“Also brought here by the flood.” Bertie scanned the ivory beams, and beyond the full-rigged schooners and lounging mermaids, she found what she sought: a rowboat tossed by waves, a princess cast overboard by her father. “He cut her fingers off, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Because she was clinging to the side of the boat, and you were coming for her.”
“Yes.” The fire crackled countless condemnations before he spoke again. “I began to carve the Théâtre’s façade upon it. As long as I stared at the bone, the tools, I managed to stay human. If I acknowledged anything else—the position of the sun in the sky, the direction of the winds outside the cave, my own hunger—that which is bird would take over. I’d lose myself to those instincts, to the winds, to the hunt, only able to recall my humanity when I returned to this place and to the work.” The Scrimshander rubbed a bit of pigment into the etching he’d created of Bertie’s seventeen-year-old self as though rubbing salt into his unseen wounds. “When the medallion was complete, Ophelia’s face stared back at me from every one of the theater’s statues. I remembered fully what had passed between us, what I had lost when I could not hold on to my humanity, and I hated the scrimshaw—every line, every bit of lampblack—almost as much as I hated myself.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I threaded the medallion upon an old metal chain and left it on my workbench, wishing it would disappear, wishing I’d never have to again lay eyes upon it. In the morning, it was gone.”
“An unwanted thing.” Bertie understood how Waschbär had come into possession of it now. Though the ivory walls radiated heat, the smooth stone of the floor was both damp and cold, and she shivered.
“How thoughtless of me. You aren’t dressed for this rough setting.” Striding back to the hearth, the Scrimshander added sticks of driftwood to the fire. Within seconds, the conflagration burned phosphorescent blue and green with tinges of violet around the edges, more glorious than any of the pyrotechnics they’d used at the Théâtre. A moment passed, marked only by the salt hiss and crackle. “This is a fool’s errand. I can’t imagine your Nate would have you risk your life for the sake of his—”
“Make no mistake, I am going.” Bertie wondered if he’d grab her by the elbow and lock her in a cage, or a bedroom, or wherever bird-fathers confined recalcitrant teenagers. “If you ever loved my mother, tell me how to get to Sedna’s kingdom. She promised to open the portal to you.”
“It was a lie.” He remained kneeling, though he looked at her and not the hearth.
Summoning shades of the snake charmer in the Caravanserai, Bertie fixed her glittering gaze upon him, uttering words in a way meant to mesmerize. “Show me where it is.”
The Scrimshander could not look away. “I won’t.”
“You can tell me.” Not just the snake charmer now, but Serefina, her commands not to be denied. The herb woman’s inflections were joined by Mrs. Edith’s tempered steel. “You must.” The Theater Manager’s way of Settling The Matter. “You will.”
Trembling with the effort, the Scrimshander rose, breaking free from her spell. “I’ve no idea how many you have twisted about your finger, how many you have tried to charm or coax or badger into giving you what it is you want, but I am your father, and I am telling you no.”
The finality of his words was like a slap. “Then I’ll find it myself! There must be some hint here … directions. A map.” When he took a step toward her, she pointed a finger at him. “If you will not speak, then neither will you move. You have failed at every turn, twice as a husband, again as a father. Let your failures bind you.”
Her fury drove the word-spell home, nails through his soul that pinned him to the wall of the Aerie. There he remained, unmoving, unable to dissuade her from flinging quills, trinkets, and bits of food every which way. Half-eaten biscuits, half-rotted fish, rocks, sticks, tattered clothing, reeking bits of rag …
“Even the fairies would think this place is disgusting, and that’s saying quite a lot.” Trying to tamp down her rising panic, Bertie went to his desk, rummaging through the bits of parchment, empty ink bottles, net mending needles, thumbnail sketches of various landmarks and ships. “No wonder Sedna left you. I cannot believe Ophelia lived in this sty.”
He spoke with great difficulty. “Your mother would not wish this for you.”
“You haven’t the foggiest notion what my mother would wish for me!” Bertie picked up a small skull off the desk and hurled it at him with a passing hysterical thought of alas, poor Yorick! As her grip on her temper loosened, so did her hold upon him.
“It is not failing you to see you safe from harm.” He managed to duck when she threw a rough clay mug, struggled forward as she flung a small stone tablet. “You will calm yourself.” Blocking the various projectiles, he grasped her by the wrists. Bertie twisted and kicked, but he held her out from him as though she were no more than a tiny fish hooked on a line. “An unseemly display. I see you inherited Ophelia’s temper as well.”
Panting, Bertie realized how great a fool she’d been. “I don’t need you to tell me.” Jerking away from him, she wrapped her fingers around the scrimshaw, thinking of Nate, of Sedna, of the cavern. “I will find the portal myself.” Her heartbeat hammered in her ears as one second passed, then another. The walls around her pulsed with the earth’s heartbeat followed by the thrum of blood in ancient veins. Everything contracted, a muscle clenched before settling back into place.
Behind the bone slab, a tattered leather curtain fluttered. The Scrimshander lunged for it, but Bertie was faster, ripping it from its ivory hooks, pulling it atop herself. Tangled, smothered, she fought her way free only to stare, blankly, at the descending stairway it had been concealing.
“It’s down there, isn’t it?” Grabbing a fat wax candle from the floor, Bertie paused only long enough to light it. A smaller animal’s ribs formed the rafters of the narrow passage, the darkness beyond leading to the waiting belly of the earth. Upon the first bit of bone, her father had scrimmed Sedna’s lair: her throne surrounded by cavern walls and water. Schools of fish swam past seals, and whales dove deep to worship the Goddess of the Sea. Yes, there she was, with her cold features and her mutilated hands, ruling over them all. “This is the map.”
“It’s not a map,” was his faint reply as the passageway narrowed, the ceiling dipped yet lower. He followed, albeit at a distance, as though he could neither bear the thought of being so enclosed, nor the notion that Bertie would disappear from sight. “They’re only the markers of the journey.”
“You must have been there.” Bertie moved down one step, then another, the flickering candlelight illuminated the next engraving: some sort of massive Hall, with sky-reaching columns and an ice-tiled floor. “You must have seen it.”
“In my mind’s eye, only,” he said. “The bones whispered to me. They showed me the way.”
But he was not the only one to whom the bones had whispered, for beyond the Hall was a picture of a knife-thin passageway over a Cauldron, then a set of interlocking circles labeled THE ICE WHEELS.
The scrimshaw hummed against Bertie’s skin with the pleasure of recognition.
It showed me the journey to Sedna’s lair as I wrote the Innamorati’s play.
“It is a wise child who knows her own father.” The words of the inverted quote echoed, matching the vibration of the medallion, which grew stronger and louder with every descending step. When the stairs finished, Bertie stood in a tiny rotunda with no exit save the way she’d come in. The only bones here were a set of massive tusks half buried in the curving stone wall. Even if the resultant archway had not borne years’ worth of elaborate carvings, she would have sensed what it was.
The portal.
Hand to the wall, Bertie willed the stone to move. “How do I get through?”
At first, only silence greeted the question.
“Bertie.” Her name on the Scrimshander’s lips was a plea. “Sedna’s is goddess-magic. Do you really think you’re a match for her,
Little One?”
She couldn’t second-guess herself now, not unless she wanted to end up a quivering mass of jelly on the cold floor. “I’ll have to be. Now tell me how to open this.”
“I don’t know!”
Rounding upon him, rage filled Bertie with fire, the accusation exploding from her mouth with a cascade of sparks. “Liar!”
“I speak the truth!” And to prove it, he rushed at the stone. “I died innumerable deaths of the heart, of the soul, trying to get through!”
Bertie retreated a few steps, sickened by the repeated crunch of flesh and bone meeting unyielding stone. Forgetting that she hated him, Bertie grabbed the Scrimshander by his newly feathered arms and dragged him back. “Don’t—”
He tore from her grasp with a bird-shriek, preparing to fly once more at the wall, but a mighty wind knocked both of them down. A wordless call came from a distance. Wax spattered over Bertie’s skin in burning droplets as her candle guttered then fell to the floor. At the top of the stairwell, the light from the hearth blazed up, casting chimera shadows down the walls before it dwindled to the barest red glow.
In the resultant darkness, the Scrimshander moved between Bertie and the unseen threat, his voice a croak. “Get behind me.”
“Your concern is adorable.” There was another cry, this one closer, and calling her by name. “But I am perfectly capable of protecting myself, especially since I recognize the voice.” Pulse thudding in her ears, Bertie shoved past him.
Ariel couldn’t have taken the potion, unless that was the noise of a man casting his memories to the wind.
As she ran up the stairs, her emotions were a giant cauldron over which the witches from That Scottish Play cackled, stirring her soul with a stick.
I should have told him I loved him. It’s true enough, isn’t it?
Except I can’t love someone I don’t trust with my whole heart.
When Bertie stumbled, her father grasped her by the arm. He sounded aggrieved even as he pulled her to her feet and kept her from falling again. “No doubt your ire keeps you better protected from random attacks than one might expect.”
“I wish I was still angry.” She sidled past the bone slab and peered around the Aerie. “When I’m angry, I forget to be afraid.”
“That’s just the trouble.” With an expression so dark that she could barely make him out, Ariel stood in the mouth of the cave. “When you forget to be afraid, you forget to worry about the sanctity of your limbs.”
Halfway across the room, Bertie staggered to a halt, held at bay by the cold fury in his words. The Scrimshander’s arms twitched, as though he would still like to wrap them about her, or fly at the intruder.
“Don’t attack him. Not yet, anyway.” Bertie turned back to Ariel, almost afraid to voice the question. “What are you doing here?”
“A marvelous question, and one you might ask yourself.” He strode across the room, his anger reaching for her with barbed tendrils. “What were you thinking, coming here alone?”
Bertie located her spine, more than a bit bruised by her tumble onto the floor, and straightened it. “Says the man who jumped off the back of a moving train!”
With the hissing flare of a match, the Scrimshander relit the lantern nearest him. “I assume this is a friend of yours?”
“Of sorts,” Bertie said. “Ariel, meet the Scrimshander. My father.”
“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. Sh
e 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?