Nobody's Goddess (6 page)

Don’t pretend you’re in love with him. Elfriede.
“But … what happens if a girl convinces herself she’s in love with her man? When she’s really just—I don’t know—in love with having her Returning? Or afraid to be alone?”

“Then she ought to delay the Returning until she’s sure. No need to rush the day you turn seventeen. Don’t know what’s wrong with all these young fool girls, thinkin’ they can’t possibly wait any longer.” Ingrith pointed the top of the walking stick in my direction. “I had my Returning when I was seventeen.”

Something felt sour in my stomach. “But you have no man!”

Ingrith pounded her walking stick and her free palm on the table. “
Every
woman gets her man! You never heard that lord’s blessing garbage at a Returning?”

I had, but—

Ingrith’s large, round eyes grew even larger, even wider. “We invited them all, you see, we ought to have had the lord’s blessing!
He
even came, that boy I truly fancied!” She laughed, but the laugh stuck in her throat like a fly caught in a spider’s webbing. “Bernhard. Bernhold. Something. I don’t even remember his name anymore! What a fool I was! He wasn’t worth none of my love, no! He had
her
!”

My palms rested against the table. I pushed back, letting the chair move slowly away.

Ingrith leaped up, summoning that secret speed of hers. “But I
had
to have a Returning, you see! My man was good enough. Nice fellow. Did whatever I wanted, though that’d be no surprise, seeing as all men follow their goddess’s orders when they’re still wearin’ those masks of theirs.” Ingrith hobbled closer to me, and my palms pushed forward, my legs tensed, ready to jump as soon as she got too near.

She leaned forward and stuck those bulbous eyes in my face before I even had a chance to jump. “
Haelan
. Village healer. Yes, we had one of those back then. Lived right here. He had no family by then, so no one else could do what he did.” She leaned back slightly and grinned, but it was a strange smile, a smile out of place on her sour, wrinkled face. “I promised to give him sons and daughters. Told ’im he could teach me and we’d all keep up the trade. Never seen a happier wood-faced man.” The smile vanished. “Though I suppose I could have told ’im we’d be living in the quarry under rocks and mud spending our days eating insects and he’d’ve been just as happy.”

Ingrith straightened as best she could, but she still looked hunched and twisted. “What made me happy is she’d once told me she liked Haelan.” Ingrith nodded and stared off above my head, not even looking at me. “But after that, her man found the goddess in her, and just like that, she was so in love with him. With
him
. She was my dearest friend, and she knew how much he meant to me. She knew how much I loved Bernie.”

Ingrith hobbled over to her door and pulled it open. She stood, staring out into the open, both hands clutching the top of her walking stick. Slowly, I moved as close to her as I dared, keeping her well in front of me.

A small gust of breeze blew in through the open door, rustling that free tendril of hair that covered the old crone’s forehead. “But she loved Bernie. She proved it at her Returning. He took off his mask and clear as day, her love for him was made plain. He was still living, and they kissed each other as if their kisses were as necessary for them to breathe as air.”

The wind blew a bit stronger. I shivered. We were too close to the mountains. It was cold.

Ingrith took a few small steps out into the open. “So I thought, why not hurt her as much as she hurt me? Why not share those kisses with her first love as she watched, watched as her soul wrapped ’round her heart and wouldn’t stop squeezin’?” She paused, squeezing her fist as tight as it would go. Then she hobbled around the home and out of view, toward the east.

She’d forgotten I was even there. I could run, forget any of this nonsense ever happened. But I thought of Elfriede, and of Jurij. I hitched my skirt up and ran out the door.

Ingrith walked eastward a few paces in front of me, shouting to no one at all. “I was a fool to think I could hurt her! I was a fool to think that the love of little children meant anything to anyone but me!”

Or me.

Ingrith stepped into the lily-covered fields and tossed her walking stick aside. It vanished into the knee-high grasses. “The goddesses are all that matter! There’s no room for love where love’s not wanted! There’s no room for hurt, for jealousy, for a love intended if not fully felt!”

I had no idea where she was going. Into the woods? Could she make such a long walk? Ingrith stopped and snapped around to face me, suddenly realizing I was still there.

“I looked before I loved, girl! I looked at the Returning!” Her eyes seemed about ready to roll out of her head. “He vanished, leavin’ nothin’ but his clothes and mask behind him!”

I stopped, and Ingrith closed the distance between us. She smiled. “And no one remembers. No one but me.” She closed her eyes and started laughing. “They didn’t even know what we’d all gathered for!” She put one hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she cradled her belly with the other hand. “I tried to hurt her by Returning with her first love, and she couldn’t even remember he ever existed!”

I stepped back, trying to let Ingrith’s hand fall, but she clutched harder, digging her yellowing nails into my dress. “Look!” She pointed behind her, upward—above the woods where I dared not look. I slapped a hand in front of my eyes.

“Look, girl!” She let my shoulder go, and her decaying old fingers pried at the hand I held tightly over my eyelids. “Look! There lives the heartless monster! The lord who gives the first goddess’s blessing! Have you ever seen him? Does he even exist? Who eats the bread, who wears the clothes? What becomes of the things the men deliver there?”

I swatted at her with my free hand. “Stop! Let me go!”

“Who are the servants bathed in white? Where are their goddesses? Do none speak? Did they punish me? Why is some
man
ruling over this village and giving the blessings of the first goddess, a woman?”

I jumped back, my eyes clamped shut, but she was still gripping my arm, pulling it downward with a force not even a man could muster. “Let go, you crazy old—”

“Oh,
now
she remembers to shut her eyes! When it’s not a life at stake, but a measly old earthquake. Well, I’m not afraid.”

The ground began to shake. Ingrith laughed, and the ground beneath my feet shifted until I had no choice but to fall into the grasses. My eyes flew open, as wide as Ingrith’s.

There it stood, dizzyingly high and regal, dark and dominant against the pale eastern mountains, ringed in verdant green trees from the woods before it. It was taller than I imagined, almost half the height of the mountain behind it. Its wide berth supported two great, jagged spires, so thin as to be impractical, but as menacing to me then as if they were actual swords, great daggers the building needed to defend itself against monsters. The castle. Forbidden to the eyes of all women.

The earthquake grew stronger, and my palms, scuffed and scratched already, clutched for the safety of the broken blades of grass and the fallen lilies, but the earth wouldn’t stop moving. The old crone danced, somehow staying upright even as the ground shook around her.

“I’m not afraid, you heartless monster! Live forever, you will never die, but you’ll never know love neither!” She grabbed her skirt and kicked her feet up high. “Punish me, lord! Strike me down and punish me!”

I didn’t know what to do. “Ingrith!”

Her feet stopped moving, and a gasping, scratching sound came from her throat, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Her clothing fell beside me, her body already gone. The ground stopped shaking. But my heart kept beating, strong and fast, as if the ground would never again be stable.

I touched the dirty, dark shawl that had once covered her white head. It lay between a lily and an indentation in the grass, where Ingrith had once stood. Her clothing was now all that remained.

Had the lord actually killed her? But why? And how? He’d never executed anyone before.

No woman has ever looked at the castle for that long, either.

And no one ever really complained about him before. No one said what would happen if we went against the first goddess’s teachings. They just asked his blessing, like he was some ever-watching shepherd spirit, like we were his mindless flock.
Someone has to eat the food, wear the clothes. Unless it’s all the specters.

The lord’s servants. Less reverently and more often called “the specters” in my mind. To a child they were too-real monsters, appearing without fanfare and dissipating into the mist once they were done with their errand. They showed up any time anyone had so much as a disagreement in Vena’s tavern, not that there was much room for anything resembling an actual fight like those in the tales of queens and kings in the village of simpering men and goddesses. They also did the lord’s shopping for him, silently handing merchants notes with the lord’s orders. Clothed from head to toe entirely in white, the specters would have been hard not to spot even from leagues away. But their hair—each one had hair to his shoulders—was white. Their skin was white, as white as snow. It was as if they were men who’d had every bit of life, every bit of color drained out of them. They were like a walking death, if anything of our bodies was left behind once we died.

Only once had I gotten close enough to look at one’s face. It was there that I saw the only hint of color: blood red eyes.

I shook my head clear of the image. In any case, at least we had an image to put to the specters—unlike the lord, whom no one had ever seen.

The heartless monster.
She called him that. Was it all just Ingrith’s delusion?

“Damn you, you crazy ol’ crone! Ingrith!”

There was no mistaking that voice, muffled and angry and distant though it might have been.
Fish Face
. I wondered if this time someone in the quarry had gotten hurt—or worse. And they would come with their anger, itching to find Ingrith, and they would find me. Just me.

I released the shawl from my fingers and stood up, ignoring the soreness in my muscles. Before I could even stop to think, my feet kicked up the dress and flew farther into the fields. If I could just get out of sight before they came. If I could just pretend I’d been long gone before the second earthquake.

They knew you were with her beforehand. They’ll see you running through the fields. There’s no reason for them to keep their eyes down.

I ran, though, as if there were no other choice. I couldn’t deal with all of the questions. I couldn’t deal with the stares, the hatred. Not on this day.

Thanks to the hills, I might have gotten out of sight before they found her clothing. I made for the eastern dirt path as soon as I could, ready to insist I’d just been walking homeward. Home was so close. I was running at a speed I’d thought I’d lost, staring at the ground all the while, fighting through my body’s struggle to breathe. Ready to pretend I’d never even cut through the fields.

My dress!
There were tears and grass stains all over the skirt.

Home was right there. Mother and Father might still be inside; there had to be a little time before dusk yet. I could cover the skirt up with an apron. I could grab another dress when Mother wasn’t looking.
They’d notice. We don’t have any other nice dresses.

I kept running, straight past the house and into the woods. The trees kept the castle from view, so I looked up at last. I found the well-worn foliage to the side of the path and burst through the trees. I didn’t care that stray branches scratched my arms and ripped at already-torn seams. I was going somewhere where I could rest and think, where I could quiet the insanity running through my head, where I could figure out what choices were left to me, if any at all.

A shriek, or more like a giggling squeal, tore through the air as something fast and hard slammed against my abdomen. I felt a sharp poke in my leg and heard a snap.

“Noll!” The little girl whose bushy, twig-filled head had just rammed into my abdomen stepped back and looked up, rubbing her forehead with one hand. In her other hand, she held a branch. The top of it dangled by a thread.

My pulse was still racing, and I shut my mouth, worried my heart might escape through my throat. I ran a palm over the pain in my side, swallowed my heart back inside me, and spoke, breathless. “Nissa.” A farmer’s daughter. A friend of Luuk’s. We’d all played together before. “What are you doing here?”

It was a dumb question. I was the one who’d shown her the cavern in the first place.

Nissa tilted her head, pointing the branch at the cavern’s dark mouth behind her. “Slaying monsters.” Her mouth pinched. “It broke.” She tossed the branch onto a nearby pile of moss and rocks.

I smiled, even despite everything. “Elgar’s always broken. It’ll mend next time you pick it up.”
Pick it up somewhere else entirely.
My smile faded. “Were you in there alone?”

Nissa shrugged and clutched both hands behind her back. “Everyone else is getting ready for the Returning.” Her gaze fell on my dress. “Aren’t you going to get ready?”