Eyes of the Woods (8 page)

I sighed. “I’m not so sure.”

Father’s face turned red and his expression severe. He was finished trying to placate me. “I worry about you, Eris.”

“I worry about me too.”

He grumbled. “Your priorities are…It’s not natural. To feel your betrothal is a fate worse than a nightwalker’s. If you had a choice, I don’t think you’d—”

“I don’t. Have a choice. And that is the problem.”

Father narrowed his eyes at me, and then his shoulders fell. He shook his head.

“Eris!” Mother called from down the hall.

“She’s been planning this day your entire life. You’re her only daughter. Don’t ruin this for her.”

My lips formed a hard line. “This isn’t about her, Father. It’s not about you. This is my life that’s about to change, and I don’t want it to. Please,” I began, my tone turning to begging, “please don’t make me do this. I could stay here. Live here. Keep living my life the way I have been.”

“Eris, it’s the law. This is the way things are done.”

“Then the laws are wrong!”

“Eris!” Father bellowed.

Mother rounded the corner, her eyes round and dancing between Father and me. “Dyre?”

Father relaxed and smiled. “She’s just nervous, dear. She’ll be fine.”

Father stood and left the room without another word, and Mother offered a cautious smile.

I forced the corners of my mouth to turn up. “Where shall we start?”

She held up an iron wand and a brush. “With your hair.”

I walked over to my vanity and sat on the velvet-covered bench. I pulled my long hair over onto one shoulder, casting my sky-blue eyes onto the mirror that hung on the wall, staring at my reflection. Did I belong here? I didn’t feel like it. I was meant to be something else. Something…more. Father was right. I wasn’t a good Prior. I had let him down, something I had never wanted to do. But he’d let me down too. I was in the genesis of my life, and it felt like it was about to end.

“Okay, Mother,” I said, picking up the brush and pulling it through my hair. “Let’s get started then.”

FOR A WHILE MOTHER JUST PLAYED
with various pieces of my hair, an absent smile on her face. Then she wound it around the hot iron. When she finally finished, my hair fell across my shoulder blades in thick, golden ringlets.

Mother took her time painting my lips a blood red to match my dress. My pale skin contrasted against the crimson color, and I tried to look everywhere but the mirror. Mother wanted me to be excited about this, and I just couldn’t, so I pretended to be nervous instead.

Mother walked over to the dress form, carefully loosening the dozens of buttons that fastened the back. “Get your petticoat on, darling.”

I obeyed, walking over to my wardrobe, pulling the fluffy white slip from its iron hanger, and stepping into it. Mother pulled the dress up and off the form and held it away from her.

“Eris?” she said.

“Yes?”

She chuckled, pushing the dress toward me. “Well? Put it on! You’ve been staring at it for weeks.”

I nodded, and walked over to her, stepping one foot in and then the other. Mother pulled it up, and I slipped my arms in.

She sighed as she fastened the buttons. “I just can’t believe it. Doesn’t seem possible that the day is finally here.”

“I can’t believe it either.”

She finished, and I turned to face her. Her eyes immediately filled with tears, and salty streams wet her cheeks.

“You’re beautiful,” she cried.

“Thank you.”

She walked over to my vanity and returned with a small vial. She turned it upside down and dabbed her finger on my neck and then each of my wrists. The smell of roses seemed to surround me.

“Your boots,” she said, helping me to step into them. They were brand-new, shiny black leather. Mother had chosen them herself. The heel was too tall, and I felt unbalanced.

She giggled. “You’ll get used to them quickly. Just stay centered. I should have made you practice first.”

I didn’t complain, secretly grateful she kept her promise not to make me suffer a corset. Unlike the other girls of the village, I wasn’t raised to wear one and could barely tolerate them.

Mother left me alone, returning to her room to change clothes, and I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes began to burn, and I cursed at the girl in the mirror.

“Don’t cry, you daft cow!” But the tears came anyway.

In less than an hour, I would be paraded around the village stage, and Father would announce which boy I would belong to for the rest of my days.

Father came in, wearing his best clothes.

“Eris. You’re stunning.”

“I can’t,” I whispered.

His face fell, and the light in his eyes vanished. “You have to stop this.”

“Please don’t make me.”

“Enough. You’ll embarrass your mother. You’ll embarrass me. The entire family. Get yourself under control and wipe those tears away before your mother sees you. You’ll break her heart.”

I raised the back of my hand to my face, and dried my cheeks.

Mother sauntered in wearing a jade dress. She’d had it made just for this day and was nearly as excited to wear it as she was to see me in mine. We walked into the great chamber where my brothers waited.

Clemens’s smile was wide. “You actually look like a girl!”

“Clemens!” Mother chided. “She’s already nervous. Don’t make it worse.”

Lukas and Jonathan were smiling too. But Jonathan’s expression was different. He was smug, glad I was so miserable. I looked down to the floor.

“Is the carriage ready?” Mother asked the boys. They nodded. “Let us go then.”

Father climbed up onto the front bench, joined by Clemens, and the boys helped Mother and I climb into the carriage. Father signaled to the horses, and the wheels surged forward and then continued in a smooth, forward motion.

I could tell when we were getting close because of the instruments playing and the chatter of the villagers. Everyone would attend the betrothal of a daughter of the Priory. They all wanted to see which young man of our territory was lucky enough to be promised a spot in our family. And not just him. His family would experience a significance improvement in their social—and financial—standing as well.

The carriage came to a halt, and the door swept open. Lukas helped me down the single step to the ground, and Mother and Jonathan followed behind. But before we had reached the crowd, a woman grabbed at Father. Instinctively, he took her wrists in his large hands, easily holding her an arm’s length away. She looked familiar to me, but not enough to place where or why we had met before. So many people came through our door, it was impossible to keep up.

“If you would just…just…,” she began, but Father shook his head.

“Magnes, enough. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Mother stepped in front of me, bending her arm to hold me back or to keep the woman away from my dress. Magnes’s skin sagged and had deep wrinkles. Her irises were so dull, I couldn’t discern if they were once blue or green. Her hair was milk white and straggly. Her hands and hairline were covered in large, brown spots, and her nails were yellowed—all signs of someone who had stopped using Vileon to stave off aging.

“Dyre, please. Just a small vial.” She laughed and motioned with her hand. “I don’t know what else I can do to convince you.”

“You can’t convince me,” Father said. “You can have it when you pay.”

“I’ve offered to sign a contract. You can have me when I die.”

“That wouldn’t pay for a drop,” Father said. His eyes were cold, and he pushed Magnes away.

“Who is she?” I whispered to Mother.

“Magnes Sven,” she said, keeping her voice low. “She’s been a customer of your father’s for a long time. But her husband died and left her with nothing but debt. She’s been hounding us for Vileon. Your father has keep quiet about it, and here she is begging in front of the whole village. Pity,” she said, watching her with a spark in her eyes. Mother was as intrigued and entertained as everyone else.

I was embarrassed. “Vileon?” I asked, confused. “She’s behaving like Father is a Phosphant.”

She glanced at me with impatient eyes, but I wasn’t sure if I had crossed the line, or if she was just irritated that I wouldn’t allow her to focus on the scene Magnes was making. She shushed me.

“We’re in public, Eris!”

“Look at her. Is Vileon…Is it addictive?”

Father had only explained Phosphants to me once before, when we caught one selling a special kind of mushroom powder at the edge of the woods to an Onan. They preyed mostly on the poor, and Father had zero tolerance for them in our territory. Once the villagers were hooked, no matter what they had prided themselves in before, the powder made them careless—a phosner. Phosners were harder to keep out of the woods, or in their homes with their families.

Mother sighed. “Just like the ancients used to wear purple to signify their royal blood, those in society use Vileon to show their place in the social order. She’s addicted to money and being treated a certain way because of that money, Eris. Vileon has no addictive ingredients.”

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Not a lot. Magnes is only the second I’ve seen this way since I married your father.”

“Take her away, Ander,” Father said to my large, intimidating cousin. Ander did as he was told, struggling with Magnes while Father pressed forward through the crowd.

He climbed up the stairs and on to the stage, forcing a smile. “Welcome!” he cried. The crowd erupted into cheering and whistles. Once they settled down, he held his hand out to me. Clemens guided me to the wooden stage, and I stood between Father and him.

Mother took her place between my younger brothers at the front, close to the corner of the stage. I swallowed, nervous, and she pressed her lips together and smiled. She looked so proud. I felt so nauseated.

Girls stood where I stood, typically giddy with excitement. This was a special day, essentially being auctioned off to the highest bidder like a steer or a pig at market. People were staring at me, most smiling, some curious. It was humiliating. I had spent my life protecting their lives, and now I was being paraded around like a prize stallion.

Father began his speech about how beautiful I was when I was born, and then told of my training and education. He spoke of my achievements in the Priory and how proud of me he was. I stood there, not really listening, his loud words blurring together. I glanced out at the villagers, seeing the different faces, wondering whom I would be given to, and then, when it was my turn, I repeated the forty-first paragraph of the laws. Words about how Onans were proud to be given away, and how it honored their family to do so. Mother watched me with a smile on her face and her fingers intertwined at her chest.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce my only daughter’s betrothed. I’ve lost many a day’s sleep over this choice, but her mother and I agree they will long be happy with each other.” Father gestured to Mother, and she joined us on stage. Father held her hand and then mine, and took a deep breath.

“William Courcy.”

Everyone gasped. Many looked at one another and to the people on each side of them. Finally the crowd broke, parting like the Red Sea, revealing a tall, scrawny bit of a man. A man I’d known since childhood. He was quiet, I suppose kind, but never excelled with a bow or sword. He was a florist, and his parents weren’t particularly close with mine.

He climbed the steps and nervously approached me. I glanced at Father and after a pause, held out my hand. William took it, and the crowd cheered.

“I present to you my future son-in-law, William Courcy, to wed my daughter Eris a year from this day.”

The crowd cheered again. William and I locked eyes, and then we turned toward the villagers, watching them as they clapped and whistled. I caught sight of William’s mother, who was accepting congratulatory handshakes and hugs with tearful eyes.

“Now we celebrate!” Father shouted.

The music began again, and the crowd dispersed, reconvening in groups of people dancing, eating, talking, and laughing.

William guided me from the stage, and we walked out to where others were dancing.

“I’m not much of a dancer, I’m afraid.”

“Me either,” I said quietly, just before he took his first step.

We awkwardly made our way around the dirt dance floor, and I watched as men vigorously patted William’s shoulder and women offered their compliments.

Father stood with many of the councilmen, next to a large barrel full of wine. His bellowing laughter could be heard over all.

When the song was over, as was customary, William took me by the hand and guided me behind the stage to a table. It was already covered with a fine lace cloth, and two glasses of wine sat in front of each chair.

“Eris,” William said, pulling out my chair.

I sat.

He took his seat as well and fumbled with his wineglass. “I…don’t really…know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this at all. Did you know?”

I shook my head.

He raised his eyebrows and stared at the table. “I suppose it is a shock. I’m the last person anyone would think Dyre Helgren would pair with his daughter. But…I’m…I’m honored.”