by Sam Starbuck
"Course," the boy said. "See you soon?"
"I hope so."
"Take care, Lucas," I added. "Thanks, Charles!"
Charles gave me a wave as Lucas rolled the window back up, and they pulled away while I opened the shop and followed the boy inside. Across the street, Carmen waved at me from the cafe and then almost dropped the tray she was carrying when she saw the bandage on my hand. I waggled my fingers – I'm fine, nothing to worry about – and closed the door. The boy was sitting on my counter, legs swinging.
"You didn't tell Charles what happened," I said to him. He shrugged.
"Not my place," he said. He had that same look about him that he'd had when he told me to find Lucas – not quite authority, not quite age, but something that said this was not going to be a conversation with a child. Maybe not even with an equal. "Lucas can tell if he wants."
"And calling the hospital?" I asked. "With the telephone out?"
He shrugged. "Must've been working for him. It's cold in here."
"I usually start a fire in the morning. What would have happened if Lucas had died?" I demanded.
"But he didn't."
"He could have."
"No. You saved him," he said with a smile.
"And how'd you know to come get me so I could?"
He leaned back, heels drumming gently on the counterfront. "The Friendly said he might. Christopher the storyteller said he had the melancholy."
"He didn't tell me that."
"Maybe he didn't have time."
I rested my arm on the cash register, staring at him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I didn't know he'd do it any sooner."
"Goddammit!" I shouted. "Give me a straight answer!"
He widened his eyes, innocently. "What straight answer do you want? All the things you've seen, you still don't see there aren't any?"
"He's my friend," I said through gritted teeth.
"Oh?" he tilted his head. "That what he is?"
"I would have helped him."
"You would have tried. He had to see. Now you have to see," he said, and held out his hand. I stared at it. "Lemme see your bite."
"No," I said, pulling my left arm against my chest.
"Then what will you do now?" he asked. "How are you going to help him?"
"I don't know! It's not my job to fix people," I said. "It's not my job – "
" -- to put a collar on Lucas?"
"Nameless," I said, before I thought about it. He laughed and I wanted to hit him, but – he was just a kid. He looked like one, anyway.
"What did you want to say to me?" I asked coldly. He twitched his fingers, still outstretched for my hand. I hesitated, but it was obvious he wasn't going to move or speak until I did what he wanted. I stretched our my arm and put my wrist into his hand. He turned it over, studying the bandage across my palm.
"Lucas is a mystic," he said, tracing the fingers of his other hand in the air above mine, not touching, following the lines of the bandage. "But you don't believe."
"I believe what he's done is real," I protested.
"Only 'cause you've seen it. You make an exception. Doesn't matter, I guess," he added thoughtfully. "That kind of thing...it's not just believers. You can touch it too."
"I don't want to," I said, scared now.
"You will," he said confidently. "Let me give you something," and he pressed his hand flat over my palm. Under the bandages, my skin tingled.
"You don't have to believe. But you do have to care," he said. He let go of my hand and slid off the counter, walking around me to the door. I turned, but only in time to see the door close. When I looked out the window I didn't see him at all.
I stood there for a while, the palm of my left hand still extended and upturned, then closed my fingers as far as they would go and rested the knuckles on the counter.
I left the lights out in the shop, though dark was falling on Low Ferry pretty quickly. I didn't want to answer the same questions over and over, not until I'd had a good night's sleep, and I thought – hoped – that Charles had warned people to leave me alone for the evening. Eventually I walked into the back storage room and leaned against a bookshelf, forehead and nose pressed against an uneven series of book-spines, smelling of binding glue and paper. It felt like I'd been gone for weeks instead of a single day.
I wanted to help Lucas. I did. For all his assurances that he wouldn't try anything again, I knew that if he didn't fix the broken thing inside him he would. I wished I knew how to help him. Obviously he'd placed all his hope in Nameless, in somehow being able to join everything he was excluded from if he could just change his shape.
It hadn't worked. I'd told him as much. Not any more than coming to Low Ferry had kept me safe from my own heart.
It was almost as if all his maskmaking was to compensate for something, some missing part of him. Some invisible mask everyone else had, a protective shield that we're born with but he seemed to have missed. Lucas turned a very wise, very clever, but very naked face to the world. It was too easy to hurt someone so unprotected.
My hand still felt strange under the bandage, a pinprick tingle that wasn't the throbbing pain from the bite but was becoming impossible to ignore. I flexed my fingers a few times, leaned back from the bookshelf, and looked down at my palm. The bandages were tight and pale against my skin, wrapped awkwardly around the base of my thumb and extending up past my knuckles.
If I could make Lucas a mask, an invisible mask he could always wear – if I could give him the means to protect himself instead of protecting him...that would be a fine thing. Even just a symbol would be something.
I walked out into the dark shop and reached for a piece of paper on the desk, then stopped. I wasn't an artist, and paper masks are children's toys anyway. I looked up, casting around the shop, and the Dottore mask hanging over the fireplace seemed to leer knowingly at me. I ignored him and went to my workbench, where my bookbinding tools lay – scissors and glue, clean waxed thread, needles, punches, sharp scalpels and dull bone paper-folders. There was nothing there that would help. I was a book-binder, not a maskmaker.
But I had my hands and they weren't unskilled. If Lucas could make a mask in his desperation to be loved, I could make one in desperation to save him. Without his book (which I had never believed in) and without his tools (which wouldn't be of any use in my hands) I could make him something. One thing, even if I didn't believe. For Lucas, because I loved him.
I clenched my left hand as tightly as I could, which made the lacerations under the bandages throb and pull away painfully from the sterile cotton. But I could feel something hard and solid in my palm, something forming to the shape of my fingers. When I opened my hand again it rested there like a weight even though I couldn't see anything.
I picked it up in my right hand – invisible, but for a strange shimmer of light across it from the streetlamp through the window. I pressed my hands together and it flattened, slowly, stubbornly. When I ran my thumb over it, shaping it, it seemed to smooth and stretch.
I don't remember much about that night, except that I worked through it, exhausted, still filthy from the mud and the hospital and the train ride back to Low Ferry. My left hand was almost useless in the bandage and I do remember eventually finding scissors at the workbench and slicing the cotton off, unwrapping it from the bite and drawing fresh blood when the scabs pulled away. The blood dripped onto the mask I couldn't see, spattering briefly or smearing under my fingers and then disappearing as well.
I wanted it perfect. I wanted to make it beautiful, even if it couldn't be seen.
I know it sounds insane. I know that. It sounds as if I had some kind of breakdown, and perhaps I did, but I know what I felt, too. There was something real under my hands, something solid. It had weight, it had a smooth texture like glass, and it fought me every step of the way – sprung back when I tried to press it out, closed over when I tried to mold holes in it for eyes. It may have been shaped under my hands but it wa
s slow going, and my shoulders and wrists were aching in earnest around the time the sun was coming up. My fingertips were already raw and bruised.
I began to cry in frustration, like a child who can't make a painting look the way they want it. I let it drop to the counter, resting one hand on the smooth curved surface as I sat down and rubbed my face with the other. Static crackled in the air, shocked me where my fingertips touched my skin – it would be a dry day outside, cold and sunny and brutal.
I set it on the workbench, exhausted, and found my hands bloody, grit under the fingernails, the sharp crescent of the bite still oozing a little. There was nothing to be done, and I couldn't be seen like this. I climbed the stairs slowly, turned on the shower, and scrubbed my hands clean while the water warmed up.
Under the hot water, my muscles began to relax and then to shake; it was all I could do to dry myself off and crawl into bed, and that was the last I knew for hours.
***
I woke to Jacob's voice, calling my name in the shop below. I flailed out of bed and dragged the blanket with me as I walked to the stairs.
"Down in five minutes!" I called.
"I can wait!" he shouted back. I pulled some clothing on with numb, exhausted fingers, and then looked down at my hand again. The scabs had held but seemed grotesque and misshapen, and I wrapped a dishtowel around my palm as I hurried down the stairs.
"Sorry," I said, as I reached the bottom. "Just cleaning my – "
Jacob was standing at the counter, paging through a book, but all my senses focused on the workbench, and the slight shimmer in the air where the mask lay. I looked nervously at him, but he didn't appear bothered. Didn't even see it – not that there was anything to see. But to me it seemed – better than it had earlier. It didn't seem as imperfect as I'd thought it was. We have no objectivity when we're tired.
" – hand," I finished weakly, holding it up.
"Carmen said you'd hurt yourself," Jacob said, frowning in concern as he set the book down. "Anything serious?"
"No, just – just a dog bite," I lied, tucking the towel-wrapped hand behind my back and coming forward. "I – ran into a nasty stray on my way to The Pines."
"Town folk were worried when your lights weren't on this morning. Isn't like you to disappear," he said. "Thought I'd come over and see."
"Long night." I rummaged in the shelves behind the counter and finally came up with an old elastic bandage and some cotton wadding I normally used for wiping up paste when I was bookbinding. "I told the boy to tell people I got bitten, but he only told Charles."
"Ah," Jacob said. "Which boy?"
"You know, the one Lucas tutors," I said. He gave me a vague nod that told me he didn't have much of an idea who I was talking about. "Did you need something?"
"Nope, just to see you were well," he said. "Come on over to the cafe, Carmen's been worrying. Buy you lunch," he added.
"Lunchtime already?" I asked.
"Pretty nearly. Whole town's been wanting to stop by all morning."
"Gratifying," I said with a light smile. "Let me get my boots."
Carmen threw her arms around my neck when we walked in, nearly knocking me over, and then wouldn't let us sit down until I'd shown her my makeshift bandage and assured her that they'd given me all my shots at the hospital. Everyone asked a lot of questions, but I answered evasively and eventually they must have figured out that I didn't want to talk about it.
On the way out, I caught Carmen's elbow as she passed.
"Hey," I said. "You know the kid that's always running around with Lucas?"
"Sure," she replied, with the same distracted look Jacob had given me. "He comes in for a soda sometimes."
"Anything about him ever strike you as a little weird?"
She laughed. "Weird? Nah. He's just one of the town kids, you know."
"I thought he might be from one of the farms."
"Could be. Who is he again?"
I looked at her, frowned, and shook my head. "Don't worry about it. I'll see you later."
"Feel better!" she called after me as I left.
I walked back across the street to Dusk Books and pushed the door open, though I didn't intend to stay long. More people would want to come see me that afternoon, which was fine – but I wanted to be sure Lucas was all right. And I wanted to give him the mask, which sang out almost audibly when I walked into the shop.
How to give it to him was the question. Standing there holding out empty air would look ridiculous, but then so was the entire idea of Nameless. Wrapping it in paper didn't work – believe me, I tried – and it didn't seem right to just sling it into a box or a bag and carry it.
I picked it up from the workbench, turning it over in my hands, and then quickly set it down again when the wooden door to the shop creaked open.
"Christopher?" Michael called, putting his head around the door.
"Come on in," I said, walking back to the counter. "Afternoon, Michael."
"Afternoon," he said, standing in front of the counter, eyes darting down to my hand. "Heard you were hurt. Word going around is you got a dog bite."
I held up my hand. "Nothing serious. Looks kind of gross, though. Caught a stray on a bad day."
"Only stray around here's that big husky," he said. "That the one?"
"Who, Nameless? No," I told him. "Just some dog."
He gave me a searching look. "How's your heart?"
I laughed. "My heart's fine, Michael. How's yours?"
That got me a grin. "Fine too. Better than fine."
"You need anything?"
"No, just wanted to make sure you didn't need us to go find Nameless. Whatever it was, it drew blood – got to put down a creature like that, before it gets a kid or something."
"Long gone by now, I guess – don't think it was local to start with," I said hastily.
"I can put word around if you want. You know Low Ferry."
"Mm. Yeah, I do. I think I'm closing up today – I'd appreciate it if you told folks not to bother Nameless if they see him."
"Sure. Where you headed?"
"Out to The Pines."
"Drive you far as the road goes," Michael offered.
"No," I said, thinking of the mask. "I...think I'll walk. Nice day for it."
He gave me an uncertain look. "Sure?"
"Yeah. I love that walk. Next time though, maybe?"
A small smile. "Sure. See you round, Christopher."
He left, the door banging shut behind him, and I turned back to the mask. This time, when I picked it up, something brushed against my fingers. I almost dropped it in surprise. I looked down, which was stupid, and then brought my other hand up to explore the edge, discovering something dangling next to one of the eye-holes.
A ribbon. Another on the other side.
I almost burst out laughing, but instead I tied the ribbons together and looped them around my hand, letting the mask dangle from my fingers in a way that was almost unnoticeable. I glanced furtively at Dottore, whose leer from above the fireplace was more of a benevolent smile in the daytime, and left for The Pines.
I didn't see many people as I walked, none once I left the main street, and the world seemed still and a little empty. Mask swinging from one hand, I left the asphalt behind and walked out into the fields that divided The Pines from town, the grass still sodden and pocked here and there with snow.