Nobody's Goddess (26 page)

Alvilda let her arms fall gently to the table. “People have never liked to talk much about the ‘always watching’ lord and his servants. A whisper here, a tale there—the things one could piece together are downright laughable.” She sighed. “The ‘heartless monster.’ A strange way to put it, but it means that he’s inhuman, an immortal whose heart never found its goddess and so he lives forever.”

I felt something strange clutching my heart, like I could feel the man watching me. “Mother told me it was just a story.”
But if that dream was real, and that was the lord when he was younger, it’d have to be long ago. So you’re actually certain you went into the past. Through a pond.
I knew it was crazy, but it felt true. Maybe spending so long alone in the castle had made me lose my sense of reason.

“I have to admit,” said Father, running a nervous finger over his palm, “it seems to be the only explanation. No one can remember when he came to be.”

“Nonsense,” said Alvilda, waving a hand. “All of this talk of immortality in our blood is merely an old wives’ tale.”

I cocked my head to the side. “And what of the men and the masks? And the power of their goddesses?”

Alvilda looked thoughtful for a moment but then shrugged. “That’s just the way things are.”

I mulled that over. What was in front of us was fact. What we couldn’t prove was nonsense. But still I didn’t understand why men and women were so different. Or why men and women were so different in such a very different way in my drowning dream.

“So you really don’t know more about him than the whispers I’ve heard myself.”

“Did you believe those whispers then?” asked Alvilda.

I shrugged. “Maybe. There are far too many things about the man in the castle that set him apart. You have no idea of the lengths to which he goes to offset the power I have over him. I wasn’t exaggerating about his threat to kill Mother. It’s like he can’t stand that he loves me. I’m not even
sure
he loves me. Not that I
want him
to love me.”

“Kill? A person? Like the animals we kill for meat?” Alvilda shook her head thoughtfully. “No. I’m sure not. But even so, I can’t picture a man who had found his goddess who would do anything other than agonize and wish to please her. Younger boys can manage to engage themselves in different pursuits from time to time because their hearts haven’t yet given up hope. But once a goddess turns seventeen, a man pretty much knows whether or not he’ll ever have her—in one form or another.”

She sighed. “For a man to actively plot against his own goddess seems something altogether new. I know men can be torn between their own desires and the desires to make their goddesses happy, on the rare occasion that those desires don’t line up. But for one to grab hold of his own wishes while knowingly making his goddess so unhappy goes against everything we know. If that were true, maybe there could be hope for men without the Returning to find happiness in another form. But that simply is not so.” She stared over my father’s head at the art on the wall. It always came back to her brother.

“What if I told you I have reason to believe he’s different? That he
has
lived a long time. Longer than he ought to have.”

Alvilda seemed genuinely curious. “What do you mean?”

“I … ” I bit my lip. “Did anyone—your grandparents, talking about their grandparents maybe—tell you of a time when men walked around without masking their faces?”

“No … ” Despite the flush on Father’s cheeks, he seemed to think I was the one who was drunk.

“You mean, like the tales of the first goddess?” Alvilda asked. “That’s just a story, Noll. A way to explain why thing are. But there’s no proof things were ever any different.”

Father shook his head. “Maybe they were. Long ago. But the legend of the first goddess must be a thousand years old.”

We three sat silently for a while. I felt stupid.
A thousand years? You really think you traveled back in time a thousand years, and that the lord lived then and has lived to this day? How? It just can’t be. It felt real then, but now it’s just a memory.

Finally, Father let out a deep breath. He didn’t seem interested in my visions of the past. Not when his goddess’s life hung in the balance.

“Whatever you think of the lord, Noll, he saved your mother’s life.”

Both Alvilda and I turned toward Father.

Father traced a pattern in the sawdust on the table with his finger. “Everyone who got sick from that illness died, Noll. Every single one. And I think all of her stress over your refusal to love your man made Aubree susceptible.”

I grimaced. This revelation explained much of the unspoken strain between us after Mother’s “death.” My mother was his goddess, and whatever I was to him, nothing could match the worth he put on her health and happiness. He could feel free to blame me. I no longer cared. “Mother understood. She didn’t want to rush me. She wanted me to be happy.”

Father licked his dry, cracked lips. “But that’s only because she assumed you’d eventually Return to him. Like decent women do.”

Alvilda reached across the corner of the table and smacked Father on the back of the head. She sent me a satisfied smile.

Father rubbed his head and looked at Alvilda wearily. “That wasn’t a comment on you, Alvilda.”

Alvilda pounded her fist on the table. “I don’t care. It’s a darn careless thing to say about your daughter. What about a woman’s
choice
?”

Father shook his head. “What worth is a woman’s choice when it comes to the lord of the village? I’d hoped she would learn to love him. At the very least, that she wouldn’t wish for him to be as wretched as those in the commune.”

“The lord of the village does not
move into the commune
,” I said. Alvilda and Father both looked at me with puzzled expressions. I sighed. “And did Mother know what you had done?”

Father rubbed his cheek and stared at his empty bottle. “No, she was already beyond consciousness by then.” A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye; that eye seemed dark and lifeless with its dying flicker. “I didn’t know for certain until today that she truly still lived.”

“And does Elfriede know?”

Father continued to scratch his chin. “I think she knows enough. She probably pieced some of it together. She spent more time around the house than you after I told you your mother died.”

Probably because I spent most of my time outrunning carriages and deliverymen’s carts. And because she was there, almost always with Jurij.

I’d had enough of the tiresome discussion. I would say my goodbyes and be on my way. Back to that chilling castle, the closest thing I had to a home now. I stood to leave when the door burst open. Jurij and Elfriede appeared in the doorway, and before anyone could speak, Jurij swept me into his arms and held me tightly.

“Noll,” he whispered. “I didn’t know you came. We missed you.”

My hands moved numbly to squeeze him back. Elfriede, still in the doorway, wouldn’t look at me. She stood there, her eyes on the floor, one arm cradling the other against her chest. She hadn’t missed me at all. In fact, I imagined seeing her new husband in my arms was enough to make her wish she had seen the last of me when I rode off in the black carriage.

They never cared about me. Not Father, not Elfriede. They wanted me to stuff away all my hopes, all my feelings. I tried. I did. But if I’m going to accept that I’m the veiled lord’s goddess, as they want me to, then at least I’ll have one thing to remember before I lock all my happiness away.

I ran my fingers through the back of Jurij’s hair and kissed him.

The ground exploded. It cracked and groaned and roared to life. And I knew, just a moment too late, that it wasn’t the euphoria of my first kiss that made me feel as if the earth moved beneath my feet. It was actually moving and I was sent flying.

“Alvilda! Are you all right?”

I looked up to see a masked man in the doorway. He crouched near Alvilda, who must have fallen off of her chair.

“I’m fine, Jaron.” Alvilda pushed away at his chest even as he extended his hand to help her. “How is everyone else?”

I took in the shambles of Alvilda’s home and shop. Furniture tipped over, carvings fell off the mantle, and some of the artwork was on the floor and split in two. Her tools lay scattered about the room. On the ground, Father rubbed his elbow. Jurij lay on Elfriede’s lap beside the doorway. Elfriede wept. Jurij was moaning and a trickle of blood ran down his face.

And I was clear across the room, dazed but uninjured. It was as if the ground had moved solely to split Jurij and me apart.

And as I thought that, I knew that it had. That he had made it so.

Why did I do that? Goddess help me. I’m sorry, Jurij. I’m sorry, Elfriede.

But when I thought of how much the lord had overreacted to my inability to Return to him, I wasn’t very sorry to have hurt him.

Although only two specters had brought me to the wedding, half a dozen filed into the home now. I blinked and swore I saw even more of them piling into the road outside.

Alvilda scrambled to stand beside me, elbowing Jaron as he tried to restrain her. He didn’t succeed, but he trailed after her, only one step behind.

“What’s going on here?” Alvilda demanded of the specters. She still hadn’t learned that she couldn’t take them in a fight.

“Alvilda—” began Jaron.

“Be quiet until I tell you to speak again!” snapped Alvilda.

Jaron spoke no more.

The specters moved around Alvilda and seized me, propping me up. Alvilda launched herself at them, but the specters weren’t bothered in the slightest. Jaron wrapped his arms around the kicking, snarling Alvilda but had no choice but to let her go when she ordered it. Two specters took Jaron’s place and grabbed Alvilda to restrain her, if only to stop her from yipping at them.

“I apologize for being so late to the celebration.”

Alvilda ceased struggling. Even Elfriede stopped weeping. All eyes but those of the specters turned toward the black figure that had entered the room.

“Congratulations, my dear,” said the lord, extending his hand downward toward the weeping Elfriede. She looked back at him, confused, her eyes still swollen with tears.

The lord pulled his hand back, not bothered by Elfriede’s lack of reaction. “What an accident!” said the lord. My gaze fled to the fallen Jurij on Elfriede’s lap. The blood I’d noticed earlier extended clear across his left cheek. His left eye was swollen and clamped tightly shut. A bloodied gouge lay on the ground beside him.

The lord waved his hand in their direction and a few more specters entered the already crowded home to sweep Jurij from Elfriede’s lap and carry him outside. Jurij moaned as he disappeared from view. Moments later, a black carriage passed by the open doorway, silently slipping away from sight.

What have I done?

“Fret not, my dear,” said the lord to Elfriede. “My servants shall attend to him.” He crouched down and cupped Elfriede’s chin in one gloved hand. “There, there. You have to smile. Today is your wedding day. And was it not kind of me to allow your sister to attend?”

No. What has
he
done?

Elfriede’s mouth cracked upward in a hollow echo of her smile. She opened her mouth to speak, but she bit down on her lip quickly. Was it the idea of our mother in the castle that kept her from asking the obvious?

Well, I wasn’t afraid to ask the monster a question. “Where are you taking him?”

The lord released Elfriede and stood now, facing me. He adjusted first one glove and then the other, tugging on the leather cuffs.

“Well, well, good day,
my
goddess,” he said. “Did you enjoy the wedding, Olivière? Or did you find the reception afterward more enticing?” His words gathered an extra edge toward the end of his latter question.

Heat swirled inside of me. “I enjoyed the reception very much.”

The lord placed his hands on his hips and stood immobile for a moment. Then he motioned a hand toward me and turned to exit. “In any case, I can see I just missed the last of the festivities.” He nodded at Elfriede, the tip of his hat bobbing down and up. “I dare say your sister will be glad to see us leave. The lord of the castle and his goddess alike. Wherever they go, no mere bride can compare. It seems we have stolen all that was owed to her this day. It is, after all, her wedding day.”

“Noll, how could you?” Elfriede screamed as the specters pulled me toward the second black carriage. She was weeping, barely able to speak between heavy, quivering sobs. Her voice grew quieter, the words catching in her throat. “How could you be so selfish? You won’t be happy until you have Jurij for yourself. You’d rather he die than be with me.”

“Friede!” I shouted back, doing all I could to break free from the tight grips on my arms. I had more to say, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted her to hate me.

The lord seemed amused. “My, what a joyous family reunion.” He nodded at the specters, who pulled me inside the carriage like they were lugging in a sack of grain. The lord grabbed hold of the sides of the carriage doorway and heaved himself inward. “You must be so delighted that you came.”