“What happened after ye left me? I thought I heard ye cry out.”
Bertie opened her eyes to the damp black of an ink puddle, a place without edges or echoes. “I fell into a great, big Nothing.”
“An’ then?”
For a moment, she couldn’t remember anything beyond the utter terror of falling through the void.
Little One.
“My father rescued me.” She reached for the scrimshaw. “Did you know?”
“Know what?” Nate’s voice was closer now, growing in strength.
“That it’s all connected: the scrimshaw, Sedna, my father.” She walked forward, arms outstretched, until she bumped into the solid weight of him. The story fell out of her in dribbles of gold and silver light until the ground shimmered. “Did you know he’d carved it, when you gave it to me?”
“Nay, I didn’t know.” The touch of his fingertip traced the edge of the medallion, curving around the bone disk to burn a circular path on her skin.
Something inside Bertie cracked. Or maybe it had cracked when the Scrimshander had told her in feather tones that he was her father. She needed so many things: to feel safe again, to rescue Nate, but most important, she needed to see him, to look into his eyes. “We need more light.”
The moment she said the words, there was once again a bonfire. Only then was it evident how much Nate’s soul had weakened in her absence. Forced to abide within her memories of him, he would have been helpless to stop the fraying along the edges that reduced his linen shirt to tatters at hem and cuffs. The bit of leather holding back his queue had broken, allowing strands of hair to become tangled and wild. His boots were gone, his earring missing, the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth had smoothed.
But, worst of all, the light in his eyes had faded, replaced with the dancing flames of a real fire rather than a stage artifice. Its smoke wended a path through trees that rustled with living leaves. The ancient grove was coming to life, roots running deep into soil that was dark and rich. It filled Bertie’s nostrils with the promise of seedlings and spring, but she had no use for it, not when she’d rather press her nose to Nate’s chest and smell salt and soap and leather. Resting her cheek against his shoulder, Bertie could detect nothing of him at all.
Thankfully the feel of his arms around her had not yet changed, for all that Nate was but a walking shadow. Their fingers met at the tips, then slid one alongside the other until interwoven. The steady thrum of his pulse against the base of her wrist was some reassurance, at least, as he pressed his forehead against hers.
“It’s been so long since I saw ye last.”
“Only a day.” Bertie thought of everything that had transpired. “The longest day of my life, I’ll grant you, but just a day.”
His hand tightened upon hers. “Yer days might be spent in Ariel’s company, but yer nights belong t’ me.”
The thought came, unbidden, unwelcome, as prickly as a nettle against Bertie’s skin:
Then what is mine, and mine alone?
“This night, at least.” Nate looked down at her, eyes filled with equal parts jealousy and despair. “I don’t think I can last much longer.”
Whatever prickling disconcertion she’d been feeling disappeared, replaced by a more immediate threat. “I need to pull you through.”
His voice was hoarse, this time with hope. “Do ye think ye can manage it?”
“I have to try, before you’re no more than a dressmaker’s mannequin.” Bertie didn’t want to summon Sedna, and so she did not use her name. “Where is she keeping you?”
Nate tilted his head back, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple visible when he swallowed hard. “A cavern. There’s water all around, an’ a throne o’ dark stone.”
“What did it feel like, when I pulled you from that place?”
“It hurt,” he said with a wince. “Like I tore open, slow an’ soft, an’ stepped out o’ myself. And then I … passed through.”
“Like through the curtains at the theater?” It had felt the same, stepping into the soft glow of the spotlight, falling through the Void and back into the caravan. “There are thin places, I think. Between what’s real—”
“An’ what ye’ve conjured.”
“Yes.” Now that she’d given the idea words, Bertie could feel the different layers of the world come together, one atop the other, like the old bits of tissue paper Mrs. Edith kept in the Wardrobe Department for wrapping delicate costumes. She held her arms out, convinced she could touch them, if only she reached hard enough. “Distance is only a matter of perception.”
“Ye make it sound easy,” Nate said. “But yer words weren’t enough th’ last time.”
Bertie’s exhalation of breath slowed everything, including her heartbeat. Underneath them, the earth shuddered. “No, the words weren’t enough. It takes something more. Some kind of sacrifice.”
“Blood-magic is powerful.” His thumb found the hollow of her throat, pressing hard enough to count off her pulse, if he wanted. “Yer father helped bring ye through, and ye share the blood.”
“Then we’ll do the same. We’ll make a blood vow.” When she pulled the journal from her bodice, the ribbon-tied obsidian knife fell from its pages and into the grass.
“That’s quite th’ bookmark.” Though Nate crouched down, he didn’t move to touch the blade. “Unless ye just summoned a knife from thin air.”
“Oh, happy dagger.” Kneeling, Bertie scooped it up.
“Ye don’t fancy yerself as Juliet, do ye?” Nate caught her by the wrist.
“I’d prefer less death and more results, if that’s all right with you.” She rotated her hand over and unfurled her fingers, the knife’s streamer of silk like a blood trail. “Hold this.” After a long moment, he took it, and she was able to open the journal. “What should we say?”
“Yer th’ one wi’ th’ words.” The muted dance of the fire’s light played over his face, softening his surprised expression. “Why would ye think I’d know?”
Heartened by her success with the map, Bertie still wondered how best to word it. “There should be no misunderstanding that I want you with me.”
Cradling her left hand in his, Nate tracked her life line across her palm with his fingertip. “Forever?”
The question gave her pause, but only for a second. “Of course.”
“Then I have the words.” His voice dropped, as though he feared someone might overhear him. “Blood o’ my blood.”
The rightness of the phrase echoed in her head, and she wrote it without hesitation.
Blood of my blood.
Though she expected the pain, it still startled her when Nate carved a thin line into her palm. She held out her hand for the knife and made a mirror cut on his broad hand. Her palm against his, the knife’s crimson ribbon twisted about to bind them at the wrist, the blade dangling like a man from the gallows. Their gazes met, then their lips; the firelight flickered and died. As the kiss ended, the grove of trees behind Nate disappeared into the blackout, and dark scrim curtains rushed to encircle them.
A pale blue light came up beyond the thin gauze, and Bertie caught her first glimpse of Sedna’s lair. The Sea Goddess’s spell upon Nate’s inert physical form was a ribbon bow that bound his hands behind his back and wound about his legs. “I can see you.” The Nate standing before her jerked with surprise, and she hastened to add, “Don’t move.”
His hand, already tight in her grasp, clamped down upon hers in panic. “I can smell th’ water.”
“Don’t. Move.” Without taking her gaze off either Nate, Bertie wrote,
Knots unpicked by unseen hands, he was free to leave.
“It isn’t good manners to trespass, nor to steal.” The Sea Goddess stood behind Nate’s body, all ink trails of deepest purple, the flash of scales, and flickering glimpses of creamy yellow bone that matched the medallion hanging around Bertie’s neck. “If you want him, you will have to take his place. You will have to drown to save him.”
“Not all the rules are yours,” Bertie said.
(The words pull him to her.)
BERTIE
Blood of my blood.
The echo shook the walls of the cavern, shook her, shook both Nates.
“It’s working—” he gasped.
She didn’t need him to tell her; she could feel the difference as the blood they’d shared pulled his physical self through the thinning curtains.
The Sea Goddess screamed her displeasure, wrapped her arms about her prize, and retreated into the gloom with a snarl. “Though it’s but a shell, it’s mine nonetheless.”
Next to Bertie, Nate choked, as though Sedna were drowning him again.
“Blood of my blood!” But Bertie needed something more than blood-magic. “Bone of my bone.” Left hand still clasping his, she shoved the journal into her bodice and caught up the scrimshaw in her right. With the rustle of leaves, of pages, of sheets of tissue paper, the curtains skimmed around them. “Don’t let go!”
“I won’t!”
Tiny, crystalline bits of white drifted over their skin like a lighting special. Bertie clasped Nate with all the strength she possessed, her grasp on the scrimshaw tightening until the only thing separating the bone medallion from her own bones was the thin layer of flesh on her fingers.
“Say ye love me,” Nate choked. “Even if it’s not true, let me keep th’ words.”
“I’m not giving up!”
“Three words, lass. ’Tisn’t much.”
He’s wrong. The words are everything. I should have written these down as well.
“I … I love you.” Bertie fell forward, resting her head against his shoulder as his face faded into the blackout. In the place between light and dark, she shifted, taking the words with her. “I love you.” Still she leaned on his shoulder. Still she held his hand, fingers interlaced. “I love you.”
A gentle breeze settled around Bertie’s shoulders like a warm cloak as he pressed his mouth to the top of her head. “I think I’ve waited all my life to hear you say that.”
Bertie opened her eyes, wincing at the brilliant white light that slanted over his shoulders.
Ariel’s shoulders.
CHAPTER NINE
Snow upon a Raven’s Back
Ariel’s arm encircled her under the blanket, pulling her against his chest and settling them both more comfortably on the narrow driver’s seat. Around them, a winter’s tempest stirred the air, as though a giant hand shook a snow globe and set it down in their path, white flakes aswirl.
At least, if I cry, the tears will freeze before they fall.
Heart aching over her failure, she wished she could put her head back down on Ariel’s shoulder, fall asleep again, return to that place armed with something more than a mere knife and a mouthful of words—
“Did you have pleasant dreams?” was his softly spoken query.
There was no way in Hades to properly answer that question, so she pressed her own lips together, swallowing the secret. The inside of her mouth tasted as though something small and furry had clambered in there while she slept. And died. She would have suspected the ferrets, but a backward glance revealed that Pip Pip and Cheerio snored under Waschbär’s chin. “When did it start to snow?”
“A soon as you wrote about the landscape passing in a blur, but it’s ten times worse now that we’re clear of the mountains.” Peaseblossom looked guiltily from Bertie to her almond-paste boyfriend, propped against the hatbox proscenium arch. “We did try to wake you.”
The boys jumped up and down on Bertie’s knees. “All the usual things—”
“Pinching—”
“Punching—”
“Hair pulling!”
“We were just about to wave the smelly cheese under your nose.” Mustardseed looked thwarted.
“Thank you for refraining.” Bertie pulled away from Ariel, but her palm came free from his with the crackle of dried blood.
“Oh, we didn’t refrain,” Mustardseed said cheerfully as Ariel recaptured Bertie’s hand and made a series of tsking noises. “Moth ate the last of it!”
“You’ve hurt yourself,” the air elemental said.
The crimson ribbon bloomed in the folds of Bertie’s skirt, still wrapped around the knife. “Just a scratch. Probably from this.” She lifted the blade gingerly.
A furry paw appeared between them and then the knife disappeared, better than a conjurer’s trick. For his part, Ariel pulled out a clean handkerchief and bandaged her wound deftly, finishing off the procedure with a gentle kiss, causing some part of Bertie’s soul to wither.
“Please don’t.”
“That’s not hygienic!” The fairies made gagging noises. “Tell me the point of wrapping it up if you’re going to get your GERMS in it.”
“Yeah, keep your lips to yourself!”
Ariel only laughed at them, his smile brighter than the dawn. Peaseblossom, however, alighted on Bertie’s shoulder like a tiny rain cloud of despair.
“I didn’t think it possible, but the weather’s getting worse!”
Frost flowers bloomed on the arched necks of the mechanical horses, their inner workings struggling under the harsh conditions. Blue diamond crystals skimmed along the harnesses and enveloped the caravan. Beyond that, Bertie could see only a few feet of white-powdered road.
She pulled the woolen blanket atop her head in a makeshift hood, her exhaled breath tinkling like sleigh bells. “Where are we?”
“No way of telling.” Waschbär leaned over the seat, his breath furring the edges of his hood with ice. “I’m afraid the map’s delicate machinery froze up some time ago.”
No longer able to fly for the cold, the fairies burrowed deep under Bertie’s blanket to warm their icicle extremities in her elbow crooks and under her hair. Peaseblossom’s nose had turned the bright pink of her namesake. She clutched the marzipan groom to her, tiny teeth chattering. “This is t-t-t-terrible. We can’t stay out much longer in this, or we’ll freeze—”
A heart-stopping screech interrupted the fairy: The legs of the mechanical horses had locked up stiff, but the wheels missed the memo to stop. The caravan slid to one side and slammed into a snowdrift.
Moth spoke from under Bertie’s hair. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“This never would have happened in the theater.” Peeking out from the protective wool of the blanket hood, Peaseblossom’s lips were blue, and Bertie wondered just how long they could survive.
Except I’m not about to sit here and wait to find that out.
Tucking Peaseblossom farther into the blankets with her Henry, Bertie thought of the baby Beatrix and gave silent thanks they weren’t also contending with an infant in this sort of weather. “I’ll have to write something.” Nearly numb, she pulled the journal out.
“Sooner rather than later,” Waschbär advised, “if you value your fingers and toes.”
Though the cottage scene from How Bertie Came to the Theater was not as she’d expected, there was another bit to that tale Bertie could use now. “We’ll take the train.”
“Can’t you just write us out of the storm?” Cobweb had worked his way under her left ear, which tickled when he spoke.
“Would you like to end up a hundred miles away? A thousand?” Bertie put the fountain pen to paper. “With my luck, the journal would pick us up, shake us around a bit, then plop us down in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Never mind,” was his muffled rejoinder.
Intending to write “An Ordinary Station” before her fingers cracked with cold, Bertie panicked when she couldn’t get the ink flowing. “Ariel …”
He leaned over in the seat, understanding the unspoken plea. Lips brushing her hands, he exhaled a soft summer wind into the tiny shelter between her palms, thawing the ink long enough for Bertie to write,
The train station is a carriage clock of a building.
When she looked up from the journal, she thought she could make out a distant structure between the shifting flurries
of blinding white.
“Well done.” Cobweb peeped out of the blanket. “Except that there’s a goodly amount of space between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ Bertie.”
“I’ll take care of it.” With a gallant leap, Ariel descended, not sinking into the white powder so much as hovering atop it. He moved between the horses, agile and surefooted as though there wasn’t an inch of ice covering the road now. Hands outstretched, he summoned equatorial winds and tried to surround the caravan the same as he had during the rain. Snow and ice turned to slush, metal gears warmed and began to turn again. Slip-sliding, Ariel coaxed the mechanical horses to move forward. The caravan followed, wheels dragging through the half-melted snow instead of rolling as they should.
Bertie clutched the journal and her seat both as they approached the station. Built of wood that had the same dark gloss as freshly baked gingerbread, it was well suited to the elaborate whorls and carvings around the eaves and archways. A fine layer of ice decorated the roof with sugar powder. Beyond the main building, train cars like icing confections beckoned.
“Glorious,” Waschbär said.
Plucking the fairies from her hood, Bertie shoved the four of them and the marzipan groom into their carpetbag. “Find something warm to wear, all right?”
There were immediate cries of dismay from Peaseblossom. “Bertie, the boys are trying to eat my boyfriend!”
Automatically Bertie said, “Leave Peaseblossom’s boyfriend alone.”
“He doesn’t need all his toes.”
“Stingy!”
Bertie had more important things to worry about than fairy cannibalism. The snow had obscured a slight slope to the road, which they only discovered as everything—Ariel, horses, cart—commenced sliding downhill toward the station. “Ariel!”
“I know!” He already had his arms braced across the necks of the mechanical horses. “Grab the reins!”
Shoving the journal into her bodice, Bertie caught up the leather straps, trying to slow them. The horses attempted to obey the command, legs locking stiff and straight as Ariel unleashed matching blue-gray streamers of wind. Head down, he pushed back against the caravan. The muscles in his back worked visibly under his heavy coat, his breath came in crystalline gasps, but the caravan’s weight and momentum was too much for him. “I can’t … stop … it.”