Then came the sound of chatter and laughter as if from a world away.
It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen to watch those figures dancing and drinking from broken glasses, laughing and talkingwithoutmouths or noses, knowing where to go without eyes and how to avoid us standing there in a circle.
We were all stunned as we watched, and for a while that was all they did. They danced and swirled around, sometimes with one another, sometimes by themselves, so gracefully. The instruments continued to play that music that sounded so wrong I was tempted to close my ears but didn’t.
“What are they?” Anika asked.
“Are theyusfrom back then?” Seth wondered.
“How will we know when they don’t have faces?!” Mimi cried. “Guys, this is so wrong! This is…”
Her voice trailed off when the figures began to jump inthe air—to reach for the masks hanging onto those near invisible threads over our heads.
Within the second, every single figure made of light was jumping and trying to grab the masks, but their hands went right through them.
“They can’t touch them,” said Cook. “They can’t touch the masks.”
He was absolutely right. Every single one of those figures were jumping as high as they could, and their fingers just went through. Strange, when they’d been able to grab the chairs and the glasses just fine. Why not those masks?
The next second, Cook jumped, too.
He reached for the mask right over his head, and he grabbed it.
My heart skipped a beat at the sudden movement. The thin thread extended. Cook’s feet touched the floor again, and he gasped and froze in place as if something had attacked him from within.
“Cook!”
We grabbed him, shook him, called his name, but he didn’t move for half a minute, his muscles locked, eyes ahead but he didn’t see anything, the mask still in his fist.
It was a dark cherry red in color, with black satin strings on the sides like ribbons, and it was meant to cover half the face, the edge of it just below the nose, shielding the upper lip of its wearer. The holes of the eyes were shaped like a cat’s, uptilted, and outlined with a silver thread woven into the thick fabric. There was no dust on the mask, no dirt—it looked brand new.
Then Cook let go of it and stepped back, and the mask, still attached to the thread, traveled up over our heads again, as if nothing at all had happened.
“What is it, Cook? What did it do to you? Did it hurt?” weasked as he raced to catch his breath, shaking his hands, pale as a sheet.
“No, no,” he breathed. “It…it showed me something. It showed me…something!”
I’d let go of March’s hand, but he was still right behind me when I looked back.
“How? How did it show you?” Erith asked.
“Whatwas the something?!” Mimi.
Cook blinked, looked down at his shaking hands and said, “I think it was…a memory.”
“A memory?” March said, and the heaviness of his voice fell over my shoulders.
“It was someone’s memory,” Cook said with a nod. “I touched the mask, and I saw it. In here.” He pressed his fingers to his temples.
“Is that how we unwin?” Anika said, turning to look at the figures, who were dancing and jumping and reaching for the masks still, despite the fact that none could touch them still. “Is that what they’re trying to tell us?”
“It’s a trap,” March said. “They’ve put memories in these masks—it has to be a trap. Where did they get those memories from?”
He spun around, looked up at the many masks above us—there must have been at least fifty.
“He’s right,” Levana said. “Memories cost something. They always costsomethingto be moved around.”
“What other choice do we have?” I wondered. Because there was clearly nothing else in here—just these figures made of light, and the broken instruments playing that awful music—and the masks.
