Nobody's Goddess by Amy McNulty Page B

what good it does. You need not fear death here.” He pulled me close to him, his body pressed against mine. I felt strange, revolted, but at the same time, an unbidden sense of exhilaration spread from my head to my toes. His hand stroked the back of my head, and I felt patches of his cold, thin arms sweep across my cheek. My other cheek brushed against the silken fabric covering his shoulder.
    “That decree was my own doing, and I am delighted to at last be free from the order. For what would become of me had you not ventured here, against all counsel? What is your name?” he asked.
    “Noll,” I whispered. My lips froze as they brushed against the icy surface of his ear.
    His hand stopped stroking my head and balled into a fist around some of my hair. It hurt a bit, but I couldn’t express my alarm. My voice choked at the realization of what was happening.
    “Olivière,” his voice croaked through the darkness. Somehow he knew my full name, the girly name I couldn’t stand to hear spoken. Like the vision in the cavern.
    “Oh, Olivière,” he spoke again, his voice trembling. He let go of my hair and wrapped both arms so tightly around me, I thought he must have worried that I would float away.
    And then I knew he would never again let me go.

 
     
    He let me go home that night, but I could never truly be my own again, never truly be out of his embrace. Four months had passed since the lord of the village had found the goddess in me. I was only half a year away from turning seventeen.
    And Mother was dying.
    Before my thoughts were consumed with Mother’s illness, I found myself bitterly thinking like Ingrith said she once did, hoping at the very least that the news of my foolish trespass might spark some jealousy in Elfriede—what was a scrawny, puppy-face boy compared to the lord of the village?—or some kind of regret in Jurij that I, too, had someone else to love me.
    But I was lying to myself. A scrawny, puppy-face boy was everything. And Elfriede and Jurij were so dreadfully excited for me. It was the only time they bothered to spare me any thought as of late.
    “Wasn’t Mother right? We all knew your man would find you. And soon you can have your Returning and be as happy as me.”
    “Now you know the joys that exist between a man and his goddess! Now you know real love.”
    Their happiness was like the fangs of a monster, tearing into the defenseless flesh of the queen who’d foolishly set out to slay the beast, only to meet her own doom.
    I couldn’t get used to the idea that I was somebody’s goddess. Not just anybody’s goddess, either. But it was so far from what I’d wanted I didn’t know what to do. Not only was Jurij’s curse unbroken, but I left the castle that night knowing my future. Knowing I had someone to Return to.
    Because no one seemed to consider that I might not want to Return to him.
    My only refuge was Alvilda’s workshop, as far west from the castle as one could get, short of living in the commune.
    Alvilda’s trade had once been secondary to Father’s, considering she took it up only after refusing her Returning. However, since my mother’s illness, Father was less inclined to work than ever and only did so when Mother was conscious enough to remind him. Alvilda stepped right up to fill in the void, and she got most of the real work these days. At least Father was too far gone to care. In fact, he helped her from time to time. Or just gave her a tool he no longer felt he needed. Mostly because he no longer felt like working.
    I knocked and let myself in at the usual call of “No masked men here, come in!” Master Tailor sometimes visited his sister, and he could take his mask off in front of her.
    But she failed to warn me that an unmasked man was there.
    “Noll! What brings you here?” Alvilda looked up from her work—an ornate bed headboard, I believed. The smile that flashed over her features was genuine, although she couldn’t be torn from her work for