“I thought as much.” The expression on his face stabbed her to the heart. “Farewell, milady. Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Making her a lovely, sweeping bow, he stepped off the back of the train, immediately lost to the blizzard.
A final blast of wind knocked her backward, where she lay panting on the cold floor of the caboose, the wooden planks like frozen steel. Tears trickled from her eyes, forming icicles on her cheeks. Snow swirled in the open door. Reality fell away from Bertie in jagged-edged chunks even as she wrestled the journal from her pocket. The fountain pen had gone missing somewhere between Wardrobe and pie car; sleeve crackling with ice, Bertie’s sound hand closed around Aleksandr’s ridiculous quill and managed to scratch out the word,
Truth
The floor under her cheek slanted a bit, tilting the stage of the fairies’ puppet theater toward her. Montagues, Capulets … It was only fitting to repeat the line.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Except Ariel’s bitter departure and his theft of the medallion might just be her undoing. Another tear slid down her cheek; this one did not freeze, though, falling instead in an onyx droplet to the floor and cracking like an egg on impact.
Out danced a tiny figure that moved like a marionette, though she was without strings when she gestured at Bertie. “O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”
Squinting at the not-puppet, Bertie recalled Alice’s Wonderland “Drink Me” bottle back in the Properties Department, imbibing its contents, and fearing she would shrink down to nothing. The memory cued a costume and scene change, both; her spine was the crease on a piece of paper, her bones no more than diagonal folds on a bit of origami. The caboose, the snow, the cold, all faded into the blackout. For a moment, she could see nothing, could feel nothing beyond the rustle of her vellum limbs.
A gentle amber spotlight came up, tightly focused on the marionette without strings. With screwed joints at knee and elbow, and hinge lines now visible at the corners of her mouth, she bent over in cheerful greeting. “Hallo!”
Bertie sat up with difficulty. “What are you doing here, Ophelia?”
The spotlight’s radiance diffused outward, and Bertie found herself sitting on the edge of The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery. Open to its version of the Théâtre Illuminata, it rendered the velvet curtains in paper, the gilt with metallic gold paint.
“The next line,” the curious marionette said, “is yours.”
Bertie could taste the words in her mouth, like crimson lip rouge. “My mother was a star, an ingénue on the rise, a society darling.”
“Not really.” Puppet-Ophelia string-danced to her dressing table and sat down upon a chair. “The performances night after night, the make-up and the costuming and the curtain calls … all of it was weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. I got sick of being Polonius’s daughter and Laertes’s sister and Hamlet’s girlfriend. I wanted, for just a while, to be only myself. That’s when he arrived.”
A deep-timbred voice spoke from the shadows offstage. “I haunted the cliffs and shores, waiting for the day when my lost love would take pity upon me and open the gateway to her underworld. Then word came via travelers to the Caravanserai about a place where the Sea Witch ruled.”
Bertie shifted, trying to catch a glimpse of him, and nearly fell off the edge of the book. When the Mysterious Stranger entered a few seconds later, he walked with a stiff-legged gait to Center Stage. The hood of his gray cloak fell back, revealing the papier-mâché mask of a bird, complete with feathers and a yellow bill. His lower, decidedly human jaw was left free to speak.
“I came to this place, this theater, looking for her.”
Ophelia twisted around in her chair. “What are you doing in here? Get out, before I call the Stage Manager—”
“You are not a mermaid.” The bird-creature lifted two handfuls of Ophelia’s hair and brought them to his face. “Yet you smell faintly of the ocean.”
“That would be the seaweed.” She twitched free of his impertinent grasp. “And no, I am not a mermaid. They’re just beginning Act One, if you’ve come to see the play.”
“I’m in the wrong place,” the bird-creature answered. “I apologize for the interruption, but I was passing by, and thought I recognized your scent … that is to say …”
“I should summon one of the stagehands before you defile the floor.” Ophelia pursed her lips. “Why are you backstage? You aren’t one of the Players. I have no idea who you are, Stranger, or even what you are.”
“I am a fulmar,” he said, then added, “the bird of the storm.”
“Just who do you seek?” Tilting her head to one side, she regarded him with a full measure of sudden curiosity.
“There was another who smelt of the sea. I have searched for her everywhere, but she is not to be found.” The bird-creature rustled uneasy feathers. “You are obviously not her, so I will make my apologies and leave.”
“Leave?” Ophelia repeated the word as though it had just occurred to her. Then she said it once more, this time with inflections of salted caramel candy. “Leave.”
Considering her with those jet-black eyes, the bird-creature asked, “Do you also wish to leave?”
“I do!” She spoke with enough vehemence to ruffle his feathers. “I am trapped here, performing the same play night after night, unless …”
“Unless?”
Ophelia’s smile was brighter than the stage lights. “Unless I pull my lines, my story, from The Book. It will be like I never existed at all.” Clapping her hands, she went to brush past him, but the bird-creature filled the doorway, standing stiff and still for a long moment.
“For the sake of another who wished herself away, I will take you with me, if you like.”
“Are you certain?” Ophelia asked, looking up at him through her lashes. “I shouldn’t like to be any trouble.”
The bird-creature shook his head. “I do get the feeling that trouble might be a specialty of yours.”
Ophelia stood on tiptoe to look directly into the glossy surface of his eyes. “The moment you tire of my company, we’ll part ways.”
The couple disappeared into the wings of the stage as two black-clad stagehands lifted the edge of the enormous page. Bertie slid off just in time, her hasty retreat accompanied by the faint cry of the Call Boy, “Ophelia to the stage, please.” The Théâtre set folded in upon itself as the cliffs rose. Ophelia’s costume changed as well, to gray velvet with shadowed trim that helped her disappear time and again into the shifting lights.
“I was the first to figure out how to free myself from the theater,” puppet-Ophelia said as they crossed to Stage Right. “I took my page with me to the seaside, and it was there that I fell rather unexpectedly in love.”
“It surprised both of us,” the bird-creature said softly. “There was no slipper, nor spinning wheel, nor true love’s first kiss. This was not a fairy tale with a happily ever after.”
The scene shifted again with the crackle of cardboard so that Bertie’s puppet-parents stood inside a cave. Warm stone walls curved in at the top, while bits of leaf and twig lay scattered on the floor. From behind the set, something did a decent job mimicking the roar and moan of the ocean. Bertie clambered back into The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery, afraid to speak for fear they would stop telling her story.
“You must admit,” Ophelia said with a laugh as she made a nest Center Stage, “that there was something between us right from the beginning.”
“There was yearning, I will admit, and a loneliness inside me.” Though the bird-creature’s words were for Ophelia, his eyes were on Bertie until he turned and entered the scene. “And you were lovely, and young, and full of life. I hardly knew what to make of you.”
“For the first time in centuries, I felt as if I could breathe.” Ophelia’s smile was only for him. “Though I was surrounded by water, I had no desire to throw myself in.”
The bird-creature circled her; as he moved, the lights lowered, and there was the suggestion of a thunder
storm outside. In the flashes of light, Bertie could see his feathers drift to the floor. Soft bits of down swirled and settled until he knelt before Ophelia, more man than bird. “Yes, there was something between us.” He brought her hand to his mouth for a single kiss.
Bertie could not think of him as her father yet, but he was no longer a Mysterious Stranger, either.
What part is he playing for me?
Watching Ophelia nestle against the man’s broad chest with a happy sigh, Bertie found it hard to breathe, hard to swallow. “What ruined it? Was it me?”
“Never think that—” the man started to say, but black-clad stagehands rushed into the cave set, wrapping the two figures onstage in long, twisted strips of sparkling aquamarine. Torn apart and coiled in separate cocoons, Ophelia reached for him, while the Scrimshander thrashed his arms and legs. The water was a winding sheet, though neither was dead yet.
“No!” Bertie cried when their motions slowed and finally stilled. The fabric settled into sloppy-wet pools. Ophelia lay in a heap, her swollen belly straining at the sodden green fabric of her dress.
The man crawled to her, his hand seeking the fullness of her middle before sliding up to her throat. He shook her gently. “Breathe, my love.”
A pale blue lighting special washed over her cheeks, but Ophelia obeyed him. She turned her head to one side and spat silver glitter onto the stage. “It’s all right. I’m used to it.”
Gathering her to his chest, the man cast about the cave. “It’s not safe in this place.”
Ophelia clutched him. “What are you saying?”
“We have to go back to the theater.”
“You’re supposed to be my handsome prince,” Ophelia cried. “This is supposed to be my happily ever after.”
“Calm yourself.” He gathered her in his arms. “I’m not leaving you. Not now. Not ever.”
“But you did,” Bertie whispered.
“Hush,” he said as the set shifted around them, a scrim curtain running across the stage with the blur of motion, the rush of air that suggested flight. When it came to a standstill, Bertie could see it was painted with the Théâtre’s façade. The marquee dangled from invisible-thin wires, Hamlet’s name spelled out in lights.
The bird-creature set Ophelia on the stage, feathers once more obscuring his features. “The journey came at a great cost. Summoning my almost-forgotten flight-magic awakened the wild creature I’d once been.”
Ophelia turned to him, grasping his face in her hands. “Don’t you dare leave.”
His every muscle trembled with the effort of holding on to her. “Don’t let go, whatever you do.” A haunting melody began to play: whale song, the call of the gulls. The bird-creature shuddered. “She’s calling to me. She claims she’ll open the portal.”
“Lies.” Ophelia wrapped herself around him like a starfish clinging to a rock. “Stay with me.”
“I love you.” His words were a croak.
“And I you,” Ophelia cried. “Do you doubt that?”
Bertie stiffened at the words.
Do you doubt that?
The line echoed all around them as a golden sheet of paper—her page from The Book—fluttered free of Ophelia’s pocket and then disappeared. The water-maiden immediately faded around the edges.
That . . . that . . . that . . .
“Your opening line,” Bertie said.
The performance taking place that night … an understudy onstage perhaps …
Someone said Ophelia’s first line, acted her page back into The Book, pulled her back into the theater.
Unbidden, the Theater Manager’s face swam before Bertie as the stage tumbled into a blackout.
“No!” both women screamed in unison.
When the lights rose to half, Ophelia was trapped behind the scrim curtain. Only thin gauze separated her from the Scrimshander, who had fallen to his knees, but it was enough to keep them apart. He trembled, hands pressed against the stage floor, shoulders shaking. Without her to tether him, he began to transform.
Ophelia pounded on the painted door; though the scrim was no more substantial than a whisper, she could not broach it. “My love!”
His keening cry cut through the space, the humanity fading from it, and there was nothing of the man left to recognize her. The bird shook, settling every feather into place before he launched himself into the sky. The scrim curtains slithered offstage, their task performed, and Ophelia fell as though her strings had been cut. Bertie ran to her mother, past the stagehands who flipped the pages of The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery to the Théâtre’s Lobby with the swift crackle of stiff paper.
“Ophelia.” Bertie lifted the woman’s limp form into her arms.
“He promised he wouldn’t leave.” Her puppet-mother stared up, eyes wide and unseeing.
Bertie choked, wishing there was something she could do, except this was a mere recitation of events long since past. Two of the faceless, black-clad stagehands rushed in and pried her off Ophelia.
“You must let her finish.”
“The play is not yet done.”
“I don’t want to see anymore!” Bertie twisted in their grasp.
Stage Left, another stagehand pulled a tab so that a two-dimensional cutout of Mrs. Edith glided across the stage. As the Wardrobe Mistress passed before Ophelia, the stagehand pushed the tab back into the book. The figure flipped about, and the new version of Mrs. Edith held a swaddled bundle in her arms.
Ophelia sat upon the page, the salt water of her tears reclaiming her. “We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep.”
The Theater Manager’s voice echoed all around them. “I think it would be best for everyone if you took the child away from the Théâtre.”
Mrs. Edith’s rejoinder was stern. “What does Ophelia think of your plan?”
“Not a thing,” he said. “She remembers nothing of the outside world, nothing about the child.”
Ophelia put her fists to her eyes, crying out. Accompanied by the croon of a single violin, a series of ghostly projections waltzed across the stage: dark silhouettes of her first meeting with the fulmar, their journey to the sea, their time spent together in the Aerie. The lighting darkened, the shadow-recollections showing their return to the theater. Ophelia clutching the Scrimshander. Panting in childbirth. Cradling a newborn baby. Then the projector clicked off and took the memories with it.
Rising, Ophelia gave Bertie that calm yet vague smile that had been her signature expression for years. “The curtain is coming down, don’t you see? You ought to be off.”
The blackout that followed was swift and certain. With the performance finished, a single, bare lightbulb flickered to life, dangling from a wire overhead. Spots danced through Bertie’s vision as her eyes struggled to adjust. Left alone once again, she swallowed and swallowed, refusing to cry.
For any of them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Of His Bones Are Coral Made
Ophelia didn’t forget me … her memories were taken from her.” Bertie’s fingers closed around a single feather the Scrimshander had left behind; it was cold, like the kiss of great icebergs passing through arctic waters. Frost slid through her, salt-spangled and tasting of the sea. “And my father didn’t abandon her. He was trying to stay.”
Not only that, but—
She’s calling to me. She claims she’ll open the portal.
Another crossing-over place. One that would lead her to Nate—
A whistle blast cut through the darkness, shattering the single lightbulb. Bertie ducked her head to avoid the glittering shower of glass.
“Bertie!” The cry seemed to come from the end of a train tunnel. “Bertie!” Getting closer.
She refocused her eyes upon four tiny perturbed faces only half illuminated by the tiny coal-burning stove.
“How long have you been like this?” Peaseblossom wanted to know, except her features were sculpted from marzipan.
“Insane?” Bertie levered herself upright, eve
ry muscle protesting. “All my life, I think.”
The boys had been carved from milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and what appeared to be peanut nougat. “Were you asleep?”
“Not exactly.” The very idea jabbed at her vitals with rusty nails, because if she had indeed been asleep, then why had she not dreamed of the grove, of Nate—
Unless I’m too late to rescue him?
Between them, the boys managed to get the door to the rear balcony closed, though they had to shove part of a snowdrift out with it. Beyond the windows, the landscape was a midnight canvas, and Bertie concentrated very hard until the fairies’ candy coating disappeared.
“Where’s Ariel?” Peaseblossom asked, adjusting the wick on the nearest lamp. Now the light sparked with a tiny cascades of red and orange glitter, sifting down the length of the walls to decorate the surface of the remaining snow.
“He left.” Trying to rein in her panic over the prospect that Nate might have unraveled just as reality was now coming apart along the seams, Bertie allowed her head to rest against the wall. “And I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Mustardseed gaped at her. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“Jealousy,” Waschbär said from the doorway. “Something to do with the cut on your hand, I imagine.” As he approached her, Bertie wondered if he’d always so closely resembled an upright raccoon, or if the absence of the medallion played such merry havoc with her senses. He knelt next to her and held out a paw. “Let me see the wound.” When she unfurled her fingers, the feather fluttered out. The sneak-thief raised it to his nose, already aquiver. “This is a fulmar’s feather.”
“You were right,” Bertie said. “My father is a seabird.”
The end of the sneak-thief’s nose twitched again. “Your hand smells of infection.” He placed his wrist against her forehead. “You’ve a fever, there’s no doubt about that.”
“Does my fever smell of strawberries?” Holding up her good hand, Bertie tried to imagine it full of fruit. “Hot strawberries? Boiling strawberry jam?”