Masque of the Red Death

Drifting through the penthouse, I run my hands over the glass. The windows don’t open. And the door is hidden behind a brick wall.

  Hours pass. I wait. Mother taps at my door before she goes to bed.

  “They may find her, Araby.” The way she says it exacerbates my fear. I touch the scrap of paper, hoping it means something. I hear Mother sigh and walk across the hall to her own room.

  I watch the clock impatiently, and then finally slip out of our apartment.

  If the entrance to the garden isn’t on this level, then it must be above or below us. There is a terrace on the roof, and I’ve been up there enough, when I was allowed access to the roof, to know that there are no trapdoors.

  I have never been on the floor directly below this one, though. The elevator operator, with his smooth white mask, always brings us straight to the top. But there are stairs.

  Our hallway is lit by a flickering gas lamp that is too weak to truly penetrate the gloom, and the stairway at the end of the hall is completely dark. I walk gingerly, placing one foot carefully in front of the other and touching the wall with one hand.

  The corridor is filled with doors. These apartments must be considerably smaller than the penthouses above. I try each door gently, so that I don’t alert the occupants, but near the end of the hall I crash into a chair, obviously placed in the hallway for a courier, and it grates loudly against the floor before hitting the wall.

  From inside the nearest apartment, someone shouts, “Who’s there?”

  And then a door is opening. I expect to see a servant, maybe, or a family, but instead I see several young men in military uniforms.

  “What are you doing on this floor?” one of them asks, reaching for me. I step backward before he can touch me. I don’t know if he has mistaken me for someone else, but it is certain that I don’t belong here. A second door opens, revealing another, older, soldier.

  “Stop her,” he says.

  More doors are opening. The uniforms proclaim that they work for Prince Prospero. Why has he placed so many of his men on the floor directly below ours? On the older man’s lapel, I see a pin. If it weren’t for my hours with April, her attention to style and detail, I would never have noticed it. An open eye.

  I hold out the note, as if it will somehow save me.

  “‘Meet me at the garden at midnight,’” he reads.

  His uniform has many bright decorations, and I’m guessing he is in charge. None of these soldiers have the closed, cruel look of the men I see turning hungry children away from the perimeter of the upper city—but he’s looking at me like he thinks I’m crazy. Then he glances at the slip of paper again, and this time he sees the eye, faint as it is, sketched with pencil at the corner of the sheet.

  “Let her through,” he says, and bows to me. “Enjoy your time in the garden.”

  He glares up and down the hallway. “Prepare to move to someplace less luxurious in the morning.” Even in the semidarkness the underlings see his expression and slink back into the apartments.

  “It’s the last door on the right,” he says to me when he sees I haven’t moved.

  The knob on the last door turns easily. I open it and hurry through, glad to be away from the staring men. My mother has warned me repeatedly never to be in a dark corridor, a dark alley, an abandoned room, with even one man. I sigh. Her days of chaperones and fainting females are long gone, but her warnings can still frighten me.

  I can tell right away that the room is not large, but I stand in darkness for what feels like hours, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It’s a maintenance closet filled with brooms and buckets and a ladder that is attached to the back wall. I catch my breath. It’s the right height to reach the garden.

  The ceiling is covered with gears and pulleys. Crossing the room, I place one hand on a rung, and then both feet. My elegant shoes have no traction, and by the time I’m halfway up, my hands are starting to sweat.

  A large circular brass door covers the top of the ladder. I push it, and it moves upward with a loud grating sound while a bit of earth trickles down, hitting my cheek. So this Garden of Eden isn’t fully sealed after all.

  My hands make contact with soil, then grass. The air isn’t as thick as I expected from the beads of moisture that pool and roll down the window in my bedroom. It’s muggy but bearable.

  A slender tree branch slaps me in the face, and I suppress a scream. I’ve moved from the familiar darkness of the hallway to an unfamiliar darkness that smells of growing things. Vines touch my face and snake around my ankles.

  My feet make squelching sounds in the mud, so I stop, straining to listen.

  I hear the striking of a match, and my eyes latch on to the sudden flash of orange light. Someone is very near. I smell pungent smoke. Tobacco, perhaps? Taking a tentative step forward, I can make out a shape, long legs, crossed at the ankle. Obviously male.

  “Hello?” My voice is embarrassingly tremulous.

  “You’re early. I like that.”

  “This garden is supposed to be sealed.”

  “I grew up in Penthouse A. It would be cruel to keep me from the garden where I played as a boy.”

  “You’re April’s brother, Elliott?”

  He puts whatever he is smoking to his lips. I watch the brightness where the paper is burning. His movements are unhurried.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  He sighs. “I suspect that our uncle got tired of her making a spectacle of herself and has made her an unwilling guest in his castle.”

  “He can’t force her to stay.”

  He laughs. “The prince can make her stay. He can kill her if he wants, but I don’t think he will.”

  “He wouldn’t … you’re sure he won’t…” I can’t say the word kill. “He won’t hurt her?” I move closer, listening to the cadence of his voice, trying to be sure of his identity before I make my guess. “You’re the guy with the syringe.”

  “Yes.” He might be sticking out his hand for me to shake, but I can’t see well enough to be sure.

  “Blond eyebrows.” I try to remember everything I know about him. He’s a year or two older than April, eighteen or nineteen.

  He laughs again, but when he speaks, his voice is completely serious.

  “April said we could trust you, so I’m going to.” He takes another drag from his cigarette, leaving me with an impression of long, aristocratic fingers. “Would you like to sit down?”

  I put my hand forward until I can feel the wall and then, awkwardly, sit.

  “Those soldiers downstairs. Are they connected with you, somehow?”

  He coughs twice. “They didn’t bother you? I needed a place to house them, and several floors of this building are abandoned. It seemed a good enough solution.”

  “They were wearing Prince Prospero’s uniform.”

  “For now.”

  “Why do you need soldiers?” I ask.

  “Rebellion,” he says. “April and I are planning a rebellion.”

  His voice has changed from slightly bored to low and intense. Without meaning to, I lean toward him, too shocked to make even the slightest sound. This is treason.

  In this city, people who commit treason are put to death. But he has soldiers.

  “A rebellion?” I ask finally. “April is part of this?” How can April be part of a rebellion? She has trouble deciding what dress to wear.

  “She has to be a part of it. This rebellion is who we are.” He makes a sudden movement, and even in the dark I can tell he’s agitated. “April and I hid behind a curtain and watched the worthy Prince Prospero slash our father’s throat—”

  I gasp.

  I can’t help it. I actually put my hand up to my own throat. Because I know … the gush of warm blood… I force the memory away.

  “He murdered our father. He claimed lawless citizens broke into the mayor’s office. I was a boy then, and my father wanted peace, so I didn’t fight. I waited. And now we’re going to destroy the prince
. I’m going to save the city.”

  I try to see his expression, but it’s too dark. Odd that he chose this place for our meeting.

  “But other forces have begun to move in the city, and we can’t afford to let anyone else take control. We have to act soon. I asked April to bring you to meet me so I could see for myself how fearless you are.”

  I nearly fall off the stone wall. Did April tell him that? He is wrong. I have so much fear. And since last night I’ve become more interested in the future. I’m not the person Elliott thinks I am.

  “We couldn’t find you at the club,” I say.

  “I was detained.”

  “And you didn’t tell me who you were. You left me passed out behind a curtain.”

  “I did not. I left to speak to … a friend. And you made it home, while my sister did not.”

  “I’m not sure either of us was meant to make it home. There was a boy who gave us drinks....”

  “What did he look like? I’ll find him.” Something about the way he says this, with complete confidence, speaks to me. He’s so different from my father, who is quiet and always afraid.

  I describe the boy as best I can.

  “Probably working for our uncle,” Elliott says. “But if he hurt April, I’ll kill him. So … here we are in this dark, forbidding garden. Will you help me, Araby Worth? I need someone like you. Willing to take risks.”

  I stare into the darkness. He can’t see my expression, but I try to keep my face impassive anyway.

  “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “I can give you drugs,” he says. “Good ones.”

  I want to laugh. Yesterday I wanted drugs. Yesterday I needed … my hands are trembling. Maybe I still need them. But his offer eases the pressure. Maybe it’s his voice, disembodied in the humid darkness, or maybe it’s how easy he thinks I am. I think of Henry and Elise, and of course I think about Finn. Can anyone overthrow the prince? Even with an army? Elliott is quiet as he waits for my response.

  “I have an idea,” I say. “A suggestion for your new government.”

  “Oh?”

  “Free masks,” I say. “For the children.”

  He coughs and chokes. On smoke from his cigarette or on his surprise?

  “That is an excellent idea.”

  Elliott stubs out his cigarette and then lights a match. In the moment of illumination I can see that he isn’t wearing a mask. I’m not as shocked as I might have been a few days ago. He holds the match between his fingers and watches it burn.

  “There is one problem,” he says. “Very few people know how to make the masks.”

  He drops the match to the ground. It sizzles in the mud, and then we sit in silence for what feels like a long time. Suddenly I know why he agreed so easily, what he’s going to ask, that this is why he truly wanted to meet me. This was a game of chess, and he understands strategy.

  “Whoever can make the masks can defeat the disease. There is great power in that.” Elliott shifts, and a couple of stones fall from the low wall. “I’ve spoken to the workers at the factory. The filters are manufactured secretly, within the prince’s palace.”

  But I know where Father keeps the blueprints.

  I think of the young girl putting her baby’s body into the black cart. Her anguish. A mask might have saved her child. Isn’t it worth any price, any risk, to save someone from watching the contagion ravage their family? I wish I could see his face.

  I move my foot in a half circle, testing the resistance of the unseen mud.

  “I know where the plans are,” I admit quietly.

  He doesn’t waste any time.

  “I have clever friends. If you can get the blueprints, we can start production in just a matter of weeks. Days. We can distribute them secretly to people without money, for their children. I’d thought of making the masks more readily available, of course. But it would be genius to have you, the scientist’s tragic daughter, distributing them. People would love that.”

  Is that who I am? A tragedy? Is that what Will sees when he looks at me?

  “I will get the information,” I tell him.

  “Be careful. Your father is surrounded by spies.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “We know that.” We’ve always known.

  “I’ll contact you soon. Now that April has disappeared, I need you.” I like that he sounds less self-assured when he says this. It makes me think that maybe we could be friends.

  I ask, because I have to know. “Was April lying, or is it true that you write poetry?”

  A moment of silence. “It’s true.” His voice is barely audible. “My father nearly despaired of me ever amounting to anything.”

  He takes my elbow, guides me back to the ladder. “Descend carefully, Miss Araby Worth.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  WINCING AT THE BITTER TASTE, I SWALLOW MY sleeping draft. Father mixes it for me, tired of being kept awake by my screams. Thanks to the medication, I can sleep a dreamless sleep. Most nights.

  I try not to think about anything. Not matches lit in dark gardens, or small children who are unprotected from the Weeping Sickness, or April imprisoned. Not rooms upon rooms of soldiers directly below me. I breathe carefully, fighting the panic that threatens to overwhelm me.

  After what seems like an entire night’s worth of sleeplessness, I dream of faces obscured by shadows.

  I wake with a scream and sit up. My bed is wobbling. I shouldn’t be awake before the sun is up; shouldn’t open my eyes to darkness. I’m groggy, so the medicine is still in my system. Glass breaks, and something crashes to the floor. For a moment the room is bright as day. Then my bed shakes again.

  I press my hands against the mattress and pray for the room to stop moving. Am I hallucinating?

  I hear Mother and Father’s voices from the next room. They aren’t bothering to whisper.

  Another explosion rocks my bedroom.

  Bombings have happened before. Once, twice, never two so close together. This is bad.

  Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I press my feet against the floor. It doesn’t move, so I dare to stand.

  Through my window I see flames against a backdrop of darkness.

  I’m going to my parents. My door opens soundlessly, but they must feel a draft flowing in from my room, because they both turn to face me.

  A third explosion shakes the penthouse. More glass shatters in the kitchen. Mother whimpers.

  I won’t succumb to fear. I clench my teeth. Mother is ridiculous. I won’t be like her.

  Smoke billows outside. “Is the entire city burning?” I want to run to the window and look out, as if there is some way that I could see whether Will and the children are safe. Instead I stand, frozen.

  “Idiots,” Father mutters. “Burning, looting. They will make their situation worse.”

  “The people who are burning the city, what do they want?” I ask. I’m thinking of cloaked men and Elliott’s concern that someone would take over the city before he does.

  Father chooses to interpret my question as if I am completely shallow. As ignorant as I was a week ago.

  “They want to change their lives. The poverty, their desperation, the state in which they are forced to live. Desperation and apathy are all we have left—” Father is interrupted by a series of staccato explosions. “Sometimes I wish gunpowder had never been invented,” he says.

  I stare at him, shocked. This is the man who lives by science. Who exists for discoveries.

  I collapse onto the couch between my parents, and we sit in miserable silence until the sun comes up. Mother gasps each time the floor shakes. I keep my feet flat on the ground and my hands flat against the sofa cushions.

  “What would our lives have been like if the plague hadn’t happened?” As soon as I say the words, I wish I could take them back.

  Mother answers quickly. “You would have gone to school. We would have traveled. Your father had a good job at the university. You and—”


  “There is no ‘what if the plague never happened,’” Father interrupts. “It happened. That’s all.”

  We sit, silent and afraid.

  “Father,” I finally choke out, “can you tell me about the masks? How you made them?”

  He gives me a long look. He could be thinking that all I need to know is that the masks can’t be shared, not even between twins. But Father isn’t cruel. If that’s what’s going through his head, he’ll keep it to himself.

  “I’m not supposed to speak of it,” he says. “The prince threatened to cut out my tongue....”

  Mother whimpers and Father turns away. As if he’s ashamed of upsetting her. Or maybe he’s seen the shock on my face.

  I know that my father lives in a precarious place, that he used his popularity with the people to keep us here, away from the prince’s prison, while ignoring the prince’s anger at being outmaneuvered. But I never heard about the prince’s threats. Stealing the plans for Elliott could upset this balance that keeps us free.

  At breakfast time, the servants arrive, frightened, smelling of smoke. They risked themselves to come to work. Jobs are difficult to come by. Our courier is later than the others, and his mask is askew. When Father takes him into the lab to fix it, I follow them and listen.

  “When did it happen?” Father asks as he examines the mask.

  “Men were burning and looting.” The courier’s voice drops, and I have to strain to hear him. “If I contract the disease, please look in on my daughter.” His voice trails away.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Father says kindly, handing back his mask. But he keeps his own firmly in place.

  With the sunrise, the flames are no longer visible. From my window I trace the path of the river. We didn’t cross any bridges when we walked home, so Will lives on this side of the river. I scan the lower city for smoke, telling myself that he must be fine.

  The city is laid out simply. The upper city is elevated, and the harbor is close. The lower city is bordered by a marshy inlet where the ocean meets a swamp. The river curls around the lowest part of the city, and the remnants of streets frame everything, creating a grid that I can see as I look down, though there are trees and grass growing in places that used to be streets.