Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

something heavy being knocked into something else, which in turn toppled to the floor and shattered. She flinched to see a spray of China blue glass jet through the open doorway past her feet. A pause. The footsteps resumed, again lurching, and faded away. Miss Temple risked a peek around the corner. At her feet were the scattered remains of an enormous vase, the lilies that had been inside, the broken marble pedestal it had rested upon, and an end table knocked askew. The room held a large canopied bed with all its linen stripped away. Instead, the bed held three wooden boxes, identical to those the strange servant had opened in the room off the hall. These too were open and lined with felt—orange felt, as she now fully took in, recalling the word on the blackboard. The boxes were all empty, but she picked up one of the discarded lids and saw that letters—also in orange—had been stenciled on the wood: “OR-13”. She looked at the other two lids and saw that they had in turn been stenciled “OR-14” and “OR-15”. She snapped her head up to the archway. The footsteps had returned, careening even more recklessly. Before Miss Temple could do a thing to hide there was a thicker, meaty crash, and then another silence.

She waited, heard nothing, and crept to the archway. The smell was even stronger. She gagged, holding part of her sleeve across her nose and mouth. This was another sitting room, more fully furnished, but with every item covered by a white cloth, as if this part of the house were closed. On the floor, poking from behind a white- shrouded sideboard, were a pair of legs: bright red trousers with a yellow cord on the outside seam, stuffed into black boots. A soldier’s uniform. The soldier did not move. Miss Temple dared to step into the room and look at him fully. His coat was also red, draped with golden epaulettes and frogging and he had a thick black moustache and whiskers. The rest of his face was covered by a tight red leather mask. His eyes were closed. She did not see any blood—there was no immediate indication that he had hit his head. Perhaps he was drunk. Or overwhelmed by the smell. She poked the man with her foot. He did not stir, though she saw from his gently moving chest that he lived.

Wadded up in his hands—and perhaps tripping on this had been his difficulty—was a black cloak. Miss Temple smiled with satisfaction. She knelt and gently prized it free, and then stood, holding it open before her. There was no hood, but it would cover the rest of her very well. She smiled again with cunning and knelt at the man’s head, carefully unfastening his mask and then peeling it away from his face. She let out a gasp. Around his eyes the man bore what looked like a strange brand, an impression on the skin, as if a large pair of metal glasses had been pressed into his face and temples. The flesh was not burned, but discolored a visceral shade of plum, as if a layer of skin had been rubbed away. Miss Temple examined the other side of his mask with distaste. It did not seem fouled or bloody. She wiped it on one of the white chair covers. It left no stain. Still, it was with distrust that she pulled off her own white mask and exchanged it for the red. She then pulled off her white robes and wrapped herself in the black cloak. There was no mirror, but she still felt as if she had regained some of her footing. She stuffed the discarded things into the sideboard and made her way to the next doorway.

This was quite large, clearly the main entrance to this suite of rooms, and it opened directly onto a crowd of finely dressed guests moving purposefully past her down a large, well-lit corridor. A man noted Miss Temple’s appearance in the doorway and nodded, but did not pause. No one paused—in fact there seemed to be some hurry. Happy not to be causing alarm, Miss Temple stepped into the moving mass and allowed herself to be swept along. She was mindful to hold her cloak closed, but otherwise had leisure to study the people around her. They all wore masks and elegant evening wear, but seemed a variety of types and ages. As she shuffled along several others nodded or smiled to her, but no one spoke—in fact, no one was speaking at all, though she did sense an occasional smile of anticipation. She was convinced that they were all going toward something that promised to be wonderful, but that very few, if any, of them actually knew what it was. As she looked ahead and behind, she saw it was really no great group in the corridor—perhaps forty or fifty. Judging from the number of coaches at the front of the house, this was but a fraction of those attending the party. She wondered where everyone else was, and how they had explained the absence of this group. Further, where were they going? And how long was the corridor? Miss Temple decided that whoever laid out the house was unhealthily fixated with length. She stumbled abruptly into the person ahead of her—at this point a short woman (which was to say, of her own height) in a pale green dress (a color similar to Miss Temple’s own, she noted with a pang) and an especially ingenious mask made from strings of hanging beads.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” Miss Temple whispered.

“Not at all,” the woman replied, and nodded at a gentleman in front of her, “I trod on his heel.” They were stopped in the hall.

“We are stopped,” observed Miss Temple, trying to keep up the conversation.

“I was told the stair is quite narrow, and to be careful with my shoes. They never build for ladies.”

“It is a terrible truth,” agreed Miss Temple, but her gaze had shifted over their heads, where indeed she saw a line of figures winding their way up a spiral staircase, fashioned of bright metal.

Her heart leapt in her throat. Roger Bascombe—for it could be no one else, despite the plain black mask across his eyes—was even as she watched moving around the upper spiral, and for the moment facing her directly. Once more, his expression was guarded, his hand tapping impatiently on the rail as he climbed, one step at a time, other guests immediately above and below him. He so disliked the crush of a crowd—she knew he must be miserable. Where was he going? Where did he think he was going? Then all too brusquely Roger had reached the top, a narrow balcony, and disappeared from sight.

Miss Temple turned her gaze to the people around her—she had shuffled another few steps forward, her thoughts fully awhirl—and realized the woman in green had been whispering. “I’m sorry,” Miss Temple whispered back, “I was suddenly distracted with excitement.”

“It is very exciting, isn’t it?” confided the woman.

“I should say it is.”

“I am feeling quite girlish!”

“I am sure you speak for everyone,” Miss Temple assured her, and then blithely wondered, “I did not expect so many people.”

“Of course not,” answered the woman, “for they’ve been very careful—the hiding of this group within the larger function, the subtlety of our invitations, the concealment of identity.”

“Indeed.” Miss Temple nodded. “And what a cunning mask you have.”

“It is very cunning, is it not?” The woman smiled. By this time she had taken a half-step back so she could walk next to Miss Temple and they could speak lower without attracting the attention of others. “But I myself have been intending to compliment your cloak.”

“Ah, well, that is kind of you to say.”

“Rather dramatic,” the woman muttered, reaching to touch a border of black ribbon edging the collar that Miss Temple had not noticed. “It looks almost like a soldier’s.”

“Is that not the fashion?” Miss Temple smiled.

“Indeed”—here the woman’s voice went lower still—“for are we not soldiers now, in our own way?”

Miss Temple nodded, and spoke in quiet solidarity. “My feeling is the same.”

The woman met her gaze significantly, and then ran her eyes quite happily over the cloak. “And it is quite long—it covers you completely.”

Miss Temple leaned closer. “So no one will know what I am wearing.”

The woman smiled wickedly and leaned in closer still. “Or if you are wearing anything at all…”

Before Miss Temple could respond they were at the foot of the staircase. She gestured for the woman to go first—the last thing she wanted was for these impulsive words to prompt her companion to look under her cloak from below. As they rose, she looked down—there were only a scattered dozen people still in the corridor. Then she swallowed—for behind them all, advancing slowly, almost as if to herd them like sheep, was the woman in red. Her gaze fell across Miss Temple, who could not suppress a flinch, and then slid past her toward the balcony. Miss Temple kept climbing and was soon around the other side of the spiral, out of sight. When she once more rotated out into the open she steeled herself to merely face upward into the green woman’s back. The nape of her neck prickled. It was all she could do not to look, but she held to her will, resisting the destructive urge—sure she’d been discovered. Then the green woman stopped—there was a delay above them. Miss Temple felt fully exposed, as if she wore no cloak and no mask, as if she and the woman in red were alone. Again, she sensed that gaze boring into her and distinctly heard those footfalls she remembered from the mirrored hall. The woman was coming closer…closer…she had stopped directly below. Miss Temple looked down—and for a terrible flashing moment met that pair of glittering eyes. Then, an infinitesimal shift, and the woman was looking—or trying to look, partially