Nobody's Goddess (The Never Veil)

by Amy McNulty

  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 crones? 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?”

  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.

&n
bsp; “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.