Lucia's Masks Read online

  One of them put the knife’s tip to his throat and then to his earlobe and gave it a nick. “Tell us a story, pale fright,” the worm-thing demanded, placing the knife across his windpipe. “Amuse us.”

  Chandelier was so afraid that he spilled out the story which was always uppermost in his mind: how the blindingly beautiful god of Love had stepped out of the Cosmic Egg at the beginning of Time. Revealing this sacred tale to such an audience left him feeling tawdry and ignoble. The myth of the Egg and Eros was one of the holiest things he held in his head, and he had given it carelessly away. Was this the kind of trade people had to make to save their lives, or at least delay having their ears cut off? He was not sure it was worth the tormenting guilt he felt at what he had done.

  “Stooopid. What are you on, kid? Your old egg story stinks. Stinks, get it?” And they were so taken with their own wit that they become quite merry. So they decided to postpone Chandelier’s operation and their battle over the spoils until they had sat down together and been convivial. In their case, this meant inhaling solvents.

  Their addiction was Chandelier’s salvation. As they grunted and dreamed, he slid past them on his belly. Snake was with him again. Together he and Snake found another metal stair, and started up. Unfortunately, the middle rungs were just loose enough that they clanged like a doleful bell in the echoing dark when he trod upon them. Chandelier froze. He was certain this metallic racket would have roused at least one of the Under-dwellers. He looked down and saw, barely three rungs below him, a hand with long filthy fingernails, reaching up to grab his ankle. He pulled away but not quite fast enough to avoid the long nails grazing his flesh. Up and up he climbed, hand over hand on the rungs, as fast as he could. He could hear the worm-man panting close behind him.

  At last he spied just up above a disc-shaped piece of his old enemy Sky, and that too made him afraid. Yet he had no choice but to go on.

  Then he was out, emerging in a wasteland of parched grass and hardy weeds. Sky, as usual, went on forever. Today Sky was a heartless cobalt. The boy fell to his knees under its enfeebling blow. He clutched at Miriam’s pouch. It was then Snake slithered up to his ear and whispered his secret.

  “I am Sky,” he said. “I am infinity. Hold this idea,” Snake told Chandelier. “I bind in the boundlessness. It’s just me, with my tail in my mouth. Now take that precious image of me and run.”

  But it was too late for running for the worm-man loomed above him, his face even uglier in the daylight than it had been underground. Chandelier’s stomach turned as he looked at the lipless mouth with the thread-like red cracks in its corners, and its nasty green teeth. In one hand the pallid worm-man held a rusty kitchen knife; in the other, a blood-stained cloth bag for the trophies he was determined to sever from either side of the boy’s small head.

  “Think I’ll take your pretty little snout as well since you caused me so much extra trouble.” The worm-man seized Chandelier round the throat. The boy saw the air turn sickly grey, then black, then red. Something wet sprayed across his face. Chandelier staggered back. When his vision cleared, he was astonished to see the worm-man sitting on the ground in a daze. There was blood all over his flat face. Chandelier could see it streaming from a wound on the top of his skull. Who and what had brought his attacker down? And in which direction should he run now?

  Then he saw at some distance behind the worm-man a tall, narrow, dark-brown figure moving slowly and jerkily toward him. So stiff were this person’s movements it was as if he was forced to manipulate joints of rusted metal. The way the man walked — for Chandelier could see now that it was indeed a man — reminded him of the angular, long-legged birds he had seen in his father’s nature films in the Egg. Birds like the ibex, crane, and rosy flamingo.

  “Duck!” the man cried out and for a moment Chandelier was confused. Had the man called out the name of the bird he resembled? But ducks were small and had no legs to speak of. Then he understood the man wanted him to get down, low to the ground, where a duck would be. He complied just in time, for the man immediately hurled a small rock that caught the worm-man, who was struggling to stand, solidly on the forehead. Down the worm-man went again, this time lying prone and moaning and cursing.

  Chandelier sped to the side of his rescuer and discovered that the dark brown was the colour of the well-worn fabric of the man’s jacket and pants. The pants were grimy, particularly at the cuffs and knees. He looked up at the man’s face and saw eyes of pellucid blue set above lean cheeks, so scored with lines both thick and thin that the boy thought the man must have spent many years weeping, or perhaps working in harsh weather with scouring winds that bit into his flesh.

  Then he realized — this man is old! He had seen aged faces pictured in books and on film, but never on a living being. Had they lived, time would have transformed his father and mother’s faces in this way. “It is written in our cells,” his father had explained to him. “The very code of our human story is to run down. Entropy, my son. We humans grow so tired as we age that we anticipate death’s coming as we would the visit of a friend. We must accept this, with courage and a quiet joy, because it is our destiny to grow old and die.”

  Not, the boy thought ruefully, his mother or his father’s destiny. But this idea of the body’s life-force gradually dissipating still perplexed him. Where, finally, did the residual energy go?

  Now that he was actually standing beside a very old human being he understood even less, for he perceived in this person’s long, gaunt frame no obvious decline other than his wrinkles and stiff joints. In fact the old man projected something of the hardy, honed vigour of the heroes of his story books. Like Odysseus, the great adventurer. Had this man not saved him from having his ears and nose lopped off; from bleeding to death alone on this parched and blighted ground?

  “Thank you, saviour.” The words were out of his mouth before he could consider if they were the right ones.

  The old man laughed and slapped his own thigh. “Saviour! That’s a good one. I learned to skip stones over water when I was a boy. I can still see far off and judge my distance well. That’s all, boy. That’s all.

  “Did that ugly critter hurt you? Are you all right?” These questions he put to Chandelier most earnestly, bending down to peer into the boy’s face, seeking the truth of the matter in his eyes and the set of his mouth.

  No. Chandelier shook his head. The worm-man had not hurt him, unless of course you counted malign intent. He did not say this aloud.

  “Are you alone, boy? Do you have family?”

  Again Chandelier shook his head, more gravely this time, in heavy remembrance.

  “My name is Harry,” the old man said. “And yours?”

  Chandelier found himself tongue-tied. His thoughts were all entangled. That simple question — “Do you have family?” — had put him back in the thick of that baleful morning. The stink of the blasted Egg was in his nostrils as he groped in the debris and found the severed hand and saw his father’s body without its head. Then he saw his mother’s body . . . Stop! Stop! He clenched his fists and looked down at his knuckles gone a ghostly white.

  Stop! Who had said this inside his head? Had he told himself to desist? Because otherwise he would go mad. Or was it Snake who warned him? Wasn’t Snake there in the form of the big curved “S” at the beginning of the word? Stop!

  He looked up again at the old man — Harry — who continued to wait to hear his name. Chandelier still could not get the word out. So he pointed to the cut-glass bauble dangling from his ear lobe.

  “Earring? Is that your name?”

  This actually made Chandelier smile.

  “Chandelier,” he said.

  “Oh,” replied Harry. “Well . . . that’s a new one on me. Chandelier it is then.

  “Well, Chandelier, I’ll tell you what I plan to do, shall I? I’ve had a bellyful of this poisonous hellhole. I’m going to make the trek north — toward the place where I was born. There’s no way to get there except through the
forest. It’s a very long way, and I won’t kid you it’s going to be easy.

  “But at least the air will be fresher and with any luck, there will be far fewer abominations like that one to watch out for.” He gestured to the unconscious worm-man.

  “Would you like to come with me, Chandelier, to a far healthier place than this? We can keep one another company.”

  Company. Chandelier tasted the word, rolled it on is tongue and around his head. He liked the sound of it. This word seemed to speak of warm arms about him, and a place where he could rest, in complete trust he would be safe.

  “Yes,” he said, prompted not just by these positive associations, but also a deeply rooted intuition that this was a “good man” in his father’s sense of the word.

  So they set off together, Chandelier soon learning how to keep pace with Harry’s stiff and occasionally faltering steps. Almost immediately, the old man began to tell him stories to help them pass the time on their long trudge to the forest boundary.

  The boy loves the rainbow-coloured lights that flow from the old man’s mouth when he speaks. Most of all, he loves the Polar Spirit he can see standing erect inside Harry’s spare frame; and the landscape over which this spirit flies, with its mountains of glistening ice, and the emerald secret at its heart.

  Chapter Three

  The Six

  WHEN I SAW AN OLD MAN in a dark-brown suit limping ahead of us on the forest path, I wanted to strike my breast and cry out “O Fortuna!” as my great-aunt Nidia used to at any startling occurrence. O Fortuna. And exceptionally good fortune in this case. I was so sick of Candace’s constant chatter and boasting I had on occasion considered abandoning her and slipping off in the middle of the night. In reality, I would never have done so. But I swear I would willingly have given one of my back teeth just to hear a human voice other than hers.

  My instinctive urge was therefore to run ahead and speak with the old man. Just in time I realized how foolish my impulsiveness was. Hadn’t I been taken in before by someone who appeared to be old and vulnerable and was in fact a villainous young man in disguise? Why should this person ahead of us be any different? He might well be a decoy, his feigned slow gait a ploy to entice us into conversation. His cohorts would then spring out from their hiding places amidst the trees. Already I had a firm grip on the handle of my knife.

  “Have you got a weapon?” The words were out of my mouth before I actually looked at Candace and saw the fear in her eyes. She had turned quite pale. Her obvious apprehension, as she stared fixedly at the back of the man who laboured slowly on ahead, intensified my own anxiety.

  “A kitchen knife,” she whispered. Her hands shook as she tried to unzip her backpack to extract it.

  “You stay here and keep close watch,” I told her firmly. I pointed to a tree with a trunk wide enough for her to hide behind. Of course if there were others secreted by the wayside, they had probably already spotted us and this precaution was pointless. But she was so frightened I wanted to do all I could to reassure and comfort her.

  “I have pills . . . in case we need them.”

  I looked at her dumbfounded.

  “If there are others with him . . . if they try to rape us,” she explained. I could see how difficult it was for her to speak these words aloud.

  “Instantaneous,” she said. “We’d be dead before they managed even to lay a finger on us.”

  I did not know how to respond. So I simply shook my head, angry at myself for having been so often irritated with her while all the time she nursed this gnawing fear. I wondered if she had already been harmed in this way, and promised myself I would try to be more accepting of her irksome little habits in the future.

  “Take courage,” I urged her. “He may well be what he seems and quite harmless. But we cannot continue to linger behind him. Are we agreed?”

  She nodded. But I noticed she had something clutched tightly in her hand.

  “Stay calm,” I said.

  Then I went ahead, keeping a keen watch for any odd movement or shape in the tree-shadow. When I caught up to him, I saw that the old man had a companion who walked in front of him: a pale, slender, fine-boned boy, with a cut-glass earring dangling from his left lobe. He watched me warily out of huge eyes the colour of Parma violets.

  I introduced myself, and the old man scanned my face for a good half-minute, all the while keeping his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He then looked right and left and over my shoulder.

  “Lucia,” he repeated, and he smiled to himself, as if my name pleased him. I was surprised how strong his voice sounded; had my eyes been closed, I would have assumed I was in the presence of a far younger man.

  “Harry,” he said. “And this is my young friend, Chandelier. He doesn’t talk much,” he added. And then, in an undertone: “I helped him out of a tight spot in a City wasteland a few days ago. Poor little tyke. Looks like he’s been through some things that have left him pretty well mute.

  “He seems to trust me,” Harry said. “He likes listening to my stories.”

  Indeed it was many years since I had seen a young person regard an elderly one with such tender concern. But the boy was clearly edgy too, on the old man’s behalf. It was the boy’s wariness, as much as Harry’s honest face and manner that reassured me, and so I gestured to Candace to come and join us.

  She came forward cautiously, and kept glancing to either side of the path so obsessively that twice she stumbled. When at last she stood by me, I smiled at her warmly and told her the two travellers’ names. “Candace and I met five days ago,” I told Harry and Chandelier. Meanwhile, the boy kept looking me and Candace up and down as if he were afraid we might hurt the old man. I took a step or two back and let my arms fall loose at my sides so that the boy could see I held nothing in my hands. The furrow in his brow vanished and his face looked less pinched.

  “Are you travelling north?” I asked Harry.

  He nodded. “We’re headed for what people call the Sea Lake. Beyond the great Rock Shield. I was born not far from there. I want to at least get close enough to see a birch tree again.”

  “Is it true what they say,” I asked him “that the air there is pure and that the EYE’s power cannot penetrate the shield of rock?”

  “We must hope so,” he replied. “We must believe and keep faith.”

  I liked the simple frankness of his reply. And it was sheer delight for me to speak again with someone so elderly, who was quick of mind and who still managed to walk strongly albeit he sometimes leaned heavily upon his stick. The mere fact of this man’s existence made him a rarity. By the time I turned twenty we seldom saw an old person on the streets of the City. There had for years been rumours that the EYE had a secret program of mass euthanasia to dispose of the aged, regardless of their state of health. But if I saw Harry as a living wonder, Candace took a completely opposite view.

  “He reeks,” she whispered in my ear, yet loud enough I feared for Harry and the boy to hear. “He’s probably crawling with vermin. And the boy’s white as a slug. He’s obviously got some kind of wasting disease. And that earring! You’re not thinking of inviting them to travel with us, are you?”

  She stood back, planted her fists on her hips and put on one of her censorious little pouts. I didn’t even bother to respond. We had an obvious moral obligation here for one thing. Old Harry and the boy stood a far better chance of survival if Candace and I travelled with them. We were all headed in the same general direction and four pairs of eyes and ears would be a distinct advantage as we got into the denser part of the forest. Besides, Harry knew where we were going. He had actually lived near the northern Sea Lake. I had only heard of this place. For me, it was like a dream of paradise and all I had was my inner compass, the guidance of the stars, my nose and my faith to guide me.

  So I decided on the spot to override Candace’s reservations and ask Harry if he and the boy wanted to join forces with us — or with me, as the case might be. If Candace wanted to strike off on her own,
she was very welcome to do so.

  When she heard me put the invitation to Harry, she stamped her foot and glared at me. Her furious round face, with her straight-cut bangs, made me think of pictures I had seen of grimacing gargoyles. I at once regretted this unkind thought.

  “Candace wants to found a community north of the Shield.” I blurted this out, in some vain attempt to bring her out of her petulance.

  “One of those holier-than-thou places?” asked Harry. While I was sure he was teasing, I knew how offensive Candace would find this remark. Indeed she looked genuinely affronted.

  “Absolutely not,” she snapped. “And I consider your question both insulting and in extremely poor taste.”

  “It was a joke,” he said. “What people used to call lighthearted banter.” He winked at me.

  “Harrumph,” said Candace. She uses this expression whenever she is indignant, and it seems to involve the expulsion of a great deal of air from her lungs in a noisy rush. She has quite often been indignant with me, usually because I have not been listening closely enough to what she is telling me.

  “We would be very pleased to travel with you. Thank you,” said Harry, pointedly addressing us both. Candace took herself off in an apparent fit of pique, and began to pace back and forth on the path at some distance from us. Her hands were thrust deep in her pockets.

  Harry looked at me with a keen sympathy, and we waited until we were sure Candace was out of earshot.

  “She’s a bit of an endurance test,” he said with a mock glum face that made me laugh. The sound of my own laughter surprised and pleased me. It had been a long time since I had last laughed in any way except wryly. And even my wry laughter was many years ago. The boy stared at me closely for some seconds. Then he smiled at me, a smile I willingly returned. I saw then how beautiful his face was when he let go of his rigid anxiety. I did not want to speculate on the kind of horrific things he had gone through before Harry came upon him. The boy had such a fragile innocence about him. It made mes equally enraged and despairing to think of anyone deliberately making him or any other child suffer.