Assimilated

by Nick Webb

  But for the most part the wanderers were not heeded much, for they were rarely present. The closer hills to the village soon felt far too familiar to Elu and the thirst for unknown forests called his spirit, beckoning him to wander further from the known. Before he attained the age of apprenticeship he had ventured as far as the neighboring village, a small hamlet far up in the hills at the base of craggy mountains, near the spot where the icy creek issued from the snowy, forlorn peaks.

  “Let us explore the village,” said Thora. They perched themselves on the middle branches of a particularly large elmore tree on a bluff overlooking their new discovery.

  “We shall not. My father warned me about meeting strange men from other villages. Their masks may have evil spirits that deceive and make afraid.”

  “He just tells you that to scare you. Let us go down.”

  Elu sniffed and crossed his arms in defiance. “Father does not lie. He is a teacher. Your father learns at his feet after his forge grows cool and he sets aside his tools for the day. He does not make up lies to scare me.”

  “It is not a lie when a grown mask tells a young mask stories to frighten it. Father tells me things all the time to scare me. Just this morning he told me the water spirits will spring out of the lake to drag me in if I get too close. I know they will do no such thing. But he likes how my mask looks when he tells me fantastic stories.” She let her eyes go large and thrust her tongue out the small opening of her mask. Elu couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. “Let us go down, brother.”

  “Why do you call me brother?”

  “Because your brothers used to be your companions during your wanderings. You were sad when they stopped, and so now I replace them.”

  Elu marveled at the perception of her mask. The spirits therein could read his mind and whispered to her ears, he was sure of it. He said little, and yet every day Thora seemed to speak his mind as if she read it from a scroll.

  “Then, sister, let us go down. But let us stay away from the people.”

  “It is well.”

  The two negotiated the thick branches of the elmore tree and shimmied down the final few feet of trunk which had no branches at all, but whose callous bark bulged out in great islands from the tree’s body, providing plenty of space for small fingers to climb. Deep, verdant shrubbery shrouded the feet of the trees and the two cautiously descended the bluff amidst the cover of green and approached the village.

  It seemed to be part of the forest itself, with several houses built into the very trees—several sturdy trunks forming the corners of the buildings with cut logs stacked to form the walls, a patchwork of interlaced living elmore branches and thatch forming the roof. Where there were streets they were filled with ruts and holes. This village must not have a wheelwright mask to serve it, though the very existence of the roads suggested that a wheelwright lived here in the past. His mask was never passed down to an apprentice.

  Such were the times.

  Elu had seen the king’s men come to town on occasion seeking bodies to don the warrior’s mask and assist in the wars on the borders of their land—the minor kingdom of Hemlade. As such the village of Gheb had lost its last shipwright a year ago and no longer were almseeker masks seen in the streets, for those were taken at the point of a sword to serve the king’s armies.

  “What mask is that?” Thora whispered into Elu’s ear.

  “Which one?”

  “The white ones. With no mouth holes.” She pointed across a crowd of people that had gathered itself before a large open-air market. Merchant masks shouted their wares while men boisterously haggled with one another. The sharp sun unexpectedly pierced the grey and green canopy overhead and forced the sellers of leafy vegetables to cover their wilting produce. But Thora’s finger aimed at a pitiful looking group of people, tied at the hands and feet, and to each other, their expressionless white masks double strapped to their heads, no mouth holes as if their masks were not meant for speech, most looking straight down, though the smaller ones appeared fidgety and looked this way and that.

  “I have not seen those before, but my father has spoken of them. Slave masks,” said Elu.

  “There are no slaves in Gheb.”

  “We are not in Gheb. We are close to the hinterlands, where slaver masks have free reign. The king has little influence there. Or here, so it appears.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “I know not, sister.”

  “Can we do something?”

  He looked into her eyes, shocked at the question. If they were wearing the white mask of the slave then they were meant to be slaves. The gods do not distribute masks without purpose. “It is not our place. If they wear the masks then the gods have willed it. If they did not will it, they would send the king to their rescue. Or someone.”

  “Maybe they sent us,” she insisted.

  “That is not for us to decide. We must honor the ways of the ancients.”

  “That’s just what your father says.”

  “And yours. It is what all our fathers say.”

  He sensed her change of mood. He did not want this. All he wanted was adventure. To see new things. New places. Fresh places, where the spirits were unfamiliar and interesting. To get away from his mother and her constant haranguing and the endless chores and mindless tasks. He had not wanted to upset his friend. He looked down at her fists, which balled up in a rage that manifested itself also in her mask, whose tak-weed strips flashed the angry sun into his eyes. He touched her arm.

  “We should go. We’ve been gone long.”

  “Look.” She pointed to a slave-masked woman. Men argued next to her, but finally agreed on a price, and one of them handed the thick rope to the other, the rope that ended in the collar around her neck. A smaller girl, not a little child but not yet of age, clasped her hand tightly and would not let go. One of the men yelled at her. She cowered before him but still would not relinquish her grip. The man violently struck her arm and her grasp broke. She cried.

  “Let us leave,” said Elu.

  Thora remained rigid but allowed herself to be led from the village. Midway up the hill, she shook off his guiding hand and pulled ahead, leading the way back to the village of Gheb.

  They did not speak of that day afterwards. Elu could sense her anger and her helplessness and thought it better to be silent. Talk would make it worse. Silence was a salve, according to his father’s lore, that mended the piercing of words. Words would damage her more, and what good was an upset traveling companion?

  The wicked heat of late summer relented and the mornings grew crisp. The falling leaves told Elu that his treks up into the hills would soon have to end—his wanderings would now be in the valley below during the months of the chill winds. Thora had not followed him to the valley yet, and he had all sorts of wonderful sights to show her.

  But it would not be.

  “Son.”

  “Yes, father?”

  The man’s shadow darkened the doorway to the children’s bedroom. “Tomorrow you reach the age of apprenticeship.”

  “The land is my master, father, and I am an apprentice to wandering.”

  “That was sufficient for your youth, but a man must learn a trade. You are to apprentice to the potter. He expects you tomorrow. He will mask you in the morning and you will be his.”

  “But I do not wish—“

  “Silence!”

  The soft green wooden teacher’s mask took on a terrifying air as its ancient owners recoiled at Elu’s rebellious speech. He was tempted to cower, to hide his eyes from the now terrible mask and the fiery eyes behind them, but he squared his jaw, righted his child’s mask and repeated, “Father, I do not wish to be a potter.”

  The man took a step towards his son. His mask towered menacingly over the boy, but only momentarily, and the shadow passed. The mask’s countenance softened and a hand extended to his son’s shoulder.

  “Son. Some day you will make your destiny, as I foretold in your youth. But
for now, your destiny is made for you. The potter is your master now. Learn from him. Learn from your new mask. The spirits will have much to teach you. Patience, son. Patience and duty.”

  Elu watched him leave. Why must he be a potter? Of all the trades—he could be a blacksmith, a healer, a maskmaker, even a teacher as his father—but a potter? Of all the trades, is there one that requires more stillness, more patience, less movement, less adventure? Surely the gods have erred. Surely they meant to tell his father that Elu was to apprentice to the king’s magician or his horsemaster. Surely he was to become a shipwright and restore that lost lore to the village, making Elu a hero, to be honored in time as one of the great among the ancients.

  But all Elu could see in his dreams was the potter’s mask. It was not the bold blue painted clay mask that Gheb’s master potter wore, but a bone white mask, double strapped to his own terrified face as he peered down at his hands and feet, chained to the potter’s lifeless wheel.

  Two

  The Potter

  Boredom is a tedious schoolmaster. When once one thinks the lesson is learned, the indifferent master remains and delivers the lesson anew. Such thoughts filled Elu’s mind during the first days as apprentice to the potter of Gheb.

  His time with the man began promisingly enough: on a cold morning Elu’s father presented the boy to the man—more a shadow than man, he was so thin—who greeted Elu by placing his overly-large potter’s hands on Elu’s mask. He then pulled Elu’s new apprentice’s mask from the folds of his robe, revealing a slender, smaller version of his own indigo clay mask, though of milder color and not so finely adorned.

  The man stooped at the water’s edge and immersed it once in the water, not three times as with masks of identity—child masks, householder masks, homeweaver masks, these must be mostly purged of their spirits, and the three washings banishes all but the most potent, and therefore knowledgeable spirits. But the trade masks need only one immersion to wash away only the most unclean spirits—the most lazy, the most unprofitable—thus keeping the vast host of spirits of those competent bearers who previously donned the mask.

  Elu felt them when his master pressed the mask to his face. They called to him. As his face warmed the cold clay they brought things to his remembrance that he didn’t know he knew, or rather forgot he knew. He saw clay—the flesh of the earth, in all its textures and colors, writhing and contorting under masterful hands on the revolving surface of the wheel, and he recognized those hands: they were his. But not his—they belonged to all the owners of the mask from generations past, and their collective memory spurred his hands to action as he sat to work the first time, shaping, smoothing, curving, flattening, mashing, caressing the pliant mud as his feet sped and slowed the wheel beneath.

  At first, it was like his adventurings, except now the places he discovered through his new craft had the vaguest air of nostalgia, of familiarity, and within days of his initial instruction from the wiry, gruff master potter he began to venture out on his own, exploring new shapes, mixing new glazes, stretching the clay into creations taller, wider, bolder than what had gone before.

  “No, no, no!” The potter boxed his ears, making Elu wince in pain and embarrassment.

  “No, master?”

  “What is this you are doing? I gave you a task. Basins! You are to make basins! Not this refuse!”

  “But the spirits spoke to me, master, I—”

  “Your master spoke to you and ordered basins. The spirits will not contradict your master. Do as I say or I will remove your mask and send you to your father in shame.”

  Elu did not wish his mask to be taken, as much as he already loathed the man and the thought of endlessly fashioning the same basin every day for the rest of his life. But he would not shame his father. To return maskless to one’s father is the highest dishonor. It is like being born anew—but it is an ignominious rebirth, to return from your manhood as a naked child to your father who sent you prepared to face the world. And no tradesman in the town would henceforth agree to take one as apprentice who had so shamed his father and himself.

  “I will make basins, master. Forgive my rebellion,” he gritted through his mask, and angled his face to the master’s feet.

  He made the basins, grudgingly, but before the day darkened he longed for his days wandering free among the trees and streams. He found that with basic tasks the potter’s mask simply took over and completed them by rote action, leaving his mind to wander far. He longed for the forest grass under his feet, for the rushing water of the creek against his bare skin. He longed, and watched for his opportunity.

  His first chance came on a snowy day. When it snowed in the village of Gheb, rarely did more than a finger’s depth fall at once and this time was no exception. But the potter was one who imagined all sorts of false ills. Many villagers thought he was so thin because he spent half his time working clay and the other half working himself into a panic about his supposed symptoms. The weatherweaver, in whose mask the people held great trust and esteem, had not called for snow that day, so when the unexpected snow began to fall the potter rushed into the shop where Elu sat shaping another basin. He tried to speak but a fit of coughing erupted from his mask instead. He gripped the table until the coughing subsided and then breathlessly jabbed his finger towards the window.

  “Do you see that? An ill omen! The weatherweaver promised rain today. Rain all this week! And look at me—my nose waters, my body shakes, and I do not cease this cursed coughing. Evil vapors are about, my son, and you would do well to go home to your mother in this evil hour.”

  “But master, it is just some unexpected snow.”

  “This is no ordinary snow, boy. This is the work of evil spirits—whether they have taken up abode in the weatherweaver’s mask to create the snow, or in mine to make me feel its effects more powerfully, I do not know. But I know that you should go. It may be the last time you ever see your loved ones. Go!”

  Elu’s mask had only a very small hole for talking, as potter apprentices are not expected to need much speech, but in this instance it was just as well: he could not contain the smirk spreading across his face and when the door slammed shut behind the potter his eyes closed and he laughed as silently as he could as he followed his master out the door and turned down the street, not towards his mother’s house, but to the house of the blacksmith, where Thora lived.

  “What do you want with her?” The burly man asked through the half-open door. His steel mask glinted the reflected light of the leaping fire in the grill behind him.

  “Just to talk.”

  “My daughter has no friends. She is wild. What would you want with her?”

  Elu weighed his options. Would knowledge of her wanderings with Elu make her father more or less likely to allow her to see him? Best to hedge.

  “I have seen her wander and would like to ask her what she sees in her travels. May I talk to her?”

  “You may not, teacher’s son.”

  “It will be brief, master.”

  “I have spoken and will not speak again.”

  He slammed the door firmly shut, but not before Elu heard a sharp, “Father!” He waited by the door for a while, but the cold forced him to move on. Adventure called. The unknown would not wait.

  He turned his face south and west, to the low, rolling hills that bordered the forbidden barrows. It was rumored that thieves and brigands frequented those hills and apprehension had kept him from exploring them, but Elu was of age now, and no brigand would frighten him. On the trail that led from the village he heard rustling behind him. Thora ran up the path and nearly knocked him over.

  “Elu!”

  “Thora! Your father let you go?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is an obstinate man and required persuading before I left, though I cannot honestly say I had his leave. But enough. I’ve missed our wanderings. Lead on.”

  Elu looked deep into her mask. Off to t
he side of her eye, he could just make out a blue shadow, as if bruised, but the light coming off the snow cast strange shadows and beguiled his eyes. He turned and resumed his pace. He rarely spoke to her before in their wanderings, but now having not seen her in months he felt compelled to make conversation.

  “Do you enjoy your apprenticeship, Thora?”

  “I have none.”

  “Why is that? You are of age, are you not?”

  “I am. But no woman in town will have me.”

  “Then they know not what they deprive themselves of.”

  “I do work for the innkeeper’s wife. Not as apprentice, but as … as helper,” she said, struggling for words. No word existed for one who assisted another with their trade, and yet was not an apprentice. It was a grave dishonor to be of such comport and countenance that would preclude one from meriting an apprenticeship. Thora had often related to him the tauntings of the other girls, and occasionally hinted at nastier things unnamed adults in the village said in her presence, but he had not realized the extent of her exclusion.

  They traveled far that day. The snow ceased. The sun burned its way through thick clouds and the landscape rose up before them in a blaze of white. For hours they explored the hills, talking much and delighting at the rare blanket that covered the ground, however fleetingly. Elu turned his eyes further south.

  “Shall we explore the barrows?”

  “I will follow you to the end of the earth. But not there. And it is late.”

  “Why not there? Do you fear the spirits?”

  “No,” she said, defiantly.

  “Then why not?”

  “They are forbidden. Your father the teacher tells us to avoid that part of the land. As does the presbyter. And the maskmaker. And the weatherweaver. They all say the same.”

  “My father is the teacher and he is a good man, but he does not see all. He has never been there and knows not of what he speaks. Come. Let us find out for ourselves.”