Nobody's Goddess (17 page)

“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.

My mind was blissfully blank as I walked back through the village—yes, this was my village, it had to be—and onto the path home. It was all a dream. My clothing, ripped and torn, dripped from the pond’s water. Ripped mostly on the back. But that had to be a coincidence. I’d probably torn it on some sediment. Maybe I’d been sick under water, even unconscious. I could have died. I’d been stupid. I’d lost the sword I’d demanded from the lord in that water, but I had no desire to search for it. I needed badly to go home.

“
Olivière
,” the pool had whispered as I put it behind me. But I ignored it. To believe what I’d dreamed was real was more than I could bear.
Everyone already thinks I’m an oddity. First I’m nobody’s goddess and then I’m the veiled lord’s. I don’t even want to think of what I could be after having such visions.

I had to prove to myself I’d just been dreaming. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the pain of the whip across my back. But my back was smooth now. Unhurt. There was no proof I was ever there.

At the edge of the woods, I breathed a sigh of relief. My home was there. I’d reached the flattened grass where the carriage had turned around day after day. I took note of a few broken lily petals that had floated across the dirt road, still vibrant and purple despite their pressing fate.

The door to the house was cracked open. “Mother? Father? Elfriede?”

I pushed on the door and heard the creak of the hinges echo against the silence inside. There was no light, and the fire was dead, but thanks to the moonlight that crept inside, I could just make out a figure in the chair at the table that faced the doorway.

“Mother?” I whispered.

Bit by bit, the lantern light revealed the figure. The eyes, dark with just a hint of the flames that ought to have burned brightly. The scowl on the lips of his strained face. And in one hand, on the table, the same blue dress I’d seen Mother wearing before I’d visited the lord. It felt like days ago, but I knew it to be just a few hours earlier.

“I hope you’re happy, Noll,” said Father. His voice cracked and strained with each syllable. “You wouldn’t help her. And now she’s gone.”

Elfriede shrieked from where she sat atop the bed she and I shared; she buried her head into the shoulder of the man,
her
man, who comforted her.

I stumbled, the breath completely sucked out of me. There was no one there to catch me.

***

Six months went by in a blur of numbness and woodcarving.

Every day the memory of the world in my drowning dream faded. Every day the memory of the lord doing nothing, caring only about his Returning, grew stronger. I told Father I’d tried to get the lord to help us. He didn’t care. I didn’t act soon enough. I wasn’t there when she died and faded into nothingness—neither were Elfriede or Jurij, apparently, but they didn’t merit Father’s blame. So I didn’t bother telling them about my dream. Why would they believe me? Why would they care? I hardly believed it myself.

The first thing I carved after Mother’s death was my own interpretation of a heartless monster. It was a beast like the beasts of legend, a wolf, a bear, and a snake, all in one. I left an open cavity over the left side of its chest to show that there was no heart within it. Father didn’t notice it. Elfriede gave me an uneasy smile and told me it may do some good scaring off rabbits from the garden. And that’s where she put it, half-buried in leaves and dirt.

The day before my seventeenth birthday there wasn’t enough scrap wood in the land for my trembling fingers. I finished the last few dozen projects I’d started—wooden animals, trees, and flowers—by adding a few more details than necessary. I ruined more than one, but my fingers wouldn’t stop peeling away at the layers of wood. I started new projects I knew I would never finish, but it was just as well because the most I could think of carving was a blob of mud or a wooden rock.

My effort wasn’t lost on Elfriede. Although, despite my better hopes, I thought she may have been more upset about the piles of sawdust all over her kitchen table than the reason for the mess. “Clean that off, will you? Father will be home soon.”

“Here, let me help.” Jurij released his hand from around Elfriede’s shoulder and the one being became two. I didn’t say anything as I set the carved pieces on the mantle, next to a wooden lily. Far better work than mine.

As Jurij wiped the dust into a rag, I numbly placed bowls and spoons for four people at our table. A brief jolt of pain brought me to life as I placed Jurij’s setting down next to Elfriede’s, and I thought of who had once sat there. “Ah. Good day, Jurij,” came a slow, slurring voice, a croaking echo of what it had been. I glanced up to see Father in the doorway. He stumbled his way to his chair, a shade of the father I had known.

Father had the same features, but they were muted somehow. His strong, dark chin poked through a rough, unkempt black-and-gray beard. His curls drooped and stuck out in all directions, although somehow the pointed tips of his ears made a slight appearance through the wild tangle of knots. His eyes sparkled, but in a different way than they once had. The flame within them burned as lightly as a candle in its final few moments before the wick withered away.

Perhaps that described my father. He had lost his sunlight and was left only with the dimmer echoes in the children she left behind. What room was there for happiness with the sun’s light gone forever? The moon alone could never be enough, not after years of dancing in the sun’s delight. It was just a matter of time. Nissa’s father had died the same evening as his wife. They rarely lasted beyond a year.

“Good day, Gideon,” said Jurij. He tore himself from Elfriede long enough to put his hand on Father’s shoulder. “How’re Vena and Elweard?”

“Huh?” asked Father absently. Often these days you had to ask a question more than once.

“
The tavern masters
,” I reminded him. Father practically kept them in business since Mother’s death.

“Oh, fine, fine.” Father’s eyes glossed over.

“Father?” I asked, covering his trembling hand with mine. He looked at me, the smallest of smiles edging onto his lips. The light flickered in his eyes. It was still there. Of course it was. But only just.

Jurij picked up Father’s and my bowls and brought them over to the fire. Jurij and Elfriede worked in perfect harmony, one ladling the stew and the other holding the bowls out to receive it.

“Vena asked about your wedding last night,” said Father as he withdrew his hand from mine. For a moment, my heart nearly stopped.

“And what did she want to know?” asked Jurij jovially. He placed the stew bowls in front of Father and me.

I felt a rush of relief. Of course.
Their
wedding
.

Father smiled, his face almost as warm as it had once been, his eyes growing brighter. “How much ale you’ll need for the festivities, of course!”

Jurij shook his head as he grabbed the empty bowls for himself and Elfriede. “You know we only want a few bottles at the most.” He paused a moment as he slid soundlessly next to Elfriede. Even from the table, I could see the lines burrowed deep between her brows.

“Or maybe none at all,” muttered Elfriede. She plopped the stew into their bowls with a little less tenderness than was her custom.

My father’s face fell. “I’ll be on my best behavior. I promise you.”

No one spoke.

Father and I sipped from our stew for a few moments longer, and Jurij sat down next to us, placing the bowls on the table and picking up his spoon.

Elfriede lingered back at the pot for a few minutes longer, stirring and stirring. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her dab her cheek with her apron.

“Noll,” she said tentatively. She stirred the stew with a little too much interest. “Would you be willing to help Darwyn deliver the bread to the castle?”

I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “I didn’t think the bakers were so busy they couldn’t spare a few dozen members of their family to deliver bread to His Lordship.”

“Noll. Help Darwyn deliver the bread,” interrupted my father. He tried to take a sip of his stew, but his hand shook and the stew slid off the spoon, spilling onto the table. Whether because he had now gone a short while without his bottle or because he could barely contain his rage at me, I wasn’t sure.

He only managed to truly seem among the living these days when it came to rejoicing in Elfriede’s wedding and lamenting my unspoken opposition to my own.

I glanced out the window. Newly unmasked Darwyn stood in front of our house next to his cart full of bread. Father had no doubt come straight with him from the village and had let Elfriede know ahead of time.

“I promised I’d meet Alvilda after lunch.”

“Noll, you need to stop with that woodworking—”

I didn’t let Father finish. I grabbed a chisel and a block of half-carved wood and bolted out of the door, walking straight past Darwyn—no doubt fuming with impatience to be done with the task and back in his goddess’s arms. I headed down the dirt path, my head held high in the western direction.