Nobody's Goddess Read Online Free Page B

and ordinary, just like every other man’s.”
    There was no way his eyes were ordinary. Not if I could have them locked on to my own, even just once.
    Bow opened her mouth and panted, watching her master eagerly, probably smelling that weeks-old biscuit and actually deeming it fit for dog consumption. Jurij bent to set the basket on the ground, cooing as he grabbed Bow’s muzzle and rubbed the sides gently, preventing her from attacking the basket. Elfriede wasn’t the only golden-haired mongrel that got his attention. “You’re going to be a cute little mama, aren’t you?”
    I glanced at Bow’s bulging belly as I snatched up the basket. “She’s pregnant?”
    “Yup. I think it was the butcher’s dog. Because you love your sausages, don’t you? So who’s eating the disgusting old cheese?” Jurij asked, still simpering in his high-pitched baby voice.
    I dropped the cheese into the basket and moved the old black cloth around until it covered the travesty of a gift I was tasked with presenting. It took me a moment to figure out Jurij was talking to me and not his dog. “Our favorite village crazy person: Ingrith. Apparently everyone conveniently forgot to invite her to the Returning, so guess who gets to do it? In case the lord decides to prove that he actually exists and comes down from the castle to say that your Returning is canceled because one old loon wasn’t asked to give her blessing.”
    “No!” Jurij stood and twisted his wooden face to look over and behind me.
    “I was joking, Jurij.” I rubbed my temples. His every movement let me know just how much in the way I was of who he hoped to see. “She’s not with me. She’s primping with her girlfriends in the village.” Apparently he’d just missed her. Strange. Jurij would certainly have visited his goddess had he walked past her home. Elfriede was clearly more concerned with the occasion than with the young man who was the entire reason she was the focus of the village’s attention. At least until the next Returning.
    I couldn’t see his face, but the way Jurij’s shoulders slumped forward was visual cue enough to express his disappointment. Bow sensed her master’s distress and nudged his hand with her nose. Jurij pet it absently.
    The Returning would be meaningless to me. We could hold the ceremony alone in the cavern for all I’d care. All I’d want is to be with you.
    I clutched the handle of the basket with both hands, running the toe of one shoe over the dirt in the road. “I’d ask why you aren’t doing the same and primping and chatting with a bunch of excited young men, but you have no friends. Must be wonderful to be a guy. Soon as your buddy finds his goddess, he practically forgets anyone else exists.”
    “You’re my friend, Noll.” He said it with such conviction and so quickly, I didn’t know whether to be delighted or let down. “I don’t miss the other guys.”
    “I do.”
    Jurij pet the back of Bow’s head absently, rustling her floppy ear like he might a curl of Elfriede’s hair. “It’s hard to explain. They’re not important anymore.”
    “They are—they were to me.”
    Jurij shrugged. “I don’t mean anything by it. I know they don’t miss me, either.”
    I dug my heel sharply into the dirt. “Because your goddess is everything.”
    Jurij’s wooden face bobbed up and down. “She is.”
    Unlike Mother, at least Jurij didn’t try to soften the statement with assurance that some man would find the goddess in me one day. I was glad for it. “Nice face, by the way.”
    The smile carved onto the wooden face might have been genuine if it didn’t look so freaky. “Looking forward to seeing what’s under it?”
    I forced myself to laugh. “Not as much as Elfriede, I’m sure.” A lie.
    The name of his goddess pulled Jurij into some dream state of mind. His wooden face looked off behind me again. I’d pretend to seek out what caught his attention, but if I chanced to look up and glance at the