by Amy McNulty
I did as asked. The black hands shifted, intertwining the fingers lightly beneath the bottom of the veil.
“Thank you,” he said. His head appeared to shift slightly and he waved an arm behind him. “Please, join us. Your stew smells wonderful, and I did not come to delay your dinner. My retainers will serve you.”
Elfriede and Jurij exchanged a concerned look, perhaps a little surprised to be further noticed. An unspoken message passed between them and they shuffled over as one, Elfriede taking the remaining chair and Jurij standing protectively behind her.
“A chair,” spoke the lord with another wave of his hand.
“No, that’s all—” began Jurij, but the specters were already in and out of the home, returning with a cushion-laced stool instead of the black silken bag. Did they bring that with them in the carriage? They placed it down next to Elfriede, and one put his hands on Jurij’s back in order to guide him to sit atop the stool. “—right.” Jurij looked from Elfriede on one side to me on the other, as if hoping either one of us could explain what had just happened.
The specters were already gone, over by the stew pot, ladling stew into white glass bowls they seemed to have pulled out of their pockets.
No one said anything as they worked in fluid motions, setting out white bowls of stew and silver spoons before first me, then my father, and then Elfriede and Jurij. They went back to their guarded posts behind the lord.
Elfriede was the first to pick up her spoon, and Jurij soon followed. Elfriede’s hand twitched. “Won’t you dine with us?”
It was a silly question, considering the lord’s veil. The lord didn’t stir. “No, thank you, my dear. I am sure it tastes delightful, but your cooking is meant to enrapture a man other than me.”
Elfriede blushed and turned her attention to a floating chunk of potato. Jurij spread his arm on the table, trying to hide his now empty bowl. Usually, he seemed to feel nothing but delight—or at the very most, indifference—to others noticing his love for his goddess. The small gesture of him hiding the bowl from view felt odd to me, like there was a part of him that had enough free will to think negatively of the lord. To think anything of the lord. My heart was a flurry at the idea that Jurij might dislike the lord because he’d steal me from him, like that were possible. But that just reminded me that I was expected to accept the lord.
I looked at my own overflowing bowl. I couldn’t summon the will to lift the spoon. I shoved the bowl forward.
“I left Alvilda out front,” I said, anxious to change the topic. “She was blocked from entering by … ” My gaze traveled to the statue-still specters.
The lord waved his hand, cutting me off. “I will take but a moment of your time this evening. Are you feeling well, Olivière? You have not yet touched your food.”
All eyes—visible and not red eyes, at least—fell on my full stew bowl and me. Even Father, I noticed, had finished at least half of his.
“I already dined with Alvilda.” It was at least half-true.
Elfriede furrowed her brow and pursed her lips but said nothing.
“Alvilda?” asked the lord tensely. “She is?”
My father moved to open his mouth, but one of the specters bent down and perhaps murmured something where I imagined the lord’s ear to be. So they can speak?
“Ah,” said the lord. “The lady carver. I can see now why there are so many … interesting … wooden trinkets about.” He motioned to the mantle above the fireplace, where I had haphazardly dumped this morning’s creations.
Ugh. Those weren’t my best work.
“Do you really think her a wise companion, Olivière?”
I felt a roar of fire grow in my stomach. “Alvilda has talent. She may get most of the village’s carpentry and carving work these days instead of my father, but I assure you it’s by his own deeds that he suffers in his trade as of late.” I sent a pointed look to Father, but he did nothing more than pick up another spoonful of stew.
Another wave of a gloved hand. “I refer more to the detail that she refused her Returning.”
My jaw dropped. “What business is it—”
“I’ve told her time and time again that I agree with you, my lord,” interrupted Father.
My blood boiled. Really. I opened my mouth to speak.
“It matters not.” The lord began to rise, and the specters slid smoothly behind him to make room. “The morrow is Olivière’s Returning, and after the ceremony she will reside with me in the castle.”
I shot up, sending my chair flying backward and crashing. “Excuse me?”
“Noll, listen.” Father spoke quietly.
“I didn’t agree to a Returning!”
There, I had said it. No one had asked my opinion before.
Elfriede dropped her spoon onto her bowl. The silver hitting the glass made a strange clang, not like the wood-on-wood of our usual dinnerware. Jurij seemed stunned, and I noticed his hand twitched nervously on his thigh, his chair half pushed backward, whether readying himself to jump up or forcing himself to stay seated, I couldn’t be sure. Father’s face glazed over, his eyes darting from corner to corner, probably looking for a bottle.
The lord stood unmoved a moment, towering about a head over me. I tried to imagine where I might find his eyes behind the veil and I stared, daring him to correct me.
The lord’s hat shifted, and he made a quick motion in my direction with a gloved hand. For a moment, I thought the specters might move to grab me. I tensed, ready to put up as fruitless a fight as Alvilda had. Instead, they righted my fallen chair and exited the house through the doorway behind me.
“I assumed you would be ready by the morrow,” said the lord after a brief moment of silence. “I gave you time to prepare yourself. Even if you chose not to visit me. Besides, your father and sister assured me just now that you would be ready.”
A pain shot through my chest. I glanced at Father and Elfriede in turn, but neither would meet my gaze. Jurij, at least, seemed in genuine shock at the revelation. Perhaps he’d been dreaming of Elfriede when they’d had the discussion.
“I can see now that I was mistaken. The ceremony should be canceled,” continued the lord. He traced the table with the tip of a gloved finger as he made his way past my father to join Jurij and me at the other side. He held the finger up to his veil, examining the small traces of sawdust. Then he flicked away the dust with his thumb and grabbed my hand in his before I could stop him. His grip was harder than I remembered.
“But I will come for you on the morrow nonetheless.”
He slid my hand under his veil and pressed those cold, damp lips of marble to the tips of my fingers.
I didn’t speak for the rest of the evening. I couldn’t look at my father or Elfriede, and it was just as well for Father, who used the opportunity to stay long into the night at Vena’s. He didn’t appear again, not even in the morning to bid me farewell.
Elfriede busied herself first with freeing and washing Arrow and then with all manner of outside chores until the chilly air forced her to enter the home and pull herself beneath the bed covers. It wasn’t our shared bed that she entered, but our parents’. She needn’t have bothered. I didn’t use a bed. Instead, I curled up against Alvilda’s side, and we shared a quilt wrapped around our shoulders on the ground before the dying fire. She said nothing, only ceasing her gentle squeeze on my shoulder to stroke my hair on occasion.
Jurij gave me a sorry look and a pat or two on the shoulder before he disappeared outside with Elfriede. Some friend. But then, the command must have worn off after the Returning. When she came back inside, he wasn’t with her. I’d hoped to see him in the morning, but the carriage came bursting through the woods at the first fleck of light over the mountainous horizon. I felt the urge to flee, and I searched restlessly for some clue in Alvilda’s expression that I should follow the urge to run, that I could still hope for the choice that was my gift. The choice that was my right.
Alvilda wouldn’t meet my eyes.
<
br /> Elfriede shuffled out of the house, her face red and puffy. She nervously embraced me. I didn’t embrace her back. I half wondered if she was secretly happy to see me go, so I could no longer distract Jurij from his goddess. Because I had no doubt that Jurij had told her of how I begged for his love. He wouldn’t have thought it mattered at all. And to him, it didn’t.
“Good tidings,” Elfriede whispered. “Joyous birthday.”
I turned away.
Six specters appeared beside me, two grabbing my arms, the others before and behind me. They moved me toward the carriage as if I were a ragdoll.
“Wait!” called Alvilda. “I have to say goodbye!”
The carriage door shut behind me. I peered out the small window to watch as Alvilda chased after us for a bit, and Elfriede stood frozen in the doorway. Then they were swallowed by the trees, and the breaking light of dawn was replaced by the shades of darkness.
“Olivière.” I heard the whisper of my dream even then. Even when there was no hope for me to escape to it.
***
“Is the venison not to your liking?”
Since he had already noticed, I let my fork fall abruptly to the plate, taking a little perverse pleasure in the drop of gravy that spoiled the delicate roses embroidered into the too-white tablecloth. I tore at the trencher meant for scraping the plate of the meat’s juices and swallowed a chunk of the white loaf. It crumbled too easily in my throat.
“Olivière?”
I continued chewing and stared across the far-too-long table at the speaker. My dining companion. A set of black-gloved hands attached to a hazy outline obscured by a sheer black curtain. Actual sunlight was allowed into this castle, even if it was only the orange tint of twilight and not the bright white of true sunbeams, but it could do little to help me make out the lord behind the curtain. So this was how the masked ate when their goddesses couldn’t perform the Returning. At least this was how this one ate. I couldn’t picture Master Tailor bothering with this elaborate set-up in his home. I believed he ate only with Jurij and Luuk, or maybe at the Great Hall with other men or with Alvilda. And never with his goddess.
But this masked lord wasn’t one for propriety.
It was hard to decide when the lord looked most inhuman, walking around with a veil wrapped around his head showing me this or that room in the castle, or sitting leagues away from me at a dining room table, that long curtain hanging between us, for our first breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. The masks on the boys and the few masked men of the village seemed almost human in comparison, although they never actually resembled humans until the day of their Returnings.
I thought of the lord from my dream, and how he thrust his face in mine.
I nearly choked on my trencher.
The lord took great care to lay down his knife and fork so that the plate only clinked with the most dulcet of tones.
“Olivière? Are you all right?”
His hand motioned upward behind the veil, and one of the specters standing still at the far edge of the room came to life and arrived swiftly at my side to pour wine into a crystal goblet. I hated the foul taste of wine, but I grabbed it roughly from the specter and downed an entire glass until the bread worked its way free of my throat.
“Are you all right now?” The hands clutched the edge of the table. “Olivière? Answer me!”
“Yes!” I slammed down the goblet, hoping it would shatter, but it remained intact.
The hands let the tablecloth go and picked up the knife and fork again to cut the rest of the meat still on his plate.
I felt a bit light-headed. This was why I hated wine. I shoved the plate away from me. The flank of brownish meat was even more disgusting now that my nose was full of the stench of alcohol.
“Would you care for another dish for dinner?”
One hand stabbed at a piece of meat with the fork, and then the fork and the hand vanished behind the curtain.
I shook my head and used both hands to push against the table. “I’d like to be excused now.” I stood up.
Half-a-dozen specters surrounded me on either side before I could take one step.
“Sit down,” said the lord behind the black curtain. “Please.”
I did not. “I’m not feeling well,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You have not eaten enough. Food will improve your temper.”
A few well-placed stabs from Elgar the Blade to his abdomen might “improve my temper.” I took a deep breath. Just because I dreamed of a lord even more foul didn’t mean this one deserved my anger. I moved to sit, but I caught myself halfway. And why wasn’t he deserving? When I thought of how he’d acted when I’d begged for help, or how he assumed I’d perform the Returning … I had power over him. It was time he remembered that.
“Let. Me. Leave.”
The fork fell to the floor with an echoing thud. One hand gripped the tablecloth again. I found it strange to observe the specters looking almost lifelike all around me. They didn’t move to pick up their lord’s fork. They didn’t move to block me. In fact, a number of them stepped backward, clearing a roundabout way to the dining hall doorway. I smiled.
The lord loosened his grip on the tablecloth and picked up a napkin from beside his plate. “She means to let her retire from the dining hall for the night. And so shall I.” The napkin disappeared behind the curtain.
The specters swept into a state of activity, having regained their composure. As expected, one swooped down by his lord to pick up the fallen fork. The others stood in two facing lines, forming an enclosed path between the doorway and myself.
But I wasn’t satisfied.
“No, that’s not the full extent of my wishes,” I began, emphasizing each word with a strained attempt at Elfriede’s own pretense of innocent sweetness. “Let—”
The lord flew into motion, knocking his chair backward into the waiting arms of one of the specters. The curtain in front of him shook rapidly with the movement.
“Do not speak further!” he bellowed.
The words echoed in the cavernous dining hall and died only after a series of repetitions.
I could see the two black-leathered hands clench into fists below the surface of the fluttering curtain.
I clenched my own fists. “I don’t think you understand how this works—”
“Silence!”
“No! Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re supposed to mean to me? I don’t even know you. I don’t want to be here, and you’re expecting me to perform the Returning!”
The black fists pounded on the table. “Was it not you who first sought me out?”
I gestured at the ridiculously large, cold, and empty room around me. “Not for this! I never asked to be your goddess! I just wanted—” I bit my lip. There was never going to be any going back.
“You wished to free your friend so you could steal him from his goddess.” He made a gesture toward the line of specters, and the two closest appeared at my side, their hands wrapped tightly against my arms. “How unfortunate that I was unable to help you with such a generous act.” I struggled to break free, but I felt powerless in their tight grip.
The lord turned sharply. Before he took more than two steps, a series of specters appeared from the line, one to pick up his plate from the table and then one who fit the lord with his black veil and hat even as he walked. He appeared in mere moments from the side of the curtain.
“Come with me!” He exited the dining hall doorway.
The specters dragged me after him. I kicked and screamed, and, thinking of Alvilda, even tried to reach the specters’ hands in order to bite them. They dragged me forward without hesitation, and other specters broke from the line to open the doors for the lord.
“Stop!” I screamed.
The lord stopped.
“Let me—”
“Silence her!” he ordered before walking again, and one of my pale captors produced a black veil-like material and wrapped it over my mouth,
tying it at the back of my head. My eyes welled with tears. But not from sadness. No, this was a rage I’d felt only once before. He’s just like the men from my dream.
Staring straight ahead into the back of that black-veiled head was no different than staring right into the front. It made me realize that there was no loss of honor to stab this man in the back if need be. The thought gave me comfort, and I let the specters drag me, soon willing my feet to keep up with their pace so that they wouldn’t be so sore. But try as I might, I couldn’t quite match my pace with them or with the lord in front of me.
He led us through the main entryway and up a flight of stairs. From there, we marched down the long hallway that contained an empty set of guest rooms—one of which the lord had shown me earlier and told me would be mine, an opulent room that retained the chill of the castle air despite the tremendous fire in the fireplace and the bear-skin rug spread before it. I had spent the afternoon after the “tour” and lunch nestled deep within the fur, and still the chill sliced down inside of me.
As we passed a hall window, I noticed that the sun had set. The dull torchlight and the slit of a moonbeam were all there was to light the way. But the lord moved through the near-darkness unheeded, as comfortable navigating the twists and turns of the path before us as I had been in my own dark secret cavern. Only I at least knew a violet glow awaited me at the end of that journey. What would await me now? A prison? A shackle for my arms and legs to match the muzzle over my mouth?
The lord led us up another flight of stairs and across a hallway. My heart sank at my speculations nearly proven. This had not been on the “tour.” The specters had even blocked me from coming this far my first time to the third floor. The lord’s shoulders twitched as we passed the throne room, its doors opened, the room darkened. But I’d never been past this point.
At the end of that hallway—the coldest place yet in the castle, a blast of icy air blowing in from the few windows—stood two more specters, immobile before a large wooden door.
