Nobody's Lady

by Amy McNulty

Vena, his wife—or, his former wife—slipped forward and tentatively put an arm around his waist. She didn’t seem at all herself. She was known from the quarries to the fields of livestock to be the true tavern master, a woman who enjoyed bossing her husband around almost as much as he enjoyed letting her. But perhaps even in the face of his outspoken outrage at the situation, there was now room for doubts, even for her.

  Because the men had all been compelled to love. With that taken away, with even their unions stripped from them, what was left to hold a coupling together?

  “I love Vena!” shouted Elweard over the heads of the specters as he slipped an arm around her shoulders. “And I’d wed her a thousand times to prove it!”

  Vena’s eyes glistened, and she raised herself on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “My darling.” Her voice shook. “I would wed you every day for the rest of my life.”

  The nearest specter pulled parchment, quill, and a bottle of ink from his pocket.

  “And now what nonsense is this?” demanded Elweard, ripping the parchment from the specter’s hands. “An arrest order for declaring my love against his lordship’s wishes?”

  While Elweard continued to wish for the nearest specter’s death with his steady glare, Vena leaned over his shoulder and pored over the paper.

  “Dearest,” said Vena, “it’s a declaration of our marriage!”

  The crowd began whispering and pointing. Those nearest the coupling strained to read the parchment as well.

  “It’s true!” said one woman. “All we have to do is declare our love for one another, sign a paper, and the whole mess will be behind us!”

  Elweard and Vena grinned as they gazed into each other’s eyes. After a quick kiss, Elweard snatched the quill, and Vena grabbed the ink from the specter. They used the flat surface of a nearby rock to sign it.

  So they were once again husband and wife, whatever that meant now. Did the specters producing the paper count as the lord’s blessing? Why were we skipping over the wedding? Was it because Vena and Elweard had already had theirs? Or was that all meaningless now, as meaningless as the edicts of the first goddess? As far as Vena and Elweard were concerned, this new marriage would give them an excuse to throw yet another feast at the Great Hall to celebrate, because that’s just who they were—simple people, happy with simple pleasures. Maybe they didn’t have to think about marriage too much—they just knew they wanted to be the only one for each other. If only it were so simple for everyone else.

  The mob didn’t make any headway after that. A few more men and women came forth to proclaim their desire to be wed once more, and a few more parchments were signed. I saw at least two women pinch, prod, or poke their former husbands into speaking up. When those men spoke their desire to be wed again, their voices were unsteady, and the specters didn’t pull anything from their pockets. The couplings left the mob, former wives stomping ahead of former husbands and former husbands searching the mob for something. One’s eyes rested a moment on a woman near me, and she blushed.

  ***

  The village had become far too chaotic for my tastes—not that it was ever a place that willingly drew me to it. I had to make my way through it almost daily to help Alvilda with her woodworking, but most of the time, she let me escape to the woods right away to chop wood for her future projects. I sometimes met my father there, sitting on a tree stump, his shiny, unscratched ax lying lifeless beside him. He’d nod at me and pick up a flask I knew he often stashed inside his pocket. When I announced my intention to move into the empty shack, it went somewhat unnoticed. Mother and Father were still together, but Father had made no proclamations of undying love, and Mother had followed his example. Frankly, I couldn’t have left at a more suitable moment. It made me yearn for the days when I had been so revolted by the way they kissed and kissed and could only pull their arms from each other’s backs with a great and wretched show of sadness.

  Now that I was finally on my own, I preferred to work more delicately with a chisel, a gouge, and a small block of wood to felling a tree with my ax. Children especially seemed to enjoy the little animals I crafted, so I called them toys and said they were meant to be played with. I sold them around town a few days a week. The first day I’d asked Master Tailor if I could sell some outside of the Tailor Shop.

  Helping me gave Nissa some distraction. I think what she really wanted was an excuse to see Luuk, who always seemed to want to spend the night with whichever parent she wasn’t currently staying with. It wasn’t that Luuk didn’t like Nissa, but he was no longer sure he was ready for romance. Nissa decided to break it off between them, although I was sure her heart wasn’t in it. Theirs was just one of many messy partings, and theirs wasn’t even that messy, considering how young they were.

  So I avoided the messiness of the village whenever possible. I felt more comfortable staying at my lone cottage outside the quarry.

  I was fully used to rejection, so there was no need for screaming and crying out with me. The few villagers who bothered to pass by were quarry workers, mostly men, the rest women who had rejected love before the curse had broken. There were few men in the village who would shed a tear over the lord’s edict.

  “Morning!” called one such tearless man. I looked up from the stool I’d set on my porch. One of the quarry workers, a pickax slung casually over his shoulder, waved as he walked by. His face had a familiar pattern to it. I’d probably met him when he came to chastise Ingrith, the woman who’d once lived in my cottage. Since I knew his face, that meant he had once been Returned. Not that that mattered any more. I nodded my greeting before turning back to work.

  This morning, I was halfway through making a cat’s rotund hindquarters out of a scrap block of oak left over from the new table Alvilda and I had finished crafting for Vena and Elweard at the tavern.

  Alvilda had been on her way home from the market to work on that table when a specter appeared out of nowhere and—much to Alvilda’s consternation—followed her home. The next time I saw her, she stood cross-armed and smirking in her shop’s doorway with a piece of parchment stating that his lordship recognized Alvilda and Siofra as each other’s wives. She said the confounded white creature had pulled it out of his inner jacket pocket as soon as Alvilda had explained the situation in the market and Siofra had expressed her desire to wed Alvilda as well. All it took was their signatures and they were united, on paper as they were at heart.

  I wished I had been there to see it.

  “It’s a beautiful day, lady carver!”

  My hand slipped. Now my wooden cat had a chunk missing out of its tail.

  I looked up. Another of the quarry workers. I couldn’t place his face. But he might not have had it out in the open until recently.

  He took my curt nod as an invitation. His trousers brushed against the bushes separating my new home from the dirt road. I remembered those bushes as a safe place from which to get a good look at the old, husbandless crone who once lived in my shack. She had killed the one man who would ever love her. All it took was a look at his unmasked face. And no one else remembered he ever existed. I figured this out only after I had done the same.

  The worker brushed the bush’s fine needles off the front of his trousers with one hand and swung the pickax he had been carrying over his shoulder with the other. He put his free hand on his hip and spread his lips wide to reveal a set of perfectly white teeth. The effect it had on his richly dark face stirred something unexpected in my belly. I quickly looked back down at the damage his greeting had caused my cat.

  “I hear you’ve been selling those in the village,” he said.

  His hand appeared in my narrowly focused range of vision.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  I looked up. And quickly looked back down, numbly putting the wooden cat into his outstretched hand and laying my tools beside me on the stool. What was wrong with me? I’d had enough of these feelings to last a lifetime, and I had only ever bothered wi
th one man before. Or two.

  “Let me see. A butt. But whose?”

  I laughed despite myself. “There’s no real-life model.”

  He grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t seen my former wife’s ass. If not for the tail, it might be a perfect match.”

  I shifted uncomfortably and stretched my smile into my cheeks as far as my lips would let me. It took an effort.

  The worker handed the cat back to me and held his hand out to shake mine. “I’m Sindri, one of the baker’s sons. Don’t know if you remember me.”

  I felt the uneasiness in my stomach cease instantly. Sindri, one of the boys I used to play with as a girl. I shook his hand eagerly, a much easier smile on my face. “Sindri! I’m so sorry! Of course. How could I have forgotten?”

  It was Sindri’s turn to pull an uneasy smile onto his face. “Well, you’ve never seen my face, so I’m not that surprised.”

  Bile rose in my throat again. Another face I’d doomed to masking.

  “Who was your goddess again?” I asked.

  Sindri swung the pickax off his shoulder and let it scuff the ground by his feet. He leaned on it and glanced over my head, his eyes squinting at the promise of a still-brighter morning.

  “Marden, Tanner’s daughter.”

  One of Elfriede’s friends. I’d never been that close to the girls. None of them wanted to swing sticks at pigs or roll on the hills and get their dresses caked in dirt. And Sindri had found his goddess early on in the process of maturing. I’d played with his brother Darwyn for far longer. I’d lost all track of Sindri and his goddess obsession soon after he stopped being one of the elf queen’s loyal retainers.

  “You got married?” I asked, picking up my chisel and going to work again. That was a rather stupid question, but I didn’t remember the marriage.

  “Yup,” said Sindri, punctuating the end of the word sharply. “Never got Returned to. Not that I care now. When I think of how stupid I was, I want to strangle my past self. All of that trauma over that cold-hearted, selfish bi—”

  He stopped. I thought of my recent bizarre feelings for Ailill and nodded. The chisel slipped awkwardly. Fur was starting to look more like scarring. Perhaps the fat cat would be a tomcat, complete with alleyway battle scars.

  “You know,” Sindri picked up again, “his lordship’s edict has been a real blessing.”

  A dog barked sharply, cutting him short.

  “Noll!”

  My eyes snapped up at the dulcet, airy tones of my sister’s voice. It was a little off-tune and shaky. She was coming through the fields from the east, taking a shortcut from our childhood home to my new one. Skipping beside her to one side was Bow, Jurij’s old, sandy-furred retriever, and on the other side was Arrow, Bow’s perky and easily distracted golden-colored son. He stopped twice within a matter of moments to sniff the grassy field at his paws before galloping to catch up.

  Elfriede hadn’t visited me since I moved. I’d thought it best to stay away from whatever was going on with her and her husband. And that included staying away from knowing whether or not they had convinced a specter to produce a paper for them to sign from his ever-useful inner jacket pocket.

  She was crying now, her golden hair limp against her flushed and fair oak-toned face. I felt a sharp pain slide into my stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” I stood, knocking the gouge off the stool. Arrow jumped in place, yapping.

  Elfriede took first one deep breath and then another but, much to my impatience, didn’t speak. Her gaze fell on Sindri, a cold blast of something I could only describe as annoyance sparking in her face. But this was Elfriede, my sweet and much-loved elder sister. She could hardly express that side of herself with witnesses.

  “Uh, see you around, Noll,” said Sindri, who had clearly picked up on something, too.

  “Sure,” I mumbled. He took off through the bushes and up the dirt path toward the quarry, jogging to join a pack of working men a few paces ahead of him.

  Bow growled. I turned back to my sister, but not before putting the chisel and the half cat down on the stool behind me. Her wary eyes, puffed and darkened lids surrounding pale hazel, hadn’t torn themselves from Sindri’s back. Golden fur covered her wrinkled dress and apron. Her skin was perhaps in need of scrubbing. She looked as if she hadn’t cared what she looked like for days at least.

  “What is it?” I snapped at last. If I waited for her to open her mouth and stop sending death wishes after a young man she hardly knew, I was bound to waste all of the morning.

  Elfriede’s gaze turned reluctantly in my direction.

  “Was that Marden’s husband?” she asked.

  “Former husband,” I pointed out.

  Now Elfriede’s icy stare shot directly into me. “It won’t do to be seen with a traitor like him.”

  “He just stopped to say hello.” I could hardly believe the young woman before me was my sister. Had she spent the past few weeks locked up in a dark and desolate dungeon? No, my frail and carefree sister had not yet had the pleasure of that experience. I was sure my stay at the castle counted as something close enough.

  “Well, don’t say anything back,” she barked.

  I scoffed. Like I cared about the who-should-blame-whom of one of her giddy friend’s couplings.

  I put my hands on my hips. “I’ll speak to whomever I like.”

  “Don’t you have enough men after you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Where’s Jurij?” Elfriede asked the question with such volume and tenacity, I thought she imagined him in some crystal-encased cage around the back of my moldering shack. Arrow whimpered, even as Bow growled.

  “How should I know?” I asked.

  Elfriede stood on her toes to crane around my shoulders. She really is looking for some cage!

  “He’s been gone for days,” she said, her voice cracking.

  I plopped down on the stool, shoving the fat cat and the chisel to the ground beside the gouge. I cradled my face in my hands and heard the soft patter of paws. One of the dogs’ noses brushed my knees.

  Why did she have to involve me in this? Can’t she see that I’m here to get away from all of this drama?

  “Did you try his father’s?” I mumbled through my palms.

  “Yes. And his mother’s place, too. Both were as surprised as I was that he had gone missing.”

  “His friends?”

  “He doesn’t have any friends,” she spat. “Only you.”

  I rubbed my hands over my face. Arrow sat down beside me, looking upward expectantly. Odd. He could never be bothered with anyone but Elfriede before.

  “Well, I haven’t seen him, either.” It was true. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Not since he kissed me and told me he loved me amongst the lilies on the hills. I thought it best not to mention that to his wife—former wife—who stood before me and was no doubt just waiting for an excuse to lurch forward and strangle me.

  “Aren’t you the least bit worried?” She paced back and forth, flailing her hands up and down. Up and down. Bow’s head bobbed with her as she walked back and forth. All of the motion was making me ill.

  “Should I be?” I asked. She stopped moving and shot me a look of pure and utter annoyance. “Look, whatever happened between you, he probably just needs some time to himself. I mean, how far could he go? There aren’t a lot of places to hide.”

  “He should have told me!” she said, resuming her Bow-escorted back-and-forth trek to nowhere. “I would have let him be, but he should have told me!”

  I sighed and reached out a hand to stroke Arrow’s head. He actually let me touch him. His mouth opened, and his tongue spilled forth as I stroked him.

  Did I dare ask what had happened? Clearly they had signed no paper blessing their second union. Perhaps that was all I needed to know. Thinking too much about it made my chest ache.

  “Do you want me to help search?” I asked.
r />   “No!” Elfriede snapped almost the same moment I asked the question. Arrow yelped and jumped backward out of my reach at the sound.

  “Then what would you have me do?”

  She marched onto the porch and shoved open the door to my shack, Bow and Arrow both at her heels. I hadn’t known her capable of knocking over a small building with her bare hands, but I feared briefly for the welfare of my new home.

  “Jurij!” came Elfriede’s voice from inside the shack.

  I jumped up and followed her.

  “He’s not here! What are you doing?”

  Elfriede was on her hands and knees, leering into the area under my bed. Bow sniffed the ground beside her. Arrow had decided to lend his investigative ability to pinpointing my food stores. Elfriede jumped up almost as quickly as a specter and pasted herself against the wall, peeking behind my cupboard. Arrow barked and pawed the door, perhaps hoping Elfriede would soon pull out a nice, long sausage.

  “What? Are you looking for him back there? Behind about half a foot’s length of space? Jurij is thin, Elfriede, but not so thin he might slide into nooks and crannies unnoticed.”

  Elfriede said nothing, her eyes darting frantically around the shack, but there were no more places he might be hiding. She let out a strange, shaky roar and plunked herself down in one of the two chairs around my small dining table. Bow sat down beside her and howled. Arrow’s ears went back, and he lunged for the area beneath the table, pressing himself flat against the floor.

  “Friede … ”

  She brought both hands up and then down, slamming them on her lap. Tears started flowing, and a series of chokes burst from her quivering lips.

  I moved closer. She swung a hand wildly in my direction.

  “Stay away from me!” She took a deep breath, choked with a sob. “You hussy!”

  “Hussy?”

  Elfriede sent me a cold, piercing look. “He told me he loved you. And you kissed him!” So she knew about that day on the hills after all. “And on my wedding day!”

  Oh. That kiss. The one that had ended with an earthquake and Jurij getting a permanent gash over one of his eyes.