by Amy McNulty
My feet flew forward across hard, slippery rock, at last puncturing the water’s edge. I wasn’t thinking. But there was no more reason to think. Just to find that laughter.
Though I’d never swum before, I dove. I started kicking and splashing as the water crushed me on all sides. But I was going forward. By all that I had in me, I would find some way to reach that happy sound. I bobbed up and down. Water streamed down my face, from the tips of that frizzy, wild bush of black hair I’d always despised, from the tears welling in my eyes.
The violet light grew blinding, positively blinding, shooting upward from beneath the water’s surface. I closed my eyes to block it.
As I took one last breath of air, my nostrils filled with a scent so strong, my stomach turned wild with waves of nausea. A soaked animal, sopping from the sudden rain. An uncooked fish lying lifeless on a pond’s grassy shore. Wet leather. I’d once spilled a mug at the Tailors’ as they worked the material into clothing.
“Noll!” The sound of Jurij’s voice—his deeper voice, his lost-to-me voice—was the last thing I heard as I tumbled below the water’s surface.
But at the same time, almost an echo of Jurij’s scream, another voice called me, a voice cold and far-flung, even though the emotion entrenched in it more than matched the intensity of Jurij’s terror. “Olivière!”
There were none who truly knew me who would say my actual, feminine name aloud.
My eyes shot open, but the world was a blur around me. The violet light grew dull. The water threatened to fade to darkness, and I knew if I fell down there, I would never, ever get back to the surface.
Is that what you want? Part of me wasn’t sure. I kicked and opened my mouth to scream, but I shut my mouth quickly when instead of sound escaping my lips, water started pouring inside, determined to consume me.
I heard a muffled sound beside me, but I couldn’t make out the words. An arm wrapped around my chest, and I kicked once or twice more before I discovered that kicking wasn’t going to do any good. I went limp in Jurij’s arms, and with his more powerful, focused kicks, we shot upward and broke the surface.
Only it wasn’t Jurij.
There was a black leather glove resting on my shoulder, a bare and ghastly arm wrapped across my chest. In the violet light, I could see the pallor of the skin, an odd, creamy, soft rose, washed pale with white. One of the specters? The lord’s servants? No, not that pale.
We’d come to the surface, but I couldn’t breathe. My eyes drifted closed, and open again, my vision blurry. The black glove, the pale arm became a dark hand, a tan sleeve. Jurij.
Jurij kicked us toward the shore. My eyes closed, and opened. The black glove, the pale arm.
A hard smack against my back. “Do not fight the reflex,” said an unfamiliar voice. Water spilled out of my guts. “You must purge yourself of the water.”
My eyes shut again as the water spilled out once more. As I struggled to keep them open, I tried to focus on the shoreline, and the tiny yellow flicker of candlelight I saw there. But the violet water stained my eyelashes and blurred my vision. Then I noticed the dark hand, the tan sleeve. My head twisted slightly to search for the wooden face.
“Close your eyes!” screamed Jurij.
Jurij grabbed the back of my head by the hair and shoved my head under water with a strength I didn’t know his thin arms possessed.
“Close. Your. Eyes!” I struggled to breathe and started kicking and thrashing. For a moment, I thought Jurij meant to kill me, perhaps for another excuse to comfort my sister.
And then I knew what had happened. I nodded as hard as I could under the water, shut my eyes tight, and I felt Jurij’s grip on my hair relax. He gently pulled me up, and I felt us reach the shore. He rolled me over onto my back. Perhaps not willing to trust me when it came to his life, I felt one of his hands clamp firmly over my eyelids.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Olivière. You could have died.” The other voice was faded now, the strange glove and arm no longer in sight.
“Yes.” I almost choked on another mouthful of water. But I’ll never really be all right again.
“Keep them closed,” said Jurij.
I nodded. I would never—not on purpose. Not even after we’d fought. I loved him.
Jurij decided to trust me. He lifted his hand from my face and helped me sit up, pounding on my back until I coughed up the last of the water that had tried to swallow me from the inside out. The scent of wet leather. So sickening.
I wiped my arm over my mouth to clean up the last of the spittle. My eyes were clamped so tightly shut I was afraid I would never be able to open them again.
“I’m going to go get my mask,” said Jurij quietly. “It’s floating on the pool’s surface a few paces from here. Keep your eyes closed.” Jurij’s voice seemed wary.
I wouldn’t risk your life, Jurij. Not like Elfriede would.
I heard him enter the water. Jurij was a natural swimmer, which I knew well from the times he and the other boys went swimming in the pond near the livestock fields, and this pool was even smaller in size. It was only complete idiots like me who could turn the thing into a death trap.
“You can open your eyes now.”
I tentatively opened first one eye and then the other. Jurij stood above me in his man mask, looking wet, otherworldly, and beautiful in the deep purple glow. I embraced him, squeezing him more tightly than I thought possible, and he wrapped me in his arms, tapping my back lightly before pulling away.
I let the moment go.
I faced the source of candlelight. The candlestick was perched on a rock, with no one at all around it. “Where’s the other man?”
“What other man?” asked Jurij.
“The other man.” I turned my head this way and that, searching desperately for the stranger. “The pale one. Wearing leather.”
Jurij squeezed my shoulder. “It’s just you and me here.”
“But—”
Jurij heaved a weary sigh. I supposed he’d had enough of dealing with me and my delusions, on what was the greatest day of his life. “Noll. We’re both wet. It’s cold. We need to get ready. It was already late when I came in here.” He stood and walked over to the candlestick, picking it up and starting back down the way we came.
I stood, but I hesitated. The candlelight was shrinking before me. I looked once more at the pool. The violet glow still illuminated the surface of the water, although it was subdued and fading. Amongst the stalactites, the ceiling seemed to sparkle, like violet stars in the blue moonlight.
“Noll?” Jurij’s voice echoed off the ceiling, almost like he was stuck there somewhere above me. “Are you coming?”
I shook my head to clear it of all its fantasies. There were no stars masquerading as violet lights in the ceiling. There were no laughing children deep in the cavern. No pale man calling me by my full name.
And no true love at all in the heart of the man I loved most.
In the Great Hall, all was quiet.
The two figures that drew everyone’s attention held hands and stared into each other’s eyes—or in Jurij’s case, the black holes in his mask. Over his features was the Returning mask, only it wasn’t wet and sopping, so I guessed perhaps he borrowed his father’s. Not that his father had yet had a chance to use it himself, but he kept it on hand “just in case” the impossible suddenly happened. Jurij’s new attire, red and bright and stunning, was a tad too large for him, so I guessed that was borrowed, too.
I could feel Mistress Tailor’s gaze boring into me from the seat on the other side of Luuk. Father might have done the same from my other side—I was, after all, barely dried and still wearing a damp, torn, and grass-stained mud-and-vomit dress—but his eyes were forward, locked on the woman at the center of the stage behind the coupling, as if she were the only thing that mattered.
Mother stood behind Jurij and Elfriede, a black leather book in her hands. It was the book of the lord’s blessing, the one kept
at the Great Hall in a dark corner, layers of dust upon its sour pages, only touched when it was time for a woman to show to all that she was truly in love. So come on, Elfriede. Prove that you’re in love. How was it possible to want and not want something all at once?
Mother smiled and stared out at the gathered crowd, waiting for the right moment.
Although there was a pit of worry buried deep in my stomach, I was almost falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion. It felt nice, having that land of dreams almost within reach. I hoped I would wake up and forget the day had ever happened.
Mother cleared her throat and held the book open, a bit of dust escaping from its crinkling yellow pages. The mother of the goddess didn’t officiate her daughter’s wedding. That occasion was less momentous and could be handled by some figurehead in the village. But at her daughter’s Returning, the mother stood in ceremony, ready to do as her mother did for her and her mother’s mother before her.
“In a dismal time, long ago, in our village enshrined in endless mountains gray and white, love was sparse, love was rare.” Mother licked her fingertip and turned the page. What she saw there made her smile and glance at Elfriede, who looked away from Jurij in order to grin back at her. “A mother’s devotion to her child, a sister’s loyalty to her siblings, might have been all one knew of love, of warmth and passion.”
I swallowed at the mention of a sister’s loyalty, my mind lost in a mixture of guilt and revulsion. Without realizing, I’d clutched the skirt of my dress until my knuckles grew pale.
After a moment more of droning, Mother’s voice grew louder, snapping me back to attention. “But then the first goddess came down to touch the ground, from peaks unreachable, from nothingness beyond the endless mountains.
“My children, I have heard your screams, seen your tears. You stirred my heart at the first cry, and so I leaped from the mountains and fell for ages, watching you suffer for years on end. At last my feet have touched the ground. You are no longer alone.”
No longer alone. How wrong those words were. I couldn’t focus on what other drivel Mother spouted from the lord’s “blessing.” The pain in my chest was too great.
Luckily, I was distracted by Mistress Tailor’s sudden loud breathing, so deep I thought she must be snoring. Beside her, Master Tailor reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she shrugged it away.
Mother’s voice grew stern. “The goddess’s words gave the women more than hope. She spoke and the women became goddesses themselves, goddesses with power to lock out the darkness. To keep it where it was deserved: across the faces of men.” I looked to Jurij, keeper of the darkness, but whatever he thought of this part of the story, his mask kept it from me.
Mother looked up from the book, the words seeming to come from her instead of the old and dusty pages. “We mask our boys and men. Deserving of the love of mothers and sisters and aunts and cousins they may be, and to them they may show their faces. But to prove themselves truly worthy of love and of the first goddess’s blessing, they must find the goddess in a woman of no blood relation when they grow from boy to man. They must treat her kindly, regard her with reverence, and win her affection. Should the goddess in turn love the man when she is at least seventeen years of age, she may Return her feelings to him and reveal his face to the light. From that day forward, he is free to walk unmasked, having proved himself worthy of love, never again to fear the power of a woman’s gaze, no matter what the years may bring.”
Mother’s eyes wandered back to the book, and she turned a page gently. “Every goddess shall have her due. Every woman shall get her man. So spoke the goddess, and so it shall always be.”
With that, Mother shut the book. Every woman? That was proof enough that the first goddess wasn’t as all-powerful as they claimed. But Ingrith mentioned that line …
My thoughts were racing, foolishly distracting me from the danger. Jurij let go of Elfriede’s hand and ripped off his ceremonial Returning mask.
He’s going to die!
And Elfriede’s smile grew wider. She closed her eyes, leaned forward, and the two shared their first kiss, forever sealing their union.
She loves him. That can’t be true! It can’t be!
My mind was screaming at me. I wanted to run up and fling him back from her, guarding his face from her eyes, from the eyes of all of the women around me.
Mother put the book down on the table behind her and grasped both Elfriede’s and Jurij’s hands in her own, raising them high above her head. “The goddess has judged Jurij, her man, worthy of love!”
The crowd exploded. Shrieks and cries echoed throughout the space, hurting my ears.
Unmasked men and women melted into each other’s embrace. Father jumped up and ran toward Mother, his arms outstretched. “Aubree!” called Father, devotion pouring into both syllables of Mother’s name, over and over between kisses. I looked away. I bit my lip, willing myself not to cry.
As Luuk stood from the chair next to me to join the celebration, I squeezed his hand tightly. His puppy face met mine and he sat back down beside his owl-masked father and his sour-faced mother. But only a moment had passed when he stiffened. Summoning strength I didn’t know he had, he ripped his hand free from mine, walked across to the room to the end of the row, and hugged a girl seated between her parents. Nissa. She was grinning as she hugged him back.
Mother unhooked herself from Father’s embrace and laughed, pointing at Luuk and Nissa. “Look, everyone!” she shouted. “The Returned’s brother has found his goddess!”
Laughter. Clapping. My hands clasped feebly together. Another one. Another coupling. All because of the first goddess. All because of a woman who appeared out of nowhere, barking out orders and vanishing from sight. All because of the lord and his goddess’s blessing. My awful attempt at clapping ceased, my body flushed with rage.
There were two others who didn’t bother to laugh with joy at the little boy who’d found his goddess. At last, I saw that stunning face I’d never seen before as it pulled away from Elfriede with great effort, its flame-filled eyes still mesmerized by her features.
“Half the village is here,” observed Master Tailor. “How wonderful.” Everything was “wonderful, wonderful” with that man. Must be great to live in a rosy, wonderful version of your awful life. If only I could. But I’m a woman, with a woman’s mind.
After the Returning, everyone had filed up to the Returned to smile and pretend like they cared for the happiness of a man and goddess not their own. That left the families of the goddess and her man off to the side, waiting for the ceremony to be over. I stood as far away from Jurij and Elfriede as I could without leaving the area. But next to Master Tailor stood Luuk and Nissa, their hands clasped, and every so often, I heard them giggling. There was no escaping it.
“Do you remember Elweard and Vena’s Returning? What, fifteen, twenty years ago?” asked Mother. She cradled a cup of wine in her hand. She’d offered me some, but I said no thanks. Wine, like the terrible laws of the village, made me nauseous. “The whole village was there.”
Father had one arm around Mother’s shoulder and the other stuck firmly across the front of her waist. “That one was a long time coming.”
Master Tailor had neither food nor drink nor a wife who loved him to occupy his hands. No surprise. He couldn’t eat with the mask on with all of the unrelated women about. But he could talk. “Didn’t they marry before the Returning?” Mistress Tailor looked up between bites of the roll she was stuffing into her mouth.
“I believe they got wed seven years before the Returning.” Alvilda, Master Tailor’s sister, gulped down most of the contents in her cup, which I suspected to have some pretty strong liquor. She sloshed the little remaining. “Vena was nine-and-twenty when she Returned Elweard’s love.”
Luuk’s puppy face actually tore away from Nissa, and he made a little choking noise. I wondered if he was gasping behind his mask. “So it’s not too late for you, Papa!”
Master Tailor laugh
ed. “Your mother’s a bit older than nine-and-twenty, sweetheart.”
Mistress Tailor, her jaw clenched, knocked against him as she made her way back to the buffet table.
My gaze followed her, even as Mother jumped to pick up the conversation with Master Tailor with some unimportant comment about the Great Hall’s decorations. Mistress Tailor grabbed another roll and watched the crowd, her gaze resting on first one coupling, then the next. Although she was the mother of the Returned, although her other son had just found his goddess, no one spoke to her.
Alvilda was also watching. She nudged me with her elbow and lifted a finger off of her cup in Mistress Tailor’s direction. “They shame her. Even more than they shame me.”
“Is it really so bad not to Return love to your husband?” At least she didn’t risk killing him before she was sure.
“Of course.” Alvilda still hadn’t finished the drink. She seemed fixated on creating little waves of turmoil within her cup. “It’s expected for you to Return love to your husband. If you can’t, you’re supposed to be honest about it and refuse him.”
“Dooming him to the commune? Isn’t it worse for a man to live like he’s dea—” I realized who I was talking to and clamped my mouth shut.
Alvilda laughed, and not out of mirth. There was something a little awkward about the way she spoke, and I wondered if she’d drunk too much. She wasn’t normally the type who did. “I know, I know. I sent a man there.” I noticed she didn’t refer to him as her man. She sloshed her cup again. “Better that than being constantly reminded of my failure to love him.”
“Then why do some women marry their men, if they don’t love them?”
“Who knows?” Alvilda leaned her head back and poured the last of the drink down her throat. She looked around for a place to toss the cup and dropped it on the edge of a nearby pillar. “Maybe they just want children? No other man but theirs will help them with that. Maybe they feel guilty about dooming a man to the commune?” She squinted at Mistress Tailor picking up a cup and filling it from a flask of wine. “Or maybe … maybe they truly hope they’ll love them someday, even though deep down they know it’s just a lie they tell themselves?” She patted me on the back. “Well, take care, Noll.” She gave one last pat on my shoulder. “I think I’m done celebrating for the day.”
