Beckman threw something she caught easily. When she turned back, Alex saw it was a flat, brassy metal disc. She held it up at arm’s length and sighted along it toward some point in the sky, then drew it back toward her and fiddled minutely with it, muttering. Within the outer disc, several flat concentric plates were housed, all elaborately inscribed. She dialed one around a few notches, held the thing to the sky again, and nodded, satisfied.

As she tucked it away in her coat, she caught Alex’s eye. “Not seen one of those before? That’s a computer, rabbit. A proper computer, one that tells you important things, not like the distractions you play with.” She turned away. “Continue, Hans.”

Beckman and the life-sizer had removed the casket’s lid. Now they slid away the side panels to reveal the body stretched out within.

The tall man.

He lay on a red velvet base, arms folded across his chest, hands loosely joined over his cane’s silvery handle. His black coat was folded like a pillow under his head, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up over his forearms, exposing pale skin covered in interconnecting swirls of illegible black writing. The edge of a thick, dark patch of scars just barely showed on the underside of one arm.

But it was the man’s face that made Alex shiver most. Or, rather, the lack of a face. A rigid white mask covered his visage entirely, from hairline to chin. It appeared molded to replicate the features hidden beneath, but was utterly, eerily, expressionless. There were two eyeholes cut in the mask.

The body seemed lifeless. But Alex thought about the thin layer of mist on the window of the coffin’s lid and stared harder, then started in fright when the eyes behind the blank mask snapped open, as dark and wild as the heavens above.

XXXIII.

GATE, LOCK, KEY

“Look at you, all lost in the woods,” Zia called to Alex. She shifted the flower so it stood by the gate structure with its single leaf touching the old wood, then scooped up some of the surrounding dirt and poured it into the pot, patting it around the stem. As she worked, she sang reassuringly to the plant: “We’re poor wittle wabbits who’ve wost our way . . .

“Scared, yes?” she continued happily, smiling over her shoulder. She stood, wiping her palms on a silk handkerchief bearing a checkerboard pattern of purple and black.

“What’s . . . wrong with him?” Alex still stared at the figure on the ground. The eyes behind the mask burned with an awful frenzy. The flesh Alex glimpsed around them looked ravaged.

“What’s wrong?” Zia suddenly exploded. “Look at him, dumb-dumb! See what you did! The fire came down on him. It would have killed anyone else. Straight to dust. But we have protection, Thumper.” She gestured to the plant.