After a feast of fish baked in palm leaves and vegetables, we entered the great meeting house to sleep beneath the masks of our ancestors. I stayed close to grandmother, hoping she did not notice my fear. We spread a blanket beneath Lopai’s mask, which was the largest and most fearsome of all the masks I had seen. I kept my eyes averted and tried to shut out Lopai’s presence. For here was where I had to show myself, in front of my kin and the gathered tribes. There we sat while the elders chanted, argued and then their voices faded into the haze of fatigue. I kept my eyes from the walls, yet I could feel the masks pushing at me, pulling at me, trying to drag me into them. Bene was two bedrolls down; I chanced a look at him and he waved. Above his head, the mask Tukanku growled, mouth opening and closing like a monster from the deep of the sea. The mask’s eyes showed mostly white, like he was seized by rage. I turned away and buried my head in the blankets. I felt myself shaking and tried to stop it. Grandmother would not tolerate such behaviour. She accepted my visions, the strange things that I could see, as she accepted the lack of curl in my hair. Grandmother expected me to deal with it, as a daughter of a great chief should.
Something startled me awake. There was nothing but the sound of many breaths exhaling and the occasional grunt and snore. Torchlight flickered over the mounds of bodies beneath blankets. I looked up and saw Bene’s smile. He waved, urging me to follow him outside. But the masks were alive with hate. They writhed out from the walls, trying to snare anyone who passed too close. They whispered to me. I threw off my blanket, careful not to disturb my grandmother, and stole out of the meeting house. I dodged the apparitions that projected from the masks. The whispering grew louder, insistent. I chanced a sideways look and saw a mouth moving, heard words forming. I paused for a moment, realising that I had not heard the masks speaking before.
The words were hard to discern. It sounded like the one tongue. No-one spoke the one tongue anymore, though it was used in sacred ceremonies. My grandmother had taught me the words, though what I could hear was only vaguely familiar, distorted and meaningless.
One Moon’s face was full, casting bluish light all around. I caught sight of Bene crouching in the bush at the edge of the village. I was tempted to turn around and go back to bed, but the thought of the masks changed my mind. Here, at least, there was a moist breeze to wash away the stale smoke. Bene’s smile reached me and then he was gone. I sprinted to where he had been and followed the trail he left. He hadn’t gone very far when I came up behind him. He crouched down and peered through some branches. Seeing the flicker of firelight, I crawled to where he squatted. In a small clearing was my uncle Taku. He was stripped to a loin cloth, his legs and arms streaked in blood. His mask lay on the ground before him. I heard him chanting as he rubbed what looked like small finger bones into the inside of his mask. Some of the words he uttered made my skin chill. It was the one tongue again. I understood the words, hate, vengeance, darkness. He pronounced them like grandmother. I could sense these feelings rippling through the air around him and could almost taste it. I watched carefully, realising that he was putting those feelings into the mask.
A tremor shook my hand. I did not want to see this. I did not want to be there. Masks were men’s business and what Taku was doing was very wrong. Yet what I saw made me understand what I saw when I looked at the masks. Something in this ritual tied the warrior’s spirit to the mask. All the aggressive tendencies were channelled and then infused into the carved and painted wood.
I tugged on Bene’s arm and nodded with my head for us to leave. Startled, he released the branch and it crackled and shook. Leaves dislodged and floated down onto his dark hair. We both sat very still. Had Taku heard us?
There was no sound, just the pop and crackle of wood in the fire. Bene smiled and nodded. Before I could follow, I was grabbed and dragged into the clearing. Taku had his mask on. It danced in front of me, threatening, hissing. I edged back.
‘What did you see?’ Taku’s voice was hard and quick.
‘Nothing,’ I whispered, throat tight. My eyes darted around for Bene, but I could not see him. Had he got away? I hoped so.
‘What were you doing there? Who were you with?’ Taku’s hand reached around my throat and squeezed. His mask filled my vision. I could hear it. Treachery! I will take them all while they sleep. My men come. They come. Blood. Blood. Lust and power!
Oh no, I thought. He means to kill us all. I have to tell grandmother. I felt my head ache as his hand tightened. Through the pounding of blood in my ears, I heard Bene.
‘She’s with me.’ Bene stood unmoving and unafraid.
Taku rose, dropping me to the ground. He picked up his spear and circled around.
Bene smiled, but there was no trace of humour in his face.
‘You! Traitor’s child.’ Taku said, his spear-tip moving close to my head. ‘You cannot have her. You’re not worthy enough for one of Lopai’s children.’
I blinked, remembering Bene’s story. His mother had run off with an enemy warrior and his father had killed himself afterward. That was why Bene had stayed with us years ago. Our village asked that he be sent to live among the Melu, because he reminded them of his parents and their deeds and so he left.
‘I have chosen her.’ Bene said, standing very still. ‘She has chosen me. Nothing else concerns us.’
Taku snorted. The mask angled toward me. I heard it sneer, growl and spit.
‘I will take her first. Then you won’t want her. She’ll be shamed with her uncle’s baby in her belly. At least the blood will remain true. Not watered down with the likes of you.’
Taku’s words frightened me. He’d always watched me, waiting for me to undress when I bathed, peering at me from behind trees. Had he watched my mother in the same way? Grandmother said I looked like her, except for my forehead, which was strong like my father’s. Was that why there was so much anger between them?
I lay on my back. Taku’s spear pointed toward me. He angled the tip down to point between my legs. ‘Move and I’ll do it.’
Bene stayed still. I saw his gaze flick to me. I felt the spear tip and the brush of its feathers against the skin of my thigh. Already he had cut me. I felt the sting and the trickle of blood. Bene leapt with a sudden yell. Taku took his gaze from me and the spear wavered. I kicked hard, snapping it in two. I was on my feet, backing away. Taku and Bene circled one another, hands clenched and faces intent. Bene was empty-handed. Taku’s mask leered menacingly.
I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t leave Bene. His grin grew wider. Was the boy mad?
‘I know what you are planning,’ I shouted. ‘You’re going to kill us all.’
Taku’s mask shifted toward me. ‘What did you say?’
‘I know what you are planning. Your mask talks to me. It told me of your treachery.’
Behind the mask, Taku’s eyes widened. Bene’s charge took him by surprise. The fastenings of his mask snapped and it fell off and into the fire. Taku lay in the dirt, shaking his head, dazed from the attack. Bene crouched in front of me protectively. My eyes shifted to the mask. It screamed. Flames danced over the macabre face, forking through the mouth hole and the eye sockets. It begged. The vision of its writhing mouth, the sucking feeling, dissipated. The mask was well alight. It sizzled and spat but it no longer whispered to me. Taku sat in the dirt, shaking his head. He blinked at us and to the mask, his face paling. Without a word he levered himself to his feet and lurched into the bush.
Bene walked up to me and grasped my shoulders. ‘Choose me.’
I stared at him, his face composed with no smile there to make him vaguely silly. ‘I will if you promise me something.’
Bene smiled. ‘What?’
‘Promise me you won’t make a mask.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Without a mask I am not a man and cannot have you.’
I reached up and touched his face, liking the feel of his skin. ‘I see things others cannot. I see that the masks are alive, even th
ough their owners are dead. I see the unnatural evil in them.’
‘Can I not make a mask at all?’ He gestured to where Taku’s mask lay blackened and smouldering.
I shrugged. Who was I to stop him becoming a man? I could only advise him. Yet I could not choose any man with a mask.
‘That choice is yours. I urge you not to make a mask that is angry, vengeful or evil. Do not put yourself into the mask, or the blood of your enemies, and do not call on the one tongue to link your soul to the mask.’
I turned away, leaving Bene staring at the dirt. If he wanted me, he had to make a choice. I would not choose a man with one of those masks. I could not, but I did want to choose Bene.
When I crawled back into bed, I saw a few other girls returning to theirs. We exchanged smiles. Mine was feigned. I roused my grandmother and told her what I had heard from Uncle Taku’s mask. She was the head of the house. It was her duty to deal with it. She got out of bed and went to wake our chief. I went to sleep. The night’s activities had exhausted me and I had given my cares to my grandmother. The meeting house was alive with writhing masks, hissing and spitting at me it a strange rhythm. Sleeping was the only way to escape.
The next morning grandmother said nothing. Uncle Taku was nowhere to be seen. I trusted that my elders had dealt with any threat and I felt free of worry. I went with the women and we fashioned our spears. I found a strong pole of wood and smoothed it. Grandmother gave me a greenstone spearhead, freshly sharpened. It was her legacy. My finished spear was far superior to the others. No other has such fine stone, no other had two Kiku feathers. Although I was proud of my spear, I did not look forward to the evening. The boys, who had become men, would dance. I did not want to watch them. I would not choose.
Night was pierced with the light of One Moon. A large fire burned, reddening everyone’s skin and casting dancing shadows. The boys, who were now men, came out, their masks freshly painted. I saw the angry faces, the snarls, the evil glares. I stood back and lowered my spear. I was going to walk away, but then I saw it. A mask, painted red, with lines around the eyes and a mouth stretched in laughter. My heart stopped.
Could it be Bene?
The other girls were pointing and jeering. I stepped forward and placed my spear at the feet of the man with the laughing mask. Before I rose, Bene had it in his hand.
‘Beautiful spear, beautiful woman,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘But I will never scare our enemies away with this mask.’
My smile was very wide and I felt tears in my eyes. He had been clever. ‘But they will think twice when you show them my spear,’ I whispered back.
Bene laughed out loud and we danced.
Later, as we ate the feast and the elders blessed those who had chosen masks and spears, grandmother came up to me. Her face was sad. I remembered what I had told her in the early hours of the morning and understood that she had kept the news from me to avoid spoiling my happiness.
‘What you heard last night, Upai, was not a plan for attack on us, here and now. The mask spoke of a deed long ago. It spoke of betrayal and anger and bitterness. It spoke of the murder of your parents.’ Grandmother sucked in a huge breath, swallowing emotion. ‘He killed my son. He killed his brother.’
Hot tears spread down my cheeks. All the angry looks and mutterings from my past came together. I saw how it had been. Bene put his arm around me and held me close.
Grandmother frowned. ‘At the time, we suspected his guilt in their deaths but couldn’t prove it. That is why he was never made chief. I spoke against his choosing. I spoke against my own son.’
‘Has he fled?’
Grandmother shook her head. ‘No, Taku is dead. He knew that you spoke truth, that you had heard the mask’s words, the words of his own soul. He could not live with it any longer. What was burned in the mask returned to him. He could not bear the guilt, the shame.’
‘I am sorry, grandmother.’ I hugged her.
‘There is nothing for you to be sorry for. If not for your gift, I would never have known for certain. The suspicion has eaten at my soul all these years. Now I can let it go. Now I can heal.
‘When we confronted him with the truth, Taku confessed. Once free of the secret, he became more like the boy I once knew and loved. I think he will bathe in the light of the two moons with the rest of our departed kin.’
She walked away, her swaying gait reminding me of her voice and the comfort it gave. I danced with Bene, feeling free and loved and happy. I had chosen a man with a special mask, one not filled with hate. It gave me hope that one day we could live in harmony, that one day we would rid ourselves of fear.
Later as I lay with Bene beneath the stars, I saw grandmother creeping through the village. In her arms she carried Lopai’s mask. She chanted in the one tongue as she threw it in the fire. I said goodbye to my great, great grandfather’s spirit as it dissolved among the flames.
This story came to me while I was sleeping at my sister’s flat in Randwick. There were wooden masks on the walls, masks from Fiji, Papua New Guinea and maybe a tiki from New Zealand. They gave me bad dreams.
Warning Buoy
Evie felt consciousness returning while she was still deep in slime. She resisted the urge to breathe until she had surged out of the life support fluid and wiped the synthetic mucous from her nose and retched, dislodging the dregs of it from her throat. Her eyes were out of focus, but she could tell straight away that something wasn’t right, something was missing. It was Sam. He always emerged before her, programming his unit that way so that he was there to help her untether the tubes and the intravenous drips that had kept her sleeping for their jump. By the time she had pulled herself out and extracted the last tube, she saw that he wasn’t still interred in his own life support. Nothing appeared to have malfunctioned. He wasn’t dead, which had been her first fear. What was it then?
After a shower, she stood and shaved her head in preparation for their next outing while thinking back on the time before the jump. They had finished maintaining the beacons on Bright Star station and made love with the light of the system’s star before heading below to go into deep sleep. Sam had been full of joy, for no particular reason other than he loved working alone out here in space, just to the two of them. Perhaps it was his capacity for deep thinking while he stared out the viewport that had first attracted her. That and his silence.
She keyed the intercom. ‘Sam?’
A few moments of crackle and then Sam came on line. ‘You up already? Dinner is almost ready.’
‘You weren’t here.’
His breathing sounded over the intercom for a bit and then she heard him whisper. ‘I know…’ before he cut the connection.
Drawing her brows together she began to mentally catalogue plausible reasons for the ‘mood’. It was obvious he was in one. By the time she made her way up to the command deck she was over it. She smiled crookedly at him, which encouraged him to embrace her before he slapped her on the back and said, ‘Time to eat.’
‘Yeah, right…eating,’ she said anchoring herself to the small table. He refused eye contact and that made it difficult to broach the subject of the ‘mood’. Her eyebrow lifted. ‘Do you have any more of that Pinot Gris? I could do with something to wash your cooking down.’ She could do with something to wheedle the issue out of him too.
While went in search of some wine, she gazed out of the view port, dragging up details of their next maintenance stop. Out the view port she saw them—two gaseous nebulae, one more distinct than the other. The fainter one was a dying star, feeding the newer, hotter, brighter one. She tapped her finger on the table, ignored how the smell of Sam’s cooking made her stomach roil and recalled the name of the mission. ‘Tolstoy Patches,’ she said to herself, nodding. It was a newly marked corridor, with top-of-the-range transponder buoys. They guided traffic between the nebulae, warning ships away from the hi-alpha emissions, fluctuating gravity and other flotsam and jetsam caused by star birth. Space
bent sharply on the other side of Tolstoy Patches, giving ships the required run into the nearest wormhole.
Sam arrived with the wine. She wasn’t officially on duty until the next morning so she could drink the whole bottle if she wished. For herself, the wine was more for washing the salty cum metallic taste from her tongue. Not much to be done about the odor in her nose. It took a week for the solutions to wash out of the system. She guessed the pay was worth it. She and Sam could retire quite well if they worked another ten years at navigation aid maintenance.
‘Fascinating,’ he said, watching her stare out at the nebulae. ‘That is a microcosm of creation. The old made to new. Elements broken down and reformed. The universe adapting to change.’
‘It’s very pretty,’ she said with a smile.
Evie didn’t wait for Sam to finish unscrewing the lid, she had her glass aloft ready for the first splash. When they had finished the first glass, Sam was still uneasy and uncommunicative. It set her teeth on edge. Why couldn’t he just tell her? But she knew why. The same reason they were out here on their own. The same reason they hardly took shore leave. He couldn’t stomach life. Life with other people. The hurried, harried madness of the cities on Earth, or the impersonal and sterile existence on space stations. He just didn’t gel with the rest of mankind. It had taken a year of service with him to break down the barriers he’d erected and nearly that long again to work her way into his overalls.
‘So, love, what have you been up to? Been awake long?’
Sam frowned over his glass and took a long pull of the second glass. ‘Been doing maintenance on the Work Horse.’
‘Is there a problem with your Work Horse?’ she asked.
‘No…no problem…just maintenance.’
Some inner warning tickled her mind. ‘Not enhancing it are you?’
The vague distant look in Sam’s expression shifted. ‘How about a warm chocolate and a nice massage?’ The grin was wide, with no hint of subterfuge. Evie let it ride.
Beneath the Floating City collection Page 6