“You may now kiss the bride,” the Guardians pronounced as Ariel turned back her veil.
The scrimshaw had worked its way free from her bodice, and Bertie’s free hand clamped down upon it.
The first Guardian grasped her arm with frostbitten fingers. “What is that?”
The second Guardian caught sight of the scrimshaw. “Bone!”
“Bone, bone, bone!” The echo came fast, furious, and from all sides.
“Not just bone,” the Guardians said in horror, in wonder, “but Bone of Her Bone.”
The spirit-animals wailed until Bertie thought she might bleed from the ears. With hisses and screams, they diffused, spraying glittering crystals in every direction. Coalescing several yards ahead of Ariel and Bertie, they formed a ragged-edged half circle on the ice tiles, and every one of them screeched, “Kill them!” They rushed to tip over the archway, which broke into ragged chunks of ice on impact. “Lay their heads upon the block in sacrifice to Her!”
The Guardians seized Bertie and Ariel, still bound at the wrist, dragging them forward. “It must be done.”
“Like hell, it must!” Bertie twisted about, struggled to concentrate on her captor’s glass mask, its sparkling sapphire eyes. “I see what you really are.” The scrimshaw showed her what was in its heart of hearts: no more than captured smoke and bits of mirror, a spirit held prisoner by Sedna’s whims. “Sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The first Guardian shrieked and clapped its hands over the mask, but too late. The glass fragmented. Blue-white smoke escaped dome-ward. Empty, its robes puddled on the floor, sapphire eyes rolling across the ice tiles with a noise like marbles. The Second Guardian released Ariel as it fell to its knees. Toppling forward, its glass mask smashed against the ice tiles.
“Come on!” Ariel led the charge up the stairs with a thousand specters of the sea at their heels. The set of double doors opened before them, a yawning mouth. Together, they fell through the entryway and slammed the doors shut upon the reaching hands and claws.
Sedna’s voice crawled out of the darkness. “That was quite the entrance.”
Sand underfoot now, as though they’d skated off the ice tiles and onto a beach. Light began to trickle toward them in waves: wavering green and eerie, to match the waves that lapped at their toes and broke against the base of the Sea Goddess’s throne. The chair of onyx and obsidian sat some distance out, marking where the waters of the world began and ended. The tips of Sedna’s seaweed hair floated atop the foam at her feet, tethering the limp and lifeless form of a drowned mariner.
Now Bertie was the hart, her vitals pierced by the hunter’s arrow. “Nate.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hold Fast the Mortal Sword
Is this what you came for?” Sea green plaits of Sedna’s hair lifted Nate by his neck and arms.
Bound as she was to Ariel by the crimson ribbon at their wrists, Bertie nevertheless took step forward. “Monster.”
“Reckless child,” Sedna countered, smiling with row upon row of shark’s teeth. “You broke my Guardians.”
“It’s your own fault for taking something that did not belong to you—”
“I will have to fashion new masks, recapture their souls,” the Sea Goddess continued as though she had not been interrupted. “You are proving a most troublesome little snip, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith.”
“I get that a lot.” Bertie slanted a look at Ariel, whose smile was reassuring if fleeting.
“Such a lovely ceremony. A pity your pirate lad was not there to give the bride away.”
“I am not his to give away.” Bertie met Sedna’s full gaze, wishing she could wrap her hands, wounded or not, around the Sea Goddess’s throat. “I belong to myself and no one else.”
“The cuts on your hands say otherwise.” Sedna shifted her attention to Ariel. “What say you, air spirit? Do you consider yourself bound to this girl?”
“She is mine to protect, if not mine to love or hold.” Ariel met the full force of the Sea Goddess’s gaze without flinching.
Salt spray unraveled the knots in the crimson ribbon, and Bertie’s hand was once again her own as Sedna unfurled her starfish fingers, beckoning Ariel forward. “She doesn’t begin to comprehend the sacrifices you’ve made for her, but I do. I, too, was betrayed by a lover. What I lost, because of him …” The Sea Goddess paused to smile at him. “You have a nice look about you, air spirit. Would you care to take the Guardians’ place, to fly between the worlds and retrieve the souls of the dearly departed?”
“Perhaps some other time.” Except Ariel stepped forward, grimacing when he placed his weight on his injured leg.
“It’s a different wind to ride.” Sedna flung temptation in the form of emeralds at him. “Unlike any you’ve ever known before, I’d wager. What would you give to have such a thing at your command? What would you trade? A cockle or a walnut shell; a knack, a toy, a trick?”
“We’re not here to barter for a wind,” Ariel said, the words coming only with great effort.
Sedna’s precious stones dotted his arms, each one larger than the last and filled with green-fire dreams. In their facets, Bertie could see him riding astride a wind of brilliant cold. Frost decorated his silver hair and clung to his eyelashes.
“No!” Bertie grasped the largest of the emeralds and tried to pry it off, but it clung to his skin. She twisted and pulled until it came loose, leaving a trickle of blood behind.
“There’s no need for that.” Cast by Sedna, another stone landed upon Bertie’s arm. It scuttled sideways on spindly hermit-crab legs and sank pincers deep into the flesh of her arm.
Before she could yelp at the sharp sting of it, Bertie saw herself riding the wind behind Ariel, felt her arms wrapped about his chest, her frozen cheek pressed against his broad back.
“You could spend eternity like that,” Sedna offered. “You don’t have to leave. The three of you can stay here forever in this paradise that knows no passage of time. Young forever. In love, forever.”
“You know nothing of love.” It felt as if some part of Bertie died when she dug her fingernails under the terrible, lovely dream-thing and threw it with all the strength in her arm, though her voice didn’t waver. “Take back your false visions. I don’t want them.”
“Perhaps not yet,” Sedna said, “but that will change.”
“Ariel.” Bertie tore the enchanted stones from his flesh. “Wake up!” When he didn’t respond, she slapped him across the face as hard as she could. The blow rocked him backward, knocking him out of the reverie that threatened to drag him under with shackles of seaweed hair. Bertie grabbed him by the shoulders to shake the last wisps of the dream away. “Lies, lies; her words are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“Yes.” The dream-bites had raised red welts all along his arms, but his eyes were his own again, and they were angry.
“Well done, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith.” Sedna used Bertie’s name as though she were reining in a skittish horse. “But if he does not want emeralds today, perhaps he will take rubies tomorrow or sapphires the day after that. Everyone has a price. I found Nate’s. I will find Ariel’s. And yours.”
“You’ll rot like a hooked fish before you find mine,” Bertie said just before she slapped Ariel as insurance.
“All right!” he said with an uncharacteristic yelp. “I’m fine! You can stop doing that!”
“I’ll stop as soon as you get that dippy, mooning look off your damn face. And I owe you more than a slap for the handfasting!” Truth be told, it reassured her to see the color on his cheek, even if the red patch was in the shape of her hand. “Now, if I can just get Nate to wake up, too …”
Sedna rustled through the water and the dim, green light. “There is nowhere to go, no escape. I could flood this cavern any time of my choosing, but you’re not worth the trouble.”
Bertie remembered she wasn’t entirely without weapons. “Like you tried to drown my father?”
The Sea
Goddess hissed. “What do you know of that?”
“You tried to kill him, didn’t you? You discovered his Aerie, and you wanted him back, but you were too proud to ask.” Guesses all, but they hit their mark like harpoons.
Advancing, Sedna’s face contorted. Her long tresses towed Nate to shore as her bare feet met the sand. “I will summon the crabs to cut the tongue from your mouth.”
“I am no little mermaid, and I will not be silenced.” Bertie tried not to look at Nate. “Do you still love him? My father?”
Foam like spittle-lace sloshed over Bertie and Ariel when the Sea Goddess spat out her disgust. “The memory of him is no more than a grain of sand against my skin.”
“I’m not certain I believe you. I think you took Nate so that you wouldn’t be alone.”
“I took the pirate lad because a price was owed to me for the stolen bone of my bone.” Sedna’s weed-hair caressed Nate’s face, and her skirts were currents of dark water that hissed and roiled around them. “My knowledge of Man, forced upon me by my father and yours …”
“Take me instead,” Bertie said without meaning to.
Ariel clamped his arms around her neck as if to choke the words from her. “No!”
“You? The filthy, blood-tainted, bastard child of my once-upon-a-time love!” Sedna screeched. “Hardly a fair trade. The pirate is mine until I say he can go. Only then may he return to the surface.” The Sea Goddess’s horrible laugh raked sharp fingernails over Bertie’s skin. “If he ever wakes. If he remembers how to swim. If he remembers there is a surface, or a Beatrice.”
Bertie set her jaw. “I won’t leave him here.”
“He is no longer any concern of yours!”
“This man’s heart belongs to me. I will have it back.”
“Cut the heart from his chest, if it’s yours,” Sedna said. Bertie couldn’t think of an answer to that, and the Sea Goddess laughed again. “Pardon my amusement, won’t you? It’s been so long since I had such pleasant diversion.”
“It’s not really that interesting a game, is it? You hold all the cards.”
Sedna dragged Nate forward and dropped him in a heap on the sand. “Rouse him, if you can. Then we shall see what sort of game we are playing.”
Bertie reached for him, drawn to Nate like the Sleeping Princess to the spinning wheel. Arms sliding down to her shoulders, Ariel refused to let her take a step.
“She’s toying with you.”
Sedna’s laughter was the sort of noise that sank ships and dragged drowning mariners from the rocks. “I am that.”
Bertie shuddered, turning to whisper because she had no desire for the Sea Goddess to overhear. “You should have let me come alone, Ariel. This wasn’t your fight.”
“Your fights are my fights.” His arm slid down to her waist, fingers digging into the swan’s down of her bridal dress.
“I have to try to save him.” She pulled Ariel’s hands from her skirts and took a step away from him.
“You don’t.” His face worked as though he wanted to say more.
Bertie kept her gaze upon him as she took another step back; it was the knife-passage all over again, except this time, she didn’t want him to follow. “If it was me, would you be able to turn around? To walk away without trying to save me?”
“Must you always fight dirty?”
“Yes!” Picking up her skirts, Bertie pivoted on her heel and ran, certain that waves would catch her up and slam her into the sand at any second. But the Sea Goddess did not interfere as Bertie fell to her knees next to Nate. Dragging him into her lap, she was horrified by the way his head lolled, a puppet with his strings cut. His flesh was pale where once it had been bronze, and his eyes were as vacant as two pebbles. She traced the planes of his familiar and longed-for face with her hands.
“Call to him,” Sedna commanded. “See if he answers your summons.”
“Nate.” Bertie held him tighter, as though she could transfer his memories of her, of the Théâtre, through his skin and skull. “You have to wake up. Say something, please.”
Ariel reached for her with his words. “He’s too far gone, Bertie—”
If there’s anything left of his soul, it will be in the forest.
Unfocusing her eyes, Bertie let all the colors of the cave swim around her. This time, sinking into the dreamlands was like sliding through the surface of a soap bubble without popping it. For a fleeting second, she could still see the cavern, Sedna’s face twisted in silent laughter, Ariel running, trying to reach her. Distorted by the opalescent surface of the bubble, they wavered, then faded along with the lights. Black velvet curtains slid into place, muffling Ariel’s shout.
Alone in the dark, Bertie put a finger to her lips.
Quiet, please. No talking backstage.
The palest green light faded up, the promise of safety, of solace beckoning with a moss-tipped finger; the Forest Queen woke from her slumber, crowding into Bertie’s heart and mind. There was hardly room for both of them, and Bertie marveled anew at Peaseblossom’s schizophrenic portrayal of Juliet, Lady Capulet, and the Nurse.
But this is no mere performance, and when I was the Forest Queen, I didn’t care about rescuing Nate. I didn’t even remember there was a Nate.
With a thought, Bertie transformed the gentle green border of ferns into a circle of massive blocks of cold granite. Sun warmed and moon dappled, the henge would protect the blood and bones of those within its confines. The Forest Queen forced her to prowl the inner boundary, her steps soundless despite the whirl of leaves that appeared underfoot.
“Please permit me to go,” she pleaded with Bertie’s lips, yearning for her trees. “My place is there—”
“We have to save Nate.” In the dreamlands, he’d always appeared with the light; perhaps she’d arrived too late. Bertie tasted bile in the back of her throat when she whispered, “Where is he?”
“Are you a fool? A watery hearth is no home for us.” The Forest Queen clenched Bertie’s hands into fists, causing the handfasting wounds to burn. “Leave him to the Sea Goddess. It is she who called to him in his sleep, she whom he could worship for all time.”
Bertie couldn’t believe that was the truth, or the stones would crumble to dust. “Sedna’s not his goddess, she’s his kidnapper. Nate wants me to rescue him.”
“The way a hart longs for the arrow?” The Forest Queen swept aside her skirts, the animal they’d shot appearing at her feet. An arrow winged with horn protruded from just under its heart. “A true ruler cannot grieve the animals she brings down in the Hunt. Their blood and bones are hers for the taking.”
As Bertie stared at it, fur trembled and dissolved to sand, shivering off the flesh of a wounded man.
“Lass?”
She dropped beside him for the second time in as many minutes. “I’m here.”
He reached for her with a salt-scarred hand. “I think I dreamed of you.”
Blood burbled around the arrow lodged in his side. “Nate, hold still. It’s not real … you’re dreaming.”
His hand touched the shaft of the arrow and he blanched. “Don’t worry, lass. ’Tis but a Cupid’s dart you fired long ago.”
I never.
But the denial stuck in her throat, unable to cross lips that remembered every one of the pirate’s kisses. “Hold still.” Without waiting for his permission, Bertie drew the arrow from his flesh.
Nate’s scream filled the rock circle. He dug his heels into the soft earth in protest, kicking over one of the stones that surrounded them. The circle broke, the soap bubble popped. The Forest Queen disappeared with a howl of protest, and with her the promise of the trees. Both Bertie and Nate sat in the damp sand of Sedna’s cavern, and when the pirate blinked the dreams out of his eyes, his face crumpled in horror.
“I told ye not t’ come here! What in th’ name o’ all that’s holy are ye doin’?!”
“I came to rescue you.” The shift had happened too fast. Ears popping, Bertie tried to dispel the dizziness
and the feeling that her skin didn’t quite fit her properly anymore.
“Get th’ hell out!” Nate shoved at her, as though he could banish her back to the surface with wishful thinking. Blood burbled from the wound just under his heart; he’d carried it with him from the dreamlands, though here he clapped a hand over it before Bertie could see the extent of the damage. “Are ye insane?”
“Quite likely.” Ariel appeared on Bertie’s other side and didn’t wither under the pirate’s fierce gaze. “Don’t blame me, swashbuckler. This was all the lady’s doing.”
“Ye should ha’ kept her out o’ here! What were th’ two o’ ye thinkin’?!”
Water battered the far walls as Sedna scowled and the sea followed suit. Her eyes were narrow slits in her pale green face. “Come to me, my pirate lad.”
Nate’s body jerked, but he didn’t move toward her. “Go t’ hell, ye sea-spangled bitch.”
Unadulterated rage poured out of the Sea Goddess. “I gave you everything.”
Nate rose, shaking with the effort of standing, of resisting her. “Ye gave me nothing. Ye took everythin’ from me an’ called it love.”
“She would do the same!” Sedna screeched, pointing a starfish finger at Bertie.
“That’s my choice an’ hers. Ye’ve nothin’ t’ do wi’ it.”
“Such foolishness.” A piece of golden paper appeared in the Sea Goddess’s hand. “You were drowned, but now you will live just so I may have the pleasure of watching you die again.” Sedna slowly crumpled Nate’s page from The Book.
He leaned over, retching from his lungs all the water he’d sucked in at the Théâtre. Bertie held on to his shoulders, trying to keep him from falling back to his knees.
“We have to get you out of here.” She thought of Serefina, of the many-faceted jars and bottles in the herb woman’s stall. “Get you to a healer.”
“He does appear to need attention, doesn’t he?” Sedna laughed. “Would you like to take him back to the surface?”
“Yes.” Bertie licked her lips and tasted salt.