Young Immortals

Eleven: Flashback #3

"Your name?"

I did not panic when the strange voice woke me up in a dingy chamber that I did not remember falling asleep in, wearing a maid uniform that I had never seen in my life. Not did I panic when I tried to brush a hair from my face and felt cool metal where there should have been skin. 

No, the panic set in when I looked into the pocket mirror mounted crooked against the door and saw a line inscribed into the side of my copper mask.

 Born in flesh, buried in copper. Her life is the price, for however short that may be.

My chest constricted, like two walls compounding on my lungs. I staggered back and scrambled for the door handle. I left the cramped chamber, desperate for fresh air, only to stop dead in my tracks. A faint wisp of light floated in front of the hallway, taking the shape of a spirit. 

Its voice was a low hiss as if a sputtering candle tried to speak. "Your name?"

"There's been a mistake," I burst out. "Please, if you let me leave, my family will pay you ten times the sum paid to Ivan –" 

The spirit turned, then floated across the floor and through the stone wall, leaving me gaping at the empty corridor. A moment later, a fey knight strolled through the entryway, his helmet lowered so I could only see yellow eyes glowing from the shadows of his visor. 

He marched me and nine other fresh recruits outside the perimeter of the castle, stopping at the border between the gardens and the woods to cuff each of our ankles to a large oak tree. Madame watched over us in silence, ignoring all pleas for explanation or release. She gave us a cursory glance, then turned her back on us and strode back indoors, abandoning us to the woods. 

For the next twenty-four hours, I sat around the oak tree, trading stories with the other new coppers and picking splinters from the soles of my feet. We were all barefoot because for some reason, in addition to our faces, Madame saw fit to rob us of our shoes. But nothing of real consequence happened until the first licks of dawn pierced through the branches. 

Then our masks began to tighten.

At first, it only itched, then my head pounded as the copper grounded into my skull, crushing the bone inward. Madame returned to watch in silence. She let us figure out for ourselves that our mask would only let up the pressure once we stepped back into palace grounds, but not before two coppers died. 

The rest of us either strained against our ankle binds, moving as far into palace grounds as possible, or slumped on the grass, gasping and twitching, scratching at the copper mask that was now permanently gelded to our bodies, as much a part of us as an arm or a leg.

I lay next to a gnome. His foot had landed on my ankle, but both of us were too tired to move. We scarcely had a moment to catch our breath before a shadow fell over us, and Madame planted her boot on the gnome's chest. 

"What lesson did we learn today?" she asked.

His mouth screwed into a sneer. "That you're a cold-hearted—"

She rolled him over the perimeter and held him there until he stopped shrieking. Then she planted her boot on my chest, her pointed heel digging into my ribs like a knife. "What lesson did we learn today?"

It was clear to me, then, what was going on. This was an initiation of sorts, in which Madame set out to permanently strike all ideas of disobedience or escape from our vocabulary. 

"Stepping outside of palace grounds for longer than a day will kill a copper," I said.

Her eyes narrowed, and she increased the pressure on her heel, shifting more of her weight onto my ribs. She was getting ready to kick me over the perimeter.