Rainbow Beach

Late in the afternoon, I set off to explore Rainbow Beach. I had learned that the area around the docks was called the “Old Town” and comprised the docks, wharves, and storehouses, as well as the markets and most of the buildings of the original port settlement. The Old Town was a veritable warren of narrow streets and alleys. The layout confused me at first, but only until I realised that any street which led downhill would take me to the wharves.

The streets were lined with shops and stalls selling everything a person might possibly want to buy. A veritable riot of smells and colors and sounds stormed in on me as chandlers vied with bakers, vendors of spice, and curio peddlers for my attention. Cloth merchants plied their wares to me, as did woodcarvers, hat makers, jewellers, and many other craftspeople. I was often tempted but remained steadfast. I had no real need of their goods, however beautiful they might be. My destination was the famous “Women’s Market”, which took place each evening in the main market square. If at all, I thought I might find something I wanted there.

Eventually, my wanderings led me back to the market square, which was even busier than it had been when I arrived. Brightly-clad women of all ages and ethnicities were busy spreading rush mats on the ground and piling them high with baskets of goods and produce of all descriptions. Some women had erected brightly colored fabric tents and windbreaks, most of which bore banners or signs advertising the services of healers, or fortune tellers, or seamstresses. Dotted around the market square were tiny food stalls, each with women busy heating oil, chopping vegetables, stirring pots, or rolling out thin rounds of dough.

I am a lover of exotic foods, so I chose one of the stalls and, without asking what it was, pointed to something in the display. My purchase turned out to be a freshly baked chapatti, and the filling was made from chopped vegetables, light meat, and spices — saffron, coriander, and ginger, among others — with a sauce of thick joghourt and cumin. I washed it down with a bowl of steaming, spicy chai and moved on to continue my explorations refreshed.

Throngs of people had arrived at the market in the meantime, and it became increasingly difficult to weave my way through the crowd. Caught in the heaving mass of bodies, with no way out, I found myself inching along a narrow alley just off the market square. After a hundred yards or so, the alley widened and we spilled into a second, smaller, square that was also packed with stalls and booths.

The Mask Maker’s Daughter

I sat on the steps of a stone fountain to rest. A band of children played a boisterous game of catch around me, squealing and chasing each other in turn, and splashing water onto the victim, once he or she was captured. One of the boys was older and taller than the other children, he had the look of a bully about him, and he clearly called the shots. Suddenly he darted after a lanky girl of around thirteen. He caught her, and then, instead of splashing her, as the others had done, he half thrust, half threw her into the fountain.

She gasped and spluttered. “I’ll get you Billy Morris!” she shouted. “Jus’ you wait. One day yer’ll want a mask, an’ I’ll make you the most horriblist one you ever seen!”

The boy sneered. “Girls don’ make masks. Only men make masks. Yer’ll be a stooooopid dream peddler, like yer ma!”

“Me ma ain’t stoopid, and she ain’t no dream peddler, she’s a truth sayer!” Visibly irate, the girl clambered out of the water and lunged at him. She may have been small, but she was certainly plucky!

Billy Morris tumbled backward and fell but jumped up a second later, with nothing injured except his pride. He grabbed the girl and threw her to the ground. From what I could see, she landed badly.

“That’ll teach you, that will, Sarah Flower”, he jeered. Ger off ‘ome and play wiv yer dollies.” He signalled for the other children to follow him, and they ran off between the stalls. All except Sarah.

The girl got up off the ground, and I could see she was in some pain. Her dress was torn, and one knee was bleeding profusely. I wet a handkerchief in the fountain and offered it to her.

She took it and wiped her knee. “Thank you, Lady.”

She straightened up, took a few steps, and winced.

“Do you live near here, Sarah?” I asked. “Shall I help you home? I can explain to your parents that it’s not your fault your dress is torn.”

“No thanks, Lady. I’m ok.”

She hobbled another few steps and stumbled. To me, it looked as if she had sprained an ankle. The second time, I didn’t ask, I simply gave her my walking staff to help take some of the weight off her ankle and told her I was taking her to her parents.

It took only a few minutes to reach Sarah’s home.

“This is it, Lady. This is where I live.”

I helped her up the step into a shop that was filled to bursting with masks. There were masks of every description, from all corners of the world: elaborate carnival masks, tribal masks, gaudily painted demonic masks, animal masks… hundreds and hundreds of them on shelves and in glass cases, on tables and counters, and even hanging from the ceiling.

Home turned out to be a cozy room at the back of the narrow storefront. As we entered, Sarah’s father was sitting at a workbench in a corner, a mask in front of him. Her mother stood at the window, dabbing paint from a palette onto a canvas propped on an easel.

I explained my presence and the rough-and-tumble that had taken place at the fountain.

Sarah’s father sighed. “That Billy Morris is a rough ‘un, but what can you do? Can’t fight their battles for ‘em.”

I assured him that, from what I had seen, his daughter was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles, all else being equal.

In the meantime, Sarah’s mother had attended to her daughter’s injuries. “She’ll be right as rain in a day or two,” she pronounced. “Thank you for bringing her home.”

The Masks

Sarah piped up from her seat at the table, “Show her the masks, Da.”

Just a moment before Sarah spoke, I had been thinking that I should like to spend a little time looking at the masks in the shop.

The father and I walked back into the store. There we spend a delightful hour in which he pointed out various masks, explaining the origins and purpose of each one to me briefly as he did so. After some time, I realised that a though was niggling at my mind. Then it came back to me: the bully had said something about Sarah’s father being a mask MAKER, but the masks he’d shown me were all from faraway places.

Just then, Sarah hobbled into the shop. “Show her the other ones, Da.”

He seemed to hesitate. It was not the kind of hesitation that people might usually notice, and it passed in a second.

“Right, then”, he said.

Sarah’s father led the way into a small storeroom, the entrance to which lay behind the counter. The storeroom was filled from wall to ceiling with glass cases, and in the cases were masks of an entirely different kind from those in the shop.

“Me da makes these”, Sarah said. “An’ I want to be a mask maker, too, when I’m old enough.”

The strange thing about the masks in the glass cases was that, though they were clearly masks, they looked real, more like captured expressions than anything else. Each of the masks was decorated in a different way, at least, I couldn’t see two that looked alike. It was like gazing on a crowd of people at a fancy dress party. The masks had something akin to personality, as if the wearers were also present.

“You could have a mask, too, if you needed one”, Sarah said. “Ma would help you find it, and Da would make it for you.”

“I don’t think I need a mask, at the moment, Sarah. Thank you. But I’d love to learn something about them”, I replied.

“Well then, we’d best go back into the parlour”, said Sarah’s father. “Talk is always best over a cup of tea.”

Over tea and sweet biscuits, Sarah’s father, who I now knew to be called Samuel, explained to me about the masks.

“Most people think masks are for concealment, or maybe for pretending and ritual acting, but what you saw in the back room were traditional Lemurian masks. Lemurian mask makers know masks can reveal as well as obscure things about the wearer, like their hopes, intentions, dreams, and longings. If someone finds the right mask, they can do things and become the person they were meant to be to fulfill their destiny, or to perform a difficult task.”

I was intrigued. “So, how do the people for whom the masks are intended find them?”

“This is Lemuria”, he replied. “So much here is guided by fate. Lemurians know about the masks, and they know to seek out one of the mask makers. But they have to ask. That’s why the masks are stored out of sight. It wouldn’t do for someone to want a mask that wasn’t theirs. It happens, from time to time, and the outcome is rarely beneficial.”

My next question surfaced. “But… but how do seekers know when they’ve found a mask that is meant for them?”

“Oh”, he said, matter of factly, “the truth sayers help with that. Before someone can see the masks, they have to consult with a truth sayer, someone like Ayn, my wife. Ayn can see whether the required mask is in my possession, and if not, she can help find out where it might otherwise be.”

My mind raced. I wanted to know how Samuel and the other mask makers knew which masks to make, and who sought out the masks, and how the mask achieved their effect, and what happened to the masks when they were no longer required, for example, when the owner died….

“Ma can show you”, Sarah chipped in.

So that was it. Sarah was a telepath. I had suspected as much earlier on, when she asked her father to do exactly what I had been thinking. She seemed to realise she’d been found out and grinned at me. Being a child, she probably couldn’t yet resist the urge to read other people.

“Sorry,” she said. It’s just starting, you see, and it’s so much fun.

Silently, I hoped it would always remain a pleasant and useful gift for her, and that she would quickly learn to shield her mind from the barrage of confusing adult thoughts to which she would soon be exposed.

The Mirror Of Truth

Then the talk turned to me, and I told Ayn and Samuel what little there was to tell about my journey.

Presently, I decided it was time for me to leave. I got up from the chair and reached for my staff.
 
“Wait”, Ayn said. “May I tell your truth, before you leave?”

I must have looked skeptical.

“It’s not like fortune telling”, she said. “I don’t make predictions. All I do is look beneath the surface. Often I can see the nature of a thing or a purpose…. And I’ll be happy to show you the answers to your questions about the masks, too.”

Curiosity won the upper hand, and I agreed. Ayn led me into another small room and offered me a place at a table. The table top was made of what looked like smoked glass.

“It’s a mirror”, she explained. “I can see truth perfectly well without it, but it’s helpful for you, as it will show you the images I see when I search for your truth.”

We sat facing each other, both of us gazing into the mirror. After a while, I looked up and saw that Ayn’s eyes had taken on a distant look, as if she were looking far beyond the room in which we were sitting; as if the mirror was a deep, deep pool and she someone looking for stones on its bed.

Then I saw it, too. The surface of the mirror rippled and a hazy image rose to the surface. First I saw myself from a distance, walking the Holborn Hills, on my way to the Murmuring Woods. Then I watched at a series of pictures flitted across the surface of the mirror. Each showed me in a different landscape, some of which felt ancient, as if not from this lifetime, but I saw and sensed no more than that. Then I saw many masks, and I felt the knowledge of the masks pass into my wisdom. And still the images rose to the surface of the mirror. A weaver, a broken mask, a tall stone, an earth barrow, a lake, a barge, and, to my utter surprise, the face of someone I had not seen in a very long time, his eyes gazing directly into mine. This image lasted longer than the others, but all too soon it wavered like the others and broke into a thousand lights. The stream ceased, and the mirror darkened once again.

Ayn breathed deeply and stretched her limbs, like a dreamer waking from a sleep. She looked at me, and I could tell she was trying to find careful words for what she had seen.

“It is rare”, she said, “for one like you to pass this way. And you are brave to leave your world and set out on this journey, to follow where you are being led. You have no goal, but you are willing to discover one. I am surprised, for this is not your way.”

Her words fit well.

“You seek, but you are also sought. The great injustice cannot be undone, but there may be recompense. Your mask is broken, but you may find another to serve you, though it is not here in our care, and I can’t see where it lies.”

Her words made sense, though I couldn’t imagine who might be seeking me.

She spoke again. “The undertone of what I saw is emptiness. I see you, and while you may be present in places or with people, you are not tied to them or to outcomes; they seem to be of no consequence to you and your path. I am sorry, for this is a hard way to have to journey.”

I could not have spoken there and then.

We rose from our seats, and I thanked Ayn.

“May you find a journey companion soon”, she whispered.

I said my goodbyes and stepped out into the market place once more. Night had fallen, but the square still bustled with activity. I made my way down the hill to the wharves, to find the floating stage.