The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

For His Love

Previously: "Heart's Blood" 

You could break into song, and would, if you could sing.

It's Thursday, and though you are on your way to class, it is the best and brightest and happiest day ever. Though it is cool and rainy, it is the rain of life falling from clouds of silver. Every step you take threatens to break into a run, for you cannot wait to get through the day and get back to ... him!

If you didn't know better, you'd swear you were in love!

How it crushed you to part last night. That second glass of wine vanquished the terrible, soul-searing thirst immediately, and left you ravenous with lust instead: you could hardly restrain yourself from shredding the clothes from his body and tearing at his throat with your open mouth. But he caught you before you could move, and crushed you to his breast, and your heart hammered wildly in your chest as he held you tight, and crooned into your ear.

But he sent you away, finally, with a promise that he would see you again today, if you would just bring him that book you told him about, and if you told him more and all about it.

You hadn't wanted to when you met him. You had tried to hide it from him. You understand why, of course, and your reasons made sense at the time. He was, you even remember, rather cruel about it.

But that's all forgiven now. It's enough to understand that it was merely necessary.

And regrettable. Probably he regrets it. Surely he does regret it.

You pause in mid-stride.

Well, what does it matter if he regrets it or not? you decide, and leap back into your happy stride. If he doesn't regret it, it's because he knew it was necessary, and if it was necessary, then what has regret to do with it? You don't regret it! You could regret nothing that united you and him!

"Melody!"

You stop and turn as a girl comes dashing up to you. She is hunched up against the light drizzle.

"Where you going in such a hurry?" she asks with a nervous giggle. "I had to yell at you, like, a hundred times!"

"Sorry, I was distracted—"

So distracted are you, even as she talks, asking for a copy of your notes from a class you share, that you can hardly place her name, except as a Nicole Somebody. Normally you wouldn't care to share your notes with anyone else—what if they lost them?—but you happily agree now. It doesn't matter, none of it matters! All that matters it that you share with ... him!

After your class breaks, you hurry to the library to retrieve the grimoire from its hiding place.

* * * * *

His name is Aidan Seabury, and he's the artistic director of the local arts council. He gave you his card before you left last night, and after your class ends you pack up everything—grimoire, blank mask, supplies—and race a few blocks over to the old railroad depot, which is where the arts council has its offices.

A scent of creosote pervades the museum—which you have never been in—but it's a pleasant smell, and you snuffle it up as you wait for Aidan's secretary to announce you. This is what it smells like where he works, you think. I'm going to love this scent from now on! "He'll see you now," the secretary surprises you, for you'd lost yourself in anticipations of the meeting to come, and with air under your soles you glide through the door into his office.

He is beautiful in the daylight, though he is thin and looks as though he has never recovered from the ravages of a terrible illness. His smooth, pale skin seems translucent, and his eyes are large and luminous and staring.

"Melody!" he exclaims as he rises, and puts out both his hands. You almost trip as you rush at him. The desk is between you, so you can only clasp his hands clumsily and lean across its surface toward him, to drink in his face.

For a long and ecstatic moment you hang there, then withdraw reluctantly when he does, and sink into a chair opposite his desk. With the grace of a lean panther he curls up into his own chair. You sink adoringly into his smile.

Then his eyes shift, and you become aware that you and he are not alone. There are three others sitting in nearby chairs. It embarrasses you—but only a little!—that you didn't even see them when you came in; and it embarrasses you also a little to see the quick, knowing grins that spreads across the face of one of them.

He is a young, dark-haired man, lean and strong-looking, and he studies you from under smoldering brows with a leering smirk. Next to him sits is a small, neat, short-bearded man, approaching middle-age, with gray lightening his sandy hair. His gaze is very sober behind his eyeglasses, and he reminds you of some of the younger professors at the college. The third is a tall, thin black woman, very stylishly dressed in a suit of imperial purple with a matching, high-crowned hat. Her lips are painted a bright blue.

"Melody Weiss," Aidan murmurs by way of introduction. He leans back and steeples his fingers. "She has brought something for us, I believe?"

With a start you remember your book bag, and you grin shyly as you hurriedly empty it onto his desk.

The great item, of course, is the book. Aidan takes it from you, but only gives it a cursory glance before handing it over to the professorial one, who opens it in his lap and begins to pore carefully over it. Aidan keeps the blank mask, though, and runs his fingers lightly over it, like a cat touching a toy. The other items—spare materials for making masks and other whatnot—remains scattered over the table.

Aidan smiles at you, and asks you tell him and the others all about these things.

* * * * *

They talk about it openly amongst themselves afterward, as though you were not present. They seem impressed, but their interest also seems muted.

That's only the impression you get of their words: you hardly hear what they are saying. You are concentrated on Aidan's face, letting your gaze linger on it even after he has turned his own attention to the others.

Yet even as you lie wrapped in your own adoration of him, there is a niggling dread in the back of your head. This is wrong, I shouldn't be telling them about all this, it whispers to you. I shouldn't be telling anyone, and these are the worst people I could have shared it with. The little voice even dares suggest that Professor Blackwell would have been a safer trustee of the book.

Because though your spirit has forgiven Aidan for last night, and has accepted the horrifying appearance of that second glass of wine—and its hot, sour taste, which you nearly choked on even as you greedily sucked it down—some part of your rationality hasn't. Shut up! you hiss at yourself every time you remember every unnatural thing that happened. Don't let it bother you! It's all okay! But the voice of reason, with the same calm melancholy with which it used to warn that it would be better to get your homework done now rather than later, will go on quietly suggesting that maybe you shouldn't be quite so besotted with Aidan, or so helpful to his friends.

But just as it was always easier (and happier) to smother those prudential prompts under the expedience of the moment—always easier to just keep shooting bad guys on the screen than to crack open the math book—so too now it is much easier (and pleasant!) to do as Aidan asks.

So you are happy to text Will Prescott and give him an address to meet you at; and you are happy to follow Aidan back out to the old, repurposed Masonic lodge where he keeps an apartment. (That is where you met him last night.) You are happy to order Will, who is waiting there, inside, and to order him to disrobe in front of Aidan, and to pull the mask from him. You feel no shame, only a slight embarrassment at your ineptitude with the girl revealed from under the mask, as Aidan with amusement examines the petrified face and form of Melody Weiss, and compares it to your own with both his eyes and his fingertips. (You ripple with pleasure all over as his nails dance over your face and throat.)

And you are pleased to grant him permission when he cocks an eyebrow at you and asks to "try on" the items you took off the golem.

It is not a shock, but you still feel a rush of surprise when twenty minutes later Will Prescott—fully dressed and even hatted—come slithering out of the bedroom into which Aidan withdrew. Of course you know who it really must be. And so although he wears your old face in place of his, your heart beats hard as he drifts up to you, and it beats harder when he pinches your chin and kisses you softly on the mouth with lips that once were yours.

"I need to go out like this for a little while, Melody," he murmurs after he withdraws. "I hope you don't mind if I go out dressed like this."

"No, of course not," you stammer.

"So you need to still be Melody for me, for a little while."

"Sure!"

"Not for long," he promises. "Then we'll be together. Young, and together." He breathes in your face. "Always!"

Your heart almost explodes with joy.

He lifts his cap and brushes his fingers through his hair.

"But I do need you tell me a little more about your old self. I don't know why, but your mind isn't coming through to me, not clearly like you said it would, and I need to get through tonight and tomorrow as you."

"Why?" you ask.

"Because I need to get into your school." He gently squeezes your elbow. "We must needs raise the Third Pillar of the Tabernacle, and it is difficult for us to access.

"But someone with your face can. Indeed, someone with your face could raise it anytime we need!"

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"