The Woman of Masks

It was autumn. A tense and winding autumn. The sun rolled and flexed gray over and through the browning wheeze of the bare, bare, dry, dry earth, gagging and wretching those dull steel sun-rays into the grass that clawed and fingered out of the bare, bare, dry dry earth. The dust would not billow prettily around my shoes that day, rather it did clod and corrode itself into chalky clumps that flurried and skittered across the leather and seethed into the rubble along the side of the path. I leaned along into my feet, finding the normal rhythm of my gait beneath the yellowing brick of my breath and the lilting bough of my knee. This was as it was always. Until she broke it. It broke it. Broke me. It was autumn. The tiako of my step was piccoloed over by a willowy akimbo from behind- some other traveler, overtaking the pulse of my languid blood-step with an electric-mercury shock. As she passed me, her mist-robe blanching out in yelping flutters, her wrist, a strangled curl of pine, wound across my waist and in a deft cut, swung my coin-purse from its loop and shadowed it back into her mist-robe. A mist-robe- a fog robe. A foam robe. It was woven, or rather assimilated, of no earthly fabric- and whilst retaining no shape, pallor, demeanour, or texture, it completely cloaked its wearer, revealing nothing, and enabling its body to flex and bend and mould as if it were melted glass. And enabled it to flee. Oh how she did flee, the robe flashing and panting across the ground, her body taught and rigid- a jagged vicious knife cutting a ragged line through the pale apricot flesh of that tense and winding autumn. It was quite beautiful in a way. That thick toxic phantasm breathing cold life and death as she tore meaning through the still-life of the landscape. For a moment I was greatly stirred, but unfortunately for her, and perhaps for my sake, that stir caused a stretch in my stomach. Which reminded me of my hunger. Which reminded me of my purse. A vagabond, you see, no matter how poetical he entertains himself to be, always remembers his stomach. My jaw swept towards the earth, my hand in javelin-pursuit- tightening around a black rock. I squared my vision off with the flittering sheet of the disappearing woman and cometed the rock squarely into the back of where her neck should be. For a moment she stood fast, hands half raised to the aluminum sun, before delicately and silently crumbling over herself. As I stared at her, she began to lose her form, she was simply a shifting mire there in the path, framed on one side by the tangled wire chatter of a thick briar, black against the sun. I pattered towards her, the solid-wooded flex of my step quickening towards the ground.

“Name, wretch!” My voice was hacky and rich as I toed her, trying to turn her to onto her back and expose my purse and her face.

My body crooked over to bend into her and heft her weight over- but I found it jerking back and forth in a pecking awkward metronome. For a moment my boot would clench against her body as if it was some impregnable weight, and then, instantly fall right through some folds in the robe that simply didn’t exsist a moment before.

“Name, wretch!” My cheeks began to checker rubicund with agitation and stress under the dark brown creases of dirt and of my skin.

The breath tantruming inside my nostrils was interrupted by the sweet discordant hum of wooden sandals highlit against the path. A nature monk was willowing his way towards us, down the opposite side of the path, his legs akimbo and a-spray in the tittering euphoria that seems to surround those men.

“Name, wretch! Name and purse, and we shall forget this event.” I grunted one last time- giving the being some attempt at surrender before the monk’s arrival and judgment on the scene.

It lay there still for a moment, and just as the monk hum began to rise into a whistle it whipped its head around. Or what should’ve been a head. Rather it was a vacancy, just another fold across this misty robe.

“I am the woman of masks” its voice was delirious and shrill. Overwhelmingly toxic and potent. Hateful and vengeful and spiteful and greedy. Violent red and cold dead black. Tense and winding. “And you shall know regret”

The wrist, a pale milken dagger sliced from under the robe, this time with a flash of dull amorphous gray on the end of it. The creature held the wrist to its face, and the blot at the end of it was revealed as a mask.

It hovered over where her eyes should’ve been, a simple piece of bark with two eye-holes dredged into it.

To my horror and fascination the mask began to grow. Gray bark bittered across the coutours of a face- a nose beaky and wide- two broad shallow cheek bones. The bark bittered across a high ridged forehead and splintered into frail salty hair that clung to a rounding blotched scalp. The bark shot down across her robe, chiseling a sprout-armed emaciated figure in a handsome modest brown blouse and dark green skirt. The bark gnarled out faded bleached hands and wavering careful feet. Slowly the chattering echoing bark texture was replaced by gummy porous skin, still that birch-tree gray.

The tree-mask made a shuffling turn and cocked into a toothy grin- stretching her hands towards the monk. “Good sir Monk, might you have a cloth with which to bind a wound?”

Certainly here I would raise my voice and say “Dark Lucifer! Did you not see her evil spell, good monk?” But I did not. Perhaps it was the overwhelming experience of the transformation. Perhaps it was another spell, dark and tense and twisting. Regardless- I simply stood there, silent awaiting the monk’s reply.

“Good lady, are you hurt?”

“Ah sir, I was enjoying a wonderful stroll through these autumn woods, admiring the spirits of nature. Surely you must commune with them often, a man with such a fire in his eye?” Her smile shivered warm on her face- as if held in place with strings.

“I do, good lady, but resume your story please- are you hurt?”

I stood there, my feet plastered into the path, my lips painfully contorted shut. Fear. Cold apple fear of something I couldn’t and can’t name or describe.

“My arms outstretched- as they were, to feel the chi of the air and my eyes- closed as they were- that my ears might be more available to the spirit’s call. My hand did accidentally trip this man’s purse from his loose belt- and the purse became tangled in my robes. This man, did no sound make, nor did he touch me- rather he took a stone and launched it into my neck- you may ask that briar over there, he saw it.”


Here I did find voice to interject, A vagabond, you see, no matter how fearful he entertains himself to be, always remembers his saftey. “She did not accidentally mark the bag- rather she snatched it!” My voice was still a tiako, but a tinny one now.

The tree-mask made no indication of noticing me, rather she said “Good sir monk, it is not out of selfishness that I ask for the cloth- rather I wish to clean the rock- its spirit would be displeased with my blood- would it not?”

The monk breathed a sigh “Good lady, you are truly a woman of the finest soil.”

My mind strained under a heavy haze. Had she just been walking? Could it have been tangled in her robes? What did she look like? Was she this old woman? The spell was strong.

The monk reached a cloth from his robe, a sturdy wool fragment, and reached it behind the woman’s head and pressed it to her neck. He allowed her gnarled bitter hand to take it.

The warm honey of his gaze ambered and stiffened as he turned to me, “Perhaps in your next life, you shall be the rock thrown and learn a lesson of life.”

I, being a man of spirit- and certainly not wishing to live out the next life as a stone, poured out words of apology.

“My aggression towards this woman was in the wrong- I misinterpreted her actions, and am truly remorseful. I never wish to harm any soul- certainly a fine spirit such as this one” The taiko began to flutter and whorl into a low throaty cello.

I was astonished by the ease of my words. Certainly a vagabond can lie- but this was with such grace and speed that I almost found myself believing myself.

“Direct your forgiveness to her, and not to me” The monks eyes were flat.

I bowed my head and repeated myself. And I believed it. I felt a cloud of remorse tendril out of my hips and set itself deep into my stomach. It was a regrettable misunderstanding in my tense and winding mind.

She shivered up a smile again, humble and kind.

“Let us forget the matter.”

The monk then gave her a parting blessing and hummed his way down the path once more.

She whipped off the mask.

I felt dull granite break across my cheek as my senses returned.

“What foul witchcraft is this? I remember now- you thief! You are no woman! You are no spirit! You are a demon, foul and rank! You are the woman of the masks!” My cello tremoloed into a violin- pitchy and lingering.

In saying this I surprised myself, for you see- I had completely forgotten the women of the masks- being so drawn in by the tree-mask. Seeing her resume existence… or her oddly nonexistent presence shook me.

“You shall know regret” The same evil wind of a voice- and the same flick of a porcelain wrist.

The mask brought across her face this time was of feathers. Tightly woven ribbons of parrot feathers peeking and curving around the eye holes. Pluming eruptive ostrich feathers icicling their way into the double peaked top of the mask. Rich long eagle feathers, white and starch rimming the bottom and a single peacock branch lilting its way out from over the nose. The mask began to form. The parrot feathers melted into a smooth figure eight- the green seeping into the eye-holes, bubbling them into frothing emerald pools. The reds trickling down over the breast beginning to emerge from the mist-robe and lingering to form a delicate pallete under the high arched cheekbones that were beginning to vault out from the mask. The red painted on the breast began to languidly grope around the body- forming a watery silk that simply nibbled into the hour-glass form that was emerging. It showered into a delicate skirt-line. The eagle feathers lightning-spiraled into a sharp thin chin-line, and their clean wash began to run over the face, under the parrot-cheeks, down the neck and across the naked shoulders. The ostrich feathers crested into the high aristocratic skull, and flexed into two columning eyebrows. The peacock feather slithered and coiled outward- each string of beaded-green-glass darkening to brown and tumbling over ice-cubes into the dense swirl of hair. Her cheeks bled into her lips, swelling them with life and vibrance and carnal sweltering heat.

A sigh of exaltation and mannish appreciation broke the tense and winding silence.

It was not from me.

Nor was it from the feather-mask.

A soldier had stalked upon our scene, his rapier blazing with pride- stalk straight as Hermes attending his Apollo.

“Oh sir” her voice was dizzying. Light and caramel and tinged with the faintest hint of rum.

She fell with spiraling dignity onto his arm

“There was a purse left upon the street, and I reached out to grab it- intending to take it down to the orphanage- when this man” she let her finger drift and moan out to me “stoned me in the back of the neck.”

“N-n-no!" stammer “It… it was my purse!” I “she… I must have dropped it!” The violin molten silvered into flute, jamming and huffing under the dark-wine weight of my poisoned mind.

She was harsh into spinning my mind- and I could just barely notice it, and could far from acknowledge it. Deep inside of me, her gossamer began to tear away reality, asphyxiate life.

“I thought it was mine! I think it’s mine… I’m sorry!”

She brought a narsiccan hand to the soldier’s face “You believe me, don’t you”

“But of course, my seraph, but of course”

He went to fetch a superior. Or something of the sort. My mind blurred. My mind blurs. It is lost.

She removes the mask- her old scizophrenic piccolo once again repeating “I shall be revenged.”

My brain breaks the torrential maelstrom of her spell for a final moment- I gasp ragged shards of sanity- shredding my lungs deep and sallow bloody red with the claws of memories. Images. Phantasms. They all tell me that she is evil.

She dawns the final mask. It is of paper. White- all white- all shades of white. Ghostly, starched, ivoried, acumened, innocent- the criss cross a face, stern and lean and efficient. They flood a pale pale clean clean suit- bulky and masculine across her metal frame.

She is exquisitely refined and composed- violated but clinging with pride to a chaste mentality. Justice-seeking.

The judge arrives big black robe billowing gnashing curling wretching teeth. Arms swerving mellow strong.

“This vagabond did steal my purse and throw a stone at my neck”

White white white pride stout honor grasp firm

“But”

Flute to picollo. Harsh shrill picollo. My voice… hers. delirious and shrill. Overwhelmingly toxic and potent. Blazing Mercury. Spite Spite Spite. Violent red and cold dead black. Tense and winding. Tense and winding.

“Tense and winding! Tense and winding! What has it done to me?”

“Clearly he is mad. I would not condemn a mad man to prison”

White white clean clean scrubbed scrubbed polished books.

“Your purse! How could I- your purse!” a laugh cold and stale and wet ripped out of my side “My purse! MINE! You can’t posses… you are nothing.. .you are masks”

“To the house with him”
Black robes swaying robes clicking swishing harshing robes bittered in the wind.

And here I am… writing this while the last shards of my sanity string themselves together for a final parting chord. And I can bite my teeth into the white padded walls… so clean and soft. And maybe one day… it shall return to this old vagabond- his old friend sanity- and I can recover from this anvil-strike through my brain. Was it a spell that did bewitch me? Was it me that did bewitch me? Or was it all masks. Masks.

For a vagabond you see, you see, no matter how deranged he entertains himself to be, will always remember the Masks.