The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Myself, the Guinea Pig

YOU SIT DOWN AT YOUR DESK and take up the mask; you've smoothed away even the tiniest imperfection you could find on its surface. There seems nothing else to do but try it out.

You lie on your bed, holding the mask in your hands. You've taken the precaution of taking off all your clothes, in case they should interfere with whatever is supposed to happen. And so it's with a chill—but also a tingle—that you take a deep breath and slowly lower the mask onto your own face.

It feels very warm against your flesh, and you suddenly feel very drowsy. Great weights seem to be resting on your eyes and on all your joints. You try lifting your arm, but it is very heavy. There's a fog in your head, too, which makes thinking very difficult. Something warm and relaxing, almost like liquid sunlight, seems to be flowing over you. A buzzing sound, like a fly in a window, whispers distantly in your ear ...

Then your eyes snap open. You are very cold all over, and stiff. Your eyes are, of course, hooded by the mask, so you can't see anything. In a claustrophobic panic you snatch it off your face and sit up. The blood rushes to your head and you almost topple over from dizziness.

Looking down, you see that you still have arms and legs and a torso and other important appendages, all in the right places and all apparently unchanged. You blink stupidly and rub your eyes, feeling for all the world like you've just awoken from a very short but deep sleep. You glance at the clock: ten minutes have passed since you lay down, which means you almost certainly have been asleep. But you don't feel refreshed.

You look down at the mask. It is still blue, and seemingly unchanged. And yet ... There is a reflective gleam there you hadn't seen before. You look more closely, and the gleam resolves into a shape. With a shock, you recognize it as your own face, held in the mask like a 3-D image. Though faded and almost colorless, it seems to be a perfect simulacrum, too, except for the black ovals where your eyes should be. As you turn and twist the mask, you find that you can glimpse different parts of the image from different angles, and when you tip it to peer at the top edge—as though looking down on your crown—you are amazed to see it also holds an image of your torso and stomach; when you tip it to the side, you are also able to glimpse part of your shoulder. It seems reasonable to conclude that the mask copies not just your face but your entire body.

You get dressed and return to the book. A light, oval-shaped stain has appeared on the spell page; its meaning seems clear enough, and you lay the newly enchanted mask on it. When you lift it, you are able to turn the page.

The reverse page contains more writing—what looks like a continuation of the spell—while a new spell is written on the facing page. You ignore the latter, though, in order to concentrate on figuring out the rest of the old spell. It would suck if the book has saved any warnings about side effects or booby-traps for after the mask has been made.

Fortunately, there aren't any surprises, though there is much new information. The mask will continue to "absorb" new body images each time it is laid upon a face, melding the new image with the old and thus creating new faces. You guess this means that if you put the mask on Robert, the mask would create a new form that looked like someone halfway between you and your brother—a useful feature if you wanted to change your appearance without looking exactly like someone else. (You can't help wondering, though, what would happen if you combined male and female body types.) The mask won't work as a proper disguise, though, until you "seal" it—that's the next spell, you confirm with a quick glance at the next chapter—after which anyone who dons the mask will take on the form of whatever image the mask contains.