The brightness stung Neverfell’s eyes. For a moment her senses swam, and she seemed to hear a drone of insects, and smell fresh sap. When she blinked her vision clear again, before her stood Madame Appeline.
The Facesmith was dressed in a delicate spring green, with long and flowing sleeves and a gauzy shawl over her hair and shoulders. The fiercely glittering jewellery was gone, and her waist looked less splinter-thin. Even her usually elaborate hair had been released to fall in smooth but orderly waves on either side of her face, making her look younger and a little mermaidlike.
Madame Appeline looked Neverfell up and down, and her heart-shaped face melted into a small bow of a smile.
‘Neverfell,’ she said. ‘It really is you, isn’t it? The little cheese-making girl. The one in the mask. Come on, sit down, both of you.’ They obeyed, blinking the false sunlight out of their eyes. ‘Now . . . yes, I do see the problem. An unwanted emotion pushing through and staining your expression, is it? Well, that is rather out of my usual line, and obviously I cannot teach you Faces in the usual sense, but I can give you some exercises which might help relax your features.’
Neverfell mumbled something that she hoped sounded grateful.
‘Neelia!’ called Madame Appeline. A Putty Girl a little older than Zouelle appeared from among the trees, wearing a very pretty Face No. 301, Dewdrops Regarded in a Spirit of Hope. ‘Will you show Miss Childersin to the refreshments, and then give her a tour of our latest Faces as discussed?’
‘That is most generous, but really not necessary,’ Zouelle countered swiftly. ‘And Neverfell is shy when she is completely surrounded by strangers.’
‘Ah, but Neverfell and I are not strangers. This is our . . . third meeting?’
The memory of the ignominious second meeting sent Neverfell into mortified blushing.
‘I promised Neverfell that I would stay with her,’ Zouelle replied calmly.
‘How sweet!’ Madame Appeline’s smile was suddenly perfectly feline. ‘Where would Neverfell be if she had never met you?’ Although both her companions seemed to be trying to compete in the sweetness of their smiles, Neverfell had the distinct feeling that the atmosphere was frosting over. ‘Please, I must insist! You will be terribly bored sitting here while we talk Faces.’ There was a brief silence, and Neverfell felt a sting of frustration that she alone was unable to tell who was winning the battle of wills.
‘Do you know, Miss Childersin,’ Madame Appeline continued slowly, ‘you have a slight tendency to flutter. You waver rapidly between two or more Faces, because none of them are really what you want or need.’
Zouelle did not appear to have an answer. Now that it had been mentioned, Neverfell realized that she had more than once seen Zouelle do exactly that. In fact, she was doing it now, helplessly fluttering between two smiles, one less confident than the other.
‘I know how it is,’ Madame Appeline said, narrowing her slanting eyes slightly over her ice-cream smile. ‘There is a feeling deep down inside you, isn’t there? All the time. It bothers you. You don’t really know what it is, or how to describe it. You do not have a Face for it. And so you scan all the Face catalogues, and ask for Faces for every birthday because perhaps, just perhaps, if you had the right Face, you might understand what you are feeling. You need to find that Face.’ She leaned forward slightly. ‘Do go and look at our exhibition rooms, Miss Childersin.’
‘Zouelle, it’s all right.’ Neverfell could not bear the chill in the air. ‘I really will be fine.’
After a long pause it was Zouelle that lowered her gaze, and somewhat hesitantly stood.
‘I will not be far away,’ she whispered, then turned and followed Neelia to disappear among the trees. Neverfell watched her depart, and instantly regretted asking her to do so. What was she supposed to do now? She had not really thought about it, but she had assumed that Zouelle would be doing most of the clever talking.
Three other Putty Girls were watching from nearby, their green eyes fixed on Neverfell’s face. She was touched to see how confused and worried they looked, until she realized that they were on hand to watch and imitate her expressions for the Facesmith to use later. The expressions she was seeing on their faces were a semblance of her own.
Neverfell swallowed. ‘Madame Appeline? Can I . . . can I talk to you privately for a moment?’ As soon as they were alone, Neverfell gave up and jumped straight into the abyss, mouth-first.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she burst out. ‘I’m sorry about everything that happened last time! I put a tiny bit of the Stackfalter Sturton with the other things you ordered – I thought it would help you, and that you would help Master Grandible – but then I found it would just cause trouble so I had to try to get it back, and really I just wanted to find you and talk to you about it . . . but then everything happened so fast, and next thing I knew I was in your house in disguise with memory-destroying Wine trying to steal the cheese back . . . and then I was arrested before I could explain.’
‘Ahh . . .’ Madame Appeline tipped her head back and studied Neverfell through careful green slits. ‘I begin to see. You found yourself tangled up in somebody else’s plans?’ Her eye drifted briefly in the direction that Zouelle had departed.
Neverfell felt herself crimson. Somehow she had betrayed Zouelle with her expression, and had learned nothing in return. She could find no purchase on the older woman’s marble-smooth countenance. There were no cracks to give her a view into her soul.
‘I can’t tell if you’re angry!’ she exclaimed helplessly. ‘I just hoped if we talked everything would make sense, but nothing ever does. I can’t tell who’s feeling anything.’
‘I am not angry. Not with you, anyway. But I do think you should choose your friends more carefully, my dear.’ Neverfell felt her own brow furrow, and Madame Appeline smiled. ‘Oh, now I have made you uncomfortable. You are delightfully loyal . . . but you really have very little sense of when you are being mistreated or used, do you? You probably still feel loyal to Cheesemaster Grandible, even after he imprisoned and lied to you, don’t you?’
‘No! Well, yes . . . I . . . please don’t say things like that!’ The Facesmith’s words were like a giant spoon, stirring up all the uncomfortable, stinging feelings in Neverfell’s stomach.
‘As you wish.’
‘Madame Appeline,’ Neverfell plunged on impulsively, ‘if I can choose my friends, can I choose you? I felt . . . when we met the first time, back in the cheese tunnels . . . I . . .’ She lost her nerve. ‘I just wanted us to be friends,’ she ended, a bit limply.
‘Oh, I was quite the same.’ Madame Appeline’s smile was dazzling. ‘I felt we had an instant understanding. A sort of natural trust.’
‘Yes! In fact, I . . . did you ever feel that we were sort of . . . alike?’
‘In what way?’
The question cut Neverfell short, and she had no idea how to continue. ‘I don’t know,’ she said miserably, frustrated with her own fear and confusion. ‘Just a sort of connection. Like we . . . like we knew each other already.’
‘It can feel a little like that sometimes,’ answered Madame Appeline, ‘when you meet somebody with whom you have a rapport.’ Her tone was warm, but it seemed to Neverfell that it was not a warmth from the core. Neverfell could only assume that she had said something wrong, and she had no idea what or how.
Where was that sense of connection now?
‘Can I see your Tragedy Range?’ she asked desperately, snatching at the first thought foolish enough to enter her head.
‘What?’ No, Neverfell was not mistaken. Madame Appeline’s beautiful, subtle, mobile countenance had frozen for just a split second, and when she spoke her voice was a little too rapid. ‘Why the Tragedy Range? It is not really intended for wearers as young as yourself. Now, if you wanted to see the Lambs’ Tails Range, or the Brook’s Source—’
‘Please! I don’t want to wear the Tragedy Range! I just want to see it!’ Without thinking, Neverfell reached out towards the lon
g, bejewelled hand of the Facesmith. To her shock, Madame Appeline’s hand jerked away from hers, as if from the touch of a nettle. ‘I’m sorry! What did I do?’
‘Nothing.’ Madame Appeline dropped her eyes for a moment, and when she raised them her smile was impeccable once more. With great deliberation, she reached out and patted at Neverfell’s hand. ‘If you want to see the Tragedy Range, see it you shall. Are you happy to see it in an exhibition room, or would you like the girls to display the Faces?’
‘Um . . . whatever you think best?’
‘The exhibition room is easier and faster. Come!’
Madame Appeline rose and led Neverfell back out of the grove, and into a long, narrow, vaulted room. It took a few seconds for the lanterns near the door to sense their breath and struggle into life. Slowly the room became visible, and Neverfell’s heart missed a beat.
Her first impression was of two dozen floating, snow-white faces, arranged in two lines facing each other across the width of the room. As the traps pulsed more brightly, she caught sight of the black stands that supported the alabaster masks, almost camouflaged against the black-painted walls. Every mask showed a heart-shaped face, hairless and neckless, with slanting green eyes and high cheekbones. Two dozen Madame Appelines hovering in the void, each bearing a different expression, all loaded with sorrow and solemn power.
Neverfell’s jaw dropped as she walked slowly down the room, each Face she passed setting off an avalanche in her soul. The first had a faraway look, as if it were burying a thought far too painful just long enough to tell somebody else a bedtime story. The second was alert, agonized but undaunted, as if it were looking down a long, long dark tunnel towards some terrible thing, but refusing to flinch or lower its eyes. The third was smiling, the tear-touched smile of somebody regarding something incredibly precious but fragile, a bird’s egg in a jungle of thrashing thorns.
Neverfell felt something tickle her cheek. Putting up her hand, she found there was a tear running down her face. Here it was, here was the connection she had sensed before. She felt a mad desire to throw her arms around the nearest mask, make it feel better. She put out a hand to it, as if to wipe tears from its cheek.
Her palm met cold, unyielding alabaster, and her hand jerked away of its own volition. This is wrong, screamed a voice in her blood and from beyond the locked door in her head. This is wrong. Everything is wrong.
‘You shouldn’t touch them,’ said Madame Appeline, just behind her. ‘They mark easily.’
Suddenly frightened and confused, Neverfell looked over her shoulder at the woman behind her. The Facesmith’s smile was perfectly kind and patient, but it was like a wall that Neverfell could not penetrate.
‘You . . . you must have been very unhappy. When you designed these. Weren’t you?’ Why wasn’t Zouelle here? Zouelle who was good at this, who could always think of the right thing to say. ‘I mean . . . you must have felt all these things.’ Neverfell flapped an arm at the floating masks. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Why do you say that? That is like saying that you must know how a cheese feels to make good cheese. No. You just know all the things you need to do to produce a cheese that has the right effect. It is just something you make.’
‘But Faces aren’t the same! They can’t be!’ Neverfell was moving too far now, but too fast to stop. ‘You were unhappy, I know it! The Doldrums, you were in the Doldrums. And there was a child . . .’
Too far. The expression in Madame Appeline’s eyes did not change, but suddenly Neverfell felt as if the Facesmith had withdrawn a thousand miles away. She almost felt she could see the older woman receding away from her, and could feel a cold gust as the cavern air was dragged after her.
‘There was a child,’ Neverfell whispered, twisting her fingers together so hard they hurt. ‘You lost a child. Didn’t you?’
Without a word, Madame Appeline turned and strode back out of the room, disappearing through the door at the far end. Neverfell was left staring after her, whilst on either side the lanterns dimmed slightly, making the masks even more spectral in appearance.
A few minutes later, Zouelle found Neverfell there, rubbing one tear-stained cheek against one of the masks.
‘Neverfell!’ she hissed from the doorway. Neverfell pulled back abashed, leaving a trickle of dampness down the cheek of the mask.
‘I spoilt everything!’ wailed Neverfell. ‘You weren’t there and I didn’t know what to say, and . . . and then I was so stupid! I blurted out questions about the Doldrums, and whether she’d had a child . . . and she marched off without a word!’
‘Did she now?’ Zouelle answered, in a tone that suggested excitement rather than concern. ‘Then she did have a secret in the Doldrums.’
‘I don’t think she’s ever going to speak to me again.’
‘Oh, of course she will! But never mind that now. Let me tell you what I found out from talking to the Putty Girls. Apparently they’re allowed into all the rooms and galleries in Madame Appeline’s tunnels so that they can sweep and feed the traps – all rooms bar one. There’s a hidden door somewhere in here, painted over so that it is hard to see. It is always kept locked, and nobody but Madame herself is allowed to go in there. The Putty Girls are not even supposed to speak of it.’
Curiosity filled Neverfell’s mind like pain, as if somebody had pressed a burning fingertip against her thoughts. It was not enough to clear the fog in her mind, though. She blinked, then started awake again as she wobbled, Zouelle’s steadying hand on her arm.
‘Neverfell, you really are exhausted, aren’t you?’ Zouelle’s eyes were large and concerned. ‘You can’t learn face-calming tricks in this state. You need to sleep, even if it’s only for an hour. We’ll ask if they have a guest room.’
Neverfell felt a rush of relief, which was cut short when Zouelle took her by the shoulders and met her gaze earnestly.
‘But if they do, Neverfell, make sure it’s one with a lock or bolt, and make sure you secure the door from the inside. We’re in a nest of secrets here. Don’t let down your guard.’
The guest room was small, round and slightly domed, with a little postless bed in the middle, and a cut-glass lantern on the side table. Remembering Zouelle’s instructions, Neverfell bolted the door behind her, then put a chair against it. Was it really necessary? She did not know.
Neverfell did not even bother kicking off her shoes. The bed was soft and forgiving, and for once it scarcely mattered that it was not a hammock. Her mind slipped gratefully out of wakefulness like a fish from a net.
Afterwards, trying to remember the dream was like wandering in the dark, and feeling ribbons of a tattered curtain trailing across one’s face. There were pieces, hints, nothing more.
She was climbing a ladder made of black vines up to a golden balcony, looking for a hidden door. Although she was frightened, at least she had a monkey with her who knew the way and would guide her.
Her companion opened a door, and suddenly Neverfell was alone in a darkened hall, facing a single white mask with green eyes. Neverfell reached towards it, but as her fingers touched the mask it began to quiver and crack, the expression changing to one of pain and terror.
‘What did you do to her?’ it screamed as its lips shattered and its mouth became a ragged hole. ‘Why did nobody tell me what would happen?’ It was a young voice, younger than the face. Its eyes became cobwebbed with fine cracks, then crumbled away leaving dark sockets. ‘If I had known, I would never . . . I would never . . .’
At first she tried to hold the mask together, but that only crushed it further, and the screaming took on a horrible ragged sound. In the end, mad with terror and pity, she started flailing at it, beating it to powder with her fists and forearms, anything to make the screaming stop. At last the voice died with a croak, and there was nothing but loose china dust leaking between her fingers.
A violent sneeze shook Neverfell awake, and left her flailing, bewildered, in the strange bed for a few seconds. Even after her heartbeat s
lowed, it still seemed to her that her fists and forearms were tender from pounding on the terrible mask.
Somebody was banging on the door. Neverfell raked her fingers through her hair, managed to find all but one of her thimbles and pulled her shoes back on. Unbolting the door she found a Putty Girl outside, wearing a Face of polite concern.
‘Madame Appeline will be very glad to hear that you are awake! Please, follow me – quickly!’
In the grove, a veritable clan of Putty Girls was waiting. At the heart of the group stood Madame Appeline, wasp-waisted and perfectly coiffured, with not a hint of dismay or discomposure. A yard or two from them sat Zouelle, her eyes remaining downcast even as Neverfell approached.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Madame Appeline. ‘Neverfell, settle yourself in this chair. Now, we do not have a great deal of time, so we shall have to try all these methods quickly. Poppya! The signature points, if you please.’
Neverfell tried not to flinch as a girl set about gently tapping places on her face with an extremely delicate silver hammer, and regarding the results intensely. Next there was a girl with a bowl of unguent, who rubbed something into Neverfell’s brow that smelt like horseradish. Then there was a velvet-lined metal headband that strapped round the head and pulled the skin of the forehead up slightly ‘to tug against the frown’. To judge by the haste with which each of these was abandoned, none of them were achieving the desired effects.
‘The problem is internal, as we feared.’ Madame Appeline sighed. ‘Let us return to the mind.’
Half a dozen books were hastily opened. Neverfell listened baffled as she was read stories and poems, some fanciful, some mournful, many joyful. Some of them were quite pretty and probably very good, but it was hard to concentrate on them and Neverfell could not see what they had to do with anything.
‘Perhaps a more cheerful ambience. Solphe, Merrimam, Jebeleth – the light in here is dimming. Perhaps you could go up and help the others breathe on the traps?’
Just for a moment, as she gave these instructions, Madame Appeline wore the motherly Face that Neverfell had first seen her wear in the cheese tunnels. Neverfell was not ready to see her directing that look towards anyone else, and to her surprise she felt hot needles of true jealousy in her chest. Worse still, the sight seemed to put an eagerness into the Putty Girls’ step as they disappeared up a wrought iron spiral staircase so delicate and spidery that she had not even noticed it among the false trees. After a while, the ‘heavens’ above started to glow with a bit more vigour.