Perchance to Dream (16 page)

“Charmed,” Ariel said, looking anything but.

“The feeling,” the Scrimshander returned, “is mutual.”

Each of the men took the full measure of the other, after which Ariel assumed an infinitesimally more polite tone. “My apologies for the abrupt entrance, but I feared for her safety, sir.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around tonight.” Kneeling, the Scrimshander began to build up the fire with a careful arrangement of sticks and tiny scraps of paper.

Not requiring even false privacy, Bertie didn’t bother to lower her voice. “What are you doing here, Ariel? I would have thought you’d be halfway to Timbuktu.”

There was nothing of the tender lover about him now, hair and clothes twitching like a cat’s tail. “I tried, gods help me. I flew as hard and as fast as I could, but it was as though I was tethered to you, a chain pulled taut the farther I flew.”

“That chain was of your own making, Ariel. I had nothing to do with it.”

“You had
everything
to do with it. I am no more free in this world than I was in the Théâtre. I could not turn my back on you.” Ariel reached out and traced the medallion’s chain with his finger. “I could not break free of you.”

“Don’t you ever touch it—or me—again.” Bertie took half a step back. “Not after you stole it. Not after you
sold
it.”

“I did,” he said. “I figured that, for all the trouble it’s caused me since you started wearing it, it was at least half mine to pawn.”

“You thought wrong.” She threw words at him, rather than a punch. “Such a pity the draught didn’t work.”

Everything about Ariel—hair, clothes, expression—went still as he looked at her. “It didn’t have the chance to work. I poured it into the sand.”

It was easier to guard her heart when he was angry, for his fury fueled her own and acted like a shield. When their mutual rage dwindled, she was vulnerable to whatever arrow he might let fly, and so her words were a whisper. “I cannot imagine what would have stopped you. You who cherish freedom above all things? You could have been free of me. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

No answer for a moment save the crackle of the fire. “When everything else crumbles to dust, all we have left are the memories. I thought of Ophelia, wandering the theater, mind half gone … Never shall I cut from memory my sweet love’s beauty.”

After everything that had happened, she didn’t want to believe him.

Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is.

Ariel took pity on them both then and acknowledged their audience. “Did your father have anything insightful to say about rescuing Nate?”

In response, the Scrimshander ruffled feathers-unseen. “Is he worth it? This soul she wants to go down there to save?”

“Worth her risking her life?” One of Ariel’s mirthless laughs. “I think not. But he is her husband.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
This Green Plot Shall Be Our Stage

A
terrible
squawking
noise from the Scrimshander. “Her
what
?”

“Leave it to you to tell tales, Ariel.” Bertie grasped the last of the relit lanterns from her father’s curved, talonlike fingers. “And inaccurate ones, at that.”

Conversationally, Ariel addressed the Scrimshander. “Have you ever heard of handfasting? She has a mark on her palm that binds her to the pirate.”

“Do you?” Expression fierce, the Scrimshander’s brow furrowed like the sand-ripples Bertie had seen on the shoreline.

“I do.” Her gaze traveled over her linen-bound hand, and she realized what sort of magic it might take to open the portal. With the revelation came a new surge of worry that it might not work, that she might be too late.

Ariel’s righteous annoyance gave way to concern as she ran for the back of the Aerie. “Wait … where are you going?”

Without answering, Bertie took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the very real possibility of stumbling and falling arse over tea kettle, unable to slow down. At the bottom, she set the lantern upon the ground and ripped the bandage off the handfasting wound. Scraping it against the stone, she left a wet red smear across the barrier. “Blood-magic will help.” She wrapped her uninjured hand over the medallion. “And bone-magic.”

When it came, the slow thud of the earth’s heartbeat rocked her back on her feet. Bracing herself against it, she waited for the next sign of life. And waited. The earth marked the passing of time by the slow run of sap in the springtime, the shifting of mountain ranges, the melting of glaciers. In contrast, Bertie’s own pulse hammered in her ears, a lively mazurka atop a stately waltz. She tried to control her breathing, to bring her own flow of blood in time with that of the earth, but still she skimmed across the surface of a frozen lake, not deceiving the ice.

Her heartbeat was the key. Only when it slowed to meet that of the earth would she pass through the portal.

“Little One—” the Scrimshander started to protest, coming down the stairs behind her, but Bertie would hear none of it.

She counted off the beats as her heart began to slow. “One for bad news, two for mirth.”

The words were part of an old rhyme Mrs. Edith had taught her, one they’d sung when doling out pins and buttons in the Wardrobe Department. A counting song, meant to tally magpies, with their number signifying what was to come. Theater people had many superstitions, but this one Mrs. Edith must have brought in with her, from a place where birds roamed the skies.

And suddenly there was a double meaning in every word.

“Three is a wedding.” The cut on her hand thudded in time with her slowing pulse. “Four is a birth.” Echoes of Ophelia’s laughter rippled through the stone. “Five is for riches, six is a thief.”

Though Waschbär isn’t anywhere near.

“Seven, a journey, eight is for grief.”

Ariel, standing alongside her, put a hand to his own chest in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“Shifting.” The palm of her hand sank an inch into the stone. The floor heaved underfoot as the layers of the earth adjusted to let Bertie through. “Nine is a secret, ten is for sorrow.”

Ariel’s hand slammed over the top of hers, driving both of them farther through the barrier. His fingers slid between hers and clamped down. “Don’t you dare let go.” When the rock sucked them in, his face contorted with panic.

The Scrimshander tried to pull her back, but Bertie’s flesh dissolved to flecks of mica under his grasping fingers.

“Eleven is for love, twelve, joy for tomorrow.” Encapsulated, she knew only the rightness of granite. Tiny opalescent orbs bubbled to the surface of her skin, each one containing a different recollection: a thousand desserts stolen from the Green Room, notes pinned to the Call Board, laughter shared with the fairies as they raced down the hallways and onto the stage. Mrs. Edith, Ophelia, Nate, Ariel … the stone scrubbed her skin clean, and the memory-bubbles popped. Soul scraped bare, like bark flayed from a tree trunk, what was left but the pale inner flesh?

That’s when Bertie saw the trees.

Hand outstretched, she caught hold of leaves. Branches enfolded her in tender welcome, and Bertie rooted herself to the ground with ivy tendrils that clung to earth and dust and rock. Tiny scuttling spiders spun floss to keep her tethered there, and she thanked them with a silent smile. In this place without wind—

Unless I summon a breeze.

Without water—

Unless I want it to rain. I am mistress here.

“This place is mine and mine alone.”

A low chuckle in her ear, as though someone heard the thought and was amused. Bertie turned, glancing over her shoulder at the largest of the trees.

“Who’s there?”

Another bit of soft laughter, like the brush of fur against bare skin. She took a step toward the nearest tree, her fingertips traveling the rough whorls of bark and fancying a face peering out of dense foliage. Vines sprouted from the places where nose, mouth, nostrils would be.

She brushed the worst of the overgrowth away. “Who are you?”

Puck, Pan, or Green Man, he could not answer, trapped as he was deep in the heart of the wood. Bertie knew without trying that she could reach in for him, past the rings of years-imprisoned, past sap sticky as blood, and break the binding spell as easily as another would have snapped a twig. There was something about his face she trusted, leaves or no, but—

“This place is mine and mine alone,” she said, taking a step back. The tree rustled, perhaps in protest, but she turned her back on the promise of company and moved with purpose into a clearing ringed with ferns. Upon a moss-bedecked tree stump she emptied the pockets of her verdant green gown; glittering flecks of sand and tiny bits of stone rushed through her fingers. Dipping her hand into the mound, she realized each one was a memory of this place, brought with her through the stone as gifts from the children of the earth.

Atop the pile sat an emerald. Holding it up to one eye, she could see a green jungle bowed under monsoon rains. Ripe fruit dripped from the canopy above, and the padding footsteps of large felines echoed the thud of her heartbeat. Bertie could hear bare feet slapping against pounded dirt, bodies launched off felled trees and limbs brushing under low-dipping vines.

The emerald cracked, shedding granular tendrils until it was reborn as a ruby, large and flawless. Through the red jewel’s filter, she saw a place of desert trees, thick with fronds. A puff of wind shifted the sand over her feet.

“I remember pyramids, sand, rich turquoise lighting … and a Danish Prince?” Bertie frowned. “That cannot be right.”

Then the ruby was transformed into a wreath of daisies intertwined with crimson ribbons. Through it, she could see a very different sort of landscape: rolling hills, dotted with bonfires. Brows wreathed with hawthorn and primrose, many gathered to celebrate the wedding of the god and goddess.

“Beltane,” she whispered. “May Day, the Jack-in-the-Green’s celebration.”

Upon the hill, a horned god fed marigold custard and oatmeal cakes to a woman white-clad to celebrate the Light Half of the Year. The red and white ribbons of a maypole fluttered overhead. Hand in hand, shadow-couples leapt one bonfire after another, faster and faster still, until the flames were the only streak of color against the night’s canvas.

A butterfly brushed against Bertie’s cheek, but she dismissed it with a laugh. The ferns circling her trembled as she knelt, cupping her hand to lift the sands. A sparkling cascade of shimmering quartz slipped through her fingers. “Where is my forest, my realm?”

Her hand closed around a chunk of plaster, gold painted: a bit of statuary, the same face that had peered from the tree. For a moment, she was surrounded by darkness, the blur of red velvet, the flash of gilt. Now the visage was part of a building’s edifice, carved in stone, trapped in time.

“I know this place,” she whispered.

A light came up behind a curtain of moss to reveal a scene most familiar: a four-poster bed, an armoire, a dresser. Each piece of pale wood was carved in the sweeping flourishes of the art nouveau style. Rugs of mint and crushed green grass were scattered on the forest floor.

“My room.” Delighted, Bertie circled it, touching things she knew to be hers: a small armchair of woven golden saplings, a jewelry box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a stack of well-worn books in which each page was a pressed leaf.

A sanctuary, fit for a Forest Queen.

“Am I a queen?” The thought pleased her, and she felt as at home wearing it as she would a dress of wheat-gold. Turning, she spotted a hart invading her realm, paused on the edge of the clearing. With a hiss, she took up a longbow that rested against the armoire. “You have no place here. This is mine and mine alone.”

She selected an arrow. Three fingers held the bowstring, drawing it back until her thumb touched her jawbone. Her index finger kissed the corner of her mouth. Every muscle in her shoulder and back stretched with the string. She held her breath as she let the arrow fly—

But something prompted her to close her eyes the moment it hit home. When Bertie opened them, both hart and arrow were gone.

A fanfare of trumpets sounded as a knight entered the clearing, riding astride a brilliant white horse. He raised his hand in a salute, colors rippling in an unbidden breeze. Much of the knight was hidden from view by his silver-chased armor; mouth and nose were indistinct, and the eyes that met hers with an unwavering gaze could have been those of either friend or enemy.

“Who are you?” Bertie still held the longbow, and over her dress she summoned a breastplate and arm guards of verdigris.

“Your Majesty, if it pleases you, I would take you away from this place,” the knight said. His horse shifted, as restless as he, and pawed at the ground. “You must return to your quest, milady.”

Milady.

“Do not presume to call me that.” With a look, Bertie summoned vines to bind him. Cords of variegated green dragged him from his horse, towing him through bracken and fern, bringing him to rest at the tips of her slippers. “I am no lady of yours.”

“You’ve forgotten the wind—”

“We have no need of wind here,” she told him, and meant it.

“You’ve forgotten the water.” A note of pleading now in the knight’s voice as her vines dragged off his helmet, loosing his silver hair, his silver gaze. “And the ocean.”

Bent to her will, the helmet became a hair comb. A knack, a toy, a trinket. “The ocean?”

The knight’s voice faded. “Have you forgotten him?”

“Nate.” When Bertie breathed his name, a saltwater wave slammed into her chest. She sank into the loam underfoot as though towed by an anchor. Falling through the darkness, she thought she could once again feel Ariel’s fingers interlocked with hers.

She stepped free from the granite into an explosion of a thousand stars. When the sparks cleared, Bertie and Ariel stood in enormous version of
The Big Pop-up Book of
Scenery
. Bertie was dressed in the golden skirts of Columbine, while Ariel’s silver-patched Harlequin costume reflected the pale green light shining down upon them.

He kept his fingers laced through hers as he towed her Center Stage. “We’re not alone.”

Putting a hand up to cut the glare, Bertie could see rows of sandstone benches that curved around the edges of the book. A gathered crowd murmured in the universal undertone of an expectant audience, but every face in the amphitheater wore a pale, blank mask. Men, women, even the smaller figures of children were indiscernible from one another.

A ringmaster appeared atop a marble pillar, his face quivering gold-flesh and his eyes two gaping keyholes. “Ladies and Gentlemen! You are about to witness an act so extraordinary, it has never before been attempted in any otherworldly arena!”

When Bertie squinted hard and peered past the footlights, the masks were no longer void of expression. Heavy eyebrows were raised like query marks, foreheads had puckered, and mouths were rounded in anticipatory
O
s.

The stage plunged into a blackout, then twin spotlights came up behind them on a contraption that reminded her of a pair of fantastic opera glasses. A massive steel arm, like a propeller, was fixed upon a center shaft. At either end, enormous matching circles served as counterbalances. Only when they began to turn could she see the black-clad stagehands, one inside each hoop. Both facing Stage Right, they walked, spinning the mesh wheels counterclockwise. Someone in the audience clapped once, twice, not applause, but setting a rhythm that slowly increased. Soon the stagehands ran, the wheels spinning full tilt, each arcing around the other, both held forever captive by the center axis.

“It’s like
The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery
’s Wheels of Death.” Bertie stared up at it, doubly appalled when the stagehands decreased their pace. Counteracting their momentum by slowing the circles, they brought them into perfect balance, the silver at twelve o’clock and the gold at six.

“The Sun and the Moon, Ladies and Gentlemen!” the ringmaster cried.

The crinoline under Bertie’s massive skirts swayed as she tried to back away. “The scrimshaw whispered the journey to me, and I put it in the Innamorati’s play: the Ice Wheels, the Cauldron, the Hall. It’s how we’ll get to Nate. This is the way to Sedna’s kingdom.”

“How is that even possible?” Ariel sounded as dismayed as she felt. “You wrote it on ordinary paper with that ridiculous quill pen…. I sat there and watched you.”

“How else do you explain this?” She held out her day-brilliant skirts. “Or that?!” She pointed at the mesh wheels, the silver one in the sky and the gold nearest the floor. “The sun and the moon. Only one can be in the sky at a time. That’s what I wrote.”

“Winter days and nights, you also said.” As though he’d cued the special effect, snow began to fall in earnest, swirling about the stage floor and shoving them with fingers of ice toward the edge of the book. Crystals cascaded into a nonexistent orchestra pit, lost to a vast nothing that separated the stage from the audience. Ariel raised his arms; Bertie expected a wind to push back at the snow, but nothing happened.