Eyes Like Stars (18 page)

to the stage

with The Book!

Bertie folded the note in thirds, not wanting any passersby to be able to read her message, and wrote Ariel’s
name on the outside, underlining it twice for emphasis and nearly ripping a hole in the paper.

“Come on, let’s go.” She turned around, expecting the fairies to be gorging themselves on sticky toffee pudding or swimming in a pot of cheese fondue, but the refreshment table was oddly devoid of nourishment; not even crumbs dotted the surface of the tablecloth.

“What the heck is up with this?” Mustardseed said, his fists on his hips and his eyes accusatory.

Bertie faltered. Even the fairies at their most ravenous couldn’t clear the refreshment table so thoroughly. Worse yet, no coal fire burned in the stove, the bouquets rotted in their vases, and the clock had run down, as though the unseen, grandmotherly caregiver had abandoned the Green Room. “Maybe the Mariners just came through here. You know what they’re like when they disembark.”

“Something feels very, very wrong about this, Bertie.” Moth backed away as though the table crawled with vermin, or worse, carrot sticks and broccoli. “Wrong-er than Mariners.”

“There’s nothing in the sugar bowl but dust!” Peaseblossom said.

“I can’t worry about that now!” Bertie stuck the fountain pen behind her ear and dashed back to the Call Board, pulled out a brass thumbtack, and jammed it through
the note, wishing it was a sword she could use to skewer her foe. “Come on! We have to get to the stage to see if this worked.”

It was the same route that the Players took every night of a performance: Open the backstage door, climb a shallow set of black-painted stairs whose edges were lined with phosphorescent gaffer’s tape, wend around large coils of rope, brush past the heavy weight of the velvet curtains, traverse the red-gelled glow of the Stage Manager’s corner where his headset hung on a hook. The space around the pedestal radiated cold. Bereft of The Book’s golden light, the dust motes lay on the floor as though dead.

“Heigh-ho, Ariel!” Bertie strode onto the stage. “Come out, come out wherever you are, you bastard.”

“How long before he gets here?” Mustardseed asked.

“Sh!” Bertie commanded, flapping her hands at them. “I think I hear something.”

As one, they strained their ears, trying to discern anything unusual, anything that would indicate Ariel’s arrival. Bertie thought she could just make out a low whistle when Peaseblossom jerked her to one side by her hair.

“Move!”

Eyes smarting at the assault, Bertie stepped back seconds before something smashed into the spot where she’d been standing. “What the hell?”

It was one of the sandbags Mr. Tibbs used to counter-weight
the scenery, ripped down one side and disgorging its contents onto the stage. A length of sturdy rope, frayed at the end, trailed behind it.

Bertie squinted into the gloom overhead. Though she couldn’t locate the source of the sudden malfunction, her instincts pointed an accusing finger. “It has to be Ariel.”

All four fairies launched themselves upward in pursuit, but she couldn’t follow without a harness and someone to hoist her aloft. Instead, Bertie paced the stage, heaping foul oaths upon Ariel for stealing The Book, on Ophelia for putting the idea in his head, on the Theater Manager for trying to kick her out. . . .

“He’s not up there,” Mustardseed said as the fairies returned to encircle her troubled brow.

“We looked all the way up to the ceiling!” Moth said.

“How can he ignore a note on the Call Board?” Bertie demanded. “Unless—”

“Unless he’s already torn his page out,” said Cobweb.

“Unless he’s already gone,” Peaseblossom whispered, clasping her little hands together.

Bertie gripped either side of her head, as much to squeeze the thought out as to force some inspiration in. “Where did he leave The Book, then?”

“Beats me,” Mustardseed said. It bespoke their disconcertion that the other boys didn’t immediately take him up on the offer.

“Now what?” Bertie felt she’d used up all her ingenuity on the Call Board summons.

“When I lose stuff, I’m supposed to retrace my steps,” Mustardseed said.

Cobweb landed on the stage just so he could jump up and down. “Oh! Oh! You could try acting it out.”

“That’s dumb. She doesn’t have a script,” said Moth. “You can’t act something that doesn’t have a script.”

“Hold on.” The idea fluttered through Bertie’s head like one of Ariel’s butterflies. “That might just work.”

“It might?” said Cobweb, taken aback. Recovering, he turned and shoved Moth. “See? It might!”

Bertie borrowed the Stage Manager’s clipboard and started to scribble on its top sheet with the fountain pen. It was difficult to remember everything that she and Ariel had said; some moments were hazy—
curse that “Drink Me” bottle!
—but Bertie thought she had most of it by the time she pulled the page off.

“I know everything except the end,” she said. “Maybe if we act it out far enough, we can figure out what he did with The Book. I can play myself, but I need someone to be Ariel.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Peaseblossom. “I don’t do elemental.”

“Or me,” said Moth. “I don’t do antihero.”

Bertie sighed and held out the inky excuse for a script. “Someone has to play Ariel.”

Nate entered from Stage Left. “I’ll do it.”

Bertie considered escape routes, praying this was a soup-induced nightmare while the fairies considered the recasting.

“You’re a little tall to play Ariel,” said Moth.

“And you have way too many muscles,” said Mustardseed.

“But you might be able to pull it off,” Cobweb said, “if you can look really constipated.”

Nate reached for the page in Bertie’s hand, but she pulled it back and started to crumple it up.

“It was a half-baked idea.” She struggled to sound dismissive instead of frantic. “There’s no way it’s going to tell me anything I don’t know already. The ending has to be written out.”

“We’ll improvise that bit,” he said.

“We haven’t checked everywhere,” she protested.

“I have.” Nate reached for the makeshift script again.

“Why were you looking for Ariel?” Bertie demanded.

All of Nate’s muscles flexed at once. “I was going t’ wring his neck.”

“For stealing The Book?”

“Fer—” Nate blinked as the conversation shifted gears. “He stole Th’ Book?”

“Lose the sword!” suggested Moth, still trying to give Nate an Ariel-makeover.

“Ariel took The Book,” Bertie explained with reluctance. “We need to get it back before anyone realizes it’s missing.”

“An’ if he’s not in th’ theater?” Nate pried the script out of her grasp. “Mayhap he’s torn his page out an’ fled.”

“Scene change,” Peaseblossom said into the headset. “The Properties Department.”

Shelves slid into place, each one burdened with a glittering assortment of props. The “Drink Me” bottle sat Center Stage, sparkling in a soft pink spotlight. A golden glow emanated from under Marie Antoinette’s chaise.

“Nate,” Bertie said, “I really, really don’t want to do this.”

“Ye want t’ find The Book, aye?” He leaned forward until his stubble tickled her ear. “Then take yer place.”

Bertie made a strangled noise of protest as he moved into the wings. Against the advice of every screaming instinct, she knelt at Center Stage.

Where’s an asp when I really need one?

The lights cut to a blackout. A warm amber wash slowly faded up as Nate made his entrance, divested of coat, sash, and sword. While he couldn’t quite manage the air elemental’s catlike grace, his boots made nary a sound against the floorboards.

“I thought I might find you here,” Nate said with Ariel’s inflections.

“What do you want, Ariel? Come to gloat?”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Nate read.

Bertie-as-herself shook her head. “Actually, I do. I’d like three seconds to myself without noise, chaos, or crisis.”

“That’s hardly welcoming.”

“That’s because it wasn’t an invitation.”

“Skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead,” yelled Peaseblossom.

Moth signaled the orchestra, and unseen musicians launched into the tango.

Bertie’s lower intestine tied itself into a knot, but she followed her stage directions and stood up. “Shall we dance?”

Nate pulled her close. “I think it’s customary for the man to lead.”

“So lead on, pretty boy.”

Bertie wished one of the trapdoors would open up and swallow her, but Nate-as-Ariel led her into a fluid tango, as full of grace as the original but without the hallucinations of Spanish buildings or jetting fountains.

The scrimshaw’s bone-magic seeped into Bertie’s chest, except she wasn’t sure she needed it this time. Though Nate had assumed Ariel’s demeanor and his words, though his eyes got progressively darker, he’d never stood before her so completely unmasked. He twirled her out just when he ought—

I may hold ye at arm’s length. . . .

—and pulled her back when the music called for it.

But I want ye t’ be mine an’ mine alone.

“Are you ready for the finale?” Nate’s voice tightened as he dipped her.

“No!” She tried to twist out of his grasp.

He held her fast and shook his head. “That’s not yer line.”

“Nate—”

The light poured over his shoulders. “I’m not Nate right now. I’m a spirit. I’m th’ wind.”

“You’re not him.”

“I am, in this moment. Just for now. Just long enough.”

Nate-as-Ariel lowered Bertie onto the chaise, but the lips that met hers were only Nate’s, light at first and then more demanding. Bertie twisted his shirt up in her hands and tried to shove him off, but either he didn’t realize or didn’t care.

“No,” she said into his mouth.
Some other time, some other way. But not like this.

He pulled back to contemplate her, expression unfathomable, then held up the crumpled piece of paper. “It says here that ye pass out. Would ye like some help wi’ that?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then close yer eyes an’ pretend. Pretend it very hard.”

Bertie squeezed her eyes shut. She heard Nate crumple the script and drop it, felt him slide to the floor to reach a hand under the chaise.

“Is it there?” she whispered.

“That,” he said, “was not in th’ script.”

Neither was the finger that touched her lips as the lights dimmed to a blackout. When the house lights faded up, Nate was gone. The fairies sat in the audience, stunned.

“She kissed Nate!”

“Yeah, we were all sitting right here when she did it.”

“But that means she kissed Ariel, too.”

“Yuck! That’s disgusting!”

“Just how many boys have you played tonsil hockey with in the last two days, Bertie?”

“Never mind that,” she said. “What about The Book? Did Ariel take it?”

Nate reentered holding a large, leather-bound tome. “Aye, he did.”

He held it out, and Bertie’s heart gave a tremendous thump. “You found it!”

“No, lass. ’Tis but a prop.” He handed it to her. Only then could she see that it lacked the proper weight, that the gilt edges were worn and the leather false.

Bertie tossed the false Book aside and turned over the chaise for the second time that day, but this time, not even dust decorated the floor. Rage ignited in her chest, and before she thought twice about it, Bertie pulled her foot back and kicked a hole through the bottom of the chaise.

“Oh, Bertie!” Peaseblossom said. “That’s hardly the right way to get back into Mr. Hastings’ good graces.”

“I don’t care.” After the next swift kick, her shoe got stuck. Nate reached out to steady her, but Bertie abandoned her Mary Jane and her dignity to leap away from him. “You keep your hands to yourself!”

“Perhaps,” he said, pausing for effect, “ye should have said that t’ Ariel.”

“You shut up.” Bertie took her other shoe off and threw it at his head.

Nate ducked, and it bounced harmlessly in the wings. “I will not.” He picked up the “Drink Me” bottle from the stage. “That little scene was an eye-openin’ lesson in how ye spend yer free time.” A muscle in his jaw clenched as he turned. With a fluid movement of his arm and a grunt, he hurled the bottle into the wings after her shoe.

Crystal smashed into an unseen bit of scenery and Bertie flinched, at both the noise and his angry display. She thought she could smell whatever was left of the magical elixir, and the scent made her stomach clench. “Feel better now?”

Nate turned around with an expression that said he wasn’t done breaking things. “Not yet.”

“Look, I know you’re mad at me—”

“That goes wi’out sayin’.”

“But I really need your help right now!”

“Ye need somethin’. A good dose o’ reality, mayhap.”

Bertie wished she had more ammunition, but she was out of shoes. “And you need to get over yourself!”

Nate threw words instead of punches. “Ye were thoughtless. Reckless. Ye’ve put everyone in danger wi’ yer stupidity.”

“I don’t need you telling me what I did was wrong.” Bertie couldn’t rid herself of the lump of anger lodged in her throat, though she swallowed again and again.

“I’ll go get th’ Theater Manager.” He headed for the wings.

“No, Nate, please!” Bertie gave chase, nearly falling over him in the half-light backstage when he paused to pick up his personal effects. “Give me a while longer to look!”

“He needs t’ be told!” Nate jerked on his coat. “Perhaps he can set things t’ rights.”

“But he’ll cancel the performance!”

“Are ye addled in th’ head?” The look he gave her said he clearly thought it was so. “There’s not goin’ t’ be a performance wi’out The Book in th’ theater. Ye’ll be lucky t’ see out th’ day here, much less th’ week.”

Anguish stabbed at Bertie’s vitals. To hear it so pronounced was harsher than any blow, and hot tears poured out of her eyes.

“Bertie, no!” Nate dropped his sword belt to snatch at her, at the medallion, but too late.

Saltwater hit the scrimshaw. Underfoot, the stage trembled. The scenic flats and curtains swayed.

“Earthquake!” Moth cried, but it wasn’t.