Amy McNulty | Love and Freedom: 5 Reasons Why My Village’s Women Have It Worse

My name is Noll (heroine of NOBODY'S GODDESS). It’s actually Olivière, but no one calls me that. (If you’ve spent more than a few minutes with me, you’d see why I’m hardly the delicate little bird deserving of such a ladylike name.) In my village surrounded by mountains, each man falls in love with only one woman his entire life, a woman who is a “goddess” to him. Women are free to love as they please, so a woman may reject the only man who will love her, but if she does, she knows that no other man will ever love her.

In other words, you have to love the man who loves you or choose a different life, one without children and a man by your side. Strangely, nobody has found the goddess in me even though I’m already sixteen. It’s happened to other women before, but not often. I don’t know how I’d feel if my man found me, but even so, I do know that women have it worse in my village, and I have five reasons why.

1. You can love the wrong person

Men never regret falling in love. A man simply cannot conceive of loving a person other than his goddess, at least not romantically. (And to men especially, romantic love is the most important love there is.) Even if his woman won’t Return his love, he’ll always love her. A woman can love anyone, even a man who’s found the goddess in another woman. A man knows his goddess can never be anyone else’s but his, but a woman can love someone who will never be hers.

2. You can be unsure

Men don’t doubt their love for a second. They just know, sometime around the time when they age from boy to man. A woman has no way of knowing if what she feels is genuine love. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except…

3. Your uncertainty—or just your eyes—can lead to death

There’s nothing a man can do to endanger a woman. (Unless his goddess went insane and commanded him to hurt another woman for some reason, but something like that hasn’t happened. Men haven’t hurt anyone since the days of old spoken about in legends.) But a woman can kill a man or boy not related to her by blood who has yet to have his love formally Returned just by looking at his uncovered face. Everyone is very careful to make sure that doesn’t happen. However, on your Returning day, your man takes off his mask in front of you. If you only think you love him, but you don’t really, he’ll die at that moment.

4. You can accidentally order your man around

I’ve yet to experience this because no man has found the goddess in me (which, of course, lowers the village’s opinion of me), but I’ve seen it at work and I’ve felt the repercussions. Before a Returning, a man must obey every order his goddess gives him. Most women simply ask their men to do their chores or errands. However, that also means even if you tell a man a message from his goddess, he’ll jump to it. Say you approach a man saying his goddess wants to see him because she wanted him to buy some cheese or something. Before you can even give him the rest of the message, he’s already on his way to see his goddess, and he’ll get back to her without the cheese.

5. Everyone expects the best from you

Yes, a woman is free to reject the man who loves her, but the rest of the village doesn’t look kindly on that. If you’re sure you can’t Return love to your man, he spends the rest of his life in the commune, a wretched place full of forlorn, unloved men. Even worse, though, is accepting your man and never Returning his love. Some men my parents’ age are still masked even though they’re married because their wives aren’t sure they love them enough to risk seeing their faces. Those women receive the most scorn because they’re not honest with themselves. The only way to gain the village’s full approval is to Return love, but you can’t help how you feel. Men have it much easier. They can’t help but feel.

Giveaway

Readers, what do you think of Noll's village? Leave a comment below and be entered to win an ecopy of NOBODY'S GODDESS by Amy McNulty. Three winners will be chosen; international entries accepted.

About NOBODY'S GODDESS

In a village of masked men, magic compels each man to love only one woman and to follow the commands of his "goddess” without question. A woman may reject the only man who will love her if she pleases, but she will be alone forever. And a man must stay masked until his goddess returns his love—and if she can’t or won’t, he remains masked forever. Where the rest of her village celebrates this mystery that binds men and women together, seventeen year old Noll is just done with it.

She’s lost all her childhood friends as they’ve paired off, but the worst blow was when her closest companion, Jurij, finds his goddess in Noll’s own sister. Desperate to find a way to break this ancient spell, Noll instead discovers why no man has ever loved her: she is in fact the goddess of the mysterious lord of the village, a Byronic man who refuses to let Noll have her right as a woman to spurn him and who has the power to fight the curse. Thus begins a dangerous game between the two: the choice of woman versus the magic of man. And the stakes are no less than freedom and happiness, life and death—and neither Noll nor the veiled man is willing to lose.

About Amy McNulty

Amy McNulty is a freelance writer and editor from Wisconsin with an honors degree in English. She was first published in a national scholarly journal (The Concord Review) while in high school and currently spends her days alternatively writing about anime and business topics and crafting stories with dastardly villains and antiheroes set in fantastical medieval settings. NOBODY'S GODDESS, the first book in The Never Veil Series, is her debut YA romantic fantasy. You can find her on Twitter and Facebook.