“We have to make it through the scene change.”
As they swung gently, Bertie summoned a brilliant smile. “The show must go on.”
Far below them, the black-clad stagehands turned over the page in The Big Pop-up Book of Scenery, and swaths of starlit paper rustled across the stage. The new set appeared with the creak of wood and steel: two platforms, the closest just out of reach of her feet.
“You have to swing us over there,” Ariel said.
Bertie recalled the Innamorati acrobats, heaving themselves around the pie car. “Arch my back. Point my toes.” She kicked her feet, with purpose this time. “No different from sitting in a rope swing.”
“Of course not,” Ariel said with a groan. “Even if the rope swing’s arms are about to fall off.”
Glaring at him through the lace of her cap, Bertie said, “I know you are not choosing, at this critical juncture, to suggest I weigh one ounce more than I should.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” With a grunt and a heave, he let her go.
There wasn’t time enough to scream before Bertie landed atop the platform. Twisting about, she watched as Ariel levered himself upright. He leapt from the rope ladder, landing with less grace than usual.
Far below them, the stagehands pulled the tabs along the edge, and silk net bubbles rose and fell on the surface of the page. Steam drifted over the paper floorboards.
“I get the tightrope act,” Ariel said, “but we’re over a cauldron of what, exactly?”
Bertie watched the vapor uncoil like the Caterpillar’s hookah smoke. “Boiling ice.”
“A physical impossibility,” Ariel said.
More concerned with the “knife-thin” passage, Bertie peered at the glinting obsidian edge of the supposed tightrope. She could feel her heartbeat thudding in the wound on her palm as she raised her voice so the audience could hear. “This is the place that cuts the day from night. If we cross it, we can be together.”
“I’ll go first.” But his face was ashen.
“You are waning. Let me light the way.” The moment she was done speaking the line, Bertie looked at the cutting-edge of the crossing and screamed, “Why did I write that I would go first?!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Mote Will Turn the Balance
The light shifted, and Bertie now held a ribbon-striped pole. Needles of ice had rent a dozen holes in the Columbine costume. Her tights hung in golden tatters. Looking at the ragged, obsidian edge of the would-be high-wire, she could only be thankful her shoes remained intact.
“It’s in the script,” Ariel muttered. “Just don’t look down.”
Of course she did. Far below them, demons and imps frolicked and cavorted. Twisted of purpose, they wore lurid costumes and leering masks. The boldest among them leapt from bubble to bubble until their odd trampolines burst and they were burnt to ash in an instant. “I think falling would be a very bad idea.”
“I concur.”
Careful to balance her weight with the pole before she took the first step, Bertie moved out onto the edge of the knife, her existence reduced to the soles of her feet. Using a gentle singsong voice, she coaxed herself along, as though speaking to a small child. “I’m like one of the puppets in the hatbox theater. I have a string that runs aaaaall the way down my back.” Her posture became very good indeed. “Someone is holding my strings. Someone with talented fingers … Waschbär! Waschbär lifts my right foot, then my left, placing them one in front of the other. Come on, Ariel.”
His spotlight eclipsed by her growing bravery, Ariel shook his head. “I can’t.”
She’d never expected him to hesitate, never imagined him as fearful. “Look how far ahead of you I am. Twelve steps, one for each hour.” The balance pole bobbed. Instinctively she compensated, one foot in the air, toes pointed. Imaginary puppeteer still holding her strings, Bertie twisted around to look for her partner.
Ariel remained on the platform, eyes haunted.
Panic surged up the back of Bertie’s throat, thicker than bile. Knowing that shouting might unbalance her, knowing that the audience watched them, knowing that the show must go on, she tried not to betray the anger boiling inside her like the ice far below them. “You’re afraid?”
“Damn right, I am!”
“Because you can fall. It’s not so easy, is it?” Demons of her own prodded the taunts from her, though she masked them with a brilliant smile. “‘Jump, I’ll catch you!’ he says. Do you understand now what you were asking of me?”
Imps the size of rotten apples manifested on either end of her balancing pole, jumping up and down, more demented than the fairies at their worst. Misshapen of face and limb, the imps cartwheeled and gestured, doing their utmost best to unbalance her. But years spent in the company of Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed made it easy for Bertie to deal with them. Rolling the pole over in her hands, she dumped the worst of the vile things back into the Cauldron. The survivors leapt onto her shoulders, screaming their ire as Bertie took a step backward on the knife’s edge.
“Step toward me, Ariel.”
“I can’t.”
Another step back. The imps fed cruel words into her ears that spilled out of her mouth without her permission. “I guess we know which boy wins the fair maiden’s heart, then, don’t we?” Bertie bit down on her tongue, trying to stop the taunt, but too late.
The lines cast by the imps’ words pulled Ariel out onto the knife. “You won’t reach Nate without me.”
“Oh, but I will.” Using her voice, her smile, the imps dragged him forward another step. “And the reunion will be sweet.”
The next step Ariel took was of his own volition. He’d forgotten his balance pole, so he held his arms out to either side. “Remind me, if we live, to throttle you.”
While she couldn’t claim to be enjoying herself, the imps certainly were, including the ones who twisted her ears and forced her to ask, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“You’re calling me a coward now?” He was taking two steps for every one of hers, catching up swiftly.
“I am.” Her own words this time; glancing over her shoulder, she saw that with only a few steps more, they’d be safe.
The demons decided this wouldn’t do. Possessing all the power of flight that Ariel had lost, they surged up from the depths of the Cauldron to grab hold of ankles, skirts, the ends of Bertie’s balance pole. So close to the ledge, she could have jumped for it.
But Ariel will never make it.
She dropped the pole, watching it spiral back down into the Cauldron, and kicked the nearest cackling demon as hard as she could. Imps had Ariel by the elbows and knees, trying to throw him off balance. He stumbled forward, falling, his knee smashing into the dull edge of the obsidian knife with the sickening crunch of bone. Blood spurted from the wound.
The ringmaster cackled. “So he can bleed, like any other man!”
The audience roared, this time with bloodlust. Demons leapt for her ankles as Bertie ran back for Ariel. She bobbled, caught herself, arms pinwheeling, as the demons dragged the air elemental’s wounded leg over the side. He cried out—
But it was Bertie who miscalculated her fleet-footed steps. It was Bertie who fell, just as she had from the White Cliffs, the same sort of plummet as when the Scrimshander had dropped her. Wind buffeted her from all sides, filling her frilly skirts one second and sucking the air from her lungs the next.
“Little One.”
Any moment now, she would smash into the surface of the stage.
“Remember who you are.”
Child Bertie whispered to her:
I wonder if we can fly.
A cry of protest, the call of a gull. Tattered bits of lace fell into the boiling ice and were lost. Golden slippers danced into the darkness. What had been skin was feathers, and the free fall ended with a dizzying circle out over the audience.
Everything shifted, then the world clicked back into place.
The bird wheeled around, catc
hing hold of the demons that surged up from the depths of the Cauldron. It plucked out their eyes with a sharp beak, rending and scattering limbs, but they were not her prey. The lights transitioned to a single spotlight that illuminated a pale worm, writhing on a hook.
She soared out of the dark to catch hold of him just as he would have fallen, sharp talons digging into his protesting flesh. Wings beating, she flew up, dragging him to her perch, dropping him into the nest.
Another harsh cry, this one of triumph, as she landed alongside him.
The creature spoke. “Bertie?”
She tilted her head at the noise. The word was foreign, but it echoed between her ears.
The creature reached for her, and she snapped at him, beak closing down upon his pale fingers and drawing blood. Crimson droplets fell on her white feathers, dotting the plumage with rubies.
“Bertie.”
She shuddered, and the feathers marked with his blood fell out.
“You’re in there, aren’t you?”
The creature’s words made no sense at all, but his voice … his beautiful voice … called to her with all the winds she’d never flown. He reached for her again, pulling aside the beak that was now a mother-of-pearl mask.
“Air,” she squawked, trying to remember what it was like to be human. “Ariel.”
Another swirl of feathers and down drifted away when he slid his hands along her face. “You flew.” The wonder in his voice echoed in her head, then his lips were on hers, pressing the words into her mouth.
“I flew.” She held on to him, his touch leading her back to humanity. “Like my father. Like … like you.”
“You are like me.” He enfolded her in his arms, the next words whispered into her hair. “I knew it.”
Bertie could feel the scene changing around her, the platform lowering them in a spiral path back to the stage level, the Cauldron disappearing along with the demons and imps. The brush of air over her newly naked flesh was painful. She felt the loss of her feathers keenly, the sharp edge of a knife scraping lightly over her skin.
“Hold still.” Ariel covered her with the tattered remnants of his own silk shirt, and the weight of it made her cry out.
“The Lovers’ Pas de Deux,” a voice announced as the lights faded to a soft spotlight upon them.
Wearing just the tightly fitted pants of the Harlequin, Ariel was only slightly more dressed than she. The cut made by the knife-passage exposed his injured knee: a bloody gash in his pale flesh that forced him to favor that leg when he rose. “We’ve done this before.”
But it was nothing like the tango, which had been castanet-bound, a race between guitar and bandoneón. Bowstrings met violins, and Ariel caught her under the knees, cradling her as one would rock a child to sleep. Arm looped around his neck, Bertie pressed her cheek to his bare chest, the drums replacing the thud of his heartbeat as he held her.
No lines, now, but the dance told his story: I have waited forever to have you.
When he slid down to the stage, she sat a moment upon his good leg, then flowed away, running. You haven’t tamed me yet.
He rushed to catch up with her, but she pivoted, changing direction, mocking him with the laughter of flutes. They played hide-and-seek around the columns, like children, but with greater joy.
The music shifted, and he was scornful, a series of jumps telling her he would not be bound. You toy with my affections.
A knack, a toy, a trick. Dancing solo, she was confident performing in her own spotlight until the music changed again.
He was back, hands upon her waist, lifting her high in the air once more, unable to free himself from the dance, the music, from her. Though I be damned for it, I must have you.
It ended in a pose Center Stage, kneeling, arms wrapped around each other. The scenery shifted again, and fear sidled through Bertie.
“I didn’t write anything after the knife-passage, Ariel. Aleksandr just assumed it would end ‘happily ever after.’”
With great effort, Bertie raised her head from his shoulder and found herself nose to nose with someone quite odd. Dressed in silver robes that shifted in and out of reality like star-shine on a cloudy night, the creature also wore a glass death mask under which smoke coiled and unfurled. Two glittering sapphires winked at Bertie from the eyeholes.
Its voice was thunder in a bottle. “She was once the Sun.”
The second creature’s breath smelled of salt and kelp. “The other was the Moon, now turned mortal. Such a trick to play. Do you think we ought to return them to the sky?”
Bertie tilted her head up, her mind trying to make sense of the distant ceiling. Pale blue ice formed a massive dome beyond which water moved in sunlit currents. A mosaic of marble, silver-glass paste, and mother-of-pearl covered the walls, forming never-ending galleries that extended Stage Right and Stage Left.
“Which way?” The whisper came as Ariel unfolded himself just enough to take in their surroundings.
Exposed, there was no place to hide save behind the massive white marble columns, nowhere to run save up a grand, white staircase topped with an enormous set of double doors. “There.”
“Stand,” the first creature commanded. “Explain yourselves.”
“I can’t, because I’m not quite myself today.” Unbidden, Alice’s line leapt from Bertie’s mouth as they rose from the floor. A hundred sorts of fish were frozen in the ice tiles; under that, darker water eddied and flowed. “And what are you?”
Twin blinks. “Guardians.”
Of what? she started to ask, but the first Guardian voiced his question first.
“What would you have us do with you?”
Ariel stiffened, raised his chin. “Marry us, so that we might spend eternity together.”
It is a good play that ends with a wedding.
Aleksandr’s words came back to haunt her as the Guardians raised their arms.
“Very well,” the first said. “Summon the guests.” Immediately, a curious parade entered Stage Right. Half human, half animal, all masked, they carried with them vestments of white.
“I can’t!” Bertie’s hand throbbed. “I’m—”
Already married? Not about to do this as long as there’s breath in my lungs?
A clucking group of bird-creatures pulled her away from Ariel, alternately carrying and dragging Bertie behind a column. They stripped off the remnants of Ariel’s silk shirt and cinched her into a bodice of swan’s down. “A perfect match, a lovely match, he’s strong and handsome.”
Grasping the pillar, Bertie leaned out far enough to spot her “lovely match.” The Gentlemen’s Chorus was dressing him in a shirt of white linen, embroidered at collar and sleeve, and a severely cut frock coat.
“A fine match, an easy match, she’s your equal in every way,” they intoned.
“Ariel, we can’t,” she tried to protest, but the Ladies’ Chorus drowned her out with song and silk stockings.
“A wreath of blossoms for your hair. A veil to cover the eyes.” The two groups joined together to sing, “Though she will forever see to the very heart of you.”
Guarding it from strangers’ gazes, Bertie kept her hand closed over the medallion, the same hand Nate had cut with Waschbär’s knife. It burned with new fire as she tucked the scrimshaw down the bodice of the wedding dress, doubly guarded once an icy veil settled over her face and neck.
“Come. It is time.” The spirit-animals urged her down an aisle, newly strewn with white petals. The joyous cries of birds, of seals, of tusked creatures echoed over the ice. The feathers on the bridal dress rustled, summoning memories of flight and her father.
Another trapped between two loves.
I am more like him than I thought.
Every step brought her closer to Ariel: impossibly beautiful, expression unreadable, and standing under an archway of carved ice.
“Ariel, we can’t—”
“You’re supposed to wait to object,” he said. “I do believe the cue will be, ‘Speak
now, or forever hold your peace.’”
“You know what I mean, Ariel. I might already be … I mean, I’ve already …”
“What took place between you and Nate happened in a dream.”
“A place no less real than this one.” Bertie wanted to bolt, but her bare feet were frozen to the ice tiles.
Now Ariel looked down at her. “You told him you loved him, but did you vow to take him, forever and always? In sickness and in health?” When she didn’t answer, he took her unmarked hand in his. “I didn’t think so. A marriage without vows isn’t binding.”
The Guardians moved to stand before them. “We are gathered on this day,” the first said, “to witness the joining of this couple.”
Snowflakes fell, whiter than rose petals or rice.
“It isn’t the vows, but the intention behind them,” Bertie said, hardly able to see Ariel for the snow. “I said I loved him.”
The Guardian’s words flowed around them. “Do you promise to share the pain of the other and seek to ease it? To share their laughter and their dreams? Will you honor the other?”
Ariel looked down at her. “Do you love him still?”
Bertie gave the smallest of nods, afraid to do more than that. “Yes.”
The first Guardian turned to Ariel. “And you, sir?”
“Wait, what?” The ice-lace of her veil began to melt as Bertie’s temper flared. “No! Ariel, tell him—”
He nodded. “I do as well.”
“Damn it, that’s not what I meant!”
“Join their hands,” the first Guardian said. Its twin bound her to Ariel, wrist to wrist, with a long crimson ribbon.
Bertie struggled against it, but the animal-spirits only laughed. “The bride, she blushes!”
Another knot tied in the ribbon. “Ariel, tell them this is a mistake!”
“I will not. You are as much mine as you are his.”
Unbidden, she thought of the ancient grove of trees.
What is mine, and mine alone.
“Blood is drawn, to seal the covenant.” A blur of smoke and sapphire; so fast did the Guardians move that Bertie didn’t see what sort of instrument they used. Her right hand this time, but the fire of the cut was the same. Drops of blood decorated the front of her gown with crimson beading.