“Don’t!” Bertie cried, but the Sea Goddess threw her arms wide to smash the wall behind her. Fissures spread like spiderwebs, radiating outward in the promise of impending collapse. Bertie didn’t mean to panic, but it was hard not to, what with the bone-rattling shudders that traveled up from the ocean floor. “You trap me, you trap yourself!”
Sedna shook her head. “I am the sea, and all that I am will escape in bits and pieces. My arms will be eels, my torso seahorses, the rest mud dragons and jaw worms and anemones. I will drift on the foam until I gather enough strength from the tide pools and coves to assume this shape again.” Her low chuckle triggered the first avalanche; it echoed in Bertie’s ears as the roof fell in on them and the walls crumbled. “This is your living grave. Curse your mother’s name, when you wish you could have drowned.”
A heavy weight smashed into Bertie’s back and crushed her against the rock in front of her. She struggled against it, managing to shift just a bit to the side before another boulder pinned her flat. Sedna’s laughter fragmented all around her. Though Bertie could not see the transformation, she could well imagine the plethora of sea creatures worming their way free of the rubble.
“Damn you,” she whispered, the words as rough as the rocks that grated against her lips.
“No,” said a thousand voices that were all the Sea Goddess. “Damn you.”
Sedna escaped with the fizzle of soda poured in a tall glass, then Bertie heard nothing more, not even the popping of tiny bubbles or the shifting of sand. She fought against the weight that held her captive even as she suppressed waves of panic and claustrophobia.
“Calm down. Concentrate.”
Somehow, talking aloud helped, despite the grit and water that swirled in her mouth and up her nose. Something scuttled around her ankles, and undiluted panic edged out every bit of clarity and reason. Bertie jerked as though she’d stuck a finger in one of the many faulty electrical outlets back at the Théâtre, the effort accompanied by a stream of curse words and futile wriggling. One particularly sharp rock dug into her forehead, another into the small of her back. The utter absence of sound filled her ears, and Bertie realized she was light-headed.
“Ophelia’s magic can’t save me from bleeding to death.”
Her heart waited for a cue that would not come. The blood settled in her veins to burn like acid.
There’s no way to mark the passing minutes. Has it been one? Three? Five? Am I unconscious yet? Brain-dead? Not while I’m still thinking, I guess. But is it colder now?
Bertie would have shivered, but there wasn’t even room for that.
So tired.
“To sleep, perchance to dream.” The shore, the White Cliffs. The words she mouthed were like a magic spell. “Scene change.”
The jagged weight against her back disappeared, as though lifted by unseen stagehands. The cavern rocks shifted.
“Our Queen,” they murmured.
“Don’t call me that again.” Bertie realized with a start that Nate called her “lass” to imply she was young, and Ariel used “milady” to claim possession; “My Queen” was just another label, another costume to wear, another weight upon her shoulders.
There is a Beatrice who exists beyond the obligations of a daughter, outside the object of man’s affections.
She took one step, then another. As she moved through rock and soil and sand, bits of loam kissed her upturned face.
“Seek out the company of those who will never ask you to jump,” the earth advised.
Bertie remembered the rush of feathers as she soared above the audience. “I can catch myself.”
“Of those whose love will never fill your lungs with water—” the earth argued.
“But it did not kill me.”
“There should be more to love,” said the earth, “than ‘it did not kill me.’ More than ‘I survived it.’”
The wounds in her palms ached, the pain traveling up her arms to settle between her collarbones alongside the medallion. Bertie recalled the many things Sedna had seen when she peered into her heart: the hours of play, the laughter and games. “I want things to be as they were.”
“Before love?” The earth laughed at her. “That’s impossible. Old as we are, we cannot remember a time before love. Stay safe here, in our heart. Return to your forest—”
“I can’t,” Bertie said. “‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.’”
Massive tree roots gathered about her ankles and wrists, helping her to climb up, up …
“‘And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve.’”
Everything went hazy around the edges, curtains of green and brown and amber parting to let her pass. The earth decorated her ragged skirts with diamonds and ore; Bertie held aloft the largest bit of gold, using its light to hold the darkness at bay.
“‘And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.’”
It was harder to move now, but Bertie pressed forward, through the darkness, through earth and air and water, refusing to succumb to the dull ache of fatigue that settled into her bones.
“‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on,’” she gasped, pushing up like a new green shoot, “‘and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Tangled Chain, All Disordered
Bertie brought the water with her, if nothing else: a parting gift from the Sea Goddess. For several minutes, her entire existence consisted of a violent bout of hands-and-knees, yak-water-out-of-her-lungs contractions until frothy, blood-tinged foam decorated the sand between her palms. Several helpful people clapped her on the back. Yet more babbled a stream of questions and concerns that, to her addled ears, almost hurt more than the coughing.
“I’m fine!” she wheezed between desperate breaths. Unfortunately it came out sounding more akin to “ugggggg fiiiiih!” Her throat hurt, as though she’d swallowed a swordfish sideways.
“Again between the shoulder blades, Moth!” The tiny voice belonged to Peaseblossom. The boys obeyed, each giving Bertie a solid blow so that the last of the water was expelled from her lungs.
“We need to get her closer to the fire,” Waschbär added, sounding remarkably calm, given the circumstances.
Two sets of arms, neither of which was hairy enough to belong to the sneak-thief, hauled Bertie upright faster than strictly necessary. The world teetered precariously, righted itself, then went wibble-wobbly around the edges again. She blinked the salt from her eyes until she could see the beach, the morning-streaked White Cliffs, and the four highly concerned fairies that hovered three inches away from her face.
“She’s alive!” Mustardseed crowed.
“Of course she’s still alive,” Moth said.
“Never doubted it for a second,” Cobweb added.
“She’s blue,” Peaseblossom fretted as she tugged wet strands of hair out of Bertie’s eyes.
“Drowning tends to do that to people.” Ariel was on her right.
Glancing to her left, Bertie realized she might have survived a run-in with the Sea Goddess only to perish under Nate’s blistering gaze.
“Ye daft wench! Whate’er were ye thinkin’, comin’ down there?”
“Saved you, didn’t I?” She lifted a hand to his cheek, needing to confirm he really was there. Time and weather would tan his skin again, but Bertie knew it would take longer to scrub his sojourn with Sedna from his soul.
“Always have t’ have th’ last word, don’t ye?”
“Yes.” She noticed both men had located a change of clothes in the caravan’s luggage. They were battle scarred, with bruises blooming like flowers and cuts in various stages of clotting. Nate had his left arm tucked over the chest wound, and Ariel’s weight shifted to accommodate his bandaged leg. They stood on either side of her
, invisible swords still at the ready, but some sort of truce had been called in her absence, and she hoped it lasted. Then maybe, for a little while, she could hug close her joy that they were both here and safe, without having to think about matters beyond that.
The Scrimshander cleared his throat. By the thin morning light, Bertie could see that whomever she’d gotten her nose from, it hadn’t been her father. He rubbed the beaked appendage with the tip of one finger like a nervous cockatiel grooming himself. “How are you feeling, Little One?”
“Little One,” Nate muttered as he and Ariel settled Bertie near the fire. “Little, my arse.”
“It hurts to breathe,” Bertie noted. Not only that, but her heart was leapfrogging around her chest cavity like a demented toad. She had a newfound respect for Ophelia’s fortitude, especially when her teeth started chattering.
Nate and Ariel remained glued to her sides, neither willing to step away first. Ariel went so far as to try to claim her right hand, but found it was already occupied.
“What do you have there?”
Bertie unfurled her palm, expecting to find a chunk of loam-encrusted gold, but startled to see that she’d brought Nate’s page from The Book with her. “A souvenir.”
Moth rushed in to take a look. “Aw, I thought it would be a snow globe!”
Bertie tucked the paper into the tattered bodice of her gown. “It’s better than a snow globe.”
Appalled by such a statement, the fairies went on to compile a list of the many souvenirs Bertie should have brought them from the underworld, starting with apparel that read “Bertie Went to the Underworld and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt” and ending with nesting Sedna dolls.
Remembering the twisted circus acts, the demons latching on to her ankles, the scuttling sea creatures, Bertie’s skin crawled. “You’re lucky we didn’t bring anything else back with us.”
The Scrimshander shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Unspoken questions flitted across his features in avian-shaped shadows until he cleared his throat to ask, “Is she … that is, what I mean to say—”
“Yes, Sedna’s still angry with you,” Bertie said.
“I was afraid of that.” He looked out at the listless surface of the ocean, expression inscrutable. “But she let you go. That’s a good sign, at least.”
“Not quite,” Bertie corrected.
He tensed. “Not quite what?”
“It was more like she failed to kill me. Twice.” She paused to consider. “Yes, there was the drowning and then the cave-in. Three times, if you add that she tried to strangle me.”
Moth whistled appreciatively. “The Stage Manager would be jealous.”
That startled a laugh from Ariel. “True. Many is the time he’d have liked to wrap his hands around Bertie’s throat.”
“Maybe,” Mustardseed suggested, “he could send Sedna a nice thank-you note.”
“That would be difficult.” Bertie reached for the medallion and realized it barely warmed to her touch. “She broke apart to escape the rocks. The ocean is probably seething with all the bits of her.”
“I didn’t fancy a swim, in any case,” Ariel said with a delicate shiver.
“None o’ us do,” Nate said.
“She said that she would find a way to regroup. That it wouldn’t be the end of her.” Bertie looked at her father through the ragged fringe of her bangs. “Someday … the two of you might …”
One second passed, then two while Bertie’s thoughts ran rampant.
As a bird, he loved her. Is he more bird than man right now?
The Scrimshander caught her up and pressed her tightly against his thin chest. When she coughed, he loosened his grasp just enough to let her breathe.
“I am glad,” he said against the top of her head, “that you are back, and you are safe. Whatever else happens, know that.”
Then he was gone, slogging through the sand, headed back to his cave. Bertie watched his retreat, remembering her promise to Ophelia that she would bring him back to the theater.
“Dad,” she whispered hoarsely, but he didn’t hear or didn’t mark her.
He could have asked me to take him through the portal. Except Sedna’s no more than foam on the water right now.
Bertie looked at the dim light shining out of the mouth of the Aerie.
Seventeen years not knowing. And now that I know, nothing has really changed, has it? The cottage, the laundry hanging on the line, the Family Dog belong to another child. All I have are two parents trying to piece together broken memories. And then there’s me, just as broken in some ways.
The fairies prevented her from dwelling on such morose thoughts, crowding as close as they possibly could, pushing and shoving one another.
“Get out of the way, you.”
“I want to sit on her shoulder!”
“Oh, Bertie, your clothes are a mess.” Peaseblossom peered at her. “Whatever are you wearing?”
The wedding dress was no more than a waterlogged rag, tattered white feathers trailing from scraps of silk. “Someone’s idea of a joke. There were more costume changes than expected.”
“You need to change again,” the fairy said.
Nate snorted. “She’s practically asleep sitting up. What she needs is food an’ medicine.”
Mustardseed bounced, looking pleased. “It took some doing, but we managed to drive the caravan across the sand!”
“What he means is, I drove,” Waschbär hastened to reassure her.
Cobweb nodded. “And we sang for our suppers—”
“Supplies!” Moth corrected. “In the marketplace. We knew when you came back that you’d probably need cake.”
“That was very optimistic of you,” Bertie said.
Mustardseed grinned. “Even if you hadn’t made it back, we could have eaten the cake.”
“What did ye buy, besides sweets?” Nate demanded. The fairies led him off with screams of “pomegranate custard!” and “lovely meat pies” and Waschbär’s murmured “I think there was a first-aid kit in there, somewhere. Check under the haunch of venison.”
The moment they were alone, Ariel turned to her.
“My thanks,” Bertie said before he had a chance to utter a word.
That surprised him. “For what?”
“For going with me through the stone. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes,” he said with a long, quiet look that was only for her. “I did.”
Bertie found she wasn’t too tired to blush. “Did you dream anything? Before we woke on the stage?” Thinking of the forest, she felt a pull so strong that her head swam with the desire to step past the moss-curtain. She put her chin on her knees, refusing to acknowledge the lure of leaves that rustled, still within her reach.
“I was flying.” Here he swallowed. “Looking for something, though I couldn’t remember what. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that sort of fear before … at least, not until your play had me walking the knife’s edge.”
“How did you find me?”
“The winds became a white horse that took me straight to your forest. The moment I passed between the trees, I was a knight.” A smile flickered across his face. “That was your doing, I think.”
“Not on purpose—”
Nate interrupted without apology, draping a woolen blanket over Bertie’s shoulders and shoving a mug into her hands. “Drink that.”
Ariel stood with visible reluctance. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
Bertie sniffed at the steaming contents of the cup, which reeked of ginger. The cuts from her palms burned against the hot ceramic. “You didn’t get this from the lizard woman, did you?”
“Ship’s cook’s recipe. Ginger’s good for stomach upset.” Nate sat down next to her. “Helps th’ circulation too, an’ ye could do wi’ a bit more color in yer cheeks.”
“Am I still blue?” Bertie took a hesitant sip and felt her blood flare to life. The drink burned her tongue and scorched a fiery path to her in
nards.
Only after she’d consumed the entire mug did Nate speak again, turning his face into her hair to whisper, “Thank ye.”
“Don’t be silly.” She tried to shrug, but didn’t have the energy for it.
“Someday, I hope ye will learn t’ accept thanks when ’tis offer’d.”
“Maybe about the same time I learn to gracefully accept a compliment?” Bertie rested her head against his shoulder.
Nate snorted. “Mayhap.”
The two of them stared at the sea, the calm surface of the water flat and the same gray as the early morning sky. With him leaning close, Bertie realized with a pang that Nate smelled of sweat and salt and seaweed rather than the detergent Mrs. Edith used in the Théâtre laundry.
He touched a finger to the medallion. “Ye can take that off now.”
Bertie blinked. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Her magic’s gone from it. I can’t hear her callin’ t’ me through it anymore.”
“Good.” Bertie twisted her fingers around the chain, but made no move to take it off. “I don’t need her magic.”
I have my own.
“I didn’t mean it t’ be just a bit o’ pretty jewelry.” Nate looked at it and murmured, “I see ye replaced the chain.”
Bertie refused to look abashed. “What happened down there? Between you and Sedna?”
He stiffened. “Ye cut right t’ th’ heart o’ things, no?”
“She indicated she was quite charmed by you.”
“An’ what lass wouldn’t be, I’d like t’ know?” The words were jovial, but he looked bleak about the eyes.
Though Bertie didn’t want to pry, she did anyway. “She was your goddess, Nate. It’s not as if I would blame you, if something happened.”
“A fair trade fer whatever happened wi’ Ariel?”
The sudden appearance of the sneak-thief plopping down in the sand next to Bertie saved her from having to explain.
“I thought you might want this back,” he said without preamble, holding out the journal. “The Scrimshander said he found it at the base of the portal.”
Bertie was beyond thankful to see it, to hold it again in her hands. “How could it ever be an unwanted thing?”