So Silver Bright (24 page)

“How did you get in, then?” Bertie demanded, hoping her voice covered whatever telltale rustle might give them away.

“Transported as though by sorcerer’s wand,” their Leader said. “One second we were on the roof, the next on the stage as you entered like little mice.”

“Not a sorcerer’s wand,” Bertie said. “I summoned you here with my thoughts.”

He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Is that so? Then you have our thanks and my utmost attention to assure neither you nor your friends do anything stupidly heroic.”

Nate and Ariel raised reluctant hands to prove they were no threat, reinforced by a brigand’s swift removal of the pirate’s cutlass from his belt. With matching squeaks, the fairies disappeared into the curtain of Bertie’s hair and clung to her like tiny, teeth-chattering barrettes. Contrariwise, Bertie hadn’t the presence of mind to be scared, not with the new bit of her story swirling about her head, not with the knowledge that she had to get the journal back if there was to be any hope of reuniting the theaters and saving her mother.

“You have something that belongs to me,” she said.

The brigands’ Leader ignored her, turning instead to the three largest of his band. “Fetch the Theater Manager.” Without a word, they disappeared in the direction of the Stage Door.

“Best of luck with that,” Bertie said. “I’m curious myself to know if he’s here.”

“He was most anxious to recover this tome,” the Leader said with a snarl. “Something about settling a small matter of a wayward child who should have never existed … I assume that wayward child is you.”

Chilled through by the words, Bertie did her best not to quail before him. “I am not easily erased, as well he knows.”

“Nevertheless, your Theater Manager will answer my summons, if he wants to remain in good health.”

“Your threats aren’t going to mean much if he’s unavoidably detained in a parallel dimension. Would you care to leave a message for him, should that be the case?”

“Stop speaking rubbish, or I’ll cut the tongue from your mouth.” The room seemed to darken a bit with the threat.

“And how are all your small, squishable friends this fine day?” the lady brigand asked, peering pointedly at Bertie’s neck.

Peaseblossom cowered back and buried her face in Bertie’s collar before bursting into tears. The blood raged in Bertie’s veins, sending angry heat rushing through every limb.

“If you touch any of them, I’ll personally break every one of your fingers.”

With a bark of laughter, the lady brigand feinted toward her, cackling again when Bertie recoiled.

“Enough!” her Leader snarled, stepping forward with his wicked knife already unsheathed. “You can have your fun once we’ve been paid for our troubles.”

“I assure you that I’m the only one interested in acquiring your wares at the moment.” In a show of bravado, Bertie forced her stance wider, her voice louder.

“In exchange for what, I’d like to know?” The Leader raised his nose to the air and circled the troupe, sniffing at them. “We left you with nothing of value.”

Bertie hoped that he wouldn’t be able to detect the wish-come-true lingering just behind her eyes, not just yet, not so early in the game. Her fingers clamped down upon her other gift from the Queen. “I’ve this broach. It’s a token from Her Gracious Majesty and worth quite a lot.”

“A paltry bit of jewelry isn’t worth anything close to what we were promised.”

Suddenly suspicious, Bertie narrowed her gaze at him. “What
did
the Theater Manager offer in exchange for the journal?”

His answering smile was a fearsome thing indeed. “A fortune in gold and jewels. A prince’s ransom, he said.”

“And just where do you suppose he was going to get such a sum?” Bertie tried to sound reasonable and soothing, to convey as much goodwill and
don’t stab us
as she could manage rather than the dripping condescension boiling up the back of her throat. “There’s never much money in a theater’s cash box.”

“He paid us each a coin on tick,” the lady brigand purred. A metal disc flipped through the air and landed at Bertie’s feet with a
ping
! “He said there would be more when the job was done.”

“And when did he enter into such a contract with you?”

Under no obligation, the Leader nevertheless answered, “A week or so ago.”

“About the same time we departed the good theater,” Ariel noted. “That’s quite the coincidence. But the Theater Manager couldn’t have known that Waschbär had stolen the journal, nor that he would give it to us. How did you track it down, without any idea who had it or where it might have been taken?”

The Leader flipped his knife about one hand with silver slices of reflected light. “Magic that strong leaves a trail, and we followed it as surely as a hound scents a stag.”

“A rheumatic bloodhound with a bum nose,” Bertie said with a sniff. “We wended our way over half the countryside, and it took you that long to catch up with us?”

The Leader scowled his displeasure, but before he could punish Bertie for the insult, the brigands returned without their quarry.

“His office was empty,” the tallest said. “There’s no one at all in the building, save this motley group.”

“What are we to do about our fee if our hire is nowhere to be found?” The brigands’ Leader didn’t address the question to anyone in particular, though his snarl raised considerably in volume.

Sensing his distraction, Bertie dared to pick up the bit of money. She noted the weight of it, the imprint stamped on the front and back. Though lacking the necessary filing cabinets and reams of provenance paperwork, she still recognized its general origins. “This is from the Properties Department. I wonder if Mr. Hastings knew it had been taken.”

“The Properties Department, eh?” The Leader leapt upon the information as a starveling mongrel dog would a scrap of meat. “I think you ought to take us to this place. We will collect our payment, and you can have your little book back. How does that sound to you?”

It sounds too good to be true.

Bertie knew the chances were far greater that they’d lead the brigands into the Properties Department only to have their throats slit ear to ear, once the thieves realized the nearly boundless store of priceless artifacts contained therein could be theirs. She gathered her courage to her like armor. “I don’t think so.”

The Leader’s expression shifted from false amiability to undiluted malevolence. “Kill the tall one. It will give our hostess something to consider as we continue negotiations.”

“Which is the tall one?!” Mustardseed squeaked in alarm.

“Not I!” yelled the other fairies in one voice, even as the most likely candidates immediately backed up against each other, Nate with his fists at the ready and Ariel pulling a tempest from the space about them with both hands.

As the storm gathered strength, Bertie remembered she had her own source of power. Instinctively, she backed into the circle the boys had started. “If the mosaic can pull bits of my story forward, then I can do the same.” Even as she thought of the forest, of the trees, she directed her words to the brigands’ Leader. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

But it was Waschbär who answered, emerging from the tunnel to add his feral strength to their group along with the words, “I do, though it was many years ago.”

“Welcome to the party, turncoat,” the Leader said, offering cheerful hospitality at knifepoint. “I see you no longer travel alone.” Though he did not shift his eyes for more than a half second, Bertie knew he’d spotted the opal ring upon Varvara’s finger. “How much does that sort of companionship cost?”

Standing behind Waschbär, the fire-dancer’s eyes were dark and her expression carefully blank. Fed by Ariel’s windstorm, her hair blazed about her shoulders; only then did she bestow a vicious smile upon the brigands’ Leader. “You couldn’t afford me.”

Two livid red patches appeared on his cheeks and mottled his neck. Signaling to his comrades to close in, he hissed, “Let’s finish this.”

“Yes, let’s. When you liberated the journal from my possession, didn’t you recognize the caravan?” Bertie recalled the details from her own play
How Bertie Came to the Theater.
“It was many years ago that you tried to steal from a child traveling with her guardian, the previous Mistress of Revels. I was too young at the time to realize your coldness, your cruelty.”

Advancing as a group, the brigands hesitated.

“Candy fell from the sky that day.” The lady brigand finally remembered a girl who could make something of nothing with only a piece of paper and a crayon. “Peppermints and chocolate humbugs rained down on the road and fields.”

Now it was Bertie’s turn to smile. “Yes.”

“You wrote it and made it so,” the Leader said, the second to remember. “No wonder you want this!” He jerked the journal from his pocket and brandished his knife over the pages. “A pity it’s in my possession instead of yours.”

“The years have taught me many tricks,” Bertie said, “but the greatest is that I don’t necessarily need the paper. My power comes from the source itself now, from the trees.…” She had barely finished speaking when they answered her call: the great gnarled oaks pushing up through the floorboards, towering pines splintering the wood and popping nails from their places. Branches clambered over one another to reach a sky not there until the brigands were forced back, away from the holes opening underfoot, away from the tightly knit group gathered Center Stage.

“Stay close,” Bertie warned the troupe. “The trees will protect me, but they don’t care about anyone else.”

As one, Ariel and Nate took another step back, their shoulders meeting hers and Waschbär’s, Varvara pushed to the middle like the jelly in a doughnut. The five of them braced against one another for the next spurt of wild growth, and the sound of running sap was more thunderous than the rush of blood in their veins. Vines clambered up through the cracks in the stage next, unfurling leaves and trumpet flowers with choking puffs of pollen.

“Get to the tunnel,” their Leader wheezed. “We’ll leave them here to be buried!”

Bertie countermanded the order, summoning an errant green tendril to tangle about his ankle. The rest of his crew pushed and shoved their way to the open trapdoor, despite the ominous rumble that issued from within.

“Call them back,” she warned.

“Witch! Sorceress!” He raised his fingers in a ward against evil.

Bertie had to concede that’s probably what it looked like, given that the very forest primeval crept up around them, but still she protested, “This isn’t what I wanted—”

“Don’t apologize t’ th’ likes o’ him,” Nate said. “He would ha’e killed us wi’out thinkin’ twice about it, an’ may try it yet, given half th’ chance.”

“What would you say now to a trade?” In the green-filtered half-light, Ariel’s smile was unholy. “Your life for the little book?”

Before the brigands’ Leader could answer, the vine dragged him toward Bertie over splintered bits of wood that tore at his jerkin and nearly scratched the eyes from his head. Howling, he dropped the journal and sliced through the tendril with his wicked-sharp blade. With the uneven gait of a drunken sailor, he followed his comrades into the swirling-white storm brewing in the tunnel.

“Don’t—” Bertie tried to stop him, but too late. The forest closed ranks to stabilize the floor while everything else in the theater heaved and buckled and broke. The noise of it nearly deafened them as the stone walls of the tunnel turned to snow and tumbled inward. Tiles broke into jagged chunks of ice and shifted to fill the spaces between until not a single particle could be coaxed from its resting place.

“He didn’t remember,” Waschbär said softly with a twitch of his nose, “that the word-threat you used to banish us long ago was ‘avalanche.’”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For a Fantasy and Trick

“Leave it to you,”
Ariel said with a shake of his head, “to conjure snow indoors.”

Bertie retrieved the journal and pressed it tightly against her chest. “Leave it to me to nearly kill us all in the process.”

Indeed, most of the troupe stood, silent and shaking with various amounts of residual fear and adrenaline. Only Varvara, wandering away to pick a haphazard path through the trees, was unperturbed, even when she nearly set a mound of moss aflame.

Nate retrieved his cutlass from the outer edge of the snowbank, in case the ice should not prove to be a sufficient cairn for their enemies. “It’s a mistake, havin’ somethin’ like her on th’ stage.”

“Here,” Waschbär said, guiding the fire-dancer to a small circle of stones. “You can kindle something here, to better purpose.”

Standing atop a mound of dry sticks and leaves, Varvara bestowed upon him a brilliant smile, then used her toe shoes to create sparks against the rocks. A conflagration soon blazed merrily with the fire-dancer sitting immediately adjacent, hair crackling to match, hands reaching for the flames.

By then, the grove was as it had been every time Bertie had visited it, whether rendered in scenic flats, painted upon rice paper, or growing from earth so old that it had forgotten time itself. The trees towered over them, wearing their many years like a lush mantle about their shoulders. Sensing relative safety, the fairies emerged from Bertie’s hair to discuss important issues.

“I’m
starving,
” Moth whined, holding his stomach with both hands. “Near-death experiences do that to me!”

“We need jam cakes,” Mustardseed said.

“I propose a run upon the Green Room immediately, if not sooner!” Cobweb said, already flying for the Stage Door.

Bertie reached out and snagged him. “Not just yet. We don’t know if it’s safe beyond the grove.”

With grumbles and threats of mutiny, the fairies retreated to investigate their pockets for residual chocolate crumbs. In the ensuing quiet, Bertie traced the swirling markings on the journal’s cover. Frowning, she flipped it open to reveal the first page, which was—as expected—their own exit page, torn from
The Complete Works of the Stage.