7

Despite the lack of any way to tie on the mask, it stayed in place. Claire felt it gingerly, careful not to dislodge it, feeling the edges resting lightly against her temples and her jaw.

Must be magic.

She looked down at the servant and felt… nothing. Why didn’t she feel guilty or concerned?

A moment ago her heart had been pounding with a combination of the fear of discovery, worry that she had badly injured the fairy servant, and a general anxiety that seemed entirely reasonable, given her situation.

The servant’s face was still hidden in the mask, the body sprawled bonelessly on the stone floor. She felt vaguely that she ought to care whether it (he? she?) was dead or seriously injured. The worry was there, but distant; as long as no one realized she was responsible, the incident seemed almost irrelevant. Claire rested her hand on the figure’s chest, feeling cloth and a faint warm solidity beneath her fingertips, moving softly with each breath. At least the servant was alive. Whether it recovered or not had nothing to do with her.

Claire took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling the mask move with her skin as she grimaced. It was surprisingly comfortable, and she ran her fingers over the smooth surface again.

She wondered whether the mask was suppressing her terror, and whether it would do more if she wore it too long. The thought wasn’t as terrifying as she imagined it ought to be.

In fact, she wasn’t terrified at all.

That should be unsettling.

If the mask were responsible for her feeling—or rather, not feeling anything—like this, then surely suppressing feelings was not the mask’s only purpose. Perhaps it was intended to make the servants compliant. If so, even if it helped her blend in, she should take it off.

She tried to remove it, her fingernails digging into the mask edges and pulling as hard as she could. No matter where she gripped the mask, she could not get it off.

Claire paused and thought. At least there was some benefit to not being able to be terrified. The mask suppressed her feelings, but she could still think. Suppressing feelings alone wouldn’t really control someone, so something else must be coming.

I can’t take off the mask, so what should I do?

I don’t care.

Oh! That’s how it controls the wearer. If I don’t care about anything, then I won’t have any troublesome tendency to do what I want. I will be left with whatever I’m told to do, and I won’t mind doing it.

Well, I won’t let that happen to me. Even though I don’t really care, I remember what I was supposed to do.

No, what I should do.

Her mind was still her own, so that’s what she would use.

Claire stood and crept down the hallway as quietly as she could. The soles of her bare feet stung, and she shivered in the cool air.

For a time she encountered no one as she walked an endless maze of hallways. At each intersection, she chose her direction at random, finding corridors of red carpet and gold-papered walls, then flagstones and brick, and later flagstones and rough stone walls. She grew so confused that she stopped in the middle of a hallway, trying to remember whether she’d turned left or right when she entered it. She looked behind herself, and found an endless straight corridor stretching for what seemed like miles.

The halls were shifting around her.

She thought vaguely that this ought to be frightening, but she was not frightened.

The hallway came to an intersection and she did not know which way to go.

She stopped to consider the decision.

It might have minutes or hours later when she realized she had been standing still for a long time. She didn’t care which way she went, so she had been simply standing and waiting for instruction.

No! I must decide. I can decide with no feelings. And I must hurry, because this might get worse.

She flew down the hallway, careened around a corner, and ran headlong through several more corridors. She stopped abruptly when she heard voices.

Despite her lack of fear, she knew voices meant danger. Claire froze, unsure what to do, and the speakers turned the corner.

“Oh. Another one.” A Fae woman turned up her nose at Claire. The Fae was white-blonde and as beautiful as a snowflake, all sharp angles and frost. Her voice tinkled in the air like dulcimer music.

“I think he likes the masks on them.” The male Fae eyed Claire contemptuously. “Makes them interchangeable.”

Claire shrank to the side of the hallway, glancing down in horror to realize that her pajama shorts and threadbare t-shirt were as distinctive as royal dress in this land. Why didn’t they remark on her clothes? Perhaps the strange attire merely looked exotic to them. Or maybe they didn’t notice at all; the woman’s expression had not shown any surprise.

The Fae man was gold; he was sun-kissed brilliance; he was fire. His eyes were a green-gold that glinted with irrepressible mirth. His hair fell in luxurious ringlets around his face, his teeth glinting white as he grinned at Claire. He licked his lips, his eyes sliding down her body, lingering on the curve of her breasts through her shirt, on her slim waist, on her scratched and dirty legs, all the way down to her bare, bleeding feet. As the Fae woman began to turn impatiently toward him, his gaze lingered and caressed like a physical touch, lecherous and unwelcome, far too intimate for any friend, much less a stranger. His gaze reached the necklace, and the Fae woman tugged on his arm. His eyes fixed on the pendant for an instant and widened. Then he turned away.

The Fae woman strode on without giving Claire another glance, and she almost breathed a sigh of relief. Then the man glanced over his shoulder and gave Claire a wink.

Something snapped at her, catching her a stinging blow to her right thigh, and she bit back a cry.

They didn’t even look back at her; the Fae woman’s sparkling laugh echoed as they turned down another hallway and out of sight.

Was that hall there before?

Claire was sure it hadn’t been, and she glared at it while rubbing her leg. She glanced down to see a bleeding welt across her thigh. “She whipped me!” Claire muttered, seething with indignation.

The feeling, or lack thereof, wasn’t exactly anger; there was less emotion and more a sense of injustice. The Fae woman was casually cruel for no reason other than her own amusement.

The indignation gave her new resolve, and she held it close as she hurried onward.

She found a stairwell and followed it down, down, down an endless stone staircase.

Claire frowned, her bare feet curling against the frigid stone. Distant torches cast faint, flickering tongues of light up the walls, glinting on the worn granite beneath her toes.

Unease curled within her. I shouldn’t be here. I should go back up. A desire to leave crystallized within her. The feeling was wrong. It was not her feeling; it could not be, because she had no desires of her own.

So the feeling of wrongness, the desire to flee, must be forced upon her, as it would be on anyone wearing the mask.

That probably meant she was heading in the right direction.

She shuddered and crept ever downward, following the spiraling staircase into the depths of the earth.