Nobody's Goddess (4 page)

I stepped on the dog’s paw before I even realized she’d run out of the Tailor Shop to greet me. We both yelped as I tumbled.

The basket went soaring out of my arms … and into the arms of a man with a male face carved from wood, complete with exaggerated pointy wooden ears that stuck out straight sideways. It was the mask a man only wore on the morning of his Returning.

“Whoa!” The muffled voice was all too familiar. He bent forward to pick up the partially bitten cheese wedge, which had landed on the back of Bow, his golden dog. “Cheese is generally a fine gift for a Returning, but … ” He held up the wedge with one hand like it was the carcass of some dead squirrel Bow had brought him. “The fur-covered, half-eaten variety is not quite to my taste.”

I grinned and snatched the cheese from him, blowing on it to get rid of all of the hairs. “I don’t know. I hear furry cheese is an excellent cure for missing eyes.”

“Amusing.” Jurij’s creepy wooden face tilted to one side. “My eyes are here and ordinary, just like every other man’s.”

There was no way his eyes were ordinary. Not if I could have them locked on to my own, even just once.

Bow opened her mouth and panted, watching her master eagerly, probably smelling that weeks-old biscuit and actually deeming it fit for dog consumption. Jurij bent to set the basket on the ground, cooing as he grabbed Bow’s muzzle and rubbed the sides gently, preventing her from attacking the basket. Elfriede wasn’t the only golden-haired mongrel that got his attention. “You’re going to be a cute little mama, aren’t you?”

I glanced at Bow’s bulging belly as I snatched up the basket. “She’s pregnant?”

“Yup. I think it was the butcher’s dog. Because you love your sausages, don’t you? So who’s eating the disgusting old cheese?” Jurij asked, still simpering in his high-pitched baby voice.

I dropped the cheese into the basket and moved the old black cloth around until it covered the travesty of a gift I was tasked with presenting. It took me a moment to figure out Jurij was talking to me and not his dog. “Our favorite village crazy person: Ingrith. Apparently everyone conveniently forgot to invite her to the Returning, so guess who gets to do it? In case the lord decides to prove that he actually exists and comes down from the castle to say that your Returning is canceled because one old loon wasn’t asked to give her blessing.”

“No!” Jurij stood and twisted his wooden face to look over and behind me.

“I was joking, Jurij.” I rubbed my temples. His every movement let me know just how much in the way I was of who he hoped to see. “She’s not with me. She’s primping with her girlfriends in the village.” Apparently he’d just missed her. Strange. Jurij would certainly have visited his goddess had he walked past her home. Elfriede was clearly more concerned with the occasion than with the young man who was the entire reason she was the focus of the village’s attention. At least until the next Returning.

I couldn’t see his face, but the way Jurij’s shoulders slumped forward was visual cue enough to express his disappointment. Bow sensed her master’s distress and nudged his hand with her nose. Jurij pet it absently.

The Returning would be meaningless to me. We could hold the ceremony alone in the cavern for all I’d care. All I’d want is to be with you.

I clutched the handle of the basket with both hands, running the toe of one shoe over the dirt in the road. “I’d ask why you aren’t doing the same and primping and chatting with a bunch of excited young men, but you have no friends. Must be wonderful to be a guy. Soon as your buddy finds his goddess, he practically forgets anyone else exists.”

“You’re my friend, Noll.” He said it with such conviction and so quickly, I didn’t know whether to be delighted or let down. “I don’t miss the other guys.”

“I do.”

Jurij pet the back of Bow’s head absently, rustling her floppy ear like he might a curl of Elfriede’s hair. “It’s hard to explain. They’re not important anymore.”

“They are—they
were
to me.”

Jurij shrugged. “I don’t mean anything by it. I know they don’t miss me, either.”

I dug my heel sharply into the dirt. “Because your goddess is everything.”

Jurij’s wooden face bobbed up and down. “She is.”

Unlike Mother, at least Jurij didn’t try to soften the statement with assurance that some man would find the goddess in me one day. I was glad for it. “Nice face, by the way.”

The smile carved onto the wooden face might have been genuine if it didn’t look so freaky. “Looking forward to seeing what’s under it?”

I forced myself to laugh. “Not as much as Elfriede, I’m sure.” A lie.

The name of his goddess pulled Jurij into some dream state of mind. His wooden face looked off behind me again. I’d pretend to seek out what caught his attention, but if I chanced to look up and glance at the castle that lay flush against the eastern mountains, I’d have a bit of explaining to do to the village.

“Are you looking forward to today more or the wedding?” Sometimes it was easier to feed into his reverie than to try to snap him out of it entirely. Plus, today I was supposed to be happy for them.

Jurij tensed and rubbed Bow’s head wildly. “I can’t even think about the wedding yet.”

“Why?”

He smacked Bow’s back three times. She might have jumped, but her attention was focused on the basket in my hands. “It’s just too much. Too much happiness to think about. I feel like I’m going to burst.”

Hmph. I wonder if your father would agree if he had a mind of his own.
“It’s too bad you’re not already over seventeen like my father was. He had his Returning and his wedding on the same day.”

Jurij shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. I can wait nineteen months and four days.” Of course he had the exact days counted. “But today … ”

Today he could finally kiss Elfriede.

Not that some clever couplings hadn’t managed to before their Returnings by blindfolding the woman or making sure she kept her eyes shut tight when the man took his mask off. But Elfriede and Jurij were both too naive to try such things. “Today you get to walk around without a mask once and for all, never again fearing the eyes of women.”

Jurij didn’t respond. His mind was on the kisses, I feared, not the fact that he could finally let the skin on his face get acquainted with the sun.

“Well,” I said, not wanting to keep the woman who would spit on me waiting. “I guess I should get going. I’ll see you later. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Jurij stopped. “Do you want me to come with you?”

I felt the heat rush to my face. Of course, the only person in the entire village who could at all sense my discomfort was the one who was about to be lost to me forever. To a primping girl who had never fought a single monster with him.

“Sure. Thank you. I mean—” I shut my mouth, took a breath, and opened it again. “If you’re not too busy. Today being what it is.”

Jurij shrugged and made his way to the Tailor Shop door. “What more do I have to do? Swapped my mask, wore my cleanest clothing. I could use the distraction, actually. Every moment is proving to last forever.” He opened the door and Bow bolted past him to get inside. “Luuk! Watch Bow, will you?”

A young boy poked his wooden face out of the door and nodded. As ever, Luuk wore his timidity on his face, his features obscured by a darling wooden puppy. Rather like a certain boy forever in a kitten or bunny mask who used to tag along with me.

“Where are you going?” asked Luuk. At least I think that’s what he said. Thanks to his murmuring voice and the muffling veil over the puppy’s mouth hole, he might have asked, “When is dew snowing?”

Jurij understood his brother better than I did. He patted his head. “Old lady Ingrith’s.” He leaned in to the house and reached for something that must have hung near the door.

Luuk pulled back shyly to allow Jurij more room. He tapped his two index fingers together, like he was waiting for a turn to speak. But no one else was speaking.

Jurij pulled a red apple out from the doorway and lifted it to his mouth hole. Laughing, he tossed the apple, unscathed, onto the top of the cloth covering the rest of the food in the basket. “Can’t snack just now, I guess. I always forget you’re not a guy, Noll.”

Thanks so much for that
.

“Mama … ” Luuk coughed. “Mama says you and her are not to be bothered today.”

Jurij scoffed. “Mother says not to bother her most every day.”

That’s especially true for her husband, I imagine.

Jurij grabbed the basket from me. He bobbed his wooden face toward the grassy fields. “Should we take the shortcut?”

I grinned, hitching up the bottom of my skirt. Dirt was sure to blend in. Who would notice a few grass stains? “I’ll race you there!”

***

My legs weren’t made for running anymore. About halfway between the Tailor Shop and Ingrith’s, I gave up and started walking because there was no way I could run with the pain in my side. “Okay, you win, you win.”

Jurij had managed to get several paces in front of me, even with the basket in tow. He strode confidently through the grasses like he didn’t know the meaning of fatigue. But his body seemed to have noticed the exertion. By the time I caught up to him, I could hear his stomach rumbling.

“Do you need to eat?” I asked, thinking of the apple.

Jurij shook his wooden head. “No. Don’t worry about it. Besides, we ought to present Ingrith with
something
edible.” He stuck his hand into the basket and rummaged around. “What did you put in here? A stone?”

I tore the basket away from him and cradled it in my arms like a child. “I didn’t pack it. Mother did.”

Jurij nodded. “I suppose the gesture is all that’s important. It’s ill luck to have a Returning with the threat of the lord refusing to give the first goddess’s blessing.”

It’s ill luck to hold a Returning when your “goddess” forced herself to love you.
If Elfriede didn’t love Jurij, he wouldn’t live through the end of the day. Not if he still removed his mask. How could he be so confident that she loved him? After how she treated him?

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to even begin. But if his life was in danger … “Are you sure Elfriede loves you?” That was subtle.

From behind that contemptible mask, I heard what had to be a laugh. “Wow, Noll. Elfriede is lucky to have you as a sister.”

My chest tightened. “I just meant … ” What did I mean? I didn’t think she’d kill him on purpose. She wasn’t a bad person, really. But how did she know she wasn’t just fooling herself into accepting the only man who’d ever love her? I couldn’t see Elfriede taking up a trade and sending a man to the commune. To her, there was no other choice.

Jurij stopped walking, and I stopped too. “I know, I know. You’re scared about today. But, Noll, I’m not going to die. Elfriede loves me.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Have a little more faith in your sister. Sometimes I worry you don’t realize how wonderful she is.”

Jurij’s faith in her stung. “She can be
nice. I’m happy for you. Really.” There was a sharp burning taste in my mouth. “But we’re talking your life here.”

The earth shook beneath us. I stumbled and Jurij, the fool, reached out to catch me. Even as the ground kept shaking, I wanted to fling his hands off my arm and shoulder. The touch was so intoxicating, my hands were trembling. From the quake or the contact, I couldn’t tell. The basket I held, like everything about this awful village, kept the distance between us.

The shaking stopped. I looked up into the black holes in Jurij’s mask, and he let me go, his face poring over the horizon. “That started nearby.” Jurij rubbed his wooden chin. I’d have stopped to think about the ridiculousness of the gesture were it not for the seriousness of the situation.

I shook my head to clear it of the chaos under my feet and in my heart. “We should hurry.”

Jurij nodded, and he sprinted. With the basket and my heavy heart weighing me down, I had no chance of catching up to him. My legs felt like they were caked in mud, and they were pulling me down, keeping me from him.

When at last I caught up to him in front of Ingrith’s shack, Jurij was reaching out to the shriveled-up old woman, and the crone was batting his arms away, even as she stood on unsteady feet. The dirty black cloth she wore over her head tied her thick hair down and made her a bit less menacing than she’d seemed when I’d last seen her close up. When she was digging her claws into my shoulders.

Ingrith placed a hand on Jurij’s chest and pushed him backward. “You just leave me alone. I’ve got no need for masked men ’round here.”

“But Ma’am—”

“No buts. Get outta here.” Ingrith tore her eyes from him and let her glare fall over me as I approached them. “Wonderful. Now there’s a fine face I won’t soon forget. Come to bother an old woman again with your fancy games, girl?”

Better to pretend I had no idea what she was talking about. “Did you cause the quake?”

Bad idea. Ingrith’s face grew even more sour and puckered, and I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible. “Yes, I did. And never you mind.”

I glanced beyond the old woman to the rest of the northern dirt path. “But won’t the quarry workers notice? They’re close enough to have felt—”

Ingrith scoffed. “You let me worry about them workers.”

There was no sign of movement from the quarry, but still. “It’s got to be dangerous to look at the castle so near where there are men working.” She couldn’t have meant to kill the poor men, could she?

“Dangerous nothing, girl, I just made a mistake. A bird startled me. Can’t blame an old woman for lookin’ when something starts screeching at her.” Ingrith’s mouth clamped shut, and I could see the muscles tense in her jaw. She bent over to reach the walking stick she’d dropped.

Jurij tried to grab the stick for her. “Let me—”

“Oh, no.” Ingrith slapped his arm, and Jurij pulled back, cradling his forearm and staring at the woman with his blank-eyed face. Ingrith snatched her stick and stood back up. “Didn’t need no man’s help then, don’t need no man’s help now.”

Jurij turned his wooden mask toward me. The opened-mouth grin probably didn’t match his real expression underneath as the ungrateful old woman smacked him. But that was the Returning mask, and that was the countenance he was stuck with for the day. Until dusk, anyway.
I hope I really do see his face. Surely Elfriede forcing herself to love him is enough. Surely
…