Jurij heaved a weary sigh. I supposed he’d had enough of dealing with me and my delusions, on what was the greatest day of his life. “Noll. We’re both wet. It’s cold. We need to get ready. It was already late when I came in here.” He stood and walked over to the candlestick, picking it up and starting back down the way we came.
I stood, but I hesitated. The candlelight was shrinking before me. I looked once more at the pool. The violet glow still illuminated the surface of the water, although it was subdued and fading. Amongst the stalactites, the ceiling seemed to sparkle, like violet stars in the blue moonlight.
“Noll?” Jurij’s voice echoed off the ceiling, almost like he was stuck there somewhere above me. “Are you coming?”
I shook my head to clear it of all its fantasies. There were no stars masquerading as violet lights in the ceiling. There were no laughing children deep in the cavern. No pale man calling me by my full name.
And no true love at all in the heart of the man I loved most.
In the Great Hall, all was quiet.
The two figures that drew everyone’s attention held hands and stared into each other’s eyes—or in Jurij’s case, the black holes in his mask. Over his features was the Returning mask, only it wasn’t wet and sopping, so I guessed perhaps he borrowed his father’s. Not that his father had yet had a chance to use it himself, but he kept it on hand “just in case” the impossible suddenly happened. Jurij’s new attire, red and bright and stunning, was a tad too large for him, so I guessed that was borrowed, too.
I could feel Mistress Tailor’s gaze boring into me from the seat on the other side of Luuk. Father might have done the same from my other side—I was, after all, barely dried and still wearing a damp, torn, and grass-stained mud-and-vomit dress—but his eyes were forward, locked on the woman at the center of the stage behind the coupling, as if she were the only thing that mattered.
Mother stood behind Jurij and Elfriede, a black leather book in her hands. It was the book of the lord’s blessing, the one kept at the Great Hall in a dark corner, layers of dust upon its sour pages, only touched when it was time for a woman to show to all that she was truly in love. So come on, Elfriede. Prove that you’re in love. How was it possible to want and not want something all at once?
Mother smiled and stared out at the gathered crowd, waiting for the right moment.
Although there was a pit of worry buried deep in my stomach, I was almost falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion. It felt nice, having that land of dreams almost within reach. I hoped I would wake up and forget the day had ever happened.
Mother cleared her throat and held the book open, a bit of dust escaping from its crinkling yellow pages. The mother of the goddess didn’t officiate her daughter’s wedding. That occasion was less momentous and could be handled by some figurehead in the village. But at her daughter’s Returning, the mother stood in ceremony, ready to do as her mother did for her and her mother’s mother before her.
“In a dismal time, long ago, in our village enshrined in endless mountains gray and white, love was sparse, love was rare.” Mother licked her fingertip and turned the page. What she saw there made her smile and glance at Elfriede, who looked away from Jurij in order to grin back at her. “A mother’s devotion to her child, a sister’s loyalty to her siblings, might have been all one knew of love, of warmth and passion.”
I swallowed at the mention of a sister’s loyalty, my mind lost in a mixture of guilt and revulsion. Without realizing, I’d clutched the skirt of my dress until my knuckles grew pale.
After a moment more of droning, Mother’s voice grew louder, snapping me back to attention. “But then the first goddess came down to touch the ground, from peaks unreachable, from nothingness beyond the endless mountains.
“My children, I have heard your screams, seen your tears. You stirred my heart at the first cry, and so I leaped from the mountains and fell for ages, watching you suffer for years on end. At last my feet have touched the ground. You are no longer alone.”
No longer alone. How wrong those words were. I couldn’t focus on what other drivel Mother spouted from the lord’s “blessing.” The pain in my chest was too great.
Luckily, I was distracted by Mistress Tailor’s sudden loud breathing, so deep I thought she must be snoring. Beside her, Master Tailor reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she shrugged it away.