by Amy McNulty
My clapping slowed, even as the rest of the crowd grew more jubilant. Alvilda’s expression grew sour next to me, and she grabbed me gently by the hand. “Let’s go,” she whispered. She tugged me gently toward the back of the archway. I noticed Mistress Tailor’s bitter expression as she watched us go; Luuk and Nissa leaned in toward one another, smiling girl forehead plastered against wooden duck crown. It never ends, this wretched cycle.
“Congratulations,” Alvilda said softly to Master Tailor as we passed by him. She patted him on the back with her free hand. Master Tailor turned briefly and nodded. I thought I could hear him weeping, but the sound was hollow beneath the owl mask.
We walked around Elweard and stood behind my father. He saw us coming and pointedly turned back toward the jubilant crowd, digging into his front coat pocket and pulling out a small bottle. Before the bottle could quite reach his lips, Alvilda let me go and moved her hands to block it.
“Come, Gideon,” she said. “Come and speak now with your daughter.”
Father sighed and slid the bottle back into his pocket. The cheering crowd began to make its way toward us and the village.
“Let’s go,” said Alvilda, taking hold of Father and me, one in each arm. “We can talk at my place. We can pay our respects to the happy coupling later.”
We headed down the hill and toward the village. The specters in the distance stirred and jumped atop the carriage.
***
“Tea?” asked Alvilda, already pouring the hot water into the mugs she’d placed before Father and me. She put down the kettle and went back to her cupboard. As she rummaged around for leaves, Father snuck a sip of ale out of his bottle. Alvilda dropped the tea leaves into the water and took a seat at her sawdust-covered table between us. She looked from one of us to the other. I grabbed hold of my mug.
“Gideon,” said Alvilda, when no other voice was forthcoming. “I think it’s time you have a heart-to-heart with Noll. It’s actually high past time.”
Father sighed and began fumbling at the outside of his coat pocket. “What does she know?”
I felt the heat of the tea almost singe my palm through the mug. “I know that my father is so ashamed to face me that he won’t even speak directly to me.”
Father wiped a tired hand across his gray and black hairline. “I’m sorry, Noll. When I saw you’d showed for the wedding … I just didn’t know what to say.”
“You should have started by asking how Mother was doing.”
Alvilda gasped. Father’s eyes widened. “She’s well, then?”
I slapped my palms atop the table. Sawdust went flying, probably landing in my tea. “I can’t say how well she’s doing, fast asleep in the care of a monster!”
Father pulled his ale bottle out of his pocket and took a swig. Alvilda didn’t stop him.
“I knew he had her,” said Father at last. “I didn’t know for certain if she was still living. I thought I’d feel it if she … well. I couldn’t be sure.”
My eyes couldn’t meet his, couldn’t stare into the budding ember of flame I knew I’d find there.
Alvilda looked from one of us to the next. “So you’ve seen her, Noll?”
I shifted in my seat uncomfortably. “Just once. My first night there, he took me to see her in a guarded room, sleeping. She didn’t wake. And he made sure that I knew the consequences of abusing my power over him: Her death.”
“The cheat!” Alvilda banged her hands across the table.
“That evening when you were gone, Aubree took a turn for the worse.” Father gulped the ale for a moment, slamming down the empty bottle. “She was breathing so heavily. She could barely speak, but she couldn’t stop moaning. Sweat poured off her like she’d just come in from a torrent of rain. Then she stopped moaning. That was scarier than when she was moaning. She was still breathing, but barely.”
Father drummed the shaky fingers of his free hand on the table. “I heard a sound outdoors. I thought it might be you or Elfriede come home at first, but it was louder than that. The door burst open. It was the lord’s servants.”
He picked up the bottle and tried to take another sip. When he came up empty, he leered at the bottle and put it back down. “I told them you weren’t there, to be on their way to find you, that I had a dying wife to worry about. Then they came to the bed and picked her up, carried her right out the door without so much as a word to me. I jumped in and followed. ‘This was all I wanted from Noll,’ I told myself. Just to ask the man. Ask him if he could help us. Since he’d do anything for you.”
“I did ask him. That same night. You wouldn’t believe me. But that’s probably why he finally sent for her.”
Father shook his head. “The lord greeted us in the entryway to the castle, wearing his black veil and hat. I dropped right down to my knees, even as the pale servants lay Aubree on the floor before me. ‘Have mercy, my lord,’ I said. ‘Do what you can to spare my wife. I’ll do anything.’ ‘And where is Olivière?’ he asked. ‘Why has she not come with you?’ Well, I wanted to say it was just that Noll is such a—” Father stopped suddenly, held the empty bottle to his lips and spat. He wagged a finger at me. “She’s a stubborn girl, but I thought better than to insult a man’s goddess right in front of him, so I said nothing.”
But you don’t think better than to insult your own daughter in front of her. Not that that was surprising. I took a sip of my tea. It tasted a bit of sawdust.
Father plopped his filthy spit-bottle down on the table. “The lord, he waited a bit for my answer. I suppose he finally figured I had nothing to say to him on the matter, so he bade me to rise. ‘That woman continues to aggravate me,’ he said, which is why I thought you hadn’t visited him. I thought he’d tell me if you had. ‘I can heal your wife. It will take time. Tell no one she is here, not even your daughters, and do not come here yourself. You can see your wife again on the day of Olivière’s Returning.’”
If he could heal her, why wasn’t he certain until he’d sent me away? “He told you not to tell me? How could he—”
Father cut me off, letting go of the bottle in order to wring his hands. “I dared to ask if he was certain he could save her. I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. He gave me a warning. ‘The lord of the village does not make promises he cannot keep.’ I begged his forgiveness. I just didn’t know what to believe, what with the talk of immortality and how it was his lack of a goddess that had made him master of death. But I knew beyond a doubt that the lord had never found a goddess among all of the women in my lifetime, so maybe it was possible. I just worried that having found Noll, he’d have lost whatever it was that made him keep death at bay.”
Of course. Another excuse to blame me.
Alvilda sighed and stretched her arms up over her head. “I hope you didn’t say that part aloud.”
Again, Father tried to drink from the empty bottle. “No, of course not.”
“So you’ve heard it, too,” I interrupted, putting the mug down. “The title the ‘heartless monster.’”
Alvilda let her arms fall gently to the table. “People have never liked to talk much about the ‘always watching’ lord and his servants. A whisper here, a tale there—the things one could piece together are downright laughable.” She sighed. “The ‘heartless monster.’ A strange way to put it, but it means that he’s inhuman, an immortal whose heart never found its goddess and so he lives forever.”
I felt something strange clutching my heart, like I could feel the man watching me. “Mother told me it was just a story.” But if that dream was real, and that was the lord when he was younger, it’d have to be long ago. So you’re actually certain you went into the past. Through a pond. I knew it was crazy, but it felt true. Maybe spending so long alone in the castle had made me lose my sense of reason.
“I have to admit,” said Father, running a nervous finger over his palm, “it seems to be the only explanation. No one can remember when he came to be.”
“Nonsense,�
� said Alvilda, waving a hand. “All of this talk of immortality in our blood is merely an old wives’ tale.”
I cocked my head to the side. “And what of the men and the masks? And the power of their goddesses?”
Alvilda looked thoughtful for a moment but then shrugged. “That’s just the way things are.”
I mulled that over. What was in front of us was fact. What we couldn’t prove was nonsense. But still I didn’t understand why men and women were so different. Or why men and women were so different in such a very different way in my drowning dream.
“So you really don’t know more about him than the whispers I’ve heard myself.”
“Did you believe those whispers then?” asked Alvilda.
I shrugged. “Maybe. There are far too many things about the man in the castle that set him apart. You have no idea of the lengths to which he goes to offset the power I have over him. I wasn’t exaggerating about his threat to kill Mother. It’s like he can’t stand that he loves me. I’m not even sure he loves me. Not that I want him to love me.”
“Kill? A person? Like the animals we kill for meat?” Alvilda shook her head thoughtfully. “No. I’m sure not. But even so, I can’t picture a man who had found his goddess who would do anything other than agonize and wish to please her. Younger boys can manage to engage themselves in different pursuits from time to time because their hearts haven’t yet given up hope. But once a goddess turns seventeen, a man pretty much knows whether or not he’ll ever have her—in one form or another.”
She sighed. “For a man to actively plot against his own goddess seems something altogether new. I know men can be torn between their own desires and the desires to make their goddesses happy, on the rare occasion that those desires don’t line up. But for one to grab hold of his own wishes while knowingly making his goddess so unhappy goes against everything we know. If that were true, maybe there could be hope for men without the Returning to find happiness in another form. But that simply is not so.” She stared over my father’s head at the art on the wall. It always came back to her brother.
“What if I told you I have reason to believe he’s different? That he has lived a long time. Longer than he ought to have.”
Alvilda seemed genuinely curious. “What do you mean?”
“I … ” I bit my lip. “Did anyone—your grandparents, talking about their grandparents maybe—tell you of a time when men walked around without masking their faces?”
“No … ” Despite the flush on Father’s cheeks, he seemed to think I was the one who was drunk.
“You mean, like the tales of the first goddess?” Alvilda asked. “That’s just a story, Noll. A way to explain why thing are. But there’s no proof things were ever any different.”
Father shook his head. “Maybe they were. Long ago. But the legend of the first goddess must be a thousand years old.”
We three sat silently for a while. I felt stupid. A thousand years? You really think you traveled back in time a thousand years, and that the lord lived then and has lived to this day? How? It just can’t be. It felt real then, but now it’s just a memory.
Finally, Father let out a deep breath. He didn’t seem interested in my visions of the past. Not when his goddess’s life hung in the balance.
“Whatever you think of the lord, Noll, he saved your mother’s life.”
Both Alvilda and I turned toward Father.
Father traced a pattern in the sawdust on the table with his finger. “Everyone who got sick from that illness died, Noll. Every single one. And I think all of her stress over your refusal to love your man made Aubree susceptible.”
I grimaced. This revelation explained much of the unspoken strain between us after Mother’s “death.” My mother was his goddess, and whatever I was to him, nothing could match the worth he put on her health and happiness. He could feel free to blame me. I no longer cared. “Mother understood. She didn’t want to rush me. She wanted me to be happy.”
Father licked his dry, cracked lips. “But that’s only because she assumed you’d eventually Return to him. Like decent women do.”
Alvilda reached across the corner of the table and smacked Father on the back of the head. She sent me a satisfied smile.
Father rubbed his head and looked at Alvilda wearily. “That wasn’t a comment on you, Alvilda.”
Alvilda pounded her fist on the table. “I don’t care. It’s a darn careless thing to say about your daughter. What about a woman’s choice?”
Father shook his head. “What worth is a woman’s choice when it comes to the lord of the village? I’d hoped she would learn to love him. At the very least, that she wouldn’t wish for him to be as wretched as those in the commune.”
“The lord of the village does not move into the commune,” I said. Alvilda and Father both looked at me with puzzled expressions. I sighed. “And did Mother know what you had done?”
Father rubbed his cheek and stared at his empty bottle. “No, she was already beyond consciousness by then.” A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye; that eye seemed dark and lifeless with its dying flicker. “I didn’t know for certain until today that she truly still lived.”
“And does Elfriede know?”
Father continued to scratch his chin. “I think she knows enough. She probably pieced some of it together. She spent more time around the house than you after I told you your mother died.”
Probably because I spent most of my time outrunning carriages and deliverymen’s carts. And because she was there, almost always with Jurij.
I’d had enough of the tiresome discussion. I would say my goodbyes and be on my way. Back to that chilling castle, the closest thing I had to a home now. I stood to leave when the door burst open. Jurij and Elfriede appeared in the doorway, and before anyone could speak, Jurij swept me into his arms and held me tightly.
“Noll,” he whispered. “I didn’t know you came. We missed you.”
My hands moved numbly to squeeze him back. Elfriede, still in the doorway, wouldn’t look at me. She stood there, her eyes on the floor, one arm cradling the other against her chest. She hadn’t missed me at all. In fact, I imagined seeing her new husband in my arms was enough to make her wish she had seen the last of me when I rode off in the black carriage.
They never cared about me. Not Father, not Elfriede. They wanted me to stuff away all my hopes, all my feelings. I tried. I did. But if I’m going to accept that I’m the veiled lord’s goddess, as they want me to, then at least I’ll have one thing to remember before I lock all my happiness away.
I ran my fingers through the back of Jurij’s hair and kissed him.
The ground exploded. It cracked and groaned and roared to life. And I knew, just a moment too late, that it wasn’t the euphoria of my first kiss that made me feel as if the earth moved beneath my feet. It was actually moving and I was sent flying.
“Alvilda! Are you all right?”
I looked up to see a masked man in the doorway. He crouched near Alvilda, who must have fallen off of her chair.
“I’m fine, Jaron.” Alvilda pushed away at his chest even as he extended his hand to help her. “How is everyone else?”
I took in the shambles of Alvilda’s home and shop. Furniture tipped over, carvings fell off the mantle, and some of the artwork was on the floor and split in two. Her tools lay scattered about the room. On the ground, Father rubbed his elbow. Jurij lay on Elfriede’s lap beside the doorway. Elfriede wept. Jurij was moaning and a trickle of blood ran down his face.
And I was clear across the room, dazed but uninjured. It was as if the ground had moved solely to split Jurij and me apart.
And as I thought that, I knew that it had. That he had made it so.
Why did I do that? Goddess help me. I’m sorry, Jurij. I’m sorry, Elfriede.
But when I thought of how much the lord had overreacted to my inability to Return to him, I wasn’t very sorry to have hurt him.
Although only two specters had brought me to the
wedding, half a dozen filed into the home now. I blinked and swore I saw even more of them piling into the road outside.
Alvilda scrambled to stand beside me, elbowing Jaron as he tried to restrain her. He didn’t succeed, but he trailed after her, only one step behind.
“What’s going on here?” Alvilda demanded of the specters. She still hadn’t learned that she couldn’t take them in a fight.
“Alvilda—” began Jaron.
“Be quiet until I tell you to speak again!” snapped Alvilda.
Jaron spoke no more.
The specters moved around Alvilda and seized me, propping me up. Alvilda launched herself at them, but the specters weren’t bothered in the slightest. Jaron wrapped his arms around the kicking, snarling Alvilda but had no choice but to let her go when she ordered it. Two specters took Jaron’s place and grabbed Alvilda to restrain her, if only to stop her from yipping at them.
“I apologize for being so late to the celebration.”
Alvilda ceased struggling. Even Elfriede stopped weeping. All eyes but those of the specters turned toward the black figure that had entered the room.
“Congratulations, my dear,” said the lord, extending his hand downward toward the weeping Elfriede. She looked back at him, confused, her eyes still swollen with tears.
The lord pulled his hand back, not bothered by Elfriede’s lack of reaction. “What an accident!” said the lord. My gaze fled to the fallen Jurij on Elfriede’s lap. The blood I’d noticed earlier extended clear across his left cheek. His left eye was swollen and clamped tightly shut. A bloodied gouge lay on the ground beside him.
The lord waved his hand in their direction and a few more specters entered the already crowded home to sweep Jurij from Elfriede’s lap and carry him outside. Jurij moaned as he disappeared from view. Moments later, a black carriage passed by the open doorway, silently slipping away from sight.
