Nobody's Goddess (5 page)

“Let me guess. Ol’ Ingrith is the last to know. Ol’ Ingrith just has to be invited, though there’s no one who actually wants her to come, but goddess help us if the lord don’ give his blessing. I take it you two are having a Returning today?” Her eyes rolled up and down, as she examined Jurij from head to toe. “You look too young to get married.”

I didn’t often ask the first goddess for anything, but I prayed that no one would notice the flush that I could feel spreading across my face.

“She’s not my goddess.” He said it in the same manner one might say, “Please pass the potatoes.”

“Huh. If you say so.” The way Ingrith stared at me, I had a feeling the first goddess had failed me. Again.

Jurij didn’t seem to notice. “But I’m having my Returning today. This is my goddess’s sister.”

Ingrith’s eyes narrowed as she looked up at the wooden face beaming down at her. “And let me guess. The goddess is too busy primpin’ to bother with the likes of someone like me.” Her gaze fell on the basket in my arms. “What’s that? A collection for your blessed day? I haven’t got no gifts left to give all these young’uns Returning every other week.”

“No gift is necessary.” Jurij uncovered the offerings within the basket. They looked even more pitiful strewn haphazardly among the old cloth, with plenty of empty space beside them. “We just brought you some food. We thought you might like something. And yes, we’d like to invite you to my Returning.”

Ingrith stuck her head over the basket so fast I jumped backward, thinking she might be intending to ram her head into my chest. She leered up at me. “There’s not a thing here worth havin’, but for that apple.” She snatched it out of the basket and took a bite. I might have heard her teeth crack. “You go take the rest of that garbage back where you came from.” Bits of apple and spittle escaped from her mouth with each bite. “You invited me. The lord is satisfied. I’m not goin’. Now get out.” She tossed the half-eaten apple on the ground, snatched the basket from me, and shoved it at Jurij so quickly he had no choice but to catch it before it fell to the ground. She started hobbling back to what she called a home.

Jurij sighed. It took a lot to make him sigh. Especially when you considered the mother he had. “Come on, Noll. We invited her.”

Ingrith turned around as fast as someone a tenth her age. “No,
you
go, boy. Girl, you come in here and help me. Time you make up for that foolin’ around you did years ago.”

Jurij’s head tilted slightly. It was possible the only thing he remembered about that day four years prior were the parts with his golden-haired goddess.

Well, why not? What else was I going to do for the rest of the day? Find Elfriede and tuck that golden strand into her bun for the fiftieth time? I squeezed Jurij’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Jurij. Your mother might have noticed you went missing by now. I’ll see you later.”

I let his shoulder go and stepped forward. Ingrith nodded and went back to hobbling. In a few short hours, Jurij would be gone. He would vanish, or he would be hers. Either way, he was gone forever from me.

Goddess, if you hear my prayer, you’ll make time stand still, just for a little while. Or take me back. Back before love could hurt me.

We’d barely stepped inside when there was a pounding on the door. My chest squeezed in fright, but it didn’t bother Ingrith. She hobbled over to the corner of her small shack, where a chest lay at the foot of the rotted wooden frame and the mildew-covered slab of hay she counted as a bed and mattress.

“Ingrith! Ingrith, you in there?”

The pounding wasn’t stopping. Something thudded behind me. I pointed at the door. “Should I—”

Ingrith’s dark, bulbous eyes were right in front of me. She was shorter than I remembered—or I was taller, I supposed—but she was no less frightening when viewed so close. “Should you nothing, girl. This is my house.” She seemed to have lost a front tooth since the last time we’d had the pleasure of talking face to face. Or, rather, face
in
face.

“Ingrith! Why can’t you open this door when I ask nicely?”

“I don’t have to open my door for nobody but the lord’s men.” Ingrith leaned around me and cupped her free hand around her mouth. “You one of the lord’s men? I suspect not, since I can hear you speak.”

“Ingrith, we’re coming in.”

Ingrith pushed me aside and hobbled to the door, ripping it open with that one-tenth-her-age speed once again. A man stumbled inside, grabbing the door to steady himself. “You almost killed me, you crazy old—”

Ingrith shook her walking stick a little off the ground. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d’ve popped this under your mask and knocked it off. You’re not welcome here.”

She was right. He was still wearing a mask. And he didn’t seem like one of the skinny, gangly teenagers running around the village. His face was that of a wooden fish, complete with a puckering set of lips over the black hole covering his mouth.

Behind him was a man whose face was uncovered. He had no reason to fear my eyes or Ingrith’s. His love had been Returned.

Fish Face shook his vacant mask. “Did you cause that earthquake?”

Ingrith poked at his abdomen with her walking stick. “I did. What of it?”

Fish Face swatted the walking stick away with one hand and held his mask tighter with the other. “You keep that away from me, you old biddy!”

“Tayton, please.” The unmasked man stepped inside and put a hand on Fish Face’s chest. He turned to Ingrith. “There are men working in the quarry most days, Ingrith.”

She sniffled and clasped both hands on top of her walking stick, which she lowered back to the ground. “I know. I can hear their racket. Makes my head ache and my ears ring.”

Fish Face tapped his foot. “And crazy old crones looking up at the castle makes rocks fall on our heads.”

She snorted. “Good. Then maybe I’ll get a day of peace.”

Fish Face nearly choked. “You senile, unloved woman—”

The unmasked man spoke as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “I’m sure it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t,” said Ingrith, as I said, “It was. She told me so.”

Fish Face threw both hands into the air. “Who’s this?”

“My guest.” Ingrith poked at the floor near his feet. “Which
you
are not.”

Fish Face scoffed. The unmasked man looked me up and down. I had to let my gaze fall. They were all so handsome when they were unmasked. And it was rare to have any take notice of me. And Jurij, he would be the same. Handsome, blind to me.

“Woodcarver’s daughter,” he said at last. So he actually knew of a woman besides his goddess?

Fish Face seemed as perplexed as his masked expression. “The one with a Returning today?”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m her sister.”

Fish Face started laughing. At least I thought it was a laugh. It sounded coincidentally like a fish flopping and gasping without water. “The only other unloved woman in the village. Figures.”

My blood boiled. “Oh, like you have room to speak!”

“I’m married!” protested Fish Face.

I shook my head and gestured to his fishy face. “But your wife obviously doesn’t love you, or you wouldn’t still be wearing that ugly mask! Unless what’s beneath is really much worse.”

Ingrith cackled at that. I think she was actually happy.

Fish Face pointed at me. “Can you believe these women? If I had—goddess’s blessings, whose mask is that?” I turned around to look at the chipped and cracked table behind me. There was a wooden mask there, all right. A snake. As chipped and cracked as the table on which it sat.

Fish Face might have been frothing at the mouth if he’d had one. As it was, his puckering fish lips looked oddly out of tune with the tone of his voice. “You murderer!”

The unmasked man put his hand on Fish Face’s shoulder. “Enough, Tayton. That mask looks too old to be someone she might have killed recently.”

“So you’re saying it’s all right; she must have killed that man years ago.” Fish Face’s expression perfectly matched his flabbergasted tone.

The unmasked man put his fingers to his temple. “No, Tayton. I’m just saying she’s unlikely to have killed a man since we set out to work this morning. I think we would have heard if she’d killed anyone years ago.”

Ingrith laughed and pounded her walking stick on the ground. “Shows what you know!”

“I need to get out of here,” said Fish Face. “I can’t stand to be around these crones one second longer.”

These crone
s
? As in the both of us?

Sighing, the unmasked man shook his head. “We’re leaving. Ladies.” He nodded first at me, then at Ingrith. I ignored him.

“Take care not to let it happen again, Ingrith,” said the unmasked man as the two workers left. “It’s dangerous for there to be earthquakes near the quarry.”

Ingrith started muttering to herself and hobbled past me toward the table. I caught something like “useless, oblivious men” as she stepped past, leaving behind her scent of decay. With a groaning, scratching sound, she pulled a chair out from the table and plopped herself into it. She stared back at me. “Well? You goin’ to stand there all day, like your mind has gone numb? Sit down!”

It was as if I were a man, and she were my goddess. A cloud of dust flew out from under my mud-colored skirt as I sat. The chair I was in was dustier than Ingrith’s, but it seemed to be in much finer shape than the rest of the furniture. It was as if the chair had been sleeping, waiting for someone who never came to use it.

Ingrith pounded the walking stick, still in her hand even though it soared above her head while she was seated, making me sit taller in my chair. She pointed to the chipped and cracked snake mask on the table between us. “You know what that is?”

I raised an eyebrow. “A … mask?”

“
A
…
mask?
” Ingrith echoed my words as if they left a vile taste in her mouth. “Yes, we both have eyes, girl! I’m askin’ if you know what that is!”

Okay, maybe hanging out with the crazy old crone to pass the time before I lost the only man I’d ever love was a bad idea after all. Then again, it did get me out of extra primping. “A snake?”

Ingrith pounded her stick on the floor again. “Oh, for the love of … ” She grunted and reached across the table to snatch up the snake mask. She held it next to her face. “This was a man’s face, girl! How do you reckon I got it and got no man for it to be wearin’, eh?”

“I don’t know. Your brother’s or something?”

Ingrith sighed as if she needed to clear her lungs of all that dusty air in her house. She tossed the mask back onto the table, where it landed with a
thud
. “I never had no brothers, girl.” She held up a finger. “Tut, tut. And before you go guessin’ it was my father’s, he was a loved man since the day my mama turned seventeen, so no, he had no need for another face when I knew him.”

What did men do with their masks if they had their love Returned and could be rid of them? Smash them, break them, as I might do if I were them? No, they had other things on their mind. Like happiness and goddesses.

Ingrith sighed and shook her head. A white tendril broke free from the cloth covering her scalp, and I was reminded, with a jolt, of Elfriede. “You ever heard of a man called Haelan?”

I shook my head.

Ingrith heaved that weary sigh again. “Of course you haven’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “Your parents ever wonder how come there’s no healer?”

What is she talking about?
“Someone who … fixes boot heels?”

Ingrith pounded her walking stick not once, but three times. “No, I’m talkin’ ’bout a
healer
, you damn fool! Someone who makes people who are sick or injured feel better.”

“No.” Wonderful. I was going to spend the rest of the day talking nonsense with this woman. “Mother tends to us when we’re sick. I suppose women make their loved ones feel better.”

“Some broth-and-huggin’ home remedies aren’t the same as sewing up a man to stop him from bleeding or blowing air into a girl’s lungs if she stops breathin’.” Ingrith let out a breath, and I could smell the sour scent across the table. “What do your parents think of me, then?”

That you’re a crazy old crone, like the rest of us do.
“They don’t speak much of you.”

“They think I never had a man to love me?”

“Yeah … ”
They think that their daughter is probably going to do no better.

Ingrith scoffed. “Bunkum! Every woman gets her man.”

I cradled one arm against my chest and squeezed my elbow tightly. “I don’t have one, either.”

“Oh, sweet goddess. Can’t be more than sixteen and she thinks no man will ever find her. Well, isn’t that convenient?” Ingrith cupped her chin, pinching her lips together as she looked me over. “You in love with that boy you came here with?”

I bit my lip. “Why would you ask that?”

Ingrith shook her walking stick in the air. “’Cause you’re a fool, girl, if you go lovin’ where love is not needed! That boy’s your sister’s, he says? You get your
own
man. Love ’im or send him to the commune, don’t matter to me. But if you get your heart so set on another, and your man come callin’, don’t you dare go pretendin’ you’re in love with that poor soul of his, you hear me?”