面具的试炼 Trial of the Masks

作者：Jared Rosen

把世界想象成一面镜子。

Imagine the world as a mirror.

希维尔看着窗外的落叶，小口啜着玫瑰花瓣茶。茶水在她的舌尖轻舞。粉色的花瓣柔软轻巧。空气十分安静，天空一片灰蒙，希维尔的茅草房下方是坚硬的土地，将她禁锢在单一且无懈可击的现实中。

Sivir watches leaves fall outside her window, and sips tea flavored with rose petals. The liquid dances gently across her tongue. Its petals are delicate, pink, and soft. The air is still, and the sky is gray, and beneath Sivir’s thatch floor lies hard earth, grounding her upon a single and unnassailable reality.

这灰尘、这草坪、这家园、这村民都是她大半生所熟悉的——就在这小小的餐厅中，在她的小屋里，在宿寄麓村。他相信，这个世界不可能是一面镜子。这个世界实实在在。真真切切。

It is the dirt and the grass and the homes and the villagers she has been accustomed to for the majority of her life—here, in her small dining room, in her small cottage, in the small village of Sugiru. The world, she believes, cannot be a mirror. It is rigid. Concrete.

希维尔的世界是空无的倒影。

Sivir’s world is a reflection of nothing.

她尽力不去看房间的角落。

She avoids looking at the corner of the room.

那里有一个东西，就在现在。或许以前就有。或许明天也会有。一个完美无瑕、设计精巧的金色圆环——或者说是一个张牙舞爪的车轮，轮辐是丝线般锋利的刀刃。它是指南针，是星星，是武器，是钥匙。有人告诉她，它曾一度入土，而现在则已出土。

There is an object there, now. Perhaps it was there before. Perhaps it will be there tomorrow. A golden ring of immaculate, intricate design—or a monstrous wheel whose spokes are sharpened to a wire-thin killing edge. It is a compass, a star, a weapon, a key. It was buried once, someone told her, and now it is not.

斯维尔和这轮圆环一起度过了几个小时。她小啜玫瑰花瓣茶，她的茶杯举起来又放下，里面的水一点也没变少。破晓永远都没有来临，她窗外的树叶永远都在不停地落下。几小时变成了几天。几天变成了几年。希维尔把自己囚禁在这小小的餐厅中，在她的小屋里，在一个小村子里，在大海远方的小岛上，她的视线死死定在一处，她身上的肌肉在尖叫。

Hours pass between Sivir and the golden ring. She drinks tea flavored with rose petals, her cup never emptying as it rises and falls from her lips. Day never breaks, and the leaves outside her window never cease to fall. Hours become days. Days become years. Sivir grounds herself in her small dining room, in her small cottage, in a small village on a tiny island far out to sea, her vision locked in place, her muscles screaming.

希维尔偷偷瞥了一眼屋子的角落。那个圆环开始变大。

Sivir steals a glance at the corner of the room. The ring has begun to widen.

她体内的每一根神经都冻结了。那个车轮的中空部分坍缩成海洋，海水是流动着的黑夜。金色的圆框中，没有星光的空无向外延伸至无限的黑色地平线。一个老渔夫，在圆环深渊中显得格外突出，他在等待希维尔有生命的双眼，他们四目相对。他露出笑容，嘴巴绽放出千百颗牙齿。

Every synapse in her body freezes. The wheel’s empty center collapses into an ocean of liquid night. Framed with gold, a starless nothing stretches outward beyond an infinite, black horizon. An old fisherman, his shape stark within the ring’s abyss, awaits Sivir’s living eyes as they rise to meet his own. He grins, his mouth blooming into hundreds of teeth.

渔夫转过身，把他的长矛甩了出去，每一步都笨重无比，渔针无限向上画出弧线，然后落入波光粼粼的黑色海水之下。圆环继续扩大，黑水从它中间涌出。它填满了房间，填满了小屋，冲出了门窗。圆环切进了希维尔家的房顶，把建筑物从基石的贴面整齐地切下来，把小屋倚靠的崖壁从小岛上切除。希维尔跌进了海里，她映射于身体之下缺位的空无，以及她身边无处不在的空无，她看到那名渔夫的渔线牵住了什么东西，就在他们脚下深处。

The fisherman turns to cast his spear into space, each step ponderous, and the needle arcs endlessly upward, then down beneath the surface of glistening, obsidian waters. The ring continues to expand as ichor pours from its center. It fills the room, it fills the cottage, it bursts from the windows and doors. The ring slices into the roof of Sivir’s home, cutting the building’s facade from its foundation, cutting the cliff face it is stood on from the island itself. As she crashes into the sea, Sivir is reflected against the absence of nothing beneath her, the nothing all around her, and she watches the fisherman as his line catches on something, deep below their feet.

他稳健、坚定地把它向他们拖拽。

Steadily, surely, he begins to drag it towards them.

希维尔用手指抚摸圆环的边缘。切开伤口的时候没有疼痛，只有叹息、释怀。希维尔好奇地看着自己的鲜血沉入金属中——深沉的朱红色沿着圆环的表面延伸绽放，进入它迷宫般的雕纹中，向着中间无限蔓延的空无前进。圆环收缩了，传送门关闭了，黑暗发出温婉的流水声，然后被彻底放逐。

Sivir runs her finger across the edge of the golden ring. There is no pain as the cut opens, merely a sigh, a release. Sivir studies her blood as it sinks into the metal—a deep, blossoming vermillion that seems to stretch along its surface, down its labyrinthine engravings towards the ever-spreading emptiness at its center. The ring retracts; the portal closes, and the darkness burbles meekly before it is banished.

希维尔啜着玫瑰花瓣茶，看着窗外的落叶。密云散去，清晨变为白昼，树木在风中缓缓停下。她的茶杯侧边抹上了血渍。黑色的流体在她的地板上拖行。

Sivir drinks tea flavored with rose petals, and watches the leaves outside her window. The clouds begin to dissipate as morning turns to day, and the trees slowly settle against the wind. Blood is smeared along the side of her cup. Black fluid trails along her floor.

距离血月升起还有三天，一对双胞胎女孩刚刚消失在海滩的夜晚中。白昼漫长。希维尔回想起老者们的哀号，回想起他们的哭喊声刺穿了晚间的空气，回想起他们精心布置的送葬仪式，用密密麻麻的纸灯笼填进海浪——这是指引迷失灵魂回家的传统。两个小女孩的尸体始终没有找到。

It is three days before the rise of the blood moon, and a pair of twin girls has vanished along the beach at night. The day stretches. Sivir remembers how the elders wailed, how their cries punctured the evening air, and how their elaborate burial rites filled the waves with sputtering paper lanterns—an old tradition intended to guide lost souls home. The girls’ bodies were never recovered.

希维尔看着那个圆环静静地靠在她家的角落里。

Sivir watches the ring as it rests against the corner of her home.

它安静了。它满足了。暂时如此。

It is silent. Sated, for now.

肉体是不完整的。

The flesh is incomplete.

希维尔花了好几个小时才把圆环从木头中抠出来。她从来都没想过要停下，直到自己的手差点被割成两半，它闪亮的锋刃从一块古老的石头脚下突出来。当她抬头看天，白昼已经彻底过去，她不知道自己如何、以及为何在这里。

It took Sivir hours to dig the ring out of the woods. She hadn’t even known to stop until it almost cut her hand in half, its gleaming edge jutting from the foot of an old stone. When she looked up the day had fully passed, and it wasn’t clear how or why she had found herself there.

可能是希维尔把它带进了这座村子？很难想起来了。她的记忆似乎很遥远、很陌生，似乎那些记忆都沉在一座清澈的湖底，她能看到却进不去。希维尔把圆环拿到了岛屿的另一端，用沙子将它埋葬。希维尔把圆环拿到海边，将它扔进海里。

Sivir took it into the village, maybe? It is hard to recall. Her memories seem distant, unfamiliar, as though they rest at the bottom of a clear lake she can’t breach. Sivir takes the ring to the other side of the island and buries it with sand. Sivir takes the ring to the sea throws it in.

圆环总是会回来。安静地靠在她家铺满尘埃的角落，饥饿地只等她一人。每当希维尔注视它，圆环就一次次地打开，那名老渔夫衬着墨黑的静夜与她四目相对，然后开始将某种不具名的恐惧从世界的底端向上拖拽。

The ring always returns. Resting quietly against the dusty corner of her home, hungrily awaiting only her. And when Sivir gazes into it, the ring opens again and again, the old fisherman locking eyes with her against a still, atramentous midnight, and he begins to pull some nameless horror up from the bottom of the world.

有时希维尔认为自己已经死了。每当这个时候她就用大拇指揉搓口袋里的一对贝壳手镯，每条手镯都小巧精致，然后她会在一些噩梦的片段中找到一对小女孩，她们手牵着手，衬着被月光照亮的大海，漂浮在一片猩红上。

Sometimes Sivir thinks she is dead. She rubs her thumb along the matching shell bracelets in her pocket in those moments—each one small and delicate—and finds in some half-remembered nightmare a pair of girls, hand-in-hand, drifting crimson against the moonlit sea.

她和你同在。

She is with you.

希维尔生活在一座静谧岛屿的边缘，一条滨海的路上，俯瞰着一片小岛。她足够远离宿寄麓，可以躲避它每天的吵闹，又足够靠近宿寄麓，可以被接纳为村民的一员。当希维尔望向悬崖边缘，她每次都会看到自己拍烂在下面的岩石上。另一个不同的希维尔会从沙滩向上张望，她的双手被上百人的血染黑。

Sivir lives on a coastal road overlooking a small archipelago, on the far edge of a quiet island. She is remote enough from Sugiru to enjoy respite from its daily squabbles, and close enough to be accepted as a part of its community. When Sivir looks over the cliffs she sees herself smashed against the rocks below. A different Sivir will look up from the beach, her hands black with the blood of hundreds of people.

希维尔在一张棉花和稻草的床上醒来，距离血月升起还有两天。她窥视门廊尽头的另一个希维尔，她死死抓着金色圆环，手指只剩下一丝丝皮肉相连。她另一只手上拿着一个木质半截面具，面具头顶长着犄角，装饰着恶魔的容貌，然后她把面具戴到脸上。希维尔闭上双眼，当她再睁开的时候发现只有自己一人。

Sivir awakens on a bed made of cotton and straw, on the second day before the rise of the blood moon. She peers down the hall at still another Sivir, clutching the golden ring so tightly that her fingers hang by fleshy threads. Her free hand carries a horned, wooden half-mask emblazoned with the visage of a demon, and she begins to place it over her face. Sivir closes her eyes, and when she opens them she is alone.

希维尔的记忆经常互相重叠。大段大段的时间在她身后消失，而最近她又发现自己会站在室外，抬头望着那个空荡荡的、张着大嘴的天空。她穿过村庄，与村民们问好。她穿过森林，品味它的安静。她低下头，发现一个小时以前刚刚见过的人已经变成破碎的骷髅，但当她把自己摇醒，那个人却就站在她面前的港湾旁边，愁容满面。希维尔想象自己的双手环过他的脖子，然后用自己的牙齿撕开他的喉咙。

Sivir’s memories often overlap. Great lengths of time vanish behind her, and recently she has begun to find herself standing outdoors, gazing upwards at a blank and yawning sky. She walks through the village and greets its inhabitants; she walks through the forest and savors its quiet. She looks at her feet and finds the lacerated skull of a man she saw only an hour before, but when she shakes herself awake he stands in front of her at the harborside, brow furrowed in concern. Sivir imagines her hands wrapping around his neck, and ripping his throat out with her teeth.

她的手指伸展开，又弯回去。她的骨头刺穿了枯朽的靛蓝色和殷红色的血肉。巨大的犄角从她的头骨上刺出。她的皮肤开裂分离，她作为蛹的凡人身体终于承受不住，终于让位给下面真正的身躯，她通过自己燃烧的独眼怒嚎，悲伤的小动物们纷纷逃命。她逆着世界的转动，笨重的腿脚跨过时间，锯齿形的利爪割裂了无数身体渺小、拼命啃咬、苦苦哀求的东西。她剥去一栋房子的墙壁，落在了里面疯狂的人影中间，痛饮他们的尖叫，汹涌的血河冲刷她怪物般的影子，流向大海。

Her fingers stretch and bend, her bones piercing through flesh in blighted indigos and reds. Great horns burst from her skull; her skin cracks apart as the chrysalis of her mortal body finally gives in, finally gives way to the true body beneath, and she howls through her single flaming eye as sad, small creatures run for safety. She moves against the turning of the world, her feet pounding across time as serrated claws cut through tiny, gnawing, pleading things. She peels the walls off a building and falls upon the craven figures inside, drinking in their screams as thick rivers of blood pour past her monstrous shadow and into the sea.

希维尔突然发现自己来到了沙滩上，手指尖揉搓着死去的双胞胎女孩的贝壳手镯。

Sivir finds herself suddenly on the beach, rubbing dead girls’ shell bracelets between her fingers.

夜晚悄悄爬了上来。一瞬间过后又是一瞬间，太阳的光线渐渐消失在冰冷星辰的笼盖下，希维尔站在不动的黑色海洋前，无光的波浪翻滚着拍打她没有映像的镜中世界。

The night creeps in softly. Moment by moment, the sun’s rays vanish beneath a blanket of cold stars, and Sivir stands before the black static of the ocean, its lightless waves roiling against her reflectionless mirror world.

你真正的面目。

Your true face.

渔夫的长枪呼啸着穿过大片的空荡。他甩出渔线的时候光和声音都失效了，渔线的重量沉入他脚下的无底裂口。他的海是没有尽头的海，无限虚无的孪生倒影，无名纪元的失落坟墓。他的微笑中带着远古鲨鱼的饥饿。

The fisherman’s spear sings across a vast emptiness. Light and sound fail as he casts his line, its heft sinking down into the bottomless chasm above which he stands. His is a sea without end, twin reflections of an infinite nihility, the grave of a lost and nameless epoch. He smiles with the hunger of an ancient shark.

他的渔钩被紧紧咬住，他开始将一个巨大的物体从深深的下面向上拖拽。

His hook sticks fast, and he begins to pull a great shape up from far below.

一寸接一寸，一秒接一秒，高山一般轮廓清晰的黑影从渔夫背后的黑色地平线渐渐浮现。那是一座高塔，一座要塞，一轮太阳。粘稠的黑水从里面缓缓涌出，无穷无尽。密不透风的黑暗形成一面高墙，顺着海底的深渊延伸过来。长枪从那个物体的表面剥离开来，上面插着一个木制的面具。

Inch by inch, second by second, a mountainous silhouette emerges from beyond the edges of the fisherman’s black horizon. It is a tower, a fortress, a sun; thick ichor sloughs from it without end, a great wall of impenetrable darkness dragged along from some forgotten pelagic abyss. The spear tears loose from the object’s surface, a wooden mask impaled along its tip.

血月升起的前一天，希维尔把面具戴到脸上。

One day before the night of the blood moon, Sivir places the mask over her face.

下落。

Descend.

希维尔是希维尔，而希维尔又不是。

Sivir is Sivir, and Sivir is not.

在血月的红光之下，希维尔沿着早已被废弃的宿寄麓的小路行走，一只手紧紧握着金色圆环，另一只手拿着面具。任何细微的声音都让她肌肉抽动。她体内的器官不自然地运转，小石子被打磨光滑，冲刷它们的是生物海洋不受时间左右的前进浪潮。

In the red light of the blood moon, Sivir walks the paths of a long-deserted Sugiru, clutching the golden ring in one hand, and a mask in the other. Her muscles twitch at the slightest sound. Her organs pop unnaturally, pebbles washed smooth by the timeless advance of a biological sea.

她周围全都是尸体。一千个坏掉的玩偶，它们张开手臂的样子透着恐怖的狂喜，定格在某种奇特扭曲的祈祷仪式中，呼唤着早已缺位的主人、家族的神明、和祖先的灵魂。这些受害者是一座精巧的花园——这些祭品、他们卷曲的手掌，都是黑暗、奢华的丰收之花，用来献给那些名讳无人敢懂的神明。有些人还没有完全死去，他们的手指在轻柔地抓取空无。

All around her are bodies. A thousand broken dolls, their arms outstretched in hideous ecstasy, frozen in some grotesque invocation of long-absent patrons, house gods, and ancestor spirits. These victims are a delicate garden—these offerings, their curled palms, are the blossoms of a dark and sumptuous harvest given in the name of entities too terrible to understand. Some aren’t completely dead, and their fingers grasp gently at nothing.

血月落下。

The blood moon descends.

它比希维尔想象的还要大——实在太大，如同一轮巨型猩红色球体笼罩在她群龙无首的失落岛屿上。它没有在海面上投下倒影，因为没有任何东西与它同等，它遮蔽了真正的月亮，将其整个吞下。它的饥饿如巨像，无休无止、无法消除。

It is larger than Sivir imagined it—too large, looming as a great crimson sphere over her lost and rudderless island. It casts no reflection against the sea, for it has no equal; it shadows the true moon and devours it whole, its hunger colossal, unending, unquenched.

希维尔放下了木质面具和金色圆环。她跪倒在这倒映的摇篮下，它的中心是拍打的羽翼和翻滚的鲜血混成的海洋。一个巨大的人影在其中蠢蠢欲动：作为人类孪生灵魂的孤独恶魔后裔，人模人样的伟大恶魔从他的光明子宫里滑落，月亮的胚胎外壳同时破裂。巨大的人形掉进海浪中——手持恶毒的刀剑，翅膀拍打的声音如同开裂的冰川。曾经入土，而现已出土。

Sivir drops the wooden mask and the golden ring. She falls to her knees beneath this mirrored cradle, its center a bounding main of beating wings and boiling, rippling blood. A great figure stirs within: the lone demonic progeny of humanity’s twinned soul, a great demon in the shape of a man, sliding from his womb of light as the moon’s embryonic shell breaks open. The massive figure falls into the waves—a wicked blade in his hand, wings flapping with the sound of cracking glaciers. Buried once, and now not.

希维尔简短地想象她窗外的落叶，还有玫瑰花瓣茶，还有一座小岛上的小屋，现在看起来是那么渺小。她想象海边的孪生女孩，她们破碎的尸体漂过了某个苍白、消瘦的假倒影，一个古老、不可唤名的东西站在她面前，衬着血染的夜说出黑暗的低语。

Briefly, Sivir imagines the leaves outside her window, and tea flavored with rose petals, and a small cottage on a small island that seems now so, so small. She imagines the girls by the sea, their shattered bodies floating past the reflection of some pale, inadequate pretender, and the dark whispers of an ancient, unnameable thing, standing before her in the bloodstained night.

她抬起头，把世界想象成一面镜子。

She raises her head, and imagines the world as a mirror.

月亮轻轻抚摸希维尔的两个面孔，将其包裹。

The moon caresses Sivir’s two faces, and envelops them.