Ingrith shook her walking stick in the air. “’Cause you’re a fool, girl, if you go lovin’ where love is not needed! That boy’s your sister’s, he says? You get your own man. Love ’im or send him to the commune, don’t matter to me. But if you get your heart so set on another, and your man come callin’, don’t you dare go pretendin’ you’re in love with that poor soul of his, you hear me?”
Don’t pretend you’re in love with him. Elfriede. “But … what happens if a girl convinces herself she’s in love with her man? When she’s really just—I don’t know—in love with having her Returning? Or afraid to be alone?”
“Then she ought to delay the Returning until she’s sure. No need to rush the day you turn seventeen. Don’t know what’s wrong with all these young fool girls, thinkin’ they can’t possibly wait any longer.” Ingrith pointed the top of the walking stick in my direction. “I had my Returning when I was seventeen.”
Something felt sour in my stomach. “But you have no man!”
Ingrith pounded her walking stick and her free palm on the table. “Every woman gets her man! You never heard that lord’s blessing garbage at a Returning?”
I had, but—
Ingrith’s large, round eyes grew even larger, even wider. “We invited them all, you see, we ought to have had the lord’s blessing! He even came, that boy I truly fancied!” She laughed, but the laugh stuck in her throat like a fly caught in a spider’s webbing. “Bernhard. Bernhold. Something. I don’t even remember his name anymore! What a fool I was! He wasn’t worth none of my love, no! He had her!”
My palms rested against the table. I pushed back, letting the chair move slowly away.
Ingrith leaped up, summoning that secret speed of hers. “But I had to have a Returning, you see! My man was good enough. Nice fellow. Did whatever I wanted, though that’d be no surprise, seeing as all men follow their goddess’s orders when they’re still wearin’ those masks of theirs.” Ingrith hobbled closer to me, and my palms pushed forward, my legs tensed, ready to jump as soon as she got too near.
She leaned forward and stuck those bulbous eyes in my face before I even had a chance to jump. “Haelan. Village healer. Yes, we had one of those back then. Lived right here. He had no family by then, so no one else could do what he did.” She leaned back slightly and grinned, but it was a strange smile, a smile out of place on her sour, wrinkled face. “I promised to give him sons and daughters. Told ’im he could teach me and we’d all keep up the trade. Never seen a happier wood-faced man.” The smile vanished. “Though I suppose I could have told ’im we’d be living in the quarry under rocks and mud spending our days eating insects and he’d’ve been just as happy.”
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.