Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(13)

Ingrith straightened as best she could, but she still looked hunched and twisted. “What made me happy is she’d once told me she liked Haelan.” Ingrith nodded and stared off above my head, not even looking at me. “But after that, her man found the goddess in her, and just like that, she was so in love with him. With him. She was my dearest friend, and she knew how much he meant to me. She knew how much I loved Bernie.”

Ingrith hobbled over to her door and pulled it open. She stood, staring out into the open, both hands clutching the top of her walking stick. Slowly, I moved as close to her as I dared, keeping her well in front of me.

A small gust of breeze blew in through the open door, rustling that free tendril of hair that covered the old crone’s forehead. “But she loved Bernie. She proved it at her Returning. He took off his mask and clear as day, her love for him was made plain. He was still living, and they kissed each other as if their kisses were as necessary for them to breathe as air.”

The wind blew a bit stronger. I shivered. We were too close to the mountains. It was cold.

Ingrith took a few small steps out into the open. “So I thought, why not hurt her as much as she hurt me? Why not share those kisses with her first love as she watched, watched as her soul wrapped ’round her heart and wouldn’t stop squeezin’?” She paused, squeezing her fist as tight as it would go. Then she hobbled around the home and out of view, toward the east.

She’d forgotten I was even there. I could run, forget any of this nonsense ever happened. But I thought of Elfriede, and of Jurij. I hitched my skirt up and ran out the door.

Ingrith walked eastward a few paces in front of me, shouting to no one at all. “I was a fool to think I could hurt her! I was a fool to think that the love of little children meant anything to anyone but me!”

Or me.

Ingrith stepped into the lily-covered fields and tossed her walking stick aside. It vanished into the knee-high grasses. “The goddesses are all that matter! There’s no room for love where love’s not wanted! There’s no room for hurt, for jealousy, for a love intended if not fully felt!”

I had no idea where she was going. Into the woods? Could she make such a long walk? Ingrith stopped and snapped around to face me, suddenly realizing I was still there.

“I looked before I loved, girl! I looked at the Returning!” Her eyes seemed about ready to roll out of her head. “He vanished, leavin’ nothin’ but his clothes and mask behind him!”

I stopped, and Ingrith closed the distance between us. She smiled. “And no one remembers. No one but me.” She closed her eyes and started laughing. “They didn’t even know what we’d all gathered for!” She put one hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she cradled her belly with the other hand. “I tried to hurt her by Returning with her first love, and she couldn’t even remember he ever existed!”

I stepped back, trying to let Ingrith’s hand fall, but she clutched harder, digging her yellowing nails into my dress. “Look!” She pointed behind her, upward—above the woods where I dared not look. I slapped a hand in front of my eyes.

“Look, girl!” She let my shoulder go, and her decaying old fingers pried at the hand I held tightly over my eyelids. “Look! There lives the heartless monster! The lord who gives the first goddess’s blessing! Have you ever seen him? Does he even exist? Who eats the bread, who wears the clothes? What becomes of the things the men deliver there?”

I swatted at her with my free hand. “Stop! Let me go!”

“Who are the servants bathed in white? Where are their goddesses? Do none speak? Did they punish me? Why is some man ruling over this village and giving the blessings of the first goddess, a woman?”

I jumped back, my eyes clamped shut, but she was still gripping my arm, pulling it downward with a force not even a man could muster. “Let go, you crazy old—”

“Oh, now she remembers to shut her eyes! When it’s not a life at stake, but a measly old earthquake. Well, I’m not afraid.”

The ground began to shake. Ingrith laughed, and the ground beneath my feet shifted until I had no choice but to fall into the grasses. My eyes flew open, as wide as Ingrith’s.

There it stood, dizzyingly high and regal, dark and dominant against the pale eastern mountains, ringed in verdant green trees from the woods before it. It was taller than I imagined, almost half the height of the mountain behind it. Its wide berth supported two great, jagged spires, so thin as to be impractical, but as menacing to me then as if they were actual swords, great daggers the building needed to defend itself against monsters. The castle. Forbidden to the eyes of all women.

The earthquake grew stronger, and my palms, scuffed and scratched already, clutched for the safety of the broken blades of grass and the fallen lilies, but the earth wouldn’t stop moving. The old crone danced, somehow staying upright even as the ground shook around her.

“I’m not afraid, you heartless monster! Live forever, you will never die, but you’ll never know love neither!” She grabbed her skirt and kicked her feet up high. “Punish me, lord! Strike me down and punish me!”

I didn’t know what to do. “Ingrith!”

Her feet stopped moving, and a gasping, scratching sound came from her throat, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Her clothing fell beside me, her body already gone. The ground stopped shaking. But my heart kept beating, strong and fast, as if the ground would never again be stable.