by Tanith Lee
It was a quiet time, the peace. It was a convalescence. And staring through his extraordinary lenses, the astronomer saw on the tapestry of space a silver man, walking through eternal night.
The immediate reaction of the astronomer, once the initial shock subsided, was to think someone had played a joke on him. Someone had, somehow, interfered with the immaculate telescope, forcing it to produce this sight, some superimposition on the fields of space.
But then he looked again, intrigued, and watched the silver man walk, and the stars show through him, or the nearer ones show before him. And a cold clear conviction stole over the astronomer that what he saw was actual, was real. And it meant something, but in God’s name, what?
Curiously, he did not think he looked upon God Himself. A god, perhaps. An angel. A giant, who could move about the airless, gaseous regions alight among beautiful poisons, at home stepping across the distant worlds, too large to be seen except like this, suddenly, freakishly, and by accident.
The astronomer stayed at his lens until the great figure finally went from view, vanishing away as if over a hill of galaxies.
The silver man had been only that. He had had nothing very peculiar about him, except that, unclothed, he had neither any hair nor any organs, yet was so manlike he could be nothing but a male. His face was not handsome, but it was perfect. He had no expression. He shone, and the light of suns gleamed upon him like lamps.
After he had gone, the astronomer did not bother to investigate his telescope (although in after days he dismantled it, had other experts in to try it, rebuilt it, and later searched the skies again for his first sighting of the silver man, which was ever repeated). He merely sat that night, in his chair, the vague hum and glow of the City beneath him, the cool air of his hilly garden on his face through the open roof.
What he had seen had no significance. It was too monumental to carry any import.
He told no one, making only a brief note in his diary. I saw tonight a silver man who walked across space – something like that.
In later years once or twice he referred to the phenomenon in company, without explaining, as if it were a common thing many had witnessed. Perhaps they had.
Once, but once only, he dreamed that as he lay on his bed, the silver man walked through the room and through his, the astronomer’s, body. There was no discomfort, not even a warmth or coldness, the feeling of a breeze in the blood. The vast limbs went by like columns, and were gone. Waking, the astronomer felt annoyed, as if he had missed something, but what was the use? He slept again, and in the morning made no note of any sort.
It is a poor little plot, this one. Who is lying there sleeping and dead? Bend down, part the uncut grass, and see.
The Moon Is a Mask
I danced over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air couldn’t catch me.
– Traditional
The mask seemed to have alighted on a stand, in the window of a small shop of crooked masonry, wedged between two alleyways – a thoroughfare seldom used by anyone. It was as if the mask, flighting by in darkness, had been drawn to rest there, like a bird at sea that notices the mast of a benighted ship. Somehow it had melted through the glass. The rest of the window was full of secondhand or thirdhand articles, unlikely to draw much attention, a plant pot, a set of fire irons, a rickety table with the feet of a boar. The mask was not like these things. It was a jet and liquid black, black feathers tipped and rimmed by silver sequins in such an aquiline way that it resembled, even alone and eyeless, the visage of a sooty hawk or a black owl.
Although almost no one frequented the alleyways, a very few people did pass there. Sometimes others came to the shop purposely, to sell, and, rarely, to buy.
Twice every seven days Elsa Garba trod up the south alley and turned into the east alley, on her way to clean the house of a rich doctor on the street Mignonette. On other days Elsa Garba took other routes to her other drudgeries about the City, and did not pass the shop at all.
The morning that she walked by, the mask seemed to see her. She stopped, transfixed.
After a moment, she went up the step and pushed at the shop door. It opened, and a bell rankled loudly. From a strange gloom that comprised boxes, chests, stacks of books, the shopkeeper emerged like a shark from some rock shelf under the sea. He was not surprised to confront Elsa Garba, although he had never seen her before, not even noticed her on her twice-weekly treks back and forth outside his shop. She looked twenty, and was perhaps younger, little and thin and gray. Her hair was scraped into a scarf and her coat tightly belted at a bone of a waist. She was like so very many others. She was nothing.
“I must tell you,” said the proprietor at once, in a fruity jovial tone, “that business isn’t good. I can’t promise you very much, whatever it is you have to offer.”
“I don’t want to sell,” said Elsa Garba. “How much is the mask?”
“The mask? Which mask is that?”
“The mask of black feathers and silver.”
“That mask? Oh dear me. That one.” The shark fluttered its fins lugubriously. “I’m afraid I hesitate to tell you. A very beautifully made article, from a festival I believe, worn by royalty –”
“How much?”
The shopkeeper closed his eyes and told her with a look of terrible pain. It was laughable, absurd, that such a creature as this one should even dare to ask.
Elsa Garba said,“Keep the mask for me until this evening. I’ll bring you the full amount in cash.”
“Oh, my dear young woman. Really.”
“I don’t suppose,” said Elsa Garba, “you’ll have many takers. At such a price. But I won’t quibble. I expect you to have the mask ready, wrapped and waiting, at seven o’clock this evening.”
“I close at seven.”
“Then I won’t be late.”
And so saying, the gray little thing went from the shop, leaving him between annoyance and amusement, definitely unsettled.
That day Elsa Garba stole from the house of the street Mignonette. She had now and then done so in the past, as she had done so from other houses of her various employers. They were all oblivious, having far too much and not keeping proper track of it. In this case it was a bottle, one of many dozens, from the doctor’s cellar – she had long ago learned how to pick the lock. She sold it in Barrel Lane, near the church of Our Lady of Sighs. No questions asked. It was a fine brandy. It gave her just enough.
At seven o’clock she returned to the shop at the joint of the two alleys. The proprietor had shut up early, perhaps to spite her, or only to ward her off. Elsa Garba rang the bell on and on, on and on, until a light appeared and next the proprietor. She showed him the money through the window. Then he had to let her in and wrap up the mask – naturally, he had not done so before – and Elsa Garba took her prize away into the night from which it had come.
Elsa Garba had been a drudge all her short life; she was actually sixteen. Her mother had been a prostitute and her father a lout who soon vanished from the stage. At first Elsa had carried the slops, scrubbed the floors, dusted, polished, mopped up vomit and other juices, at the brothel. Then, when her mother perished of overuse, absinthe, and gin, Elsa had been offered work of another sort. She had not wanted it, and besides was thought too poor a specimen to earn much in that line. The madam, however, affronted at Elsa’s aversion to the trade, kicked her out. Elsa bore her skills, such as they were, into the wide world of the City.
She could read a little, she was self-taught, and she could write a few words, and add a few numbers together if she must. In this way she was not often shortchanged. She worked in a laundry until she saw how the vapors killed off the laundresses. Then she took herself away and hired herself to anyone who wanted a maid of all rough work. So effective was she at her profession that employers thought her a perfect treasure, and although drab and lifeless she was also clean in her person. She never thieved anything obvious, such as food, and so they loaded her with
discarded dainties. Elsa Garba often feasted on the tail ends of salmon, on stale caviar, and exquisite cakes whose cream had ever so slightly turned. Drink of the alcoholic type she disliked, having been given forced sips by her mother and the madam in her formative years.
Soon Elsa had acquired an attic room at the top of a gaunt old house near the clockmakers’.
No one was ever admitted to this room.
Elsa had no friends.
At night, when her long day’s employments were done, she would climb up the stairs of the old house and come to her door, which she would unlock with two complicated keys in a motion known only to herself. And then she would leave the earth behind, and step into her chamber.
The room was not large, with a ceiling that sloped sharply down to one side, having set in it a skylight. By day, the skylight showed only the skies above the City, their washes and clouds, their dawns and sunsets, and after dark, the skylight showed the stars and the passing of the moon. In itself, therefore, it was valid and beautiful. But additionally around the edges of the light had been fixed on some pieces of stained glass, like a mosaic, which by day threw strange rich colors upon the room. The walls of the room had been covered in an expensive wallpaper of ruched silk, and where here or there a patch of damp or a particularly virulent crack had defaced the paper, some object stood before the blemish, hiding it. In one place was a great urn from which grew a gigantic jungle plant, whose glossy black leaves reached to the skylight and spread across the ceiling. There were pendant paper lamps with tassels and prismed lamps upon stands of silver gilt. The great bed that filled up the higher half of the room had a headboard of ebony and carved posts – how it had been got up the stairs and in the door was a wonder. Embroidered pillows, lace, a feather mattress and quilts covered the bed. In one angle of the room was a tall pier glass. And in the other a gramophone with an orchid of a horn. Upon a silvered rail hung four or five dresses of incredible luster, and from an ivory box left purposely open, spilled jewels which, though made of glass, were nevertheless reminiscent of some trove of the Arabian Nights.
Once Elsa Garba had entered and locked herself in, she put a record on her gramophone. It was a symphony of the composer Cassarnet. Then Elsa stripped off her work clothes and her scarf, and put them neatly away in a chest. She next washed herself from head to toe as, on every third night, she washed also her hair. Revealed, her hair was fine, silken, and inclined to blonde. Next she dressed herself in a dress of sealike satin hung with beads, and delicately powdered and rouged her face, darkened her lashes. Then she sat down at a tiny table to her supper, which tonight was only some sausage, cheese, and grapes from the market, and a crystal goblet of water from the tap in the communal downstairs kitchen.
When she had finished her meal, Elsa rose and went to look at herself in the brightly polished pier glass. Her exotic room was as spotless as any of those to which she attended. Over her shoulder she saw reflected the white china head of a beautiful woman, life size, which she had bought years before and which she called Mélie. By sleight of eye, Elsa was able to transpose upon her own features the exquisite ones of Mélie. And presently, instead of tying it on herself, Elsa took the mask of black feathers from its wrapping and presented it to Mélie. Then she went to the gramophone and rewound it.
Elsa did not speak to herself, or to any object in the room. She had no need for this solace, which presupposes the desire for a listener, confidante, or bosom friend. Nevertheless, one word did escape the lips of Elsa, as she tied the mask upon Mélie’s face by its black satin ribbons. “Oh,” said Elsa. It was not a cry of alarm or pleasure, merely a little sound, a little acknowledgment. For the mask, fastened upon Mélie’s pure white features, altered her. She became grave, full of flight, hollow-boned.
The hour now grew late for music, for like herself the other occupants of the house near the clockmaker’s were prone to rise at dawn or earlier. Elsa let the music fade and went to her bed. She always slept fully clothed in one of her beautiful dresses, and such was her instinctive care that she moved very little in sleep, never harming or crushing them. She slept also in her paint and powder, which she would wash off at sunrise.
Elsa Garba slept, with her hair spread upon the tinsel pillows. And Mélie watched, with the eyes now of an owl.
All was quiet. In the City from far away came once a sound of riot, a smashing of bottles and a drunken scream, but these things woke no one, being not uncommon.
The stars moved over the pane, and dimmed, and the sky began to glow with another light.
Elsa woke as a brushwork of this light fell on her neck.
She rose and washed her face, put off her dress and donned her drudge’s rags, bound up her hair, and drank a portion of weak, gray coffee from a china cup.
Then she descended the house, having locked her door upon her chamber, and upon Mélie in the mask.
There were four apartments to clean this next day, and Elsa Garba did not arrive at her attic again until after nine o’clock; she had heard the bell striking from the Clocktower.
The moment that she had opened her door and closed it behind her, she felt an alteration in the air of her chamber. So she did not turn on her electric light but lit instead her candles in their pewter stands. And by this light, then, she came to see Mélie was quite changed. She had become a harpy. The china skin was corruscated by china feathers, from her head her hair rayed out, tiny claws seemed to grip the cabinet beneath her. The candles gave to her eyes within the mask a feral gleam.
Elsa Garba washed and dressed herself in a deep new silence. She did not bother with the gâteau someone had given to her. She drank some water, lifted the mask in her hands before the mirror. Would it be conceivable to risk such a thing?
Mélie sank back into the candle shadow. The tiny claws vanished from beneath her and her skin was smooth.
Elsa placed the black mask over her own eyes and brow, and the upper part of her nose, and slowly tied the ribbons.
She felt a tingling. She looked into the mirror. She saw a young woman, slender as a pencil, in a dress of water drops and cobweb, and her fair hair flowed down like rain. But she had the face of a bird, a sort of black-feathered owl, and her eyes were the eyes of an owl.
“How light I feel,” said Elsa, aloud. “I feel I would float.”
And she lifted her arms. And she rose two or three inches, but only two or three, from the carpeted floor.
“What shall I do?” Elsa asked. She looked at the skylight. Then, mundanely climbing on a chair, she opened it a little way. She went to her bed and lay there. Elsa slept in the mask.
In the morning, Elsa took off the mask and washed her face free of feathers, and her eyes became human again.
She locked her chamber, leaving the mask lying on her pillows, where her head had rested.
It took a week of such nights before Elsa Garba turned into a bird. The metamorphosis was gradual, strange, and sensual. Elsa’s sensuality had until now been all to do with things, but through the mask she graduated via an object – the mask itself – into the world of living matter.
At first only her head was altered. She came to see upon her features not a mask but an integral inky feathered skin, from which the rest of the face of the owl, its actual mask, evolved. Her eyes, rather than being contained behind the mask, were set into the mask. It was a curious owl, unlike any she had ever heard tell of, or seen in any book of pictures her various employers might have owned.
The feathers spread down her neck, over her shoulders, down her arms, little by little, with a delightful tickling. Then a vast new strength came into her thin strong worker’s arms. Her hands, that only makeup and powder could whiten, turned to exquisite claws like diamond. She had grown smaller, and compact. Her body bloomed like a bud. Her tiny breasts were feathered and the beaded dress, now enormous, fell away. Her feet too grew claws. She raised her arms and, like the spreading of a peacock’s fan, she found herself winged. Armed and armored, weaponed and flighted.
And so at long last she rose up through her skylight as the bell from the Clocktower smote for one o’clock in the morning.
The moon was slender and going down, Elsa, or Owlsa, had now an impulse to soar over it, leaping it like a bow. But instead she circled the old Clocktower, staring down on the roofs and pylons of the City, mystic in starlight, weirdly canted, wet-lit, like some painting of an insane yet talented artist.
Here and there in the country of rooftops, she beheld a faint late light burning. Electricity, even at this hour and from this height, and behind the proper drapes, had its romance.
Owlsa dropped. She dropped to stare in with her great masked eyes at the scene of a drunkard sitting over his brandy. She spurned him, giving off a faint derisive screech, maybe like the cry of a hunting owl. It startled him; he spilled his drink and staggered to the window, pale and fearful. Something is always watching us, especially as we sin against ourselves.
At another window, Owlsa saw the sick, dying, and the priest bending low, and the incense was so sweet it reminded her again of the upper air, and she spun away.
She spun like a dart from the City, out over the suburbs, which the river divided in a cruel and wanton way, its bridges like hoops, and the lamps upon the banks so wan and treacherous, who could cross by night without their hearts in their mouths? But there were people abroad. They moved about.
Far off too, she saw a train, a gust of fire upon the darkness, springing on its meaningless journey somewhere, clamped to the earth, without flight.
At last there was a window with an oil lamp, one whose electricity had failed or been taken from it. The window was ajar on the night as if to beg a visitor.
