Escaping the Masquerade

Gwynn is both relieved and terrified when he arrives at the devil’s manor. It is not the vision of hell he has been envisioning since he left the dream thief’s dominion. It is illuminated by tall windows emitting amber coloured light that shine like beacons in the darkness.

It is surrounded by a large black gate with decidedly unfriendly spikes atop it, though the curling pattern of the metal winding between the bars makes excellent footholds for climbing. They also prevent Gwynn from passing through the gate and into the garden beyond easily.

Gwynn does not need to worry, however. With a gentle push of his hand, the gate swings open, without creaking despite its appearance of advanced age.

Gwynn enters cautiously, and does not notice when the gate swings closed, equally soundlessly, behind him, until he reaches the door and glances over his shoulder.

The doors are twice his height, and made of sturdy oak carved with many swirls and depictions of dancing creatures. Some of them have human faces, turned upward toward a sun at the crest of the door, though Gwynn cannot tell if they gaze upward in admiration or restlessness.

These doors swing open in the same way as the gates, and when he steps through, they swing closed. Though their closing is followed by the muffled thump of a very old lock being turned.

Within, it is vastly different from without.

It is a riot of colour, and ablaze with light from both the sconces on the wall with bright flames dancing in them, and the chandeliers above that catch and release the reflected colours of the many dancers below.

Masked staff bedecked in a similar shade of dusky violet circumnavigate the crown, balancing silver trays with a variety of coloured drinks in oddly shaped glasses. They serve the parched company until their trays are full of empty glasses, then they fetch full replacements, though Gwynn cannot identify a point at which they might exit the room to some adjoining kitchen or parlour.  Nevertheless, refreshments arrive and the guests drink them with vigor, despite their dubious origins.

There are table laden with deserts and colourful creams, and some more exotic drinks that seem to glow in the undulating light of the surrounding candles.

The dancers at the edge of the room exhibit no shyness; they take breaks to sip wine or graze the selection of chocolate and sweets. They are easily coerced back into dancing.

The band that plays the brassy, danceable tunes is clothed in deep, smoky purple. They hardly glance up from their instruments, and the dancers hardly notice them, veering this way and that to circle around the raised platform on which they play.

Gwynn moves around the periphery, gaining boldness and venturing from his self-relegated positions in the shadows.

There is not one inch of the ballroom floor uncovered by the constant moving crowd of dancers. Gwynn can hardly get through them, and it requires much elbowing and many apologies to get anywhere. The crowds enclose around him, and then enclose again, like a Chinese puzzle box.

A few ladies standing nearby become suddenly hushed as he passes, speaking in murmurs and trailing their gazes over him.

Gwynn pushes through the crowd, looking back and forth among tafetta and satin and velvet, seeing no sign of her.

It is not until the crowd parts and he glances into a crowd to his right that he freezes and stares at the figure dressed in spangled blue silk.

Despite her star speckled mask he cannot mistake her eyes or the gentle bow of her lips.

A gentleman whirs past with a lady on his arm, and Gwynn loses sight of Isabel. He pushes through the crowds again, muttering apologies, until they apart again and he finds himself feet away from the hem of her blue gown.

“Isabel,” he says, trying to get his breath back.

She stares at Gwynn with parted lips, her gaze sweeping over him like a tide.

“Gwynn.” She sighs, lowly and softly. His name on her lips renders him lost in a state of bliss, and elements of the ballroom fall away until they are the only two people in the world. “Gwynn, you’ve come.”

There is a dreamy quality to her voice that Gwynn does not recognize, and her expression is one of unbridled delight.

“Isabel, I’ve come to get you. Are you alright? We can leave, now. I’m not sure how- the door closed, but maybe we can get one of the windows open-“

“Dance with me,” Isabel murmurs, then leans in to brush her lips against his.

Gwynn pulls back, though he keeps an arm around her waist. “Isabel, we have to leave,” he says, but his lips are tingling, and the sparkle in Isabel’s eye, possibly an effect of the wine, possibly something else, are too tantalizing to ignore.

“Dance, Gwynn. We have the time. Listen to the music; it’s just like your violin, Gwynn.” Though there is nothing sweet about the melody reverberating through the crowd, like a summer breeze through the leaves of a tree.

The music calls to him. It stirs something in his soul, and only Isabel in his arms and his own moving feet can satisfy it.

It is that, coupled with another of Isabel’s pleas that causes him to relent.

Isabel pulls him by the wrists onto the dance floor, and before another gentleman can reach for her, Gwynn catches her around the waist.

Gwynn feels ungraceful and shameful in comparison to the other dancers, who waltz across the floor with the grace of swans across a lake. But Isabel leads him in looping patterns around the other dancers, and the walls and rambunctious crowds begin to blur together into colours.

Isabel’s face loses form, and it is only her eyes that hold him steady.

The music echoes behind his eyelids, and Gwynn realizes he has closed his eyes. It pounds with his heartbeat in his ears.

Gwynn stumbles, his grip on Isabel lost, and the movement jars his eyes open. Isabel is still turning in circles, though she falters, gazing at Gwynn with dazed concern.

“Isabel,” he gasps, holding tightly to her arm as she stops spinning. He begins mentally berating himself for losing focus before he tells her quickly that they must find a place to talk, away from the music.

Gwynn pulls Isabel through the crowds, stumbling on the hems of dresses, bumping elbows aside, and attracting glares from multiple dancers.

Gwynn does not recall climbing any stairs, but they arrive at a air of double doors that open onto a balcony.

The cold air creeps down his spine like frost over a windowsill. Isabel does not seem to notice the cold, though her dress rustles as it is blown around her ankles.

Below the balcony the city glows like morning dew on a spider’s web, darkness interrupted by lanterns and street lamps and reflections on rippling water. It stretches on like another sky. The crisp air smells of a cloud of perfume from the ballroom and marine water and orchids.

“Isabel, do you remember how you got here? How he brought you here? If there is another way out?” Gwynn asks.

Isabel shakes her head. “No. I remember only dancing. As though I have been dancing forever.”

“Your father’s house is not far from here. We have to find a way to escape,” Gwynn tells her.

Isabel’s expression is clearer, though there is a lingering dazedness in her eyes.

“We can escape in a dream,” she says, and holds out her hand.

“Without a book?” Gwynn asks.

“Dreams are not books. They can be bound in books, but they are all around us,” she says, and places a hand over his eyes, plunging him into darkness.

The feeling of delving into a dream that is not already bound in paper is like falling upwards, and unplanned and shocking ascension.

When Gwynn opens his eyes, they stand atop a mountain, on a peak that is too small to walk more than a couple of paces. Though a mist hangs below them, Gwynn can see acres of bamboo, and, where the mountain slides into a valley, a collection of houses hidden by even taller shoots of bamboo.

“We have to keep going,” Isabel says, in his ear. She pulls him forward, and Gwynn does not have time to worry about her foot, falling into open space beside the mountain’s peak, before they are stepping between pumpkins in the black soil of a cemetery in the evening. They run, hand in hand, around the gravestones while Gwynn’s feet tangled in the pumpkin vines, before Isabel stops, and Gwynn nearly runs into her.

“We can rest for a moment,” Isabel says, leaning against the side of a tall statue of an angel that eclipses the moon with its wings.

“Can you? I was under the impression you would want to be quick about it,” says a voice, from behind them.

Gwynn and Isabel turn to the masked gentleman, and the dread that has been creeping down Gwynn’s spine, turns to icy fear.

“I am willing to overlook your misadventure,” the masked gentleman says, clasping his hands behind his back, and speaking to Isabel. “If you come back easily. No fuss.”

“No,” Isabel and Gwynn say in unison. “I will not be coming with you,” Isabel continues solo.

“Then you will not be coming easily,” the gentleman says with a sigh, and takes a step forward.

Gwynn’s hand finds Isabel’s instinctively, and they vanish from the cemetery.

They stand now on street in the early morning, beneath a bower of cherry blossoms. Around them, oriental merchants carry bolts of silk, carved jade animals, and other trinkets around corners, and into unopened shops.

“No rest then,” Gwynn says, as Isabel takes his hand, and they resume running.

They leap from dream to dream so quickly – as though they were climbing the steps of a staircase two steps at a time – that the dreams begin to blend together in a haze of colour and vertigo.

When they reach a stop, it takes Gwynn a moment to look at their surroundings steadily. Sand that stretches out behind him and the sea in front of him like a rippling cloth of night. Calming and serene. He inhales the scent of sea air and wind-carried temple smoke.

Beside him, Isabel breathes quickly. “We’re home,” she says. After a moment, she adds, “he’ll find us.”

“We can hide in another dream,” Gwynn suggests.

“We can’t run forever,” Isabel says, shaking her head.

“Maybe your father will think of something.”

“I doubt it,” Isabel says, but she says it softly, and she is shivering in her dress.

Gwynn draws her into his arms, stroking the back of her neck. “Can you take us back?” he whispers in her ear.

Isabel is still nodding when they reappear in the cavern full of books.

Text by Lucie MacAulay