wilderness, leaving my mask in the grass. It is an uncomfortable sensation, having my will at odds with my body.
“I’ve been watching you for a while to make sure you were right,” she says.
“Watching me?” Fragments of confusion knit into understanding. “You’re the shop girl who sold me the Iolite Bronze and the deviant man with the pewter mask.”
“And the customer at the bakery who bought a dozen egg tarts from you before that.”
“The woman with the pink mask who asked for the recipe?”
“Yes. And before, when you wore your roan and iron mask, I was in the audience when you presented your new poem. And the day before that, I picked indigo with you for the Mask Makers.”
We emerge into a clearing. A broken-down hut lists, obscured by overgrown foliage. Her sage and toffee mask still dangles from her fingertips. She passes its brim over the doorknob, and the door swings open.
“I’m glad to finally meet you,” she says. “You can call me Pena.”
The interior is dim, lit by stray sunbeams poking through holes in the ramshackle walls.
“Pena?” The word is meaningless. “Why?”
“It’s my name, a word that means me, regardless of what mask I’m wearing or not wearing.”
I snort. “Why stop at each citizen having their own name? Why not each tile or brick the builders use or every tree or blade of grass?”
“Every street has a name,” Pena says. “And every shop.”
“So we can tell one from the other. Otherwise, we couldn’t say where a place was, or differentiate between one food market and another.”
“Exactly.” She runs her fingers over a floorboard, and I hear a click. In the far corner by the fireplace, flagstones part to expose steps.
“What’s down there?” I ask.
“Answers. Come.”
We descend, and the flagstones rumble shut overhead. Ambient light washes over us — dim and red, casting bloody shadows.
We’re in a tunnel with rough, stone walls. The light extends ten paces before us; beyond is darkness. Pena strides toward this border, and I am obliged to accompany her. When we are within a pace of light’s end, more red comes on to reveal another span of corridor. When we are within this new radius, the light behind us goes out.
And so we walk.
“Why do citizens need names?” I ask. “We change masks every day, unlike shops and streets which stay the same. What if I discover that my physician is the same citizen as my murderer? Or a citizen in one mask is my lover and in another, my enemy? If I call that citizen by a single word, it’s like treating all their mask identities as the same person.”
“That’s the point,” she says. “It lets us be who we truly are, underneath our masks.”
I shake my head. “Without the masks, we’re not anything.”
“There was a time before the masks.”
“And we were empty, primitive creatures, without will or purpose, until the First Queen created the First Mask to wear and carved faces for the citizens and—”
“And She designated the Guild of Mask Makers and tasked them with their sacred duty so that everyone would be imbued with souls, blah blah blah. I know the lies.”
Her heresy is both disturbing and intriguing. “What do you believe, then?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you.”
“Why me?”
“There’s a group of us named. We seek out others who harbor the same doubts and resentments we do, and we liberate them.”
“I don’t want to be liberated.”
“Don’t you? Haven’t you wanted to be free of the daily selection routine? Or chafed against the mask, wishing the hour of unmasking came sooner? Don’t you hover in indecision some mornings, not because the choosing is so hard, but because none of them appeal? Don’t you wonder who you could be if you were left to decide for yourself?”
I am saved from having to answer by the appearance of something new when the next lights activate: a door.
7. Red Is for Revelation
“Where are we?”
“Beneath the palace at the Mask Makers guild.”
She passes her mask over the door. Like the hut’s, it opens.
I balk. “No. Absolutely not. It’s prohibited.”
She studies me. “I can make you, but I won’t. It’s your decision.”
I open my mouth to repeat myself.
“But first, hear me out.”
I exhale. “If I must. But it won’t change my mind.”
“You know I’ve been keeping by you as you’ve switched masks. I was also with you when you wore the saffron mask at the leather harvesters.”
The memory is still raw. “So?”
“Do you know who I was?”
“One of the skinners, I presume.”
“I was your neighbor in the adjoining cage.”
Despite everything, I’m dismayed. “Didn’t you know what they were going to do to you, to us?”
“I knew.”
“And still you let them, willingly even.
“Because, to be with you, I could either hurt you or be hurt, and I chose not to hurt you.”
“Am I someone to you? Have we been lovers or spouses or friends?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why?”
“Because I know who I am, and my actions are a reflection of me. I don’t skin people alive.”
Her last sentence carries a conviction, a certainty that makes me envious.
“What would you do if you had to choose,” she says, “if your decisions extended beyond what mask to wear any given day? Would you willingly inflict such suffering upon another?”
“I would… I-I don’t know.”
“Do you want to know?”
And I find I do.
The door opens upon a storage room jammed with row upon row of shelves. Bolts of multihued fabric, rolls of ribbon and lace, and jars of washes, dyes, and lacquers are piled together without any semblance of order. More rolls of textiles spill out of cubby holes and closets lining the room.
“This is their overflow storage, where they keep their excess,” Pena says. “We raid it for our mask-making supplies. Named artisans can create near-perfect replicas of guild masks, but without the oversouls, of course.”
“With added features that can unlock doors.”
She displays her teeth again. Some part of me has learned to equate that facial configuration with positive emotion, even before I breathe the perfume of her approval.
“You noticed. Very good.”
“How do they do it?”
She leads me through the jumble. “It’s complicated to explain. All of our mask functions, including the scaffold you’re wearing, are based on the Mask Makers’ constructs. There’s bits and pieces appliqued, sewn, glued,
