“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.
I touched the dirty, dark shawl that had once covered her white head. It lay between a lily and an indentation in the grass, where Ingrith had once stood. Her clothing was now all that remained.
Had the lord actually killed her? But why? And how? He’d never executed anyone before.
No woman has ever looked at the castle for that long, either.
And no one ever really complained about him before. No one said what would happen if we went against the first goddess’s teachings. They just asked his blessing, like he was some ever-watching shepherd spirit, like we were his mindless flock. Someone has to eat the food, wear the clothes. Unless it’s all the specters.
The lord’s servants. Less reverently and more often called “the specters” in my mind. To a child they were too-real monsters, appearing without fanfare and dissipating into the mist once they were done with their errand. They showed up any time anyone had so much as a disagreement in Vena’s tavern, not that there was much room for anything resembling an actual fight like those in the tales of queens and kings in the village of simpering men and goddesses. They also did the lord’s shopping for him, silently handing merchants notes with the lord’s orders. Clothed from head to toe entirely in white, the specters would have been hard not to spot even from leagues away. But their hair—each one had hair to his shoulders—was white. Their skin was white, as white as snow. It was as if they were men who’d had every bit of life, every bit of color drained out of them. They were like a walking death, if anything of our bodies was left behind once we died.
Only once had I gotten close enough to look at one’s face. It was there that I saw the only hint of color: blood red eyes.