Caleb sat by the window in his father's shop, staring at the face peering out from the block of wood. He was supposed to be repairing the Lady Leticia's armoire. The armoire lay in pieces, the glue pot unopened, as he sat amidst the shavings of the carving he held in his hands. He was not supposed to be carving. He was most certainly not supposed to be carving an Unreal Figure. He knew where that would end.
The face was at once familiar, but also clearly not human. He knew the curve of the chin, the snub-nose, the curl of the smile, the waves of hair the color of the fine oak block he held in his hands, the same color as his own. But no human face had such sharp cheekbones, no human ears reached such points.
"Caleb," his sister called from the back of the shop.
"It's not done yet," he replied, still staring at the face. She would be coming. He should put the block away, but he couldn't. He'd hidden it from her for so long, but there was no need to hide the truth any longer. His eyes ached; the borders of his vision blurred. Almost an Unreal Figure. Almost.
"Why aren't they? The Lady'll sent word she be coming at Sext, and Matins rang long ago –"
Carissa, his twin sister, swept from the back into the front of the shop, and her voice cut off abruptly. Looking up from the carving, he looked at her, knowing he should try to hide the carving, knowing he should feel guilt, knowing he should feel fear.
"You aren't," she said, staring at the block of wood in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"You promised." Her voice shook.
"I can't stop." Truly, he couldn't. He would pick up the tools, a piece of wood, intending to make clogs, and a shape would appear in the wood, and his hands moved of his own accord, curls of wood peeling away from the chisel, revealing the Unreal Figure trapped within...
"You can't, Caleb!" she cried out, fearfully. "What will become of the shop? And Father and Lucinda?"
"You know they will be taken care of..." Caleb said. True, yet a lie.
"Father will go mad! You know he will! Mad, Caleb, mad with grief, if you lose us both to the Makers! Just like Pol's da did."
Pol. The blacksmith's son. He and Caleb had been friends, they'd known each other and played together when they were small. Then Pol had started to help at his father's forge, and grown strong and smelled of iron and smoke, while Caleb had grown clever with his hands, and smelled of linseed oil and wood shavings.
Three years ago, Pol had made an Unreal Figure.
It was written in the Commandments of the Book of the Maker: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is not in the Void above, or that is not seen on the Earth beneath, or that is not found in the Water. For the Makers in Heaven alone made the Sun and the Stars and the World, and all the True Things in it. Only to the Makers are given the power to make the True Things..."
The Priests and Priestesses of the Maker held the commandment to mean that artists and craftsmen and craftswomen could make no Unreal Figures; no fanciful fire-breathing beasts, no purple trees, no women with tails of fish, or half-men, half horses. Only Real Figures, carvings or paintings or drawings of real persons, or beasts, or plants or images of the world or sea or sky. Only these, the Priests and Priestesses claimed, did not violate the Commandments.
Most of those who might desire to make an Unreal Figure, couldn't. The Makings, be they stone or paper or wood, even of such a prosaic but actual object as a leaf, or a piece of fruit, could not hold the shape of an Unreal Figure, and melted, or burned, or turned into stinking puddles of goo. As Pol and Caleb's childhood games, played out of hearing of their elders, turned into fancies of carving a mermaid, or forging a half-man, half-horse, they learned as much, to their dismay.
Still, there were a rare few who could make Unreal Figures. Hands of the Makers, they were called. Hands, and by extension their families, were viewed with a mixture of dread and awe by the villagers. The Priests and Priestesses of the Maker claimed the Hands were marked by the gifts of the Maker, and took them for their own. But there was a price. Oh yes. Pol had made an Unreal Figure, and the Makers took his sight, and his younger brother Peter had to be his eyes forever more. Some said that the blindness mirrored that of the first Maker, who Made the World in the Void; others claimed the Priests blinded them for their transgressions against the Makers. No one had spoken to Pol to ask; The Priesthood had taken them both away, and they were never seen again.
The Priesthood of the Makers were generous to the families of the Hands. Pol's father, the blacksmith, had wanted for nothing; the Priesthood had given him money enough to live on in comfort. That should have been a comfort, for the smith had lost his wife not long before, and he had no other children than Pol and Peter to train to the smithy, and he could not bring himself to smith alone. But with nothing left to live for, he took to drink, and drank his life away only a year after Pol's Making.
Caleb had wondered what Pol had Made. Rumor, suppressed by the Priesthood, claimed that a thing Made became part of the world, even if it had never before been. He thought back to their childhood games. Had Pol made a dragon? Or would a ship be lured to its death by the siren call of a mermaid? Or would a band of centaurs charge forth from the forest and sack the village? He wondered if the obsession had taken Pol as it had taken him. Had it come to Pol slowly, a vision building over time? Had he seen a dragon or serpent in his unforged metals? What, if anything, had Pol thought of what the Making would take from him, or his father? Pol might have thought it would turn out well, but Caleb knew better. Their mother was long dead. His father was old to run the shop without Caleb and Carissa, Luci still too young to help him. Yes, they would be taken care of...
The fear and the anger and the longing, suppressed these long months, suddenly took Caleb. "What would you have me do?" he shouted. "The temptation is all around me! Visions in every board, every block of wood! I see her in my dreams! I wake, and find a chisel in hand! I don't want this gift, but 'lest I strike my own hand off, I can't help it!"
Carissa stood, tears leaking down her face. "What if I won't see for you?" she whispered. "I'll leave you blind. Who will see for you then? Who will keep you from being struck by a cart-horse in the middle of the road? Who will keep you from wandering into the forest and drowning in the river? What then?"
Both of them knew these were lies. Twins, they had been inseparable even after birth. Carissa would see for him, as he would for her, were their positions switched. She would never leave him.
Carissa covered her eyes and sobbed silently. Caleb's anger seeped out of him. He did not understand why the Makers tested their flock by granting this back-handed gift. He knew his obsession would bring his da to ruin, rob Luci of her family, consign Carissa to seeing for herself and for him. He knew that he would lose his sight. But the knowledge was nothing next to his obsession with the shape of the woman in the wood, the woman with thin features, slanted eyes, high brows, and sharp, pointed ears, the shape that begged to be set free from its wooden prison, that would not be denied.
"You see? Almost done," he whispered, bending over the figure one last time. As he chiseled the last of her features free, he could sense the world dimming further. He knew he should cherish the last of his sight, should look out at the sunlit street, look at the shop, look at his sobbing sister, but he didn't. Instead, he concentrated, whittling away the last few slivers of unnecessary wood, until all he could see was the Unreal Figure with Carissa's face, Carissa whom he loved best of anything in his life, starting out at him from the block of wood.
