by Amy McNulty
“Oh, for—” Alvilda peered at the northern road to the village, tossing a hand in the air and then cradling her forehead.
Four figures ambled toward us, still some distance away. They were dancing. No, they stumbled every few steps, their arms swinging wildly up and down, their hands clutching mugs. In the quiet, all I heard was the crackling of the fire, Bow’s heavy snoring, and the unskilled warbling of the four men.
Alvilda moved around the fire to grab Nissa by the forearm, much as her brother had done to Luuk a moment beforehand. She looked at me. “Thank you for the dinner, Noll. It was great.” Wow, two barely-contained-rage-filled compliments for my cooking. She peered over her shoulder. “Siofra?”
Siofra looked down the path, worry hidden behind the deep creases in her forehead. “He’s drunk.”
“He’s a fool. And we’ll have no part of it.” Alvilda tugged Nissa along after her, and Siofra shuffled behind. “Tell him he can come home to us if he gets tired of acting like an idiot,” Alvilda called to me over her shoulder. “Or like a man in general.”
The three of them passed right by the dancing group, not even turning their heads to greet them.
The young man I wasn’t too familiar with—the one with lips that seemed permanently puckered—poked Sindri in the chest, again and again. “Have I told you about my wife’s mornings?” He had his arm around Sindri and was practically dragging him to the ground beside the fire.
“Former—former wives,” slurred Sindri. His eyes were glazed, his attention focused on the ground.
“Former,” repeated puckered-lips. “Every morning, she tooled me—”
“Told,” interrupted Jurij beside him. He turned to Darwyn and started sniggering.
“Told me, Tayton, make the breakfast. Tayton, clean the house. Tayton, it’s cold, chop more wool for the fire.”
Darwyn and Jurij burst into laughter. “Wood!” shouted Darwyn.
“Wood.” Tayton didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t get through a sentence without being corrected. He poked Sindri again and flailed his hand around. “Then I had to work in the quarry. And she just lay there, sleeping ’til lunchtime.” He reached forward for the mug he’d set down on the ground beside him, completely oblivious to the fact that Sindri was now about a nose’s length from the ground beneath Tayton’s arm. Tayton let Sindri go and sat back up, taking a swig from his mug. He wiped his mouth. “And I had to go home. Make her lunch.” He made a spitting sound and widened his eyes, flicking his free hand before his face. “Whatta bibch.”
“Bitch,” said Jurij and Darwyn as one, their arms tight across their abdomens to keep themselves from falling over.
My fingers clutched Bow’s fur as I regarded my new set of dinner guests around the fire, not a one of them interested in eating. Bow’s head raised at the sound of Sindri’s snoring. The baker’s son lay there, face down, on the blanket where Tayton had dropped him. He was uncomfortably close to the fire.
I patted Bow to calm her and made my way toward Sindri to pull him back.
“Them’s my wife’s mornings. A whole lot of nothing.” Tayton peered over the top of his mug at me as I rolled Sindri over.
Sindri’s eyelids flittered open. “Wha? No, Marden, I’m too tired.” He curled his legs against his abdomen and reached a hand out to grab my ankle, snuggling against my feet.
Tayton chuckled and spit back into his mug, swinging it side to side. “He thinks you’re his wife.”
“Farmer wife!” sang Darwyn and Jurij at once—a correction in need of correction—and they found them to be the funniest words ever spoken.
I ignored the cackling and reached down to peel Sindri’s fingers from my leg. They proved harder to unfurl than expected, and I hesitated, concerned I might hurt him. In the end, I gave up and used my full strength to tear them away.
Tayton found the sight amusing, but his laughter suddenly stopped. “Hey! I know you.”
I looked up only briefly to meet Tayton’s eyes and turned back to the task at hand, grabbing Sindri by the upper arms and dragging him back a safe distance from the fire.
“’Course you know her, genius.” Darwyn swayed a little where he sat. “She’s Noll. Lord’s goddess.”
“No.” Jurij slapped at Darwyn’s shoulder lamely. “No goddess.”
Darwyn and Jurij exchanged a glance, and they both grinned. “Farmer goddess.” They snickered. I couldn’t guess if they knew what they were saying or not.
Tayton shook his head and brought his mug to his lips. “No. I know that. I know her ’fore that.” He stared inside the mug with one eye open and one eye shut, tossing it onto the ground when he found nothing left in there.
I dropped Sindri and exhaled, wiping my brow with my arm. The fire was hot, which made dragging his heft all the more exhausting. I’d managed to get him rolled onto his back, but a terrible thought squeezed at my throat, an image of my father after one of his visits to Vena’s, coughing and choking in his sleep.
“The elf queen!” Darwyn and Jurij shouted my farmer title, laughing as the sound echoed into the evening sky. They picked up forgotten mugs and toasted them into the air. “To our queen!” They clinked them together and choked down the contents, stopping to giggle between breaths.
Holding Sindri on his side, I grabbed the picnic basket full of rolls I’d brought out for the half-finished feast. I slid it against his back for support. He kept on snoring.
Tayton leaned over to grab his fallen mug, rolling it farther out of reach with his fingertips. At last he grabbed it and lifted it into the air for the “toast,” too late, completely forgetting it was empty as he tried to slurp it again. He seemed puzzled as he tore the mug from his lips. “What’s the elf queen?”
Darwyn and Jurij found the question hilarious, just like everything else that evening. I stood with a sigh, my hands on my hips. “All right, enough. I guess you can all sleep here tonight.” As long as I don’t have to drag all four of them inside by their arms. I looked at the cottage, calculating how tired I’d get dragging just Sindri over there. It wasn’t too cold out. Maybe I could just toss some blankets over the lot of them and put out the fire so none of the idiots rolled into it.
“That’s it!” Tayton dropped the mug back onto the ground. This time it rolled until it knocked against Sindri’s fingers, but he barely stirred, murmuring something about being tired before drifting back into snoring. “You’re the crone!”
Darwyn and Jurij’s laughter was not something that should have surprised me, but it made my cheeks burn nonetheless.
“The little one,” Tayton added, pointing at me. “The pretty one.”
I tore my eyes from him and felt my cheeks grow even hotter. This bumbling drunk’s compliment made me about as happy as any of his insults, and I could do without the leering that accompanied it.
I focused instead on those big, puffy lips, reminiscent of a mask I once saw. “Fish Face!”
Cue Jurij and Darwyn, who’d probably never run out of laughter. Tayton cocked his head and studied me, the words slow to reach him. “Fish?”
I pointed to my own face. “Your mask. The day of Elfriede and Jurij’s … ” My eyes darted to Jurij, but his head was lilting back and forth, not registering what I’d been about to say. “The day Ingrith died.”
Tayton laughed, not an entirely appropriate reaction to the death of an old woman, even if he, like the rest of the village, couldn’t have cared less about her. He waved his finger at me. “You were so nasty. So nasty.” He started slinking backward, losing balance. “She was worse, but you called me unloved. Pointed me to the commune.”
I crossed my arms. “You called me unloved.”
His back slammed against the ground so suddenly I thought I felt the ground shake. I took a step closer to make sure he hadn’t hit his head, but he was resting, eyes closed, a smooth rise and fall to his chest. His eyelids fluttered, his puckered lips parted, murmuring, “Unloved.” The firelight
glistened on a tear that streaked down his cheek.
I swallowed and looked away. Darwyn leaned against Jurij, snoring louder than his brother still curled at my feet. Jurij’s eyes were open but glazed. The kind of glazed Father got after too many drinks. I could almost see the fire dancing in his eyes like it once did, could almost see the ghost of who he used to be in the way he stared. I wasn’t so sure happy drinking was anything more than painful drinking under the mask of laughter. I wasn’t so sure I could stand to watch Jurij wither away like Father had, not when he had so much to live for.
I turned the cuff of one of my sleeves and rolled it up to my forearm. Okay. I don’t need to get Elfriede and Jurij back together. It’s probably best for both of them this way.
I nodded to myself, watching Jurij’s eyes flitter. Screw love. These are my friends. Friends who need me—and each other. Friends who need to learn a thing or two about their own self-worth.
I picked up the bucket of water I’d kept beside the fire, then watched the flames burn for just a little while longer, relishing its choking cries as it flickered away to its death. The reflection of the flames vanished from Jurij’s dark irises before he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Poking and shouting didn’t work. I tried to think of how we used to get Father up after Mother supposedly “died,” but Elfriede and I just let him be most of the day. After all, what was he expected to do after his goddess was gone? To tell the truth, Elfriede and I kept thinking we’d wake up one day and he’d be gone, too, reduced to just an empty pile of clothes. Jostling him seemed like tempting fate.
Standing over the four sleeping forms, I weighed my options. Jurij was the only one I really had any business waking, even if the other three did fall asleep right outside my cabin. I dragged my bucket from the well, its contents sloshing over the rim.
“Holy goddess!” Jurij sat up so quickly, he nearly toppled over. His hand ran over his face, wiping off the water droplets.
I dropped the bucket on the ground beside him, letting it clang loudly, but it only stirred the slightest of groans from Darwyn. “I’d say you were late for the quarry. Or the bakery. And you are. But I thought today we might do something different anyway.”
Jurij guided his palm through his short dark hair, shaking the water out and staring up at me. “We?”
“Yes, we. Or did you and your inebriated friends plan to spend the rest of your days drinking?”
Jurij shook his head and stared. “I don’t remember you being this bossy.”
As if on cue, Darwyn chuckled softly, but he gave no other sign of consciousness.
I crouched beside Jurij. “I was always this bossy.” I was done making decisions for others, but I could still give them a push in the right direction. I nudged Jurij with my shoulder. “You, on the other hand, never used to put up such a fight.”
Jurij cradled his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. “Noll, it’s too early for this.”
I stood, grabbing the bucket handle. “It’s almost lunch time.” I glanced between Darwyn, Sindri, and Tayton, choosing my next victim for after a quick trip to the well.
Jurij groaned. “Can you speak a little quieter?”
“You totally messed up my dinner.” I glared at him until he opened his eyes. “You owe me.” He grabbed my extended hand, and I strained to help him stand. “And you’re going to make it up to me today.” I shoved the bucket handle into his unsuspecting hand.
***
It was warm enough that the four soaking boys—men—behind me were practically dried from the air just half an hour later, but you’d think that they were permanently soaked through to the bone from the way they still carried on about it.
“So let me get this straight.” I didn’t have to look behind me to recognize the sniveling voice of Tayton. “You four used to hang out in the livestock fields. Pretending sheep were monsters. And hitting them with sticks.”
“We didn’t actually hit them with sticks,” I corrected. “That’d be cruel.”
“No,” snorted Darwyn. “We’d just give the poor things heart attacks by chasing them. Screaming and swinging until they started running.”
“And then a few moments later, the farmers down the hill would start screaming and swinging their fists at us until we started running,” added Sindri.
“Sounds fun.” Tayton sounded entirely unconvinced.
“It wasn’t just us four.” Jurij sounded like he hoped he was making a rational argument to defend us. “Noll led a bunch of boys around the village back then.”
Tayton scoffed. “Glad I was too old by then to be under her spell. Like I’d need to be bossed around by two women in my lifetime.”
I twirled around and clapped my hands together. “We didn’t just scare sheep. There’s a pond south of the village.”
Tayton raised an eyebrow. “You mean the livestock’s watering hole.”
I chewed my lip, biting back irritation. “Yes. Some of the boys would swim on a warm day. Like today.”
“And you’re suggesting we do that today?” Tayton pinched his damp jerkin with two fingers and pulled it away from his chest. “Because I’m not already soaked through.”
I shrugged and turned back around, cutting through the grass east of the village and walking southward. “You can just sit beside the pond whining if that’s more appealing.”
“Considering our meat drinks out of that water, it probably is.”
I ignored that comment. We’d reached the eastern path, and to my left I could just make out my cottage—my family’s cottage—at the edge of the woods. Jurij brushed past me without pausing, leading the way southward. He didn’t even glance at his father’s home, let alone the one he’d shared with his former wife.
“Here, girl!” When Jurij turned his head, it was only to beckon Bow from the back of the group, where she’d stopped to sniff the familiar path between her two previous homes.
Bow barked and obeyed immediately, trotting up beside her master and sticking her nose under his hand.
Darwyn laughed. “Looks like someone’s still under a curse.”
“She’s a girl,” said Jurij, without a hint of teasing in his voice.
“Thus the ‘here, girl,’” added Sindri.
Jurij paused, confusing Bow, who stopped a few yards ahead of him, whipping her head back to figure out why he’d stopped. “Why weren’t animals affected?” asked Jurij. “Why only us?”
Jurij directed the question not at the group, but at me. I swallowed and kept walking.
“Why is it over now? Why anything, Jurij?” Darwyn clapped him on the shoulder. I quickened my steps, eager to put a few more yards between us.
“ … probably knows.” It was muted, but there was no mistaking Jurij trying to whisper something behind me.
We traveled the rest of the way in silence. When we reached the top of the final hill, I peered down at the sheep grazing amongst the cows, the lilies gone from this field, probably eradicated by endless chewing. Bow didn’t hesitate; she barked and charged down the hill.
“Bow! Stop!” Jurij ran past, a look of panic scrunching up his face.
Darwyn and Sindri followed, their faces contorted in laughter.
“Was this part of the game, back when you were smacking sheep with sticks?” Tayton appeared beside me, his hands tucked in his pockets. I nodded, looking up to take in the almost-smile he was fighting to keep from me.
The golden streak plowed toward the herd with three figures jogging after her, Jurij’s arms flailing. “Sometimes. I’d forgotten she did that. We didn’t always take her along.”
Tayton seemed content to watch rather than participate. He nodded as Bow went one way, then zigzagged another, herding sheep and cows to block the men from reaching her. “Until yesterday, the dog was with Jurij’s … ” He paused, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid.
“His wife. Former wife. My sister.”
“I figured
.” Tayton scratched his chin. “He was complaining about missing her at the quarry the other day. I didn’t ask, but I figured there was only one reason why he couldn’t get her back.”
Jurij managed to dodge a hopping sheep a few feet behind Bow. He held out his hands and took a small step forward. Bow stopped and sat upright, her tongue lolling.
“His parents got the dog back from my sister.” I couldn’t help but smile as Jurij lunged forward and Bow went flying in the opposite direction. Darwyn and Sindri caught up just in time to keep him from falling. “Since he was too scared to ask for her back himself.”
I could feel Tayton’s eyes boring into me. “He’s not equipped to handle this, Noll. None of us are.” He sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it, but moving on, figuring out how to keep going forward, it’s not simple. I don’t know what I want for dinner. I don’t know how to decide on what clothes to wear or what shoes to put on in the morning. I don’t know when I should buy things or when I’m supposed to go to bed. I’ve forgotten how to choose.”
“Tayton, I’m sorry you guys—”
“I know you are, Noll.” He gestured at the sheep, the dog, and the three men running wildly after them. “I know this little trip to the sheep must be your way of distracting us. It’s different for you, isn’t it?”
I studied Tayton quizzically. “I know, since I’m a woman, that I never really felt what you all felt.”
Tayton shook his head. “No, I mean … you’re different from the other women.” His eyes widened, and I followed his gaze to see Jurij had flung himself around Bow’s torso and was rolling with her in the grass. He jumped up, unscathed, rubbing Bow’s belly hard. I was so lost in the moment, so full of joy at seeing Jurij smile so freely, that it startled me when Tayton began speaking again. “Maybe it doesn’t bother you as much. You don’t have to see your former husband. And you never loved him.”
“He wasn’t my husband,” I snapped. I lifted my skirt, some age-old instruction not to get my hem too dirty drilled into my mind, and started walking toward the flock. I should have said more—I wanted to say more—but I wasn’t in the mood to discuss the details of my heart with Fish Face, whom I hardly even knew.
