Chapter Two:

The Man in the Mask

The first thing he became aware of was the cold. Strange. He had thrown himself overboard from the ship to end it all, and people who emerge from water were often chilled, but he had expected the place of great rest to be warm. It was called Summerland, after all, and only the spirits of the dead dwelled there, resting until the Great Mother prepared them for rebirth. Why, then, he thought, could he feel the cold of wind striking against his wet clothes and body? He should have been nothing but spirit now, waiting to be received by the Goddess.

Which goddess? The Divine who, among many other roles, was the mother of all creation, or the woman of flesh and blood who he had followed to Summerland through his drowning? Perhaps both. He wanted both. He needed both—the grounding reassurance of the Great Mother and the uplifting presence of his lover.

Both these things were as ever-present to him, in all their forms, as the moon in all her phases. Without them, his heart and his world would be forever in darkness. Why else had he leapt into the sea only moments after Dea's death? No, he no longer wondered why he could still sense things as he had done in the world he had just left behind; the only thought that possessed him was seeing them. And for a brief moment, all that possessed him was the thought of wanting to see her—Dea, his Dea—and he hoped the Great Goddess would understand.

Of course She would! She had made them both. Their love had come from Her, from Her and the Lord of the Wild. All things came from the God and Goddess. Ursus had taught as much.

Without waiting another moment, he opened his eyes. But he did not see Dea, nor did he see the Goddess, in whatever form She may have taken. Instead, he saw only the dark sky above him. And then, he became aware of the feeling of ground beneath him, a sandy beach. And then, worst of all, he became aware of his heart beating.

The shock of this made him take a sharp breath, which in turn made him cough up water. The terrible, choking coughs seemed to go on forever, and he secretly hoped they would be what pushed his spirit to leave his weakened body. But no, he survived them, too. When they subsided, he felt and heard the flickering of a small fire to his right and he feebly raised himself up and turned to see who had separated him from her. If he had been stronger, he would have screamed at what he saw.

On the other side of the campfire was a figure dressed completely in black. From the brim of his hat to the toes of his boots, from the heavy cloak around his shoulders to the gloves on his hands, all his garments were black. But that was not what made his observer so afraid. It was the man's mask. The man was wearing a black mask which had birdlike features that were not quite realistic, as if it were the face of a raven in a strange dream.

The man who had nearly drowned himself had seen far stranger things on his travels, of course, but the way the man in the mask was watching him was haunting. His sunken-in yellow eyes were staring with a fierce steadiness, as if he were willing the one he had rescued to regain strength and live. Then, the man in the mask spoke, and his voice was the complete opposite of his appearance. It was calm, soothing, comforting, even, and the man who had nearly drowned himself hated it. He was not fluent in French, the language the man in the mask had spoken in, but he knew enough to catch the meaning of his words: The man in the mask had been grateful to have found him when he did.

"I know I was nearly finished! Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone, you bastard?"

"Contrary to what others may say, I have a conscience," the man in the mask answered.

Wonderful. He understood English, and he spoke it, too, albeit with a thick accent. The man who had nearly drowned himself dropped back onto the sand and stared up into the black void of the night sky. Every breath he took felt like a curse weighing heavily within his chest. He was being punished.

The God and Goddess were punishing him. He had been dazzled by manmade splendors over their gifts—the gifts of the land, the gifts of the theater that both tormented him and kept him sane, the gifts of the wisdom of Ursus, his surrogate father, the gifts of his life with . . .

"Dea!"

He screamed her name to the sky. He sobbed as he had never sobbed before, even more terribly than the tears he had shed after those wicked men had . . . But no, their wretchedness was nothing compared to that of the man in the mask. And when he came over to kneel at his side, to try to lift him up, to embrace him, the man who had nearly drowned himself pushed the stranger back.

"Get away!" he hissed through his sobs. "You kept me from her! You stole her from me! May the gods spit in your face!"

"They wouldn't be the first to," the man in the mask said.

He spoke with a sharp quietness the man who had nearly drowned himself recognized. It was the sharp quietness of a pain that only the disfigured could understand, a pain that came from being in a body the gods loved and understood while fellow humans did not.

"I'm . . . I'm sorry."

"It's all right," the man in the mask answered in the same soothing tone he had first spoken in. "I know. I know. The loss of that kind of love is . . . unbearable."

"You don't know who she was to me!"

"Yes I do. I've screamed as you just did. You cried for Dea. I cried for . . . Christine."

"What happened to her?"

"She left with another."

The man who had nearly drowned himself reached up to strike the man in the mask on the knee as hard as he could.

"But she still lives! You may still . . . You know nothing of losing—"

The man took off his mask. By the firelight, the man who had nearly drowned himself saw a face unlike he had ever seen before. No carnival, no pleasant fairground he had ever been to, had been home to a face like that. It was the face of a living corpse—yellowish skin stretched drum-tight over sharp-featured bones, no nose to speak of, those haunting yellow eyes, and a few locks of raven hair on the head.

"Tell me," said the man who had worn a mask, "Why would she return to this? Why, when her poor, unhappy Erik let her go?"

The face that had been behind the mask now had an expression which said its owner had resigned himself to his sorrows. He had chosen them, for the sake of others' joy. The man who had nearly drowned himself knew that all too well. He did not know what to say. He finally reached out and took his rescuer's hand in his.

"My name is Gwynplaine."

"Hello, Gwynplaine," said Erik in a tone that said he understood what had been meant in the introduction.

And Gwynplaine told him everything. He told him of how, as a child, he had been disfigured as an act of revenge against his father, a nobleman who had defended the poor. He told of how he had been left for dead in a blizzard after his mouth had been cut into its grin. He told of how he had found a barely-living blind baby in the arms of her dead mother in the storm, of how he had taken the child with him and, in turn, they were taken in by the gruff philosopher, Ursus. Gwynplaine told of his life as a clown, how it tortured him and yet he did it for the sake of his family, hoping that one day, they would have enough so Ursus could stop trying to earn such a meager living with selling the herbal remedies he made.

"And Dea?" Erik asked.

"Dea . . . She would be my wife," Gwynplaine said.

The thought thrilled and frightened him just as much as it had when she was alive.

"And was she?"

"No. But she would have been."

Gwynplaine looked at Erik and the man who had worn the mask must have realized just how close Gwynplaine and Dea were to wedding, for a look of horror crossed his face, horror that was intensified by his skeletal features.

"Mon Dieu. And so you . . .?"

Gwynplaine nodded.

"But all that was after . . . they came," he continued with his tale. "Queen Anne's court found me. They wanted to make me a lord. If I were a naïve little bear cub, I would have thought it was to right the wrong done to me and my father by King James II. But no, Ursus has taught me better than that. If only I knew so at the time. I thought they wanted me back for justice's sake. But they wanted a marionette. And they nearly got their strings around me. And look wat it cost me. Look!"

Gwynplaine thrust his arms out toward the water that was only a few feet away.

"Dea! My Dea! My goddess! My wife! My love!"

He wept until his tears carried him down into sleep.

#

When he woke, it was morning. Gray clouds covered the sky. The water in front of him was an even gloomier gray. The sand around him was a dull brown. The bright fire from the night before was out. There were no joyous colors in the world anymore, it seemed.

It was good Dea had never seen this bleak world. Yet what did she see now? Did she see at all? And then, a thought occurred to Gwynplaine that he had never had: If Erik had not saved him and he had died and joined Dea in Summerland, what would she see when he was before her? Would the God and Goddess have taken away that horrible blemish which had been carved into their creation, or would Gwynplaine still be as he was now? And if he was, would Dea . . .?

He shook his head. What had gotten into him? As deep in despair as he was, he was no fool! She had told him many times in life that even if she could see him, she would not leave him. And everything Dea said was sacred to him. Gwynplaine's thoughts were interrupted by Erik's voice.

"Ah, you're awake. Well, come now."

He gestured for Gwynplaine to get up. Gwynplaine did, not certain as to why.

"Where are we going?"

"To get breakfast. I'm hungry, and you know England better than a poor fellow who's just moved here."

"I don't want to eat."

"I never said you have to. Simply that you must help me find food. Now come along, Gwynplaine!"

Gwynplaine began to walk inland, again, uncertain as to why. As they walked, Erik told him of his life, of traveling to places that Gwynplaine had only heard of from Ursus' stories. Erik told him of how things always played out in the same way—he would find work with one of his many talents, but inevitably, people's curiosity and fear drove him onward, sometimes, even, at the risk of his own life. At times, Erik confessed, he gave the people what they expected, the monster they expected him to be, because in spite of all his efforts to prove himself otherwise, the monster was all they wanted. At last, tired of the world but not yet tired of existence, Erik had retreated to beneath the Paris Opera House to live his life as he envisioned it.

"What better place to do so than under a theater?" he said, his eyes dancing merrily for the first time through the mask. "It's a temple to the truth hidden under all this."

He gestured to the vastness of the world around them.

"And she, she was the last thing I needed. I had a home, for once, a real home that I and I alone could come and go from as I wanted. I had my music. And I almost had . . . Christine. She was nearly mine until . . ."

Erik muttered harshly under his breath in French, something to do with a Persian. He said no more and the rest of their journey was taken in silence. They finally reached a little seaside café and before they entered, Gwynplaine turned up the collar on his coat to hide his scars, as he always did when out in public when he was not performing. The smell of freshly brewed tea and whatever warm, flaky things were baking in the oven made Gwynplaine's mouth water in spite of himself. Still, he feigned a lack of appetite as he and Erik sat at a table.

But when the café owner brought Erik his order, a steaming hot bowl of thick, lumpy oatmeal with brown sugar on the side, Gwynplaine could no longer contain himself.

"Pardon me, sir," he said shyly, "I'll have the same."

The café owner smiled and retreated to bring out a second order. Erik pulled up the hood on his cloak, a hood that hid his face from even Gwynplaine, who was seated directly across from him. Erik then took off his mask and began eating. Gwynplaine's breakfast arrived. He inwardly said the prayer of thanks to the God and Goddess that Ursus had taught him and Dea to say before every meal, and then, he too began to eat.

For a while, there was only the sounds of both men consuming their morning meals. Then, suddenly, in a strangely happy tone, Erik spoke.

"This is . . . nice. I haven't shared breakfast with anyone in a long time. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Gwynplaine said, because what else could one say to such a thing?

And they continued eating. And that was all that was needed.