A Face Like Glass Read Online Free PDF

still in their blue shells, he let her hold the picture. It showed a small house peeping wary-windowed through a veil of trees, with a forest
hill rising behind. There was a whitish hole in the sky, brighter than the rest.
    ‘That’s the sun, isn’t it?’ she asked, pointing.
    ‘Yes – that’s why there’s nobody outdoors in the picture. You know about that, don’t you? The sun burns people. And lots of them have to go out to work in
the fields, but if they’re out too long their skin burns red and painful and then it falls off . And none of them can ever look up because the sun is too bright, and if they do it burns
their eyes out and they go blind.’
    He glanced sideways at Neverfell as he unpeeled one of the eggs, revealing the fine, snowflake-like patterns across its caramel-coloured surface.
    ‘Look at you, jumpy as a sick rat. You know, it’s just as well I come here, or you’d go crazy. Grandible will be sorry some day he’s locked you up like this with no
company. You’ll go proper crazy and kill him.’
    ‘Don’t say things like that!’ squeaked Neverfell, her voice shrill with distress, but also a touch of outrage. She had told Erstwhile too much in the past, and thus he knew
that occasionally she did go crazy. Sometimes it was when she felt particularly trapped or hopeless, or when the tunnels were unusually dark or stuffy, or when she got stuck in a
crawl-through. Sometimes it happened for no obvious reason at all. She would feel a terrible panic tightening her chest and giving her heart a queasy lollop, she would be fighting for breath . . .
and then she would be recovering somewhere, shuddering and sick, devastation around her and her fingernails broken from clawing at the rock walls and ceilings.
    She could remember almost nothing of her fits afterwards, except a desperation for light and air. Not greenish trap-lantern light or the dull red drowsing of embers, but a chilly, searing
immensity staring down at her from above. Not the ordinary, homely, pungent air of the cheese tunnels, but air that smelt of big and had somewhere to be. Air that jostled and roared.
    Erstwhile cackled at her dismay, his good humour restored.
    ‘All right. That’s long enough.’ He took back the picture, tucked it in his jacket and settled down to cutting his egg in half, exposing its creamy, dark turquoise yolk.
‘You want to know about Madame Appeline?’
    Neverfell nodded.
    ‘Easy. I know all about her . She’s one of the best-known Facesmiths in Caverna. Probably about seventy years old now, though she hasn’t aged in forty years. The other
Facesmiths hate her like poison – even more than they hate each other – because she didn’t become a Facesmith through a proper apprenticeship like everybody else. About seven
years ago she was a nobody, just some back-cave feature-twitcher teaching pretty smiles for pocket money. Then all of a sudden she brought out her Tragedy Range.’
    ‘Tragedy Range?’ Neverfell’s mind flitted to the haggard look she had glimpsed for an instant behind Madame Appeline’s smile.
    ‘Yeah. You see, before that everybody used to hire Facesmiths because they wanted to have the newest, brightest smile, or the most lordly glare. The Tragedy Range wasn’t like that.
It had sad Faces. Hurt Faces. Brave Faces. They weren’t always pretty, but they made people look deep and interesting like they had a secret sorrow. The Court went crazy over them.
She’s been famous ever since.’
    ‘But what’s she like? I mean . . . is she nice? Is she trustworthy?’
    ‘Trustworthy?’ Erstwhile picked his teeth. ‘She’s a Facesmith . Everything about her is fake. And for sale.’
    ‘But . . . Faces have to come from somewhere, don’t they?’ persisted Neverfell. ‘The feelings behind them, I mean. So . . . perhaps something happened to her seven years
ago, something tragic, and that’s why she suddenly came up with all these Faces?’
    Erstwhile shrugged. He was