Nobody's Goddess (15 page)

I stopped turning with my arms tightly above my head.

No more vertigo. I opened my eyes. Nothing. Only violet light.

Is that what was to become of me, then? Would I float aloft in the light forever?

“
Olivière
!”

There was life outside the light, if I chose to seek it.

I clenched my jaw and nodded. Anywhere but home. Anywhere but that life. Somewhere I wasn’t that man’s goddess, if just for a little while.

Elgar shot upward, pulling me with it. This time, my arms didn’t ache. This time, as we broke through the light and back into the waters, I felt as if I were swimming. As if I were in control.

I emerged from the cavern pool more skillfully than I had entered it. I had somewhere to go. So I went, following the familiar path through the woods and to the dirt road, trotting toward the village.

And I felt immediately disappointed. Even stupid. I was home. Of course I was. The lilies still dotted the hilltops. And my house was right there beside the—

No, my house wasn’t there.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. A chill swept the air, and a breeze rustled the tresses I could never tame. I turned.

My gaze fell on the castle, which towered over the land and threatened to make me cower.

You idiot.
I squeezed my eyes shut. My knees buckled in anticipation of the fall.

But the ground didn’t shake. I slowly opened one eye and then the next and openly stared at the castle, dumbfounded.

“Who goes there?”

That voice. So familiar, so scornful. But not entirely unwelcome. I could picture the voice now, asking me to wash dishes for Mother. To grab a chair for Mother.

My gaze darted from the castle to the dirt path through the woods behind me. A group of unmasked men covered in crisscrossing chainmail exited the woods behind me. They laid their hands lazily over the sheathed blades at their sides.

“You, boy,” said one. What was that voice again? Fish Face? Had his wife unmasked him with a Returning?

Another slapped him across the chest. “That’s no boy!” I didn’t recognize him, either. But I guess I didn’t know everyone in the village.

The men shook to life, some pulling their swords out and pointing them toward me, others jolting awake and staring at me with a look of utter confusion. Their faces, varying in their beauty, all had a degree of allure that stirred my heart. Yet I knew none of the faces. And none were masked. True, most men of that age were unmasked, but to find so many together at once?
And they have swords. Like out of made-up tales. This is clearly not real!

“What are you doing here, woman?” demanded the one who had first spoken, the one whose voice I had mistaken for Father’s. There actually was a bit of a resemblance, but the man had just a few different features, a bend to his nose, a sneer to his lips that Father didn’t. The man hadn’t drawn his blade.

There was something off about these men. Before I even realized I wasn’t playing games with a stick blade, I’d pulled Elgar out of its sheath and fixed it readily in their direction. Both of my hands gripped the hilt. They’d come from the direction of the castle. “Who sent you?”

Some of the men burst out laughing, letting their blades fall. A few stuck them into the ground and leaned on them like walking sticks.

The leader took a few paces forward. I backed up uneasily, poking Elgar out in front of me.

The man dodged my awkward thrusts easily and knocked Elgar from my grip with the back of his hand. I cradled the sore spot without thinking, and the man slapped me across the cheek just as he had my wrist, with the back of his hand.

I cried out in shock. It was as if my own father had hit me. But he wouldn’t have. No man would have. I mean, unless their goddesses asked them to, but then why would a woman ever do that?

The rest of the men laughed, and the leader gestured to where Elgar had fallen.

“Pick it up!” he ordered.

One of the men scrambled forward to do as instructed. He handed the blade with two hands to the leader, who picked it up and turned it around in the air, staring at the violet glow. The leader’s brow furrowed and at last he lowered it.

“Take this back to His Lordship.” He thrust it at the man, who nodded and turned back to the pack waiting behind him before disappearing into the woods.

His Lordship? Since when does the lord have a set of speaking servants?

The leader slapped me with the back of his other hand across my other cheek.

I jumped.

“Thief!” he cried. “How dare you walk around with a sword from His Lordship’s castle?”

My tongue caught in my throat. “It’s mine! He gave it to me!” Had he sent these men to get it back? Where had they come from?

But your house is missing, Noll. This can’t be real.
I rubbed my sore jaw.
But it sure feels real.

The leader laughed, but his smile faded quickly. He grabbed me by the chin, and I winced from the pain of the pressure he exerted, a pain especially sharp in the cheeks that bore his blows. He turned my head back and forth, observing me like Mother often observed a piece of meat in the market.

He gasped. “Your ears! You mutilated your ears!” Despite the strangeness of the situation and the force exerted tightly over my face, my fingers instinctively brushed the tips of my ears. They were the same familiar, unwounded smooth edges as they were always.

I felt more lost now than I had before I entered the secret cavern.

The other men walked forward to join their leader in glaring at me.

“You’re right!” said one, his voice cocky and assured.

“Whatever possessed this one?” said another.

They were puzzled and introspective. A flash of light burned in their eyes and then faded. But it was not the flame I expected to see, just a trick of the moonlight, an echo of a shadow. These men didn’t carry flames in their eyes—and yet here they stood living before me.

The leader was confused, and he was angry. There was something about the way he looked at me, the way Father had always looked so longingly at Mother. Or Jurij at Elfriede. He let my face free and grabbed me tightly by the arm, yanking me forward down the dirt road and toward the village.

“Stop!” I screamed. The leader paused, looking over my head to address his compatriots.

“Let’s go!” he said. “It’s time we show those women exactly what happens when they disobey.”

He pulled me forward. I started struggling, but another of the men appeared at my side and grabbed my free arm, yanking me forward just as forcefully. A third man appeared behind me, and a black cloth flew in front of my face, wrapping tightly across my mouth and digging hard into my teeth and tongue as it was knotted behind me.

The men dragged me down the path, away from the castle. Even the Tailors’ home at the edge of the village was altered. My heartbeat echoed in my ears. Home, but not home. The village was much the same, but not entirely.
I’m drowning. I stupidly leaped into the pool again and this is my dying dream.

The one place that seemed hardly changed was the commune, where the men stopped dragging me at last. A fire was burning in the center, and a few dark figures stood in front of it. The men in the commune could never bring themselves to bother building a fire.

“Come out!” screamed the leader of the pack. “All of you women, come out now and look at what we bring with us!”

The commune was changed after all. Women and girls stepped out from shacks. One after another, they surrounded the small roaring fire that was lit in the center. They huddled together in packs of threes and fours. Only occasionally did a woman stand apart—mostly the women who had been standing before the fire—her eyes narrowed.

And again, as with the men, I thought I saw women I knew, only to discover something that made their faces not quite familiar. I wasn’t home, I knew that much. But I had no explanation for where I was. And why now, why when I had so much else to worry about, I found myself in this place.

“This
woman
,” spat the leader, “dared to take a treasure from your lord! She violated her ears!”

Gasps and whispers broke out from the crowd before us. There were so many terrified faces and murmuring lips amongst the rare angry expression and the jaw clenched tightly. The women were thin and frail and looked defeated. Even the few who were with child looked malnourished. Though there were some lighter in skin tone and even a few as oak-tone fair as Elfriede with the same blond curls, quite a few were the same dark earth tone of the men.

And their ears. Every last one of them had the pointed ears of men. If this was a dream, I needed desperately to wake up. But I wasn’t waking.

The leader let go of my arm, and the other man did the same. I barely had a moment to register my newfound freedom when a sharp kick on my back sent me hurtling forward.

“I don’t know how many times we have to make this clear,” said the leader. “You follow our orders! You never go against them! And don’t you
ever
disrespect our Lord Elric!”

Elric?
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever heard someone say the lord’s name.

The man grabbed at the small of his back and produced a whip. I raised my arms to defend myself, but two other men appeared at my side and flipped me back over.

The whip cracked fast, the snap echoing in my ears only after I felt the sting of pain shoot through my back. I tried to scream, but my tongue was bound. I tried to flinch, but the hands on me gripped tighter.

“This is what becomes of a disobedient woman!” He cracked the whip again.

My eyes rolled to the back of my head, a flash of light offering to let me flee with it into unconsciousness.

“Goncalo! Whatever is the ruckus here?”

A third crackle echoed and the whip lowered, hitting what I thought to be the ground behind me instead of my back.

“Lord Elric,” said the leader, the man named Goncalo. “Only just punishment.”

The men holding my arms let go and kneeled. The women before me crouched, their faces pushed tightly into the ground, while the men beside me remained more upright but still near the ground.

I rolled over and noticed with pleasure that Goncalo, like the other men, was kneeling. The whip was still clenched in his hands, its tips stained with blood. My blood.

“What has this woman done then?”

At the condescending tone, I looked up. A man sat atop a black horse, dressed entirely in black leather. He was bathed in the firelight, a glisten bouncing off of the metal on his pointed hat with the wide brim. My gaze was drawn to the hand clutching his horse’s reins. The light bounced there, too, off a metallic bangle around his wrist. In the light of the fire, the bangle seemed golden, the sole sanctuary of color amongst the black silhouette.

His face was so alluring. His cheeks protruded so, I suspected the bones would cut my fingers should I touch them. His nose was so sharp and straight, it was almost unsettling. His fine brows were drawn together.

There wasn’t a flame in his irises, yet they glistened strongly with a fire unseen.

The thought came to me at once: There was no curse over the men in this version of the village. If anything, it was the women who were cursed and tormented.

And this is “Lord Elric” unmasked, without a veil. But no, it can’t be him. I just saw him, and he kept his face from me.

Pain shot through my fresh wounds, and I banished all thoughts of longing from my heart.
Why have I come here? What’s the point of this?
A tear escaped from one of my eyes. I clenched my jaw and pressed my teeth into the grating muzzle tightly.

“Theft,” said Goncalo. “Self-mutilation.”

“Oh?” asked the lord. His voice, before so bored, carried with it some hint of interest. It reminded me of my recent conversation with the lord, when the things he said proved so callous, even if his words carried with them a slight trace of charm.

He jumped down off of his horse and crossed the short distance between us.

“And add ‘failure to bow before me’ to her list of trespasses,” he said.

All eyes turned to me. Even the girls and women lifted their heads ever so slightly to get a look.

I felt the pressure exerted from all directions. Instead of succumbing to it, I stood and glared at the lord as he strode over toward me. He was taller than me. But only just.

Women and girls gasped and the men cried out, appalled. Goncalo moved one leg forward to stand, his whip shaking violently over his head.

“Kneel!” called the lord.

Goncalo instantly slid his leg back into position. I didn’t move.

Still more whispers and gasps. A flash of anger shot across the lord’s face. “Silence!”

All tongues halted. I remembered my muzzle and reached back, my muscles searing in pain with the simple movement. Even as my open flesh smeared against itself and the remnants of the dress I wore, I slid off the muzzle and tossed it on the ground.

The lord straightened his shoulders. He let a flicker of a smile grow on his face.

“Who is she?” he asked, looking straight down at me and not speaking to me at all.

“Was she not at the castle with you tonight, my lord?” asked Goncalo from behind me. “We found her coming out of the woods, holding the stolen blade.”

“No, no,” said the lord casually. “I would remember
her
. And besides, this blade is unfamiliar to me.”

He pulled a short, glowing blade from a too-large sheath at his side. Elgar. So the men had brought it to him after all. He raised it into the air, turning it this way and that, letting the moonlight bounce off of the violet embers. I wanted to rip it out of his grasp.

“A strange blade,” said the lord. “Smaller than I am used to, but somehow compelling nonetheless.” He shifted his gaze from Elgar to my waist. “Ah. She wears the sheath still.”

The man kneeling next to me grew alarmed and tore the sheath off of my waist. The movement stung against the wounds on my lower back, and I flinched.

The man held the sheath toward the lord with both hands. The lord seemed amused. He grabbed the sheath and slid Elgar into it, belting the sheath to his waist. Although his build was thin, the belt was just a bit too small for him; his face strained at the realization, but affix it in place he did, looping it tightly. He placed both hands on his waist as he finished, his elbows extended.