Jurij’s mask cocked slightly. “What do you mean? Nissa stopped by to talk to Luuk, and she told me you were headed into the cavern, which I found odd. So that’s what I was asking. Did Ingrith tell you she was going to cause an earthquake again before you left her? I’m not too sure I believe her about the bird now that she went and caused such a tremor. We felt it halfway into the village this time.”
No one saw me leave. “No. I … ” I bit my lip. It wasn’t like I’d killed her. And I’d barely looked. That crazy old crone did it to herself. “She was rambling about something awfully weird, so I left.” What if Ingrith wasn’t completely crazy? What if a goddess who just thinks she’s in love can still kill her man when he takes off his mask? Jurij’s life could really be in danger.
Jurij put his palms back on the cavern floor and leaned back. “You look worried.”
I blushed. I’d gotten so used to never being able to see his expressions that I’d forgotten my face was as legible as an open book. “I’m worried about your Returning.”
Jurij’s mask bobbed slightly. I could almost picture his eyes rolling behind those soulless black eye holes. “Noll, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I’ll be fine.” He sighed that rare and frustrated sigh. “Can we try focusing on how this is the greatest day of my life for once? Please?”
I bit the inside of my cheek as the heat rose to my face. “Of course you think it’s the greatest day of your life. But you could die, Jurij! You just don’t realize that because you don’t have a mind of your own!”
Jurij sat up straighter. “You’re some friend, Noll. You don’t know anything about what it’s like to have a goddess. So why don’t you keep your opinion to yourself for once?”
I jumped up. Jurij wasn’t like this. He wasn’t bratty like the other boys had been. But he was blind, so blind. Blind to all of my suffering. “I’m only trying to make you think for once because I care about you!”
Jurij shook his mask-face and leaned on a stalagmite to stand up. “Do you think I don’t realize that my life is in danger from the moment I open my eyes in the morning to the moment I shut them at night? Do you think I’ve never worried that some girl or woman not related to us will burst in one morning and kill me, my brother, and my father while we’re eating together? Do you think I’ve never worried that Father’s mask might fall off while he’s sleeping, and Mother might look over and kill him where he lays?” He clenched his fist. “I know when love exists between a coupling, Noll, and when it doesn’t. We men adjust. We’re careful. We know what we’re doing.”
I grit my teeth. “You all spend so much time worshipping your goddesses, I doubt you know much of anything.”
Jurij threw his hands into the air. “When has a man ever died at his Returning? When has a man ever died from a woman looking at his face at all?”
An excellent point. How did we even know men had to cover their faces? Maybe this was all some twisted game of the always-watching, never-present lord and his imaginary “first goddess.”
Haelan. “Ingrith. She told me she killed her man at their Returning. And no one but her remembers the man ever existed.”
Jurij tapped his fingers impatiently against his thigh. “You’re using the ramblings of a crazy woman to try to delay the greatest day of my life?” He pointed at me. “With your own sister, I might add. Why do you hate Elfriede so much?”
Because she took the only thing that ever truly mattered to me. And she doesn’t even realize what a treasure she stole. “I don’t hate her!” I don’t. I don’t.
“Then why are you always talking as if she’s lying about loving me and is going to kill me?”
“I don’t think she’s lying.” My throat felt parched, but there was no hope for the dryness to ever be quenched. “I just think she doesn’t even know herself. She never knew you before you found the goddess in her.”
Jurij waved a hand. “That’s not important.”
“Yes, it is! You were nothing to her! She only convinced herself she loved you because it was you or no one.”
Jurij shrugged. “So? It’s the same for me. It’s her or no one. Her or the commune. Her or death.”
“But you have no choice but to love her! You don’t realize what it’s like for a woman. We have the choice to love or not, to not even know if what we think we feel is real or just some crazy mixture of desire and filial affection.” Tears formed at the edges of my eyes, and I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. “Jurij, I love you!”
Jurij sighed and shook his head. “I love you, too, but—”
“Not like that!” I dug my fingers as deeply into my arms as they would go. “I love you, like you love Elfriede.”
Jurij ran a hand up and down his forearm. Before he spoke, there was nothing but the drip, drip, drop of the distant source of water. There was no horrible past, no terrible future. Time was standing still, and in my mind, an impossible future was still a possibility. I love you, too. Say it.