by Colt, K. J.
Your first masks are given to you by the ones who also give you life. Later, with wisdom only a stern and unforgiving world can teach, you accept other masks given you by your masters, be it the king, the presbyter, or the teacher: on rare occasion the mask may be given by fate itself. One may choose his own mask, yes, but the gods frown upon such insolence. Such presumption.
And so the following morning, next to the icy cold waters of the creek that ran through the village of Gheb, Elu was masked by his father. The child’s mask—a basic curved wooden frame with goat leather stretched across, punctuated by large eye holes and a small opening for the mouth, suggesting to the child that they should see much and say little—was every man’s first mask. The father, still young himself, slowly, ceremoniously, dipped the simple wooden frame three times into the swift, black water. Thus cleansed of the wood spirits that previously called it home, he strapped it proudly to his son’s face, who proceeded to rip it off and run for the brisk water’s edge, only to be yanked back by his frantic mother.
Never had a child been given a mask at such a young age in the village of Gheb, and the neighbors, who early in the morning had merely scoffed, now openly derided the teacher for his folly. ‘Tis an evil thing, they said, for one so young to be masked, but the father stoically ignored them, firmly holding his son and reattaching the mask to his face. This time the child relented.
Through his youth Elu kept his mask on. But he wandered. The small village could not contain him and he escaped early and often to the edges of the hills from which flowed the creek that fed the village below. Several of his older brothers, and later, his younger ones, often accompanied him but he did not abide more than one or two at a time.
When the gullies and meanderings of the creek had yielded their secrets, he looked further up the hills and spied the beginning of the forest. Vast elmore trees with their bushy, prickly arms fluttered in the wind, or swayed with the whisperings of the wood spirits that called to his mask, seeking to reclaim their lost home.
Elu ventured only short distances into the trees at first, not wishing to dishonor his mother who had commanded him not to wander too far, but the spirits called him, and he followed. Deep into the woods he went one day with his smaller brother, Lo. Higher and higher they followed the creek—a pathway of water encased by a low roof of dense foliage as if the stream had carved a tunnel through the green itself. Lush moss clothed the sharp rocks, and the muted water seemed to linger over its plush softness, but here and there the green had been torn or rubbed away by beast or man, revealing the black angled stones that made up the water’s bed.
Elu and Lo paused at a large rock over which flowed a trickling waterfall into a shallow pool below. Hangra fish scattered to and fro as the boys tossed tiny stones at them. They competed—seeing who could come closest to hitting first the fish, then the furry dandra that scurried on the forest floor beneath the foliage. Small games escalated to larger ones, when finally Lo said, “I reckon you can’t be climbing that rock.”
“I reckon I can,” said Elu.
“Show it to me,” said Lo.
“Show it yourself.”
“You are the elder. Show it first.”
“I will, but you follow when I succeed.” Elu started to climb up the slick rock before calling back, “If you can.”
Slowly, but steadily, he climbed the rock and within a minute stood triumphantly on the top, kicking water down at his brother below.
“Your turn to show it, brother.”
Lo began unsteadily at first, but gained confidence and skill as he climbed. Not an arm’s length from the top his bare foot slipped off the mossy rock and he fell, hitting his head as he dropped out of sight. Elu yelled and jumped into the shallow pool below, making a wave that washed his brother’s unmoving form up against the rock. He dragged the boy out of the water and examined him. His mask had been thrown off and blood issued from the back of his head, but soon he stirred and opened his now naked eyes.
“I didn’t show it.”
“You’re showing it all over me. Come, we must heal you.”
Lo stumbled to his feet, but soon collapsed. Elu lifted the boy and carried him down the ravine, off the hills and to the village where he entered the healer’s hut. The healer, a young woman with the black oak and bone mask of her trade, hurried Elu inside and snatched the smaller boy out of his arms. She laid him on a table and began chanting as she pressed cloth to the wound. Elu listened to the chant, how it began in the woman’s throat, but flowed through the mask, channeled and shaped by the ancient healers’ spirits that gave life and power and purpose to the mask. Long-dead masters of the healer’s art now caressed Lo’s head, and the bleeding staunched.
“Where is his mask, young one?”
“I do not know.”
“Then the gods have punished him for removing it. We do not remove them for play. You know that, child.”
“He did not remove it. It fell off when he fell.”
“The gods punish lying as well. Leave this place and tell your mother what you have done this day.”
“What have I done this day?” said Elu, his voice now raised defensively.
“You have lied, and to a healer, by the gods. I can see it. In your countenance. In your face, written upon your very mask. I know a liar when I see one. Get thee hence.”
Elu returned to his mother, a troubled but shrewd woman who could read her child’s mask like the teacher reads his scroll. He recounted the day’s events. She knew he did not lie—a child of hers could not dare to—but she knew his foretold destiny and feared for her other children. His free spirit would infect them—she knew. No more would his siblings be allowed to follow him in his wanderings. Not the older children, anyway, for they were now too busy with their apprenticeships, and now not the younger ones, by command of their mother.
And so Elu met Thora.
Thora ran and jumped as the boys, but with the grace as of a rowyn, with its delicate antlers and slender legs. Thora had not antlers but long braids of hair tied at the ends with coarse bark string, and her girl-child’s mask radiated thin strips of speckled, shining tak-weed from the river, tied there by Thora herself, which caught the beams of the sun and scattered them where she ran. The wild one, the villagers called her, and the other girls dared not play with her out of fear the wayward spirits haunting her mask might also latch onto them. Her girl-child’s mask must not have been properly anointed in the river during her masking, so Elu thought, otherwise, how else could the spirits find her and speak troubled, mischievous thoughts through the mask to her ears?
Elu did not care though, for she began to follow him in his adventurings, in spite of his younger age and the social impropriety of a girl and a boy alone together, unbetrothed. Some day, Elu’s mother would choose his partner and obtain for him a householder mask, but Elu did not feel, or yearn for Thora in that way. She simply filled the void left by Elu’s brothers, and he liked her. She climbed better than Lo, threw rocks farther than Lan—Elu’s next oldest brother—and punched harder than Elu himself.
Several villagers began to whisper, particularly those whose masks were wont to gossip. The potter’s wife especially, whose homeweaver mask must have been home to several considerably loud spirits, for the woman’s voice carried as she remarked at the ill manners of the teacher’s son and the blacksmith’s daughter. Her neighbor, the weaver’s wife, nodded in agreement, her mask giving its solemn approval to the prudent judgment.
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 kin
g’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.
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AFTERWORD
Nick Webb is the USA Today bestselling author of the Masks of Terremar. He lives in Huntsville, Alabama with his family. He is: a dad, a husband, a scientist, a writer, and a total sci-fi/fantasy nerd.
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WITCH HUNT
A Gryphonpike Chronicles Novella
by
Annie Bellet
WITCH HUNT
WE ALL KNOW THIS TALE. There once was a beautiful elven princess who lived in a crystal forest in a hidden kingdom far beyond the common worlds. Her voice was unparalleled among the World-singers and her power brought her all she desired.
Until Wrath and Pride wound their way around her heart, turning songs of beauty and creation into songs of death and violence. For her crimes, she was cast out and cursed to live among the lesser creatures, among the elves and men who had forgotten those who sang into existence the earth they squabbled over. Her voice was stolen, her words taken like ember-waves melt footprints from the glowing sands.