Unmasked (Rise of the Masks Book 1)

by Kaplan, EM

  The man continued, "If I live a thousand years, I'll never forget the sight of all those beautiful Keep girls burned up in their fancy dresses." He passed an unsteady, speckled hand over his eyes.

  Another man standing in the muddy street, his cap askew, said, "I don't know what those creatures were, but they're nothing but animals. They took the bodies of the dead, too, as well as the living. The dead we found had teeth marks on them. They use them as food, the young men and the old ones. The ones they don't use for food . . . " and Mel stopped listening, as the locals talked on, milking their own fears and their undeniable relief at having been far away from the Keep at the time. She didn't have that comfort, though she was alive. She wondered how she had been spared. A vague memory of a wall crumbling at her came, and then drifted back into the depths of her mind. No, there it was again. She had been crushed by the falling stones of the Keep. She hadn’t been saved; she had merely been overlooked.

  Mel heard more narratives from men in the village who had gone up to the Keep with weapons, hoping to capture some of the creatures and kill them, but that none of the beasts were left. The only ones left were a few human dead, whose names were added to the list after they were identified. No Rav, no Ott. Neither was Ott's big friend on any list.

  When she came back to herself, when her mind finally cleared, Mel began to feel frantic. "What about a search party? We need to find the others. Surely, there are others still up there," she asked them, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, trying not to cling to their shirt fronts and shake complicity from them. They had to go back, she kept thinking. She had to find her friends and Ott—especially him. She didn't feel right in her own skin. She wanted the warmth of his hands and the shine of his green eyes looking back at her.

  "It's no use," they told her, shaking their heads. She listened to them talking, everywhere, describing the great, gaping fissure in the floor of the Keep, a strange hole that was so deep and noxious that no light would penetrate it and no person could breathe there. They had thrown ropes down into it, intending to lower themselves down, but the best any of them could do was one or two arm lengths down the rope before the fumes were too much.

  She wandered around the now overcrowded village thinking maybe she could go into the hole, that great scar in the center of the Keep. She could slow her breathing, hold her breath for minutes. A quarter of an hour at the most, but that was without other physical exertion. She'd have to climb and adjust her eyes to see in almost absolute darkness. Protect her skin from noxious gas. Her weakness nearly made her cry. She was only one mostly ineffective person. They would need an army. An army of her kind. She shivered remembering how large the creatures were. Tufts of coarse hair sprouting above their foreheads. Gray, glaucous eyes and always that labored, raspy breathing. She leaned against the rough stone wall outside the inn, and in bright sunlight, allowed herself to be afraid. Bone-wrenchingly, mind-numbingly terror-stricken.

  Mel couldn't go back to the Keep and search for the dead. She did not want to see Rav's burnished, bronze skin dulled by char and dust and lack of life. She did not want to see the Keep in ruins, flags never to fly again, crumbled piles of rubble that were once beautiful stone walls. Mud, soot, and blood churning through the soft grass on the lawn. And where was Lady Skance? Had her ceremonial facepaint and fastidious posture been destroyed forever?

  Even now in the village, Mel could hardly determine the identities of the survivors; their gray slack faces all looked alike. Did she not know anyone because of her own diminished ability to sense anything? Her persistent numbness? Or did they actually look all alike, transfigured by grief, shock, and bodily injury? She stumbled around for days, taking what she was offered: clothing, shoes, food, and a place to sleep. The villagers were very, very kind. They were not wealthy by any means, but they gave what they had. Some offered prayer, mostly to gods that were not hers. Falcun of the sky. Pesca of water. She shook her head no. Would they have taken such good care of her if they had known she was a Mask? Without the cloak, was she even a Mask at all or just another wounded body to tend to?

  For days, she drifted in and out of her mind and her body, always startled to come back to herself and always relieved to retreat again into numbness. After a couple of blurrily indistinct weeks, they put her on a carriage out of town that would take her to Port Navio.

  Chapter 10

  Ott could not be dead.

  She told herself this again and again as the large carriage jostled her down a deeply rutted road to the distant port city. In fact, she knew he wasn't dead. He couldn't be, or else she knew something in her would sense it, would cry out, would protest. They had bonded, had they not? Made an emotional and spiritual connection. She refused to believe it had been physical attraction only. If he had been slain in the assault on the Keep, something inside her would have ripped apart. She would bleed, not feel this terrible numbness.

  Wouldn't I feel something?

  Doubt, fear, and dread. Hope. And then guilt—Ott was alive out there somewhere and probably thought she were dead. She trembled like a coward for another reason. It was easier to let him think her dead than to tell him she was a Mask . . . but letting him think she was dead was a lie. She would have to find a way to make that right. If she ever found him again. Outside the carriage window, trees turned from blue to green. She could smell the water of the river miles before they reached it—the brine and far-traveled wind from distant lands. It was not until then that the sulfurous smell of the creatures truly cleared out of her nose and her mind.

  News traveled with her to Port Navio, and the whole countryside was alive with talk of the attack on Cillary Keep. She heard about it at every stop they made, at every small town and inn. People clamored for more information, but they would take whatever rumor or half-truth was available. From the port, news would travel across the lands to others. That was how it always worked. Port Navio was the hub, the gateway to more than one direction. Up the Uptdon River or down or across to the far eastern states. The great river was the conduit to the southern sea, and from there, on to worlds hardly known, even by Masks.

  On the teeming docks of Port Navio, Mel perched, exhausted, on a lumpy, donated bag of cast-off clothes that she had neither wanted nor been able to turn down. She might have seemed out of place in the crowd, sitting numbly in the middle of the pedestrian thoroughfare, if it weren’t for the collective preoccupation of the crowd, which was alive with uncertainty and gossip. At any other time, her behavior might have struck an observer as odd. Instead, people passed her by without notice, intent on news from the west. Survivors had made it to Navio before her with their fear-ridden tales of the beasts and carnage. The people were ready to believe the hearsay of baby-eating trolls come to life from stories of childhood. Yet, these were no made-up stories.

  Parents' voices were a little too shrill in calling to their children. Others kept their heads entirely down, eyes averted in fear or suspicion of strangers. The only safe thing to do was to keep to themselves and go on as before.

  There was comfort in the familiar patterns of life, but sometimes you had to adhere to them despite all evidence telling you things were not normal and perhaps, would never be again.

  Threads of conversation filtered down to her between passing groups. The crowd swirled around her, bodies creating eddies as they stopped to greet loved ones, listen to news bearers, or, like her, to rest wearily.

  "They say there are ogres, but there are no such things. That's the stuff of fairy tales, things to scare children into behaving. But these eat human flesh. And they are probably cannibals, too . . . They're bluer and taller than those blue Cillary trees . . . And then they left the very next day, back down to the hell they came from. Such a terrible waste, all those dead, beautiful girls and their young men . . . We wanted to get out of there as fast as we could carry ourselves . . . Well, you're safe now."

  A hand fell on Mel's shoulder, radiating warmth and comfort, and she turned to look up its o
wner. Jenks. Sunburned skin, deep lines, blue eyes, and a simpleness that harbored no duplicity. Could never. He was an outsider who ran errands for the Mask settlement. He lived with them, but apart, on his own, in a hermit-like cabin that he'd constructed himself.

  "Go on home," he said, slight pressure from his fingertips. "I'll take care of your things."

  She nodded because Jenks would know what to do with her second-hand bag. That was the type of thing he did. Erase traces of each Mask when they had to go out in the general population. He delivered messages to them from the world outside. He was the one who had set up her passage to the Keep. She stood, feeling his warm hand slip off her shoulder. Fifteen paces into the crowd and he was gone completely. Then she slipped away from the river, away from the dock, away from the crowded streets, and into the woods unnoticed.

  She had been away from home for only a few months. As she jogged northward through the woods in the underbrush and things began to be familiar to her, she didn't feel as relieved and comforted to be there as she'd hoped, even though these were the familiar green woods she’d grown up in. While she ran, she worked on healing the minor injuries on her skin, her broken or missing fingernails and the scratches on her face. She was grateful for the high-ankled and thick soled shoes on her feet, which were slightly too big. Wearing them through puddles and mud had helped to mold them to her feet over the past days since they had been given to her.

  She smelled the clearing near her mother's house before she reached it: a sweet, warm scent with clover, grass, and a sunshine dryness. She stopped at the edge, gazing at the open field, which was home, but not entirely so. She started to walk, trying to shake the feeling that a small piece of what she called home now moved around somewhere on two legs, clad in hunter's garb. Her fingers tingled thinking about him, wanting to touch him again, to feel the roughness of his unshaven face under her hands. She shook her head to clear it and walked to her house.

  "Mother," Mel said.

  And as Ley'Ana embraced her, growing softer and velvety around Mel, a flicker of confusion crossed her mother's placid face as she scanned and categorized the changes in her daughter. Her mother hugged her tightly. Mel inhaled, taking in the familiar scent of her mother's soap. Otherwise, her mother had no natural aroma of her own. Every regular human outside of the settlement had a distinct aroma, like Ott or Rav. Within the settlement, occupation determined a person's scent: bakers smelled like yeast and sometimes sugar; woodcrafters smelled like wood chips and sawdust; and everyone smelled of book dust and ink. Otherwise, Masks purposely concealed themselves; it was part of taking the Mask, depersonalization so as to be the blank, unwritten face of impartiality. Even at the most basic level of scent.

  Her mother held her at arm’s length and said with an owlish blink of her eyes, "We have trouble. We must study this problem." No tsking, no mindless chatter or need for pointless details of her trip: the bumpiness of her carriage, the sogginess of the weather, the makeshift meals she had eaten. Mel had a sudden, wistful yearning for Liz and her need to speak the obvious, sometimes over and over. Poor Liz. Mel mourned her for a minute, and then silently berated herself for her sentimentality, her weakness—her feelings—and followed her mother into to the library. She couldn’t allow herself to be compromised by emotion. But, poor Liz.

  A library was a loose definition for the endless rows of shelves that made up the majority of their small and tidy, bricked home. Mel had hung her muddied cloak by the wooden door and dropped her borrowed shoes outside on the front porch near the box where Jenks normally left their traded vegetables. She had washed her hands in a sink in the kitchen where water could be pumped into the house, and taken a piece of cheese on bread. They went into the largest room of the house where they kept their journals and books. They each had a desk, but Mel sank into a chair near a pile of books and papers. Light washed in from the window. To protect the older books, there were no windows in the back of the room where the shelves reached up to the ceiling.

  Mel's mother with her always even, always moderate heartbeat, exactly Mel’s own height and build, except with threads of gray woven in her auburn hair, perched on the desktop next to Mel. Her eyes tightened with a hint of worry as she studied Mel's face again. "You've been crying." Mel gave a minuscule nod of her head. "You lost friends. But there's something more. You have an entirely different color about you." Her mother spoke as she always did, the way all Masks did, carefully considering each word before she spoke.

  There was no point in concealing any of what happened to Mel from her mother, even if Mel wanted to. It would take more energy to hide the truth than to reveal the whole of it. Nothing could come of her feelings for Ott now. She would have to take up the Mask very soon and become as impartial an arbitrator as she could, as she was supposed to. So, as simply as she could, she described her final days at the Keep, culminating in the attack and siege.

  Her mother sighed. "Your father and I did not mean for it to unfold in this manner. You've always been so much more given to action than the rest of us."

  "I don’t understand." Mel had leaned back in the chair, trying to feel at home, but there was a net of anxiety pulling tightly across her face and eyes that she couldn't unweave. She rubbed at her forehead. She was sure her mother saw her always as a bundle of nerves, a jangling, pulsating ridiculous person. When her mother didn't answer, Mel looked at her. Her mother wore a small, bittersweet smile that spoke volumes. It reminded Mel of how she always ran, while other Masks always walked, even the children among them. It told her gently that though she was one of them, she would always be something else besides. Other.

  She saw herself now, sprawled across the chair while her mother gazed at her mildly, seriously, and calmly, her hands folded in front of her, gathering her fine-woven tunic at the waist. Mel gave her mother a helpless half-shrug, and the older woman did not try to suppress the wider smile that spread across her smooth features.

  "We sent you to the Keep to see if you would become more or less like the others, the outsiders. We wondered if you would find yourself at home amongst them or see yourself as separate." Her mother did not continue; she did not ask Mel what she had discovered.

  "And you think I've changed in just these few short months?"

  "Go to the mirror and see for yourself," her mother said. Mel blinked, trying to decide if her mother were speaking metaphorically. She got up and walked to the wall where she peered into the same circular mirror that she used to make faces into when she was little. The looking glass had a plain wood frame that was dark and had been rubbed with oil until it shined. Mel looked at her reflection and was surprised to find it difficult to meet her own eyes. When she did, she saw a lot of her mother's features.

  She had the same, straight auburn hair, high cheekbones, and thin nose with a smattering of freckles across it, though more freckles than her book-loving mother. That was where the similarities ended, however. Although she had not seen her father in almost four years now, she knew she shared his dark eyes and wide, full-lipped mouth. She thought she looked the same as she always had, and as she turned to her mother to say so, she stopped. From out of the corner of her eye, she caught something, a strange yellow shimmer. Her mother was right. Something about her color was not the same. Her skin was different. It looked more elastic, almost, and it had a strange glow, a shine to it. She frowned.

  "Step into the light more," her mother suggested. With an eye on her reflection, Mel took a step backward into the direct sunlight and froze, startled. Her color wasn't yellow, but golden. Her normal skin tone was there, but there was a distinct golden glow. She touched it, rubbed a spot on her arm, and found it was permanent. Had she wandered around the wounded and dying survivors of the Keep looking like this? Had she sat in the middle of the bustling port city glowing like a golden idol?

  "What is this? I'm not doing this." She looked questioningly at her mother, although something tickled her min. The memory of kissing Ott in the forest, of turning inexplicab
ly golden, floated into her mind. Warmth crept into her neck and face thinking about it. Looking at herself in the mirror, she tried to control the color, to dull it in shadow, but it didn't change. It was still there, faint to anyone out in the world, like a touch too much sun perhaps, but highly noticeable to her mother.

  "I don't know what it is. I'll have to look through my books and see what I can read about it." Mel fought unsuccessfully to hide the desire to roll her eyes. She pretended to contemplate the ceiling. Her mother’s response was laughable: always, the impulse to check the books. And her mother read her look and laughed outright, a rare sound.

  To distract herself and to avert embarrassment Mel said, "What do you know about these things, these creatures? Those beings that attacked the Keep?" As soon as she brought it up, her stomach twisted in a tight, painful knot, uncomfortable nearly to the point of making her sink back into her chair. Her mother crossed the room purposefully, gathering up a book and her shawl as well.

  "That certainly is the question of the moment. We've been calling them 'troglodytes' so far, but we shall wait to see how they refer to themselves before we set on it. It might be preferable to some of the other terms Jenks has reported hearing in the city. They are certainly not ogres, though the people will want to resort to their childhood stories and fears when confronted with the unknown. But ‘troglodytes’ is not too demeaning, I think. After all, they deserve representation as much as you or I. But in any case, we're discussing it right now in the hall. We should join them."

  Mel was shocked, yet kept her mouth shut. It should not have come as a surprise that her people viewed the attackers as people entitled to the same rights as everyone else. As for herself, she wasn't entirely sure they were people. She followed her mother out the door into the smooth unpaved road of the street. And for another thing, although her mother accused the general populace of resorting to their fairy tales and bedtime stories, her mother herself clung to research and scholarship. Turning academic was as comforting and as cloistering as any fiction.