I grab for her sex, clutching at her with my slick fingers. I am so intent that I do not see the blade, glowing in her fist. As my fingertips slip into her, she plunges the weapon into my chest, and I go down.
Lying in a pool of my own blood, the scent of Iolite Bronze turning rank, I watch the blade rise and fall as she stabs me again and again.
Her mask is so pretty.
2. Blue Is for Maidens
The next morning, I linger over my selection, touching one beautiful face, then another. There is a vacant spot where the yellow mask used to be, but I have many more.
Finally, I choose one the color of sapphires. The brow is sewn from satin smooth as water. I twine the velveteen ribbons in my hair, and the tassels shush around my ears like whispered secrets.
I don’t think I’ll ever marry,” I say. “Why should I?”
The girl beside me giggles, slender fingers over her mouth opening. Her mask is hewn from green wood hardened by three days of fire. Once carved and finished, the wood takes on a glasslike clarity, the tracery of sepia veins like a thick filigree of lace.
“Mark my words,” she says. “All the flirting you do will catch up to you one day. A man will steal your heart, and you’ll come running to me to help with the wedding.”
I laugh. “Not likely. The guys we know only think about Queen’s Honey and getting me alone. I’d just as soon marry a Mask Maker as any of those meatheads.”
“Eww, that’s twisted.” My girlfriend squeals and points. “Look! It’s the new shipment. Didn’t I tell you the delivery trucks come round this street first?”
We stand with our masks pressed against the shop window, ogling the display of vials.
“
“You would.”
“Oh, hush. Let’s go try them.”
“That store’s awfully posh. You think they’ll let us try without buying?”
“Of course they will. We’re customers, aren’t we? They won’t throw us out.”
“They might.”
My concerns fail to dampen her enthusiasm, and I let her tow me through the crystalline doors.
The mingled scents in the shop wash over us. My friend abandons me, rushing to join the jostling horde clustered around the new arrivals. While the mixture of emotive fumes makes my friend giddy and excited, they overwhelm me. I lean against a counter and take shallow breaths.
“You look lost.” The man’s mask is matte pewter, the metal coating so thin I can see the strokes from the artisan’s paintbrush. A flame design swirls across both cheeks in variegated shades of purple.
“I’m just waiting for my friend.” I gesture in the direction of the mob. There’s a glint of translucent green, all I can see of her.
“You’re not interested in trying this new batch?”
“Not really. I prefer the traditional distillations. I guess that makes me old-fashioned.”
The man leans to conspiratorial closeness. “But you purchased those three new ones yesterday. I tried to warn you about the Iolite Bronze. It’s not at all a proper substitute for Queen’s Honey.”
Memories of lust and violence fill me, musk and arousal, pain and blood. But they are wrong. I am someone else today. I shake my head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I search for a hint of green glass or sepia lace. Where is she? “I’d never let someone use Iolite Bronze on me.”
“Didn’t you say it was a gift when I sold it to you?”
“What?”
“I was the shop girl in the onyx mask.”
I am shocked beyond words, beyond reaction. It is the biggest taboo in our society, so profane and obscene that it is not even in our law books. We do not discuss the events and encounters of our other masks. It is not done. What if people started blaming one face for what another did, merely because the same citizen wore both?
The moment of speechless paralysis ends, and I run. I fly through the glittering doors, not caring that I’ve left my best friend behind, and run, run, run until I am back to the dormitory on Center at Corridor. I huddle in the lift, and it whisks me to my quarters. On my bed, I sob, the tears wetting the inside of my mask. A part of me worries that I will stain the satin, but it is a distant part.
When the tears run out, I am done with the day, done with this mask. But the unmasking time is still far off. If I’d only worn the tan mask today, with the bronze veneer and dripping beadwork, I wouldn’t have fled from the pewter-masked deviant. I’d have punched him in the golden flesh of his gut or hauled him to the queen’s gendarmes for a reckoning.
Then I realize what I’m thinking, what I’m wanting — another mask, but not during the morning selection, not during the unmasking — while I’m still wearing today’s.
And I’m afraid.
3. Black Is for Sex
In the morning, as I stand barefaced among my masks, looking anywhere but at the tan one, I receive the queen’s summons. It is delivered, as always, by a gendarme masked in thinly hammered silver. He rings my bell, waiting for me to acknowledge him over the intercom.
The gendarmes are the only citizens about during the early morning when the rest of us are selecting our daily masks, just as they are the only ones who patrol the thoroughfares after the unmasking hour, collecting retired masks and distributing new ones.
“Good morning, gendarme,” I say.
“Good morning, citizen. You are called upon today to carry out your civic duty.”
“I am pleased to oblige.” A square of paper slips through my delivery slot and into my summons tray, bringing with it an elusive sweetness. The queen’s writs are always scented like the honey named after her, both more insistent and more subtle than the stuff which circulates in the marketplaces.
Among my arrayed masks, raised above the others, is the sable mask — hammered steel painted with liquid ebony. It is the consort mask, worn only to honor the queen’s summons. The paint is sheer, and glimmers of silver flicker through the color. The eyes are outlined in opaque kohl, a masked mask.
I lock the delicate chains with their delicate clasps around my head. For a moment, I am disoriented by the lenses over the eyes. It takes longer for me to adjust to the warp in my vision than to the feel and heft of the mask. But not much longer.
The music trills liquid and rich around us, and I concentrate on the steps. In her mask-like-stars, the queen swirls and glides across the ballroom in my arms. Caught in her beauty and my exertions, I have missed her words.
“I beg your pardon, my queen. What did you say?”
Her mask tilts up, and the piquant flavor of her amusement fills my senses. “I asked if you were enjoying the dance, whether you liked the refreshment.”
“I have not sampled the buffet, but it looks lavish. As to the dance, I am worried that my clumsiness might offend you or that I might misstep.”
