Nobody's Goddess (The Never Veil)

by Amy McNulty

  Jurij and Elfriede were seated at the small dining table, eating. The table was covered with a thin layer of sawdust that belied how often Alvilda really used the table for its intended purpose.

  Elfriede laid the rest of her crispel on the table and wrinkled her nose. “Good day, Noll.” At least I think that was what she said. Elfriede’s gentle voice and Alvilda’s tools running across the wood made for a bad combination. If I care to hear what she has to say, anyway. I shook my head. I was being awful. It wasn’t so bad when we were home without Jurij and she could tell me how happy she was that “my man” had found the goddess in me. But whenever Jurij showed up, I felt like there was nothing but frost in the air between us.

  I’d spent the morning in the garden, trying not to think about anything, to little avail. I saw Elfriede leaving with a basket, and I figured she was off to fetch her man. I didn’t figure on encountering them here.

  It’s almost like she knows what you told Jurij. She probably did.

  “Good day,” I said at last. “Didn’t know you were here.”

  “Gideon sent us on a quest,” said Jurij as he shoved the rest of the cheese in his mouth.

  Alvilda laughed as she ran her file back and forth against the large rough edge that remained on the future headboard. “Not one of those monster-hunting quests, is it?”

  It was my turn to smile. “No, we haven’t been on one of those in a while.”

  Elfriede spoke at the same time, and rather loudly. “I always thought those games were rather stupid.”

  I opened my mouth to point out that her “beloved” enjoyed those games she found rather stupid, but I thought better.

  Jurij looked first at Elfriede and then at me. I was surprised he was able to tear his eyes off her for someone as unimportant as me. He stretched and stood from the table, strolling over to examine some of the pieces of wooden art that lined Alvilda’s walls from one side to the next. Jurij pointed to one of the pieces. “Have you ever seen this one, Noll?”

  He’s talking to me. I watched Elfriede out of the corner of my eye as I came up behind him. She seemed bored, more concerned with straightening imagined wrinkles in her skirt. But then I stood on my toes and put a hand on his shoulder in order to get a closer look. Elfriede got up at once and made her way to stand beside me.

  I pulled my hand back immediately. He’s just your friend. He’s her man. I thought you’d gotten used to that. I focused on the carving. It showed a little girl smiling with a triumphant look on her face. She held a long tree branch—Elgar—high above her like it was the mightiest blade in the land. Beside her—but a little behind her, I took note—was a heroic-looking diminutive retainer wearing a kitten mask. I spun to face the artist. “Alvilda! Is that Jurij and me?”

  She grinned. “It is indeed.” She paused to wipe her brow with the back of her arm.

  I laughed and exchanged a smile with Jurij, forgetting for just one moment that there was anyone else with us, that there was anything but happy feelings between us.

  The chirping bird cleared her throat. “I’ve asked Auntie to do one of our Returning.” “Auntie.” Of course. She’ll be one of the family soon.

  My smile faded and I stepped back. Elfriede stepped in immediately to intertwine her arm with his. Jurij smiled peacefully and tilted his head so that Elfriede’s golden curls caressed his cheek.

  Alvilda appeared behind us, wiping sawdust from her hands with a rag that she carelessly tossed over the fireplace mantle once she finished. “I’m definitely looking forward to carving that.” She focused her dark brown eyes on me, and I saw something in them that made me wonder just how much she meant her words. “But first, I’m a little busy with a special gift here.”

  She got between the coupling so she could grab Jurij by the shoulder and shake him playfully. The blush that covered Jurij’s entire face said it all.

  A bed headboard. An upcoming wedding. But Jurij wouldn’t turn seventeen for a year. I forced myself to smile. “Are we thinking about wedding gifts already?”

  Elfriede studied me a moment. She didn’t seem to like what she found. “Headboards take a while, and Alvilda’s too busy to spend all of her time on it.” She smiled sweetly at me. “Of course, I know your Returning comes first, Noll. Just let me know what you’d like. I’m quite excited.”

  My Returning. A woman had the choice to send her man to the commune, but …

  No one’s ever been the goddess of the lord, not in my lifetime or my parents’ lifetimes, either. It seemed to go without saying that I’d accept him.

  Alvilda wiped her brow and slipped an arm around both Elfriede’s and Jurij’s shoulders as she stuck her head between them. She had a bit of sawdust in her hair. “Which tools did Gideon want now?”

  I cocked my head. “Father wants to borrow tools?”

  Alvilda nodded and stepped back. “More like he wants the tools I’ve borrowed back.” She made her way to her toolbox and started picking through its contents.

  “It’s Mother, really.” Elfriede hugged Jurij tighter. “She was doing a bit better this morning. She got mad that he’d given away so many of his tools when she was in and out over the past few days, and she asked that we get them back, so Father could start working again.” Elfriede pinched her nose. “It’ll make her happy.”

  But it won’t make him work, she seemed poised to say. Alvilda laid out a number of tools on her workbench. “That seems a bit much to carry like that. You can borrow some baskets.”

  Elfriede walked to the cupboard and pulled out a basket like it was her home and she knew were everything was. She took out three and Jurij started filling them.

  Alvilda crossed over to where Elfriede was standing. She smiled as she put one of the baskets back into the cupboard. “I think two baskets should be enough.” Jurij finished loading the second basket as she spoke as if to prove her words true. “And I’d like to elicit Noll’s opinion on that special gift I’m working on.”

  Beautiful. Now I’d be helping plan the décor resting over their wedding bed.

  Elfriede’s shoulders relaxed, and I suspected she was relieved not to have to fight for her man’s attention on the trek back home. She stepped to the door without picking up either basket. “Thank you again for lunch, Auntie.”

  Alvilda nodded. “Sure thing. You’re always welcome!”

  Jurij slipped his arms around both baskets. I wondered if Elfriede knew that if she offered to carry one, he’d refuse, or if she didn’t even bother to worry about him carrying all of that without assistance. Either way, he seemed delighted. “See you later!” he called, and then both were gone, Elfriede shutting the door behind them.

  I turned back to the carving and sighed.

  Alvilda left me to my thoughts for a few moments. I could hear her pick up the file and continue working. “I didn’t really want to ask you about the headboard.”

  I jumped. Alvilda rested her file back on her workbench and grinned. “Come, now. Even I’m not that heartless.”

  Heartless. Ingrith had called the man who had found the goddess in me the heartless monster. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t understand anything about him, and I was so scared to find out more. So frightened to acknowledge that I had a big decision to make.

  I snapped out of my daze just long enough to pull out one of the sawdust-covered chairs at the eating table. Alvilda followed suit.

  “It’s all right,” I said, breaking a few tense moments of silence. I wanted to talk about everything. I wanted to ask her if there was a way to act as if I’d never gone to the castle. I wanted to ask her if it would be okay to delay the lord’s courtship as much as possible, to pretend to be preparing my heart for the Returning day after day, year after year as I continued living as if nothing had changed.

  But why is it different for me? Why do I have to Return at all? I’d rather live the rest of my own days in the commune.

  Alvilda of all people should have been able to understand my feelings, but even she
thought it a bad idea to reject the lord. “He’s good to us. He pays the villagers well for their wares.” But what did I care? If even Alvilda thought that I should sacrifice myself so the rest of the village could pocket a few more coppers, I couldn’t betray any of my plan to delay the Returning. “Plus, he’s—” Alvilda had dropped what she was going to say then, choosing to bite her lip instead. It was probably “always watching.” The people in the village were worried he’d punish them for forgetting to invite someone to a Returning, so what would he do to them if his goddess refused to love him?

  He’s not always watching, though. He can’t be. He’s just a man.

  So I couldn’t ask any questions. Not questions that mattered anyway. Still, I figured it would be rude to pass up a rare invitation to get to know Alvilda better. She wasn’t one for musings. “A waste of time, effort, and the brain our foremothers blessed you with,” she often said.

  “Why did you choose woodworking?” I asked. Maybe she’d mistake my intentions and tell me about the beauty of the craft; I could let it wash over me and retreat back to the emptiness in my heart.

  “Well,” said Alvilda softly. “Women have the right to choose what their hearts tell them. It’s a gift from the first goddess.”

  My eyes welled again. “That’s a lie! It’s not a gift—and it’s not even true!”

  So much for sidestepping the issue.

  Alvilda coughed. “It’s not an easy gift, I know.” She tapped her fingers over the table and looked thoughtful, a rarity on her features. “I know.”

  She let me cry a bit without saying anything more. I almost grabbed a rag with which to wipe my face, but I remembered the sawdust and spread my tears all over my sleeve instead. I no longer could stand to wear aprons.

  Finally, I managed to compose myself. “Whatever it is, it’s different for me.” I can’t send the lord to the commune. I just can’t. No one would let me.

  “I know, dear. I’m sorry.”

  What else was there to say?

  Alvilda broke into the silence. “You know, I tried to love Jaron.” So that was his name. Mother’s first love. “I really did. I certainly didn’t dislike him.”

  I scoffed. I hadn’t intended to be rude to Alvilda, especially as she opened herself up to me. But even though I felt Alvilda was the closest person I had to someone who might understand, it wasn’t the same.

  Alvilda didn’t notice or at least didn’t comment. “Whenever I let my thoughts wander, I feel so ill at the idea of what my choice has done to him I want to retch.”

  I met Alvilda’s eyes. They were strong, dark brown like mine, but I detected a glisten in them. Unlike me, though, she held it in, her throat making a gurgling noise as she steeled herself to speak further.

  “I thought about marrying him even without the Returning. So many had done it before.” She looked upward at the art carvings behind me. “But I couldn’t decide if his muted happiness at being near me would be worth the torment of my own soul in his stead.”

  I nodded. “And people didn’t urge you to marry him anyway? Tell you how sometimes the Returning is delayed years and that there could be a chance you would both one day be happy?” The words were not my own, but the echoes of voice after voice and lecture after lecture.

  Alvilda bit her lip and didn’t look away from the wall behind me. “Yes, they did. But no, I would never, ever be happy.”

  My gaze followed Alvilda’s. She saw me looking and tore away, but I saw the carving in which she had been engrossed. Her family. Luuk as a toddler in his bunny rabbit mask, his mother holding him in her arms with a sour look carved deep and permanently into her features. Master Tailor stood next to Mistress Tailor, one hand on Jurij the puppy dog who stood in front of him, his other arm tightly around Mistress Tailor’s shoulder, his demeanor projecting a sense of joviality that his face could not. Because Master Tailor still wore a mask, his face obscured by that of an owl’s.

  Of course. Alvilda had witnessed her brother marry without the Returning. As his blood relation, she knew his face, but she chose to carve him with his missing features. Perhaps to guard his secret from the wandering female eye. Or perhaps to remind herself of what could have been, had she chosen to marry Jaron against her heart’s desire.

  “In any case,” Alvilda said, her tone calm but still trembling, “I’m sorry for my foolish ramblings. I know that your circumstances simply don’t compare to mine. The lord is—well, in any case, you don’t want to go through what I did.” Alvilda walked across the room, rummaged through her toolbox, and came back to the eating table.

  “Here,” she said, tossing a small chunk of wood and a chisel on the table. “It’s the most I can do for you. You’re going to learn woodcarving.”

  Woodcarving was the only thing I had, the only thing that quieted my thoughts. When I worked, I was able to forget. I first took a tool in my hand and turned a rough piece of wood into a sphere. It wasn’t much, but I controlled what the wood would be. And no one told me I didn’t really get to choose.

  I’d grown better in the past few weeks. Elfriede thought woodcarving was a wonderful idea—as a hobby, she emphasized. And then on further introspection, as a hobby for now, she would add. As if I could forget that I had so little time before I was expected to perform a miracle. I already had a miniature sculpture of Elfriede’s new golden puppy, Arrow, to present to her as a gift. It was only after I had finished that my numbed mind remembered that Arrow himself had been an early wedding gift from Jurij, and I probably shouldn’t have spent so much time carving his image into my mind before the happy coupling and I went our separate ways.

  Father had little to say about my talent, or the tools I borrowed from him without asking. But I forgave him. I felt as numb as he did these days.

  Mother was only sometimes with us.

  Father was behind the house on a tree stump, whittling what looked to be a bowl or a cup. Mother sat beneath the shade of a tree on the edge of the woods, her hand clasping a small piece of wood. Mother should have known that if she was near Father when he worked, she’d wind up distracting him. But lately she was loath to part from him at all.

  “How are you feeling today?” I nestled into the grass and leaned against the tree beside her. I clutched little wooden Arrow in my hands to work on the finishing touches, although my model was off somewhere with Elfriede and Jurij.

  It took a moment for Mother to acknowledge me. She turned her head slowly. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, a sallow tinge to the once-beautiful oaken shade of her skin. “Better,” she lied.

  I looked up to watch Father’s reaction. He held the bowl and chisel in his hands as if he were still carving, but his hands were frozen.

  “Your father’s working,” Mother said. “He’s making beautiful things.”

  Father’s hands moved again, slowly.

  I took a closer look at the wooden figure in Mother’s grasp. “What’s that?”

  Mother turned it over and lifted her arms weakly to bring it closer to me. “It’s a lily. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Seeing the hint of a smile on Mother’s face made me genuinely happy. I gestured to the fields behind Father. “It’s lovelier than all the ones around us.” It was getting colder, and those blooms were dying.

  Mother leaned her head against the tree bark and shut her eyes. A moment passed and she began to breathe deeply.

  I shifted the wooden flower that was slipping from her grasp to the center of her lap. I laid her hands across it. She didn’t stir.

  “She’s getting worse every day.” Father continued to carve his bowl. His interest in me was usually so decidedly little it took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me.

  “The others in the village are still sick.” I pulled my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around my knees. A merchant’s wife. The butcher’s daughter. Even little Nissa’s mother. All struck ill, the same day as Mother. The day after I visited the castle.

  But Father had little intere
st in the rest of those ill in the village. He threw the bowl and chisel down into the grass, cradling his forehead. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t know what to say.

  Father looked up from his hands. “Will you ask the lord if he can help us?”

  “The lord?” I’d tried my best not to think about that night. Even though I always failed. “What could he do?” My voice faltered.

  As if in response to my question, I heard the sound of a wooden wheel and the clip-clop, clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the dirt path. It could have been perfectly timed, but the same thing had happened every evening since the specters brought me home the night I met the lord.

  The black horses and the carriage burst through the trees and halted in front of our home. A specter sat atop the carriage, his back stiff, his hands clutching the reins. Two specters stepped out of the carriage and stood in front of it, their hands clasped behind their backs, as still as if there was no breath within them.

  Now, as always since that first night, I was drawn to their eyes, all of them red like blood on ice. As a child, the eyes had scared me a little. But then I noticed that there was no trace of flame there, and that too set them apart from other unmasked men. Somehow, this made the specters more sad than horrifying.

  Father clasped his hands together and leaned his arms over his thighs. He tilted his head toward them. “Go with them. Ask.”

  I stood, quickly. “I can’t.” I couldn’t. Going there in the first place had been a terrible mistake. But I couldn’t possibly explain it to Father.

  Mother’s eyes fluttered open. She brushed a hand against the hem of my skirt. “Noll … ”

  “They’re here again.” I swallowed the sour taste in my throat. “The specters. His servants.”

  Father appeared beside Mother, kneeling beside her. “How are you feeling, darling?” He placed the back of his hand against her cheek. “Warm.”

  Mother laid a hand on Father’s knee gently. “Gideon, I’m fine.” She turned her head to look up at me. “Does he want you to visit him?”