Nobody's Goddess (33 page)

The last of the men who had not yet drawn their swords did so. The women shook their tools. I caught Avery’s eye beside me. She nodded and began slinking away from me, between Goncalo and one of the other men.

I drew Elgar again and pointed it toward the lord, closing the space between us. It bothered me that he didn’t move, and his guards didn’t stir from their posts. I stopped just a few paces from the lord, Elgar looming dangerously close to his abdomen. He looked amused.

“In your arrogance,” I began, “you have treated the women of the village as your slaves. You have worked them to the bone while the men sit on their asses. You have plucked them from the commune at will, treating them like your playthings, all of you—fathering children like it was no greater deal than siring cattle.”

I turned my eyes from the lord and let them wander over the rest of the men in the castle. I recognized a few from my day in the stocks. Those last few words would be especially suited to them.

I continued. “But you will learn what love is, and you will respect the power women can have over you. For where I come from, it is women who have the freedom to do as they will, and the men have no choice but to follow them.”

The lord tapped his fingers against his elbow impatiently. Behind me, the women started shouting and spreading throughout the room. Many stared straight into the guards’ faces, willing them to melt.

Still the men didn’t strike. My blood boiled.

“I will not let you forget what you have done!” I cried. “What I say will be done by any man who has ever felt longing toward me.”

A flash of pain marred the lord’s stunning features, but only for a moment. The women continued to circle the room.

I felt moved by the lord’s sadness, as I had the only time I had seen him before all of this, when he was drained of color. But then I thought of Avery, Livia, and the other women of this village. I thought, too, of Ailill watching his mother die, using his healing in vain on a woman chopped into pieces. I thought of the lord’s disdain and lust for me in my version of the village, the twisted game he played with my comatose mother, his plotting and planning to match his power over mine, blow for blow. I knew what I had to do. I would not let him die this day. He had to suffer, to know firsthand what he inflicted upon those around him. I only hoped I could word it so that I would win in the end, so I could enjoy watching him vanish that day in what I now knew to be his future—with one direct look from my eyes.

Yes. It’s clear now. Things have to be this way.
I felt as if a force unseen took over me.

“Men of this village!” The words flowed so easily. The curse that had shaped my life tumbled out of me. “Love only one woman each and treat her as the goddess she is. Leave no woman without a man to worship her. Obey your goddess’s commands, pine for her heart and body and suffer if she will not Return her love to you. Win her heart with obedience and affection to enjoy a small reprieve from your torment. Fail to feel the Returning of her affections, and rot away for the rest of your wretched existence.”

There was a strange stirring throughout the room. The men cocked their heads, as if lost in a dream. The already lax grips on their swords grew even laxer.

The lord’s face flew into a fury. His expression contorted with something I guessed to be pain, his eyes rolling backward in his head.

I smiled. “But I have a special command for the lord of this castle. Do not find your goddess for a lifetime after a lifetime and more. Until then, keep no living company in your castle, not even the company of living, breathing horses with which to ease your loneliness. Live the lives of many men, leaving a mere shadow of each life behind to keep you company and to remind you of how long you have suffered.

“And don’t think that a pretty face will abet you, Your
Lordship
, in your quest to win your goddess’s heart. All of you men, lord and guards, villagers and tormentors, cover your faces now, cover your faces always, or crumble under the eyes of the women around you and vanish forever as if you had never existed. Find sanctuary from this command only in the blood relations who know you are no more than breeding stock and among all women only once you have earned the love of your goddess, no sooner than when she ages from girl to woman.”

The last words had not yet left my mouth when I saw the tip of the gouge jutting through the lord’s chest. It dripped with blood, spilling drops on the stone floor. Lord Elric fell forward without a sound. Before he could hit the ground, he vanished, and it was the leather clothing, wide-brimmed hat, and golden bangle that broke the silence, clattering like the crash of thunder that would start an avalanche.

Avery stood behind where the lord had been, her mouth contorted into a look of primal lust. She licked her lips, raised both her ax and her bloody gouge, and shouted out a cry that reverberated across the castle walls. The other women joined in, running forward while shaking their axes, hoes, and pitchforks at the ceiling.

Lord Elric had been stabbed, perhaps dead before I gave my command to the lord of the castle. But I had spoken all of the command aloud before I could stop my wayward tongue.

But this wasn’t what I’d meant to do.

The spell was cast.

The castle roared to life. A halo of violet light spread across the land and the ground shook.

As I fought to stand steady, my eyes darted about the entryway frantically, falling at last upon the small figure peeking through the crack in the door to the garden. The dark eye that locked on to mine was wide and frightened.

Ailill. Who I could see so clearly now would grow up to be striking—perhaps more striking than his brother. Who was now the lord of the village and had been the moment Avery’s gouge had struck the killing blow to their brother Elric. Who would now bear the brunt of my curse.

Who would one day love me.

No, he already loved me, in his childlike way. And that was all the more reason why my words would hold him prisoner, now and forever.

A flicker and then a flame burst to life in that small dark eye.

I felt ill.

I sheathed Elgar, knowing I would never draw blood with the blade. It was no more meant for slaying monsters than the tree branch I had once called by the same name. Full of pride at myself and my power, like I had been as a child, I was just pretending at battle. I hadn’t meant for this to happen. The cavern pool had called me to a dismal time, and I was just following the example of the first goddess.

No. The truth was too plain.

I was
the first goddess.

I dashed across the short distance between myself and the garden doorway, shoving aside women, dodging spears, watching as the guards screamed and fell and vanished one after another. A man who didn’t fall prey to an ax, a hoe, or a pitchfork melted into thin air with no injury, banished from existence simply by the look of a woman’s eyes upon his face. Goncalo stumbled and turned around to avoid one woman’s stab only to come face to face with my stare. His eyes widened, the newfound flame within snuffed out, and he was gone.

A sour taste rose high within my throat. I ran through where Goncalo had been and ripped the shawl off of my shoulders.
I have to cover him. I have to teach him to keep his face from women who don’t love him.

I almost stopped right there, realizing what I was thinking. But I knew I had to move on, that covering him was the right thing to do.

That he would be safe from my eyes, if not safe from the eyes of anyone else but his sisters’.

After a lifetime, I reached the door, my hands running wildly over the coarse wood until I gripped the iron handle. Pulling it open the smallest amount I could afford, I slipped inside and slammed the door shut behind me.

Ailill stepped back from me as I entered, tears flowing freely from his firelit eyes, his hands shoved forward weakly to block me. Ignoring his attempt to keep me from him, I flung the black shawl over his head and dragged him behind the nearest rose bush. Squeezed tightly between the wall and the blooms, we both got pricked and scratched and gouged by the roses’ pointed thorns.

I crouched down to my knees to match Ailill’s small height and shifted the shawl so that I could see his face, which I cupped in both hands with as much force and tenderness as I could inject. His chest expanded and contracted rapidly. The look of terror on his face felt worse than any blow that had been inflicted to my body.

I smiled, although it broke my heart to think of what my words had done. I formed the next few words carefully. “For you, Ailill, lord of the village, for you alone, I have another command.”

Ailill’s shallow breathing slowed somewhat, and his face grew less terrified. His eyes dared not blink and would not move from mine.

My words meant for Lord Elric, backed by the ferocity of the abused women among my ancestors, had been too powerful to undo. I couldn’t speak a countermand directly, for I had passed my power to all of the village’s women, and they knew nothing but contempt for their abusers. I had forbidden the lord company in his castle, I knew, but I wondered if Ailill would still get around my words by seeking company elsewhere. Avery, her hands now so soaked in blood, would be unlikely to put much thought into saving Ailill so fresh after her victory. If he ran to someone like Livia, to whom he was not blood related, Ailill could vanish from existence. Long before I could meet him.

But how could I save him? I felt the hot sting of my foolishness, for even if I had intended the worst for Elric and the rest of the men, even those words rightfully placed would have harmed this poor, dear boy before me. I thought, too, of the men I knew from my time. I thought of Father and the shade he became following Mother’s illness. I thought of Master Tailor and Jaron, stuck loving two women whose hearts would never Return to them—and also, by forcing them each to bear responsibility for a man’s misery, what my words would do to rend Alvilda and Mistress Tailor unhappy. I thought of Mother and all of those who loved where love was not wanted. I thought of Nissa and Luuk and all the rest—children who grew up overnight because of the love I forced upon them. I thought of friends lost to love, and love lost to friends. I thought of Jurij, and all the lost hope of love I would come to know because I myself willed it.

There was no deep malice in my village’s men. What disdain there was only existed because I had forced them to think of none other than their goddesses. Perhaps my words this day had made that happen, but they had doomed the men of my village, too. They had doomed us all.

“Ailill, though you may be bound by words already spoken, hide away and banish women and girls from your castle. Do not allow them even to look upon the castle, so that they may forget it and leave you alone. Treat the villagers well, but do not, if you can help it, walk among them—if you do, the earth will tremble, and the skies will rumble to scare the villagers away from you, to protect you from harm. The same will happen if a woman lays her eyes upon your abode. Await your goddess safely within your castle. She will find you.”

The words came freely to me, but without the force I’d felt before. It was like these were my own words, and those others were someone else’s.

The tears slowed their descent down Ailill’s trembling cheeks. A snowflake appeared on his dark eyelashes, but the flame within his eyes couldn’t melt it. Snow was falling, despite the previously temperate weather, threatening to blanket us in white.

“You will feel compelled to love your goddess, but do as your heart tells you. If you are ever to vanish at her direct gaze, you alone shall have the power to return.”

I bent forward and kissed him atop the forehead. The frigid snow that peppered his scalp chilled my lips.

The roses beside us were blanketed in snow, hardly a trace of their red petals to be found. Letting go of Ailill’s face, I yanked at a snow-covered blossom, not caring that a thorn poked my finger as I did. I tore out the thorn and placed the newly white rose in Ailill’s open palm, giving his hand a tight squeeze with both of mine.

“Return back to life in your own time, if you alone will it. Return as if you had merely spent a time sleeping. And free yourself of woman’s power upon your return.” I bit my lip. “I command you to overcome the power of women at last upon your return.”

I stood and pulled the shawl down over his face. A braver woman, a nobler woman, would stay and help the boy through the fate I had given him, but that woman was not me. There was no place for the kind of woman I was here, a pretender. The violet glow of the cavern was already calling for me.

Still, as I turned to go, I paused at the fountain, remembering the crying boy who would one day be entombed atop of its cascade of water. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that the statue was of Ailill as a boy, now that I knew how he looked then. Had Ailill had that statue carved? Did it remind him of what I’d done to him, of what I’d done to all men, to women, too? What I wanted to do now was selfish, and I had been selfish enough to doom all of our kind. But still, my mouth opened.

“If, after your own Returning,” I said, my back still to the shivering figure, “you can find it in your heart to forgive me, you, the last of the men whose blood runs with his own power, will free all men bound by my curse.”

I clamped my mouth shut and marched forward. Through the door, past the torn and bloody piles of clothing, beyond the cheering women. I had played at leader, I had played at queen, and this is what my foolishness got me. I slipped away unnoticed into the secret cavern in the woods. I didn’t look once behind me. My last act was to leave Elgar in the hollow of a tree I passed, waiting for Jaron to find it many, many lifetimes later.