The Mask Carver's Son Read Online Free

tightly to his chest, not out of brotherly love but rather out of a savage yearning to keep himself warm. It is there that he whispers, with his breath hot in the younger boy’s ear, of his plans to leave the next day for the city, to find work and be free of this misery.
    “I will come back for you, brother,” he says.
    But he never did.
    *   *   *
    It is a month or two later that he finds himself alone in the woods. He has learned to fashion a chisel by hand. He binds a piece of flint to a stick with rope and practices carving on scraps of wood.
    He carves nothing but faces. He has no image in his head, and he has no schooling in the craft. The faces simply reveal themselves in the wood. He strips the layers of bark away like a surgeon. He unearths the faces from their slumber with the swiftness of his hand.
    One might think that he carves only sad faces, but he does not. He has no control over what he carves. He does not dictate to his chisel. He only follows.
    *   *   *
    No one knows of his talent. He hides it. It is something that is precious to him, and he fears that it will be taken away. His fingers blister. Callused palms and bleeding skin. But he feels no pain. He feels nothing at all. Nothing except the sensation of wood between his hands.
    The faces carved from the wood become his family. They are eternal and will never die. He wraps them in rags and buries them in the soil. “I won’t abandon you,” he whispers to them as he smooths the earth over their shallow grave. “I promise that I will always return.”
    *   *   *
    He carves faces of young women and wizened old men. He carves warriors and demons with horns. Yet he uses no pattern. The lines of the wood are his only map, his guide to what he believes is his salvation.
    He believes that he is alone in the world. The image of his mother and father becomes less clear. He can no longer remember the exact curve of his mother’s smile, the precise length of her hair. He tries to recall the pitch of her laughter, the smoothness of her voice.
    She is fading from his memory. He carries only stones in the cavity of his mind. His head is heavy but empty. There are no more colors. The young boy has been consumed. His hands are all that remains. The hands with a rhythm of their own.
    *   *   *
    One day a priest appears, draped in white linen, his shaved head covered by a hat made of straw. He sees the boy in the distance, his back round as a boulder, his head bowed to his knees.
    He holds his breath and raises his sandals carefully with each step. Peering over the tiny shoulder and craning his neck to get a better view, he discovers a boy carving. The boy is whittling a face out of a block of wood.
    It is not an ordinary face. It is not one that is recognizable to his trained eye. Yet it is extraordinary all the same. It is haunting. It is in the process of being born.
    The planes of the face are smooth and supple. The cheeks gently sloping, the forehead high and round. But it is the eyes, staring wide and wild, that are the most disturbing, bulging pupils and raised lids. It is a face whose spirit cannot be contained.
    The priest is speechless. He has not seen a mask like this in more than thirty years. He feels himself tremble. He feels his fingers tingle and his wrists begin to cramp.
    He too was a carver, a long, long time ago.
    *   *   *
    He befriends the young boy. At first the boy is frightened and tries to flee. He is like a wild animal feeling threatened by an unfamiliar predator. The priest does not try to follow him. He remains where he first glimpsed the boy carving. He stands there and waits. He waits until the young boy returns.
    “I call myself Tamashii,” the priest says in a solemn voice, “and the forest is my temple. If you will listen, I shall share my story with you. And you might learn something from me.”
    It is a long and complicated story. There are elements that the young boy will not comprehend until