cut through the valley, rustling the brown grasses and bare branches.
Women knew of us. Women wanted to join us.
I did not know what terrified me more. For a moment, all I could do was signal Aina and Damaris with a whistle and wait for them to meet us.
Their arrival beside me, with the ibex between them, produced yet more whispers and shuffles from the children, though it was the women to whom I was paying the most attention.
“My name is Sotiria.” Only the one had spoken to me, though the others listened eagerly.
“We have traveled for two days to find you.” Her speech suddenly quickened, and she reached into the satchel beside her.
“We have skills we can bring to you. I can work metal if you have a forge. My father was a smith. I have not worked it for many years, but when I was a child, I would help him every day. I made this when I was only ten.”
She stretched out her hand, offering me the knife, which I tentatively turned over in my hand. The work was rough, the hammer marks clear along the blade edge, but it was better than any woman in the village or I could produce.
“We do not have a forge,” I said.
Her face fell, but she did not let it stay so for long.
“We have other skills too. Boryana can sew. Her tapestries have hung in the temple of Athena. The greatest that our village has produced.”
“We do not need pretty tapestries or silk garments.”
My responses were curt, but not through cruelty. Too many questions whirled through my mind, and while she continued to speak, I could not fully form, let alone voice, any of them.
Damaris, however, happily interrupted the woman when she started to speak again.
“How did you hear of us?” she said. “How did you hear about what happened?”
Sotiria exchanged glances with the women before she spoke. Several pursed their lips, but they did not speak their concerns, so Sotiria continued.
“There was a man who came to us,” she said.
“A man who ran through the night. He said the women in his village had turned savage, as if they were possessed. He said they had killed all their husbands. Poisoned them. Stabbed them. Fired arrows through their hearts. He believed he was the only survivor.”
“Thalia’s husband,” Damaris muttered. “I hoped he had died running.”
A new question had formed in my mind, one that I voiced.
“If he told you we had gone insane, why would you come looking for us? Why would you try to find people who would slaughter their loved ones?”
Sotiria scoffed. “If you loved your husbands here, then you are more fortunate than any of us. We saw what type of man he was. The same as the ones we married.” She gestured around her.
“A hundred times, we met in our village baths and ruminated on how we could repay them. What tortures we could inflict. No one ever did, though several took their own lives instead.”
At this, she paused and reached out to squeeze the hand of the woman next to her. Was it a sister she was referring to, I wondered, or a mother? It could have been either.
“The more we heard him speak of how he had escaped and the things he would do upon his return, the more we knew who the real monsters were. And we knew we were not alone. But you had the courage to see the act through. Which is why we are here. To join you.”
“If it is sanctuary you seek, why not go to a temple?” I said to Sotiria. “The priestesses there would protect you.”
“Some of us have done so. And some have been dragged back through the temple gates by the same husbands who sent them running. Besides, we do not want sanctuary. We want freedom. We want strength. We want you to teach us. And we will offer you every skill we have in return.”
Sotiria straightened her back as if she had said everything she needed to.
I saw more of myself in her than I wished to admit. She was the one who had brought these women to us, who spoke for them. It was likely she was the one who had tried to convince them to rise up against their husbands as I had done.
“I cannot make that decision alone,” I said to her. “None of us can. But for now, you need food. And your wounds need tending. Let us address those issues first. Then we will discuss what you came for.”
I turned and began the walk back to the village. Several paces later, I stopped, glanced over my shoulder, and found the women still standing there.
“Come,” I said. “I do not extend an invitation twice.”