Nobody's Lady

by Amy McNulty

  Alvilda must have noticed I hadn’t responded to her remark that I was a fool. I didn’t have anything to say; at this point, I probably agreed with it. Alvilda appeared beside me and took a swig from the mug she kept between a pile of filthy rags and a chisel on her worktable. “So how exactly does this living arrangement work?”

  “He’s sleeping on the floor. On some hay and blankets.”

  Alvilda peered down at me over the top of her mug. “And … doing what exactly?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing. We haven’t done anything.”

  Alvilda raised an eyebrow and put her mug back down. “No, you carved this box for me. And probably carved more of your toy animals, too.” Alvilda leaned across me to grab a few more nails and went back to her box and hammer. “I want to know if Jurij is doing anything other than moping and trying to get you to make love to him.”

  “Alvilda! He isn’t— We aren’t—” I coughed and made a show of covering my mouth so I could hide the blush on my cheeks at the same time. “It’s only been a few days.”

  “A few days becomes a few weeks becomes a few years in time.” Alvilda whacked the hammer with probably a little more force than necessary. “Now that men don’t need to be told what to do, they seem to need to be told what to do more than ever.”

  I thought about what she said for a moment, and what initially sounded like nonsense started to make sense. “Elweard still runs the tavern.”

  “Vena still runs the tavern. And Vena being bossy just happened to work out with Elweard looking for someone to boss him around, even without the curse driving him.” Alvilda shook the hammer in my direction. “Elweard is about the only good worker left among the lot of them. Well, and Coll.” Alvilda’s brother—Jurij’s father—had both sister and former wife to make sure he didn’t slack any just because his whole life was turned upside down.

  Alvilda picked up a nail. “Do you know what I had to go through to get an order of these? The blacksmith decided to use his newfound freedom to spend his days lying in the fields. Lying in the fields!” She shook her head and positioned the nail, taking a swing at it with her hammer. “I didn’t even dare to ask who with. His wife—former wife—told me he could rot in the fields for all she cared. But I needed my nails, so I made sure to give him a reason or two to get up off his flower-covered ass.” She swung the hammer back, resting it over her shoulder, and admired her hammering with a snarl, perhaps either intentionally or subconsciously showing me just how she convinced the man to get back to work. Then she placed the hammer down and snatched her mug up from the table like I might be tempted to steal it out of her hands. “And your father? What was his excuse to pack up shop in the last week? He’s retiring?”

  I shrugged and looked away. I hadn’t been home in weeks. I wasn’t really avoiding Father or Mother, but I knew I wouldn’t be going home to a happy family reunion. Especially not with how things were with Elfriede.

  Alvilda’s rant was undeterred by my silence. She swung her arms around the room, sloshing a little of her drink onto the floor. “All this carving to do, and the other master carver in the village has retired?” She shook her head and took a sip. “No. No, I won’t have it with my nephews.” She slammed the mug down. “And Siofra and Coll won’t have it, either.”

  “Luuk helps Master Tailor and Siofra.”

  Alvilda nodded. “He helps his father and mother and even me plenty. Nissa, too. They’re young. We can still tell them they’d better help out.” I didn’t ask if youth helped them cope with Luuk’s sudden lack of romantic devotion toward his former goddess. I didn’t relish whoever was the one to have the discussion with Nissa that her former little love now thought of her as more of a sister. Alvilda pointed directly at me. “Jurij is the problem here.”

  I crumbled under Alvilda’s stare, focusing instead on the circles my fingers keep tracing in the sawdust. I hated to admit what I already knew, that Jurij wasn’t my Jurij. Even if this probably was the real Jurij, the one who’d have existed without the curse. Then again, the curse was the reason for his bitterness, so who knows who he would have been? “I’m working on fixing things.”

  “Fixing things?” I could hear Alvilda scoff. “And what does that entail exactly?”

  I met Alvilda’s gaze. “Jurij back home with Elfriede. With his wife.”

  “With his former wife.” Alvilda sighed and threaded her arms across her chest. “Noll, you’re just not getting it. Things aren’t the same anymore. You can’t influence Jurij now any more than you could when you wanted him to love you.”

  “That was different.”

  “Why? Because he had to love Elfriede, so there was no hope for you?”

  “That’s exactly why. Now, his feelings could go either way. Or another way entirely.”

  “Then wishing your will on him seems more hopeless than ever.”

  I stared, studying Alvilda. “But he can be convinced now.”

  “You can’t shape him like one of your wooden toys, Noll!” Alvilda rolled her eyes. “He has his own feelings, his own desires. Let him figure out how he feels for himself.”

  “But I don’t want him to love me. Not like that. Not now.”

  Alvilda tilted her head. “And why not?”

  “Because.” I stared back at my circles, surprised to find that I’d traced a blooming rosebud without meaning to. “It’s just easier that way.”

  “Are you worried about Elfriede?” Alvilda waited for my response before continuing, but I said nothing. “Because she’s stronger than you give her credit for, stronger maybe than even she realizes. She’s beautiful and sweet, and there are dozens upon dozens of available men out there now. She doesn’t need Jurij, even if she thinks she does. She just needs time.”

  She doesn’t need him. And I don’t need Ailill. “I need time, too,” I said at last.

  Alvilda didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she picked up her hammer and went back to work. “Well, take it. You could all use a little time to stop obsessing over romance, if you ask me.”

  “Maybe.” I took a deep breath and stood, gathering my tools into my work basket.

  Alvilda pointed at me with the hammer again. “You tell Jurij his mother and I expect him here for dinner tomorrow. He’s had enough time to mope.”

  “I don’t think I can convince him.”

  Alvilda laughed and swung the hammer at a nail. “You tell him he can be convinced by you, or he can wait for me to come over and convince him.” She gestured at the door with the hammer. “And he might want to spend tomorrow walking through the village, looking for someplace where some other man has slacked off. Because if he’s going to relish being free, he’s going to find something productive he likes doing. Or if he can’t choose, I’ll choose for him. He’ll take over the tailor work and the carver work both.” She slammed the hammer one more time. “And I can find plenty more work that needs doing.”

  I wouldn’t doubt that, not even if the entire village were already carved from wood.

  “How can Alvilda expect me to make up my mind in one day?” Jurij had asked that question so many times I was starting to bite my tongue. If he’d spent a little less time asking, he’d have had more time to think about it. The blanket he’d carried for me was slipping out from under his arm, its edges grazing the road to the heart of the village. I shifted the basket of wooden toys onto my arm, scrambled to pick up the blanket hem, and tucked it back tighter beneath Jurij’s arm. He didn’t seem to notice. “I haven’t had time to think about it. I haven’t had time to think about anything but … ” He stopped speaking and gestured with his free hand. His eyebrows creased, his mouth pursed. “I mean, expecting me to help out with Mother and Father is one thing. When they’re busy. I’d even help out Auntie if she really needed the help.”

  I halted at the crossroads, realizing Jurij was still ranting in an entirely different direction. “But that’s what I don’t get,” Jurij was saying by the time I caught up wit
h him again. I grabbed his upper arm to stop him.

  “The baker’s today, remember?” I tugged him back the way we were meant to turn.

  Jurij followed my lead, letting himself be guided, not responding at all to what I’d said. “When I was El—her man, no one batted an eye that I went off to do nothing. Nothing but hand her cooking utensils and sweep floors and whatever else she demanded I do, even if it was just to stand there worshipping the ground she walked on.”

  I winced and readjusted the basket on my arm. Elfriede hadn’t been that bad, surely. No worse than any other goddess. Probably better than some. Like Jurij’s mother.

  “No, worshipping a woman, doing whatever it took to make her life easier, that was a fine occupation of my time. But now that I can do whatever I want … ”

  I dropped the basket onto the ground, hoping the noise it made would snap Jurij out of his tirade. My toys were hardy; they could take the abuse. “We’re here.” I put my hands on my waist and looked at the little patch of ground in front of the baker’s shop like it was something I’d built with my own two hands. Jurij had stopped speaking at least, but he wasn’t thinking, either, apparently. “Blanket.” I pointed to the bundle under his arm.

  Jurij nodded and shook the blanket out, spreading it on the ground in the spot I’d asked Mistress Baker to let me borrow one day a week. She’d been so flustered when I’d asked, elbow-deep in flour and yeast, I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. But she hadn’t corrected me since, so I was content to keep setting up shop in front of one of the village’s most popular stores. Everyone needed bread. And kids almost always tagged along to the baker’s, hoping for something sweet.

  I sat down on the blanket and opened the basket, setting out the wooden animals I’d brought along. Jurij stood there blankly. “Are you going to walk around the village?” I asked, placing a wooden doe next to the stag whose antlers had taken me half a day to get right. The broken-off one was just part of his appeal. “Look for some kind of work?”

  Jurij scrambled to sit next to me, digging into the basket and grabbing a handful of animals. We didn’t say anything for a moment. I finished emptying the basket, but Jurij was still staring at the animals in his hands, utterly unhelpful. He seemed to feel my stare and looked up with a smile. “These are nice, Noll.”

  I tore away, suddenly forgetting how annoyingly unhelpful he was being and remembering how attractive his face was. That cleft in his chin always had an effect on me. “Thanks.” I tucked a little bit of hair behind my ears. It was short, but it still stuck out enough that it could get irritating if I swung my head around quickly.

  Jurij put down the cat with the scarred rump and followed it with a dog and her puppy. He arranged and rearranged them until he must have decided they were shown off to their best angles. His hand lingered on the mother dog. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to get Bow. Tell El—your sister you need some company?”

  I laughed, and not kindly. “I don’t think she’d have much sympathy. Especially once she discovered I already had some company.”

  Jurij leaned back, resting his head against the bricks of the baker’s shop. “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t work.”

  I reached into the basket and pulled out the last of its contents, a small wooden sign on which I’d carved “Wooden Playthings, 2 Coppers Each,” and placed it in front of the eclectic little herd. “Well, if it’s any comfort, she’s bound to realize soon enough that you haven’t gone off to die, and you’ll get your dog back in the chaos that ensues.”

  Jurij pounded the back of his head against the baker’s shop wall once, twice, and a third time. “That’s not a comfort at all.”

  I shrugged. I knew that. But I didn’t think he was helping things by hoping it never happened. “Why don’t we invite her to your mother and aunt’s tonight?”

  Jurij tore his head away from the wall and stared at me. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  I ran a finger in a circle around a squirrel. “You might not find it so bad after all. You might … ” Just go back and make up with your wife already.

  “No.” Jurij leaned his head back again and hugged his knees to his chest. He always did that when he was uncomfortable. I wondered if Elfriede knew that about him. Or if she’d ever seen him uncomfortable before the curse was broken.

  “You know, Elfriede doesn’t … ” The giggles of children stopped me from continuing. I smiled at the boy and two girls standing in front of my makeshift shop. “Good day.” The girl in the front held two copper coins between her fingers.

  “Ask her!” The boy laughed and shoved the girl beside him.

  “No, you ask her!” The girl he’d shoved dug her heels into the ground and pushed back against the boy’s hands in her efforts to resist him, accidentally bumping into the girl with the coins in the exchange.

  I pretended to cough and held up the cat. “Do you want to take a closer look? Go ahead. Pick them up.”

  The well-behaved girl with the coppers took the cat from me and examined it. The boy and girl behind her were undeterred, still pushing against one another. Jurij stared at them, one eyebrow raised. “What’s up with those two?” he asked quietly.

  I stuck out a hand to stop further inquiries on the subject. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten questions, and it was bound not to be the last. With any luck, they’d both prove too shy to ask, and that would be the end of it.

  The little customer put the cat back on the blanket and picked up the squirrel, just as the girl behind her stumbled forward, her battle against the boy’s persistence lost. “Um,” she said, rubbing a hand over her forearm. “Wanted nolorloolike.”

  “What?” asked Jurij.

  The children burst out laughing, the boy clutching his arms to his stomach, the girl covering her mouth as if she’d said something shameful. She hadn’t said anything at all, really, except that I knew exactly what she meant, having heard it a number of times now.

  I picked up the puppy figure and held it to the girl in front, who put the squirrel down and took the puppy from me. “They want to know,” I answered Jurij, pausing to stop myself from grinding my teeth, “what the lord looks like.”

  The girl with her hand over her mouth squealed, and the boy stepped forward, practically shoving my customer aside. “Is he real?”

  “Is he a person?” added the squealer. “Or a monster?”

  “Is he all pale like them?” The boy nodded sideways. I hesitated to look, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a specter approaching.

  Jurij turned his head to look, and his face soured. He put a finger to his lips. “Guys, calm down.”

  “This one.” It was the first time the girl with the coppers spoke, and I had no idea which animal she’d picked.

  I was torn between watching the specter and pretending that my sole focus was my customer. “Okay. Sure. Two coppers then.” The cat after all. The one with the rather large rump. I held my hand out for the coppers, my gaze directed as much on the corner of my eye as possible, the giggles of the other children and the buzz of the villagers in the marketplace drowning out any hope of hearing his approaching footsteps.

  The coppers landed in my palm. “Thank you.” I turned my head just slightly, and for one fleeting second caught the red irises of the specter. It was almost like he was looking at me. But they’d rarely met my eyes before. They’d rarely done anything but fulfill the lord’s orders with utmost efficiency.

  But it was a fleeting moment. I’d only imagined it was longer. His face did so resemble Ailill’s, if Ailill had aged to appear much older. His eyes fell, and he opened the door to the baker’s shop, vanishing from sight.

  “Noll?”

  I shook my head to clear it and found Jurij’s gaze fixed on me. He nodded sideways, and I followed his gesture to find the three children absolutely still, staring at me.

  “She knows that servant, I bet!” cried the boy.

  “Maybe she likes him!” I h
ad no idea how the giggly girl came up with that idea. But then I realized my cheeks were hot, and I pocketed the coppers. I looked down at the array of wooden animals, straightening them back into order.

  “Thank you for the purchase.” I smiled, remembering what was more important. The girl cradling her wooden cat grinned.

  “Oh! That is cute.” The other girl grabbed the cat from my customer’s hands. She seemed reluctant to part with it, but she had little choice in the matter. “I want one!”

  “Two coppers,” I said, pointing to the sign.

  “Never mind.” She sighed and handed the cat back to her friend, who gingerly pet it with one finger, like it was a miniature kitten.

  The boy peeked his head over the two girls’ shoulders, studying the blanket and all of my wares. “They’re all right,” he said, clearly not impressed. His gaze wandered to the shop window above my head, and I knew he was watching the specter conduct his business in there.

  Jurij leaned over and picked up the squirrel. He pretended not to notice as the girl without coppers took in the figure hungrily, and he leaned back against the wall, turning the squirrel over in his lap. “You know, when I wanted coppers as a kid, I asked around to see if anyone had any work that needed doing.”

  Am I really hearing him say those words directed at someone else?

  The girl scuffed her foot on the ground. “Papa used to give me coppers. Now he keeps them.”

  I didn’t want to ask what he used them for. Thinking about how things had changed in the village with so many men refusing to work reminded me of that month no one remembered. When Ailill vanished—when I made him vanish—the whole village suffered without his purchases. If one man could make such an impact, albeit one man who spent a large amount in the village, surely dozens, if not hundreds, of men earning and spending less would, too. I grabbed the squirrel out of Jurij’s hands and placed it back among the wooden animals. “Well, you earn some of your own, instead of asking your papa for them, and I may give you a discount.”