“I’ve never danced with you before? That would explain your stiffness.”
“I have not had the pleasure. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was only a whimsy. I don’t dance with many. You probably won’t dance with me again.” The queen gestures, and the music stops. She leads me to her couch — crimson sheets and alabaster cushions. I am more familiar with this type of dance, but she isn’t ready for me yet. Her scent, though heady, tells me it is not time to mate, although it will be soon.
It confuses me, this waiting. Why am I here, if not to do my duty?
She reclines on her couch but not in the position of copulation.
“Talk to me,” she says.
“What would you like to speak on, my queen?”
“Do you have a favorite mask?”
It is an odd question, treading the boundary of indecency.
“No, my queen. They are all precious to me.”
“Don’t you wish you could discard some masks, perhaps the ones that you suffer in, and just wear the ones that are pleasurable?”
Was she testing me? “They are all precious to me,” I say again. “Each in its wonderful variety. I would never presume to contravene the law.”
“Not even to bend it a little? There are some citizens who wear just a few masks and don others only as often as they must in order to stay out of the purview of the gendarmes.”
“But that’s criminal.”
“Technically, it’s legal, although it defies the heart of the code. Generally, the number of their select rotation is large enough that no single mask becomes dominant. Do you find the prospect appealing?”
Dominant mask? What would be the purpose in limiting one’s mask selection? Her words make no sense.
“No.”
My answer pleases her. Her scent rises and with it, my arousal, and I cannot think clearly anymore. The queen is the font of desire and satisfaction — the perfume of true Queen’s Honey between her legs, her need, mine — nothing exists but the urgency of mating. It eclipses mere copulation as the sun outshines the stars. I submerge in a tide of desire and completion and the rise of desire again, over and over, until the unmasking hour.
In the morning, barefaced and aching, I report to the Mask Makers galley. I avoid looking at their ugly, soft countenances. It’s partly instinctive discomfort at being seen without a mask, but also, Mask Makers have always made me uneasy. I feel sorry for them, their faces so colorless and insipid. It’s an irony that they wear such bland features and plain colors, yet they make such marvelous faces for us, each one unique in its brilliance. I pity them, and I’m glad I was not born to their caste.
I hand over my summons writ and accept my newest mask, my favor from the queen. It is glossy saffron with pointed wires to fasten it. It has no mouth opening, but it does not seem lacking for that. Like every face they craft, it is a feat of artistry.
4. Orange Is for Agony
I press the saffron mask to my face and wrap the barbed laces around my head. A fleeting touch, my fingertips on the painted metal tell me of thick runnels that dent the surface. Their unevenness makes the fit uncomfortable. For a moment.
Wire mesh presses above and below. If I lie down, I can stretch my neck, a little. But then the mesh cuts into my feet, my forearms, my chest. Standing, sitting, a few back-and-forth steps. But pacing only reminds me how small my cell is. And they do not like for us to pace. Exercise thins the fat between muscle and skin, making the harvest more difficult.
My neighbor wears a ginger mask dotted with cobalt sequins. He urinates, and it splashes through the mesh on me. I hiss my rage, crowded by the scent of his body, and return the favor.
I’m glad when the workers come for him and watch as they trap him in their loops. He tries to fight, but he has nothing sharp or hard to wield. Their wicked tools, edged with blue light, open him from neck to groin. He barely has time to bleed before they carve perpendicular incisions, flaps to better flay him in a single piece.
His eyes bulge as they tear away his skin, all the movement he is capable of. He’s silent, for there is no mouth on his mask; he is as mute as I.
When they’re done, they leave him writhing in the liquids of his body on the wire mesh floor. They take the heavy cloak of his skin with them.
Then it’s my turn. The ginger planes of my neighbor’s mask swivel to me, so he can watch.
There’s no place to run in my tiny cell, and their loops pinion me. When they begin to cut away my skin, it is the most terrible pain I have ever known.
Their masks are lemon, daffodil, and butterscotch. Pretty and yellow, like sunshine.
5. Jasper Is for Jilting
The next morning, the choice is harder than usual. I flinch away from the saffron mask and stare for a long while at the tan one. But it feels inappropriate to select it.
Like a whiff of passing corruption, the notion of going without a mask today, simply staying in my quarters and not choosing a face, flits through my thoughts. It is too scandalous to contemplate; I feel guilty to have even considered it.
Without looking, I reach among the rows of empty faces and snatch the first one my hand falls upon.
It is brackish green, the color of stagnant water in a pool that never sees the sun. The chin and nose are gilded in dark velvet, and the lips shine, liquid silver hand-painted on silk. I tighten the woven cords around my head.
I hover beneath the window of my lover, she of the cerulean mask detailed in voile. She reclines on her balcony, and a song of courtship thrums from her dainty mouth. I inhale the delicate body scents her servant wafts out with a fan: enticement and temptation, innocence and promise.
“Do you love me?” my sweetheart calls.
“With all my soul. You are my everything.”
“I don’t believe you,” she laughs. “How are you different from all the other men, just waiting for a chance to slather me with Queen’s Honey?”
“How can you say that? I’ve asked you to marry me.”
“What does that prove? Any meathead with a tongue can do that. And anyway, I don’t want to marry at all. Marriage is a sorry state that leads to fighting and grief.”
I pantomime exaggerated dismay for her benefit. “What can I do to convince you of my sincerity? Ask me for anything, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Do you have a jar of Queen’s Honey?”
I hesitate. If I answer truthfully, she might accuse me again of being a libertine. But it is also my courting gift. She will feel slighted if I don’t have anything to offer her.
I sigh and choose the better of my options. “A humble present to honor your loveliness.”
“Good.”
When I’m not immediately rebuffed, I dare to hope.
“I’m sending my girl down. Give the Queen’s Honey to her, and we’ll all play a game. She’ll seal the jar so the contents may not be used without breaking it, and puncture its lid, freeing the scent. If you can spend the
