Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(41)

At the edge of the woods, I breathed a sigh of relief. My home was there. I’d reached the flattened grass where the carriage had turned around day after day. I took note of a few broken lily petals that had floated across the dirt road, still vibrant and purple despite their pressing fate.

The door to the house was cracked open. “Mother? Father? Elfriede?”

I pushed on the door and heard the creak of the hinges echo against the silence inside. There was no light, and the fire was dead, but thanks to the moonlight that crept inside, I could just make out a figure in the chair at the table that faced the doorway.

“Mother?” I whispered.

Bit by bit, the lantern light revealed the figure. The eyes, dark with just a hint of the flames that ought to have burned brightly. The scowl on the lips of his strained face. And in one hand, on the table, the same blue dress I’d seen Mother wearing before I’d visited the lord. It felt like days ago, but I knew it to be just a few hours earlier.

“I hope you’re happy, Noll,” said Father. His voice cracked and strained with each syllable. “You wouldn’t help her. And now she’s gone.”

Elfriede shrieked from where she sat atop the bed she and I shared; she buried her head into the shoulder of the man, her man, who comforted her.

I stumbled, the breath completely sucked out of me. There was no one there to catch me.



***



Six months went by in a blur of numbness and woodcarving.

Every day the memory of the world in my drowning dream faded. Every day the memory of the lord doing nothing, caring only about his Returning, grew stronger. I told Father I’d tried to get the lord to help us. He didn’t care. I didn’t act soon enough. I wasn’t there when she died and faded into nothingness—neither were Elfriede or Jurij, apparently, but they didn’t merit Father’s blame. So I didn’t bother telling them about my dream. Why would they believe me? Why would they care? I hardly believed it myself.

The first thing I carved after Mother’s death was my own interpretation of a heartless monster. It was a beast like the beasts of legend, a wolf, a bear, and a snake, all in one. I left an open cavity over the left side of its chest to show that there was no heart within it. Father didn’t notice it. Elfriede gave me an uneasy smile and told me it may do some good scaring off rabbits from the garden. And that’s where she put it, half-buried in leaves and dirt.

The day before my seventeenth birthday there wasn’t enough scrap wood in the land for my trembling fingers. I finished the last few dozen projects I’d started—wooden animals, trees, and flowers—by adding a few more details than necessary. I ruined more than one, but my fingers wouldn’t stop peeling away at the layers of wood. I started new projects I knew I would never finish, but it was just as well because the most I could think of carving was a blob of mud or a wooden rock.

My effort wasn’t lost on Elfriede. Although, despite my better hopes, I thought she may have been more upset about the piles of sawdust all over her kitchen table than the reason for the mess. “Clean that off, will you? Father will be home soon.”

“Here, let me help.” Jurij released his hand from around Elfriede’s shoulder and the one being became two. I didn’t say anything as I set the carved pieces on the mantle, next to a wooden lily. Far better work than mine.

As Jurij wiped the dust into a rag, I numbly placed bowls and spoons for four people at our table. A brief jolt of pain brought me to life as I placed Jurij’s setting down next to Elfriede’s, and I thought of who had once sat there. “Ah. Good day, Jurij,” came a slow, slurring voice, a croaking echo of what it had been. I glanced up to see Father in the doorway. He stumbled his way to his chair, a shade of the father I had known.

Father had the same features, but they were muted somehow. His strong, dark chin poked through a rough, unkempt black-and-gray beard. His curls drooped and stuck out in all directions, although somehow the pointed tips of his ears made a slight appearance through the wild tangle of knots. His eyes sparkled, but in a different way than they once had. The flame within them burned as lightly as a candle in its final few moments before the wick withered away.

Perhaps that described my father. He had lost his sunlight and was left only with the dimmer echoes in the children she left behind. What room was there for happiness with the sun’s light gone forever? The moon alone could never be enough, not after years of dancing in the sun’s delight. It was just a matter of time. Nissa’s father had died the same evening as his wife. They rarely lasted beyond a year.

“Good day, Gideon,” said Jurij. He tore himself from Elfriede long enough to put his hand on Father’s shoulder. “How’re Vena and Elweard?”

“Huh?” asked Father absently. Often these days you had to ask a question more than once.

“The tavern masters,” I reminded him. Father practically kept them in business since Mother’s death.

“Oh, fine, fine.” Father’s eyes glossed over.

“Father?” I asked, covering his trembling hand with mine. He looked at me, the smallest of smiles edging onto his lips. The light flickered in his eyes. It was still there. Of course it was. But only just.

Jurij picked up Father’s and my bowls and brought them over to the fire. Jurij and Elfriede worked in perfect harmony, one ladling the stew and the other holding the bowls out to receive it.