Oh. “But that means—”
Mother tipped her head forward a bit. Her fingers dug into my skin. “He’s there.”
By there, she didn’t mean any of the rows of houses along the path we were walking, nor the fields of crops that went on for leagues until stopped by the western mountains. Certainly not Alvilda’s home at the western edge of the village, where she peddled her woodcarvings as Father’s only competitor.
No, between the fields and Alvilda’s lay a small outcropping of dilapidated shacks. Their roofs had holes in them. Their flooring, I was told, was just dirt and rocks and filth. Each shack looked likely to topple over. It was lucky for the men who lived there that no woman bothered spending much time nearby because if one happened to look up to the castle in the east, surely the entire commune would fall over.
“That’s sad. Still, if Alvilda didn’t love him … ” I knew I’d feel guilty in her place, but there was no avoiding it. “I mean, it doesn’t seem fair that we can’t love who we want to.”
Mother kept the slow pace toward the west, silent for a while. Then she opened her mouth, her lips almost trembling. “Women are not forced by nature to love. When we love, we do so of our own will. Men have no choice. But we have three: love at once, learn to love, or never love at all.”
“You forgot one. Love a man who will never love you.”
Mother squeezed my arm closer to her bosom. “That’s so poor a choice I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
We didn’t speak for a moment more. At last, I moved my tongue. “But if it does happen?”
Mother stopped. “Then you do the best you can to forget him.”
You don’t know how I feel. You couldn’t have loved that man like I love Jurij. I strained to read her light-brown eyes. In the dying light, I thought I saw the glisten of a forgotten choice. “Do you still love him?”
Mother let go of my arms and fanned a hand at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. I was a child. That was long ago. Before your father found the goddess in me.”
I sighed. Of course. There couldn’t be anything to tarnish the sweet love between my parents. “So what was it about Father? The way he was bound to follow your every order?” Useful for commanding a man to be a lonely loveless girl’s friend, that.
“Noll.” Mother shook her head, but there was a smile on her face. “To tell the truth, that part is sort of … disconcerting. Especially if you forget that anything you say that could possibly be construed as your direct command he does immediately. Even if you were joking.”
“Do the commands and obeying really die down after the Returning like they say?” I snorted, thinking of this morning with Father. “It doesn’t seem that way.” Great. Jurij is going to keep pretending to be my friend, even though I could never live down what happened in the cavern.
“That takes a bit of the pressure off. If it doesn’t appear that way to you, well, that’s just the man acting out of love. But don’t confuse it with pre-Returning commands. Those are absolute.”
I thought of the little scene in the Great Hall. “I’m sure women like Mistress Tailor find that a benefit of not yet Returning their husbands’ affections.”
Mother rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, women like Siofra take advantage of it if you ask me. Maybe some little revenge for the poor men who had no choice but to love them in the first place.”
“Is that why women whose husbands are still masked seem to get more scorn than the women who send their men to the commune?”
“Well, at the very least, those women are honest with themselves. And by choosing to devote themselves to a profession or hobby, they have value in the community. Still, I wouldn’t wish any woman to be in either position.”
I forced myself to smile. “How lucky for you that it all worked out.”
Mother paused before speaking. “Yes.”
We stopped. We’d reached the western edge of the village. If we were going to go for a walk in the fields, we’d have to pass through the commune first. The stench was off-putting.
A man in a faded, cracked mask stumbled from one edge of the commune to the other. I couldn’t tell what animal his face had once resembled. I figured he wouldn’t remember, either.
He stopped and slumped over next to a basket. Dirt went flying as his rear hit the ground. The basket was full of bread and veggies, all of which were rotting. What didn’t make it for mulch for the fields got dumped to feed the men in the commune. At least the lord doesn’t seem to care if these unloved men are not invited. Not that they’d go.
The man’s hand fumbled into the basket. He stuck the bread up beneath his mask, and I saw the mask bobbing. Between slow, slow bites of bread, he mumbled something, over and over and over.