She was alone, this child. This odd and terrible child. She was as alone as he was. More so than he, in fact, despite all his attempts to hide away. More so than a child that age could possibly realize.

Suddenly it came to Grandible that he would adopt her. The decision seemed to make itself without asking him. For long years he had refused to take an apprentice, knowing that any underling would only seek to betray and replace him. This child, however, was a different matter.

Tomorrow, he would organize a ceremony of apprenticeship with his strange, young captive. He would invent a parentage for her. He would explain that she had been scarred during a cheese-baking and had to keep her face bandaged. He would guide her pen to enter her name as “Neverfell Grandible” on the documents.

But today, before anything else, he would send out for a small, velvet mask.

DEFACED

On a certain murky hour about seven years after that fateful day, a skinny figure could be seen capering sideways beside Grandible as he growled and slouched his way through the tunnels with a great white loop of braided rope-cheese over one shoulder, and a ring of keys bristling in his fist.

She was no longer the little cheese-clotted scrap of life that blinked white lashes at Cheesemaster Grandible and so terrified him. Nor was she like her master, grim-jowled, solemn, and taciturn, dogged and careful in word and action. No, despite her best efforts she was a skinny, long-boned tangle of fidget and frisk, with feet that would not stay still, and elbows made to knock things off shelves. Her hair was twisted into a mass of short, twiggy red pigtails to keep it out of her face, the cheese, and everything else.

Seven years had passed. Seven years in the cheese tunnels, struggling after Grandible’s round-shouldered rolling gait with pails of milk or pots of hot wax. Seven years turning cheeses onto their bellies, cheddaring, clambering up the wide wooden shelves like a monkey, sniffing scoops of cheese paste for ripeness. Seven years learning to follow her nose through the darkened tunnels, for Cheesemaster Grandible was stingy with the trap-lanterns. Seven years of sleeping in a hammock strung between the shelves, her only lullaby the fluting of the Whitwhistle cheese as its emerald rind heaved and settled. Seven years of helping Grandible defend his territory from the murderous attempts of other cheesemakers. Seven years of tinkering and taking things apart to fill the unyielding hours, inventing curd-shredders and triple-whisks, and learning the pleasure of seeing cog obey cog.

Seven years in which Grandible never permitted her to step out of his private tunnels, even for a moment, and never let her meet anybody without wearing a mask.