A Face Like Glass Read Free

so that Master Grandible would have no reason to lock her out of sight before the visitor arrived.
    She felt her throat tighten, and had to blink back the blur of tears. Master Grandible stared at her and nothing changed in his face. No light moved in his eyes. Perhaps he was going to strike
her. Or for all she knew perhaps he was just thinking of Cheddar.
    ‘Go and put your mask on, then,’ he growled, and scowled away down the corridor. ‘And no gabbling when she arrives.’
    Neverfell did not waste an instant wondering at his change of heart, but scampered away to extricate her black mask from the heap of tools, ragged catalogues and disembowelled clocks under her
hammock. The pile of the velvet was now rough and flattened by years of greasy handling.
    It was a full-face mask with silver brows and a silver mouth closed in a polite smile. It had painted eyes, each with a little hole in the centre for her to peer through. She pushed her pigtails
back, and tied the mask in place with its frayed black ribbon.
    Once, many years before, she had dared to ask why she had to wear a mask when visitors came. Grandible’s response had been blunt and searing.
    For the same reason that a sore wears a scab.
    In that moment she had realized that she must be hideous. She had never asked again. From then on she had lived in dread of her own blurry reflection in the copper pots, flinched from the pale
and wobbly visage that greeted her indistinctly in the whey pails. She was a horror. She must be. She was too horrible to be allowed out of Grandible’s tunnels.
    However, deep in Neverfell’s tangle of a mind there was a curious little knot of stubbornness. In truth, she had never resigned herself to the idea of a life spent cloistered away among
Stiltons. Thus when she had discovered the identity of the woman who had so confidently invited herself to tea a small bubble of hope had formed in Neverfell’s mind.
    Neverfell flung off her leather apron, and hurried on the jacket with all the buttons or near enough. She had barely had time to make herself presentable when she heard the door’s string
of bells ring to announce the arrival of Madame Vesperta Appeline, the celebrated Facesmith.
    Facesmiths could only be found in Caverna. The outer world had no need of them. It was only in the labyrinthine underground city of Caverna that babies did not smile.
    In the overground world, babies that stared up at their mother’s faces gradually started to work out that the two bright stars they could see above them were eyes like their own, and that
the broad curve was a mouth like theirs. Without even thinking about it, they would curve their mouths the same way, mirroring their mothers’ smiles in miniature. When they were frightened or
unhappy, they would know at once how to screw up their faces and bawl. Caverna babies never did this, and nobody knew why. They looked solemnly at the face above them, and saw eyes, nose, mouth,
but they did not copy its expressions. There was nothing wrong with their features, but somehow one of the tiny silver links in the chain of their souls was missing. They had to be forced to learn
expressions one at a time, slowly and painfully, otherwise they remained blank as eggs.
    These carefully taught expressions were the Faces. Those at the cheapest crèches learned only a handful of Faces, all suitable for their station, for what need had they of more? Richer
families sent their children to better nurseries where they would learn two or three hundred Faces. Most Cavernans spent their lives making do with the Faces they had learned in infancy, but the
affluent elite sometimes hired Facesmiths, specialist Face-designers, to teach them new expressions. Among the fashionable elite, a new, beautiful or interesting Face could cause more of a stir
than a string of black pearls or a daring hat.
    This was Neverfell’s first opportunity to meet a Facesmith, and her heart was punching against her ribs with