Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(4)

She retreated into the house and slammed the door behind her. I wrapped my hand around Jurij’s arm, pulling him eastward. “Come on. Let’s go. There’re bound to be more monsters in the cavern.”

Jurij didn’t give beneath my pull. He wouldn’t move.

“Jurij?”

I knew right then, somewhere in my mind, what had happened. But I was twelve. And Jurij was my last real friend. I knew he’d leave me one day like the others, but on some level, I didn’t really believe it yet.

Jurij stood stock still, even as I wrenched my arm harder and harder to get him to move.

“Oh for—Jurij!” I yelled, dropping my hands from his arm in frustration. “Ugh. I wish I was your goddess just so I could get you to obey me. Even if that means I’d have to put up with all that—yuck—smooching.” I shivered at the thought.

At last Jurij moved, if only to lift his other arm, to run his fingers across the strap that Elfriede had mended. She was gone from my sight, but Jurij would never see another.

It struck them all. Sometime around Jurij’s age, the boys’ voices cracked, shifting from high to deep and back again in a matter of a few words. They went from little wooden-faced animals always shorter than you to young men on their way to towering over you. And one day, at one moment, at some age, earlier for some and later for others, they looked at a girl they’d probably seen thousands of times before and simply ceased to be. At least, they weren’t who I knew them to be ever again.

And as with so many of my friends before Jurij, in that moment all other girls ceased to matter. I was nothing to him now, an afterthought, a shadow, a memory.

No.

Not him.

My dearest, my most special friend of all, now doomed to live or die by the choice of the fragile little bird who’d stopped to mend his strap.



Like most of the village, we couldn’t afford a mirror, but if you asked me, that was a good thing. By the time Mother was done trying to make me appear half a lady, I was ready to smash anything easily breakable within five yards of where I sat. “I don’t care how long you spend running the comb through my hair, it’s never going to be soft and supple.”

It’ll never be as beautiful as Elfriede’s.

Mother dipped the wooden comb in the bowl of water she’d brought to the kitchen-table-turned-rack-of-torture. It wasn’t working too well. I could tell from the constant battle between my scalp and the roots of my hair that so badly wished to tear free of the skin. But it was either that or bacon grease, and I wasn’t having any pig fat slathered over my hair in attempt to tame it, not today.

She gripped a chunk of hair like the tail on a dead squirrel and ran the wooden comb upward. “Oh!” came the shout, followed quickly by the snap of the wooden comb Father had carved for her upon their Returning years ago. The comb that was only really a last resort, a gift meant for Mother to treasure and run through her own silky, wavy golden hair. “We’ve broken the last of them,” she sighed. “We can still use the grease.”

“No.” I could just imagine myself smelling of dead pig on the first day I’d look upon the face of the man I loved. Not that he’d care even if I showed up smeared in mud with a live pig under each arm and missing a few teeth. He only had eyes for his goddess.

“Mother,” interrupted Elfriede, the goddess who’d have his love with or without the mud and the pigs. She stood by the sink, perhaps hoping to see her reflection in the musty water collected there. One hand held a wavy lock of golden hair that had escaped from the bun at the back of her neck. “This keeps falling out.”

Mother crossed the room and ran the broken half of the comb through Elfriede’s loose tendril. I yanked and jostled the tangle at the top of my head until the other half of the comb came loose. “Can’t I just cut it short?”

“No,” said Mother and Elfriede at once, in the same tone I’d used moments before.

Elfriede patted the sides of her head as Mother crossed back over toward the bed my sister and I shared. “Really, Noll,” said Elfriede, without turning her head. “You act like a young boy enough already. What if someone glanced over and thought you were a boy—unmasked—running around? You’d scare the women in the village to death!”

I drummed my fingers across the table. “As if anyone could mistake me for a boy.” At sixteen, I wasn’t as oak-pale as Mother and Elfriede, but my chestnut skin was lighter than any man’s.

Mother appeared behind me to tuck a small clump of hair behind my lobe. She pinched the top of my ear playfully. “Yes, your ears are round and smooth, but you can’t expect a woman to check for the pointed ears of a man when she’s worried she’s going to kill you just by glancing at your uncovered face.”

I tucked a strand behind my other ear as Mother glided across the room with a silky deep violet dress over her arm. She grabbed Elfriede by the wrist and gently guided her into the shaft of sunlight spilling in from the open doorway. “Won’t this look breathtaking on you?” said Mother, her face full of awe. She unfurled the dress and held it up before Elfriede. Its hem brushed the floor, kicking up a small flight of dust.

Elfriede beamed and stepped into the dress, sliding it over the slip she’d worn since Mother did her hair earlier. Mother grinned as she helped fasten the buttons at the back. “This was the dress I wore to my Returning,” said Mother. She took Elfriede by the shoulders and spun her around. “And it’s such a joy to see my dear girl wearing it for her own.” She kissed Elfriede’s temple and used a thumb to wipe a tear first from Elfriede’s cheek and then her own. “What a fine color. It really brings out the blossom on your cheeks.”