“Oh, no? Look up at the sky. The sun’s moved more sincewe’ve been talking than in the time it took me to clear these ten yards.”
She looked up again. The sun had indeed moved, maybe a degree towards midday. She dropped her eyes.
“We can do this?”
“Yes,” I said. “But we can’t stop. We have to be suffering, desperate for the task to be over. If we pause, if we break, then we’ll be wishing for more time and it’ll go the other way.” I held up my hands, strafed with deep cuts. “It is not going to be easy.”
Belis took my hands, holding them palm up in one of her own. Her touch was gentle as she traced one of the scratches with her finger.
“I’m sorry for getting you into this,” she said, still looking down at my hands. “I’m more grateful than you could know to have someone here beside me, to have you.”
She glanced up and met my gaze. Above me I felt the sun moving overhead. “Come on,” I said, withdrawing my hands. “We must get to work.”
It was brutal. The skin of my palms was almost completely flayed by the time we had cut the whole length of the field, completing about a quarter of the clearance. I paused to tear rags from the tattered remnants of my tunic and wrapped them around the spade handles, to prevent them slipping from my grip. The pain was close to incapacitating, so that each blow to the brambles seemed to fall in slow motion, and hoisting the spade up again felt like rolling a boulder up a cliff.
I remembered estimating the whole job at over a week for a village, at least a month for the pair of us. It certainly felt that this morning had stretched far beyond that already. I wondered how much longer I could go on, whether my body would give up before my mind did.
Beside me, Belis worked tirelessly. We had settled into advancing at the same pace, though she cleared twice as much width as me. We were nearer the centre of the brush now, the brambles thickening so that they caught at my spade and wouldn’t let go. I had to slice at the same vines again and again before they wouldbreak. I glimpsed the sun through lashes dripping with sweat. It was nearly midday. Even the pain, all the longing within for this to be done, wasn’t slowing the morning enough.
I ripped the bandages from my hands, exposing the bloody flesh beneath. In patches I could see the white glint of bone through the flesh. I stuffed the rags into my mouth to stop me from screaming and gripped the shovel tight.
Somehow, inch by bloody inch, we finished clearing the brambles. Belis helped me with the last of my patch, swapping her spade for a pitchfork to remove the last cuttings.
I leaned on my spade, gasping for breath. The red ribbon fluttered in the breeze, now surrounding an acre of scrubby land still dotted with tree stumps. Above, the midday sun had gathered strength, beating down on us.
“We’ve still got half the day left,” Belis said. “We need to dig out those stumps and plough and sow. If we can keep the pace up we can do it. The worst is the brambles and that’s done.”
I flicked my gaze towards her, too exhausted even to turn my head. Belis looked in terrible shape. Her thick arms were scored with red, lines of blood criss-crossing her face. It hurt to see her in pain, almost worse than my own agony.
“Bel, I can’t, I—” The words had to be pushed out of my mouth. “I’ll try, I really will.”
We dug the stumps out, first with shovels then by hand, scooping handfuls of dirt away from the knotted roots. When the final stump lay outside the boundary there was perhaps an hour ’til dusk. Belis fetched the plough, an ancient wooden thing, and pulled it herself, while I followed on behind, pushing with all my strength. In the last few moments of the day we ran up and down casting handfuls of linseed across the freshly turned soil.
The sun sank below the eastern horizon, leaving only the faintest wash of light over the field. I keeled over and collapsed onto the ground. The pain and blood loss had made me weaker than I had ever been before, but a small part of me felt a little stronger for all that I had endured. Belis sat down beside me,lolling back so that we were both staring up at the evening stars as they appeared above us.
“Everything hurts,” I muttered, feeling I had earned the right to a few complaints. “If we ever do get back to the living world I’m never going to eat blackberries again. I’m done with thorns. If anyone comes courting with a handful of roses I’ll slap them out of their arms.”
“Is that a problem you anticipate happening regularly?” asked Belis, with a smile in her tone. I stuck out my tongue, though I didn’t really mind. I liked the sound of her voice when she was happy.
“You don’t understand my struggle! Mortals are always falling for me and leaving me bouquets of flowers and presents of food. It’s a real problem trying to stop the dogs from eating them.”
Belis laughed, rolling back and forth on the soft grass.
“Oh, the trials of Mallt, the incandescently lovely. So roses are out. What should your admirers bring you instead? Golden torcs? Wildflowers?”
“Usually dog treats are a good start. You need to get the hounds on side.” I smiled, thinking about the pack of dogs I had left behind me. “After that? Apples are nice. Apples and, I don’t know, foxgloves. Although now I suppose I won’t ever be a goddess again, I won’t have all those worshippers. I’ll have this face forever and no one will think I’m beautiful.”
“I think you look just fine,” Belis said.
“If I remember correctly, when we met you said I looked like half the starving farm girls in Britain.”
“Well, I was quite upset,” Belis admitted. “And I had only just met you.”
I turned onto my side. She was still gazing up into the sky, her face silhouetted against the stars, but I could hear the blush in her voice.
“What about you? Do you have someone waiting for you in the east?”
“All my admirers wanted was my land, the title that would come with me. Roses would have been much appreciated.”
