As though summoned, the shadowy silhouette of an enormous bird dipped low over the campsite. Its cry sent dark, curved talons down Bertie’s spine as she followed Nate’s vague shape toward the caravan.
Already settled upon the ground, Waschbär nestled deep into the folds of his furry overcoat and gestured to the ferrets, who came at a run and dove into his pockets. “No more proper bed than a soft cushion of earth and the night sky for a coverlet.”
Running, Bertie called out, “Good night, everyone!” She feared the fairies would give chase, but a glance revealed they were already constructing impromptu nests of twigs and brambles, as though setting a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There was no time to stop and appreciate the pretty picture they made as she climbed the diminutive back stairs. Inside, Nate wavered in the center of overturned boxes and cabinet doors hanging ajar. Far worse than the mess, he’d gone as fuzzy as a spotlight diffusing across a stage.
How can he look paler than a ghost?!
“Bertie?” came the soft query behind her.
Though she didn’t want to, she turned around in the doorway to see Ariel standing just below her, a Romeo of reduced circumstances now that they were without the necessary balcony.
“Would you like to me come inside?”
“Whatever for?” Before Ariel could explain, the answer slammed into her chest. “Oh. No. No, thank you.”
“Are you certain?” When the air elemental placed one foot on the staircase, the caravan began to vibrate.
Standing just behind her, Nate strained to close the door. The journal’s sparks had burned tiny holes in his shirt, his hands, his cheeks, and bits of light gobbled yet more greedily as he expended what energy he had left.
Bertie hastened inside, not wanting him to wink out like a candle. “I am. But … er … thank you for the offer.”
“Good night, then—” Ariel managed to say before Nate succeeded in slamming the door shut in his face.
CHAPTER FOUR
Darkness Like a Dream
While I don’ like th’ idea o’ him sniffin’ about ye,” Nate said, his voice crawling out of a dark so blue that it could only be found at the bottom of the sea, “I hope fer both yer sakes all he’s done is sniff.”
“Never mind that.” Entangled in unseen debris, Bertie lost her shoes as she tripped over what felt like a table leg, a jumbled pile of bedding, and an open drawer. She fumbled her way along one wall, locating the wooden bracket that contained a tiny glass oil lamp and a box of matches. Once she’d banished the shadows, the interior of the caravan reminded her of a doll’s house that had been upended and rattled about. The sleeping berth tucked along one wall had belched half its bedding upon the floor, the pocket-size breakfast nook was a jumble of embroidered place mats and crockery, but she gave the amenities only a perfunctory glance. Setting the journal and pen in the center of the table, she turned to address a more important issue. “You’re fading.”
Nate leaned against the cabinetry, though he wasn’t solid enough to rest any weight against it. His poltergeist act had apparently drained him of yet more strength, causing his features to waver then resettle upon his spectral bones. “I’m not long fer this place, I fear.”
Bertie would have traded any number of things to be able to reach out and take his hand. “Your soul isn’t meant to be separated from your body. I’ll have to write you back.”
“T’ Sedna’s cave?” Nate surged forward and attempted to grab the journal, though his hands merely stirred the cover. “Like hell ye will!”
“I have to! Do you want to die here?”
He hesitated before admitting, “I’m already dead, lass.”
Everything went hazy around the edges, and the floor tilted up to meet her. When Bertie sat down hard upon the crooked mattress, she cracked the back of her head against the wood that framed the sleeping berth. “What do you mean?”
“Sedna drown’d me, don’t ye remember?”
Instantly Bertie was transported back to the theater. Hanging from the chandelier, she saw him sucked under by the saltwater currents. She remembered holding her own breath until her lungs burned, reaching desperately for him as the Sea Goddess claimed Nate along with the glowing paper-fish that was his page from The Book. “Why?”
“She couldn’t take me t’ th’ underworld, unless my physical body was dead.” The words had more substance and power than he did. “That’s all she has now: that empty shell.” The sounds of spectral expectoration. “May she curse it till she’s blue instead o’ green.”
“But you’re fading.”
He fell to his knees alongside her, half drifting through the floorboards. “I’d rather fade t’ nothin’ here wi’ ye than be trapped there wi’ her.”
Bertie’s stomach clenched painfully and, along with it, her fists. “I’ll kill her.”
Nate rested the suggestion of his shaggy head on her knee. “Leave it be, lass. I’ll not have ye risk yer life fer th’ sake o’ revenge.”
“If you think you can order me about, you’ve forgotten much in your time away.” She tried to touch him then, but all she could feel was the cold.
“I’ve forgotten nothin’.” Then, before Bertie could say anything, he mumbled into her skirts, “Ye need t’ change. Ye’ve got dirt on yer face, an’ this gown’s fer th’ rag bag.”
“Tsk.” It took every bit of Bertie’s restraint to stay the threat of tears. “Mrs. Edith would have a fit, should she learn I changed clothes in your company again.”
“Yes, if by ‘fit’ ye mean she’d have my head on a pike.” Nate’s shade was now as thin as a bit of tissue paper held up to the light. He reached for her again, and this time his hand drifted through hers. “Lass—”
The whisper trailed off, a bit of rope slithering across a wooden deck and falling overboard without a splash to mark it. Surging up from the mattress, Bertie scrambled to open the journal.
“Not again.” Two fierce words, strong enough to cause the lamplight to flicker as she wrote,
They were transported to
the place where her powers would
be strongest, the place where she could
hold on to him with both hands.
A gust—of wind? of water?—snuffed out the lamp. Underfoot, the caravan’s floor was suddenly slick, a midwinter pond etched with ice-skating patterns, furrows raised and sharp like scars against the bare soles of her feet. Setting the pen down atop the journal, Bertie didn’t expect the table to immediately glide away from her like a sleigh. She reached for it, stretching her arms out in front of her, fingertips expecting to meet something, anything, but the bed was gone now as well, as though the Stage Manager had called a scene change, summoning a Great and Icy Nothingness to replace her bedroom. Trapped in the memory of black velvet curtains, Bertie took a tentative step, shoving against fabric that wasn’t there.
“Nate?”
Her piercing whisper prompted no response, and Bertie’s teeth started to chatter. The cold crept up her bare legs in icy ribbons, and the hem of her ruined evening gown crackled with frost. About the time she would have started screaming for help, a pinpoint of light appeared in the distance. Squinting, hoping it wouldn’t disappear, Bertie sidled forward. The fleck of gold dilated until she realized it was a single brilliant spotlight focused on a kneeling figure.
Then she began to half run, half skate across the treacherous black ice. “Nate!”
His head came up, and she was thankful to see that, though scruffy and wild-eyed, he was no longer transparent. “Don’t—”
Too late; she’d passed through a thin sheet of amber gel, the sort used to color the theater lights. Nate was on his feet just in time to catch her, and never before had Bertie been so thankful to painfully collide with someone in her life. Grasping his face in her hands, she wished for better words than the ones that tumbled out of her. “Are you all right?”
Nate nodded until hair came loose from his plait. “I think so.”
B
ertie counted fingers and toes and eyes in a frantic bodily inventory that thankfully ended with everything where it should be. He had no wounds, either. Not ones she could see, anyway.
“It worked!” she crowed, as loud as Peter Pan. “Something I wrote finally turned out the way I wanted it to!”
“Ye kept me from fadin’ t’ nothin’,” he said. “And fer that, I owe ye my thanks.”
The kiss wasn’t unexpected, but the moment his lips touched hers, Bertie realized something was still not quite as it should be. Nate’s mouth, the rough linen of his shirt, the solid weight of his chest under her hands … everything was slightly askew, reminding her of an ill-fitted costume. Pulling away from him, she put a hand over the scrimshaw. “You’re still not properly you.”
“I’m wearin’ yer memories o’ me like a second skin.” He tilted his head to the side, as though testing muscles newly strung. “Ye did well, though I feel a bit taller than before.”
Now she could see the small differences she’d wrought, the details she’d neglected. Beyond angry with herself for conjuring only the illusion of him, Bertie spat curses upon the ground.
Nate stepped back, giving her temper a wide berth. “Mrs. Edith would wash yer mouth out wi’ soap, if she could hear ye.”
“I don’t give a fig for Mrs. Edith right now.” Bertie went to kick something and realized they stood in a tightly focused spotlight. Slowly it expanded to include a tiny circle of stones, streamers of red and orange ribbon snapping to life within. Immense roots crept over the ground, the tangled tresses of a captured dryad. Bark-clad legs and gnarled torsos formed the trunks of ancient trees, their branches reaching through the darkness to form a massive canopy.
Nate’s breath caught at the sight of the trees. “Do ye know this place?”
“Yes.”
The last time I stood in a grove such as this, Ariel had torn all the pages from The Book, the Théâtre was falling down about our ears, and I used the trees to keep the ceiling from crumbling in upon us.
She’d conjured an exact duplicate of that set, and once again she drew strength from the ancient grove. A few minutes more, the branches might be her own arms, able to protect her and Nate both from time and tide.
“I want ye t’ promise me somethin’, Bertie.” The softly voiced words drew her attention away from the forest’s foliage.
She turned to face him, thankful she didn’t have to lie about this. “Nothing happened with Ariel.”
Nothing too bad, at any rate.
The stern look he gave her was exactly as she’d remembered.
Of course I got that bit right.
“I can’t deal wi’ him as I’d like.” Nate’s right hand reached for a sword she’d forgotten to give him. “Until that changes, I want ye t’ promise me ye won’t go lookin’ for Sedna.”
“Can’t exactly go looking for her here, can I?” Bertie thought she’d neatly skirted the issue, but that only led to another bit of difficulty.
“An’ how will ye get back t’ th’ caravan?”
“You can’t think I’m going back without you.” Not phrased as a question, Bertie’s words came out flat, the edges sharp, a dare to contradict her.
“Stow yer weapons, lass, ye won’t cut me wi’ that tone.” Nate’s arms encircled her, pulling her against a reassuringly solid chest. “Th’ longer ye tarry, th’ harder it will be t’ get back.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Th’ same way I know how t’ find th’ North Star.” Putting a hand over hers, he raised it to gesture at a sky devoid of light. “Ye don’t belong here.”
“Neither do you!” He was a page torn from her own book, held maddeningly just out of reach in the hand of a goddess.
“Go.” As though it pained him, Nate released her. The gentle shove that followed put her within inches of the spotlight’s edge. “I’ll keep.”
“I won’t leave you here—”
“Ye will!” He pushed her out of the light then, and everything beyond was the same brittle crackle of black ice.
Feet shooting from underneath her, Bertie fell upon her rear with a solid thunk! Pain shot up her spine. She was sliding, the already-terrifying downward slope growing steeper with each passing second. Her hands scrabbled at an impossibly slick surface until the ice ended, and a Void began.
Flung into it, Bertie screamed, loud and long, but now there was not so much as an echo for her trouble. She was Alice falling down the rabbit hole, without the niceties of a harness, counterweighted cables, and a dozen stagehands to guide her descent.
“Little One, what have you done to yourself?” The voice came from every direction at once, then there was the brush of feathers against her cheek.
Bertie windmilled at the darkness with both arms, her fears tangled about her like a winding sheet until she ceased her flailing to grab the medallion with both hands. “Help me!”
“You’re having a nightmare.” This time, the voice came from just above her. Fingers like talons closed over her shoulders. “Calm yourself and open your eyes.”
Without knowing why, Bertie obeyed, then wished she hadn’t. The creature standing before her was more bird than man, taller even than Ariel. Moonlight streamed through the window and over his broad shoulders.
“Who are you?” Bertie’s skirts were twisted about her, waist to ankles, thwarting her efforts to scramble away from him. The caravan—for they were indeed inside the caravan now—was pitiably small, the sleeping berth a tiny prison in which she was trapped by a demented stranger. “What are you doing in here?”
There was a horrible clearing of his throat, as though bird and man fought for use of the same muscles. Man won. “I was flying overhead. Your nightmare pulled me in, even as the medallion called to me.”
“Why would it do that?”
“Because I carved it.” There was the flare of a match as he relit the lantern. “I’m the Scrimshander.” With those words, the stranger began to tremble. The feathers obscuring his face drifted free from his skin to reveal tattooed swirls and flourishes. When he adjusted the lamp’s wick, Bertie saw that which she’d mistaken for a beak was only his nose, shadow-exaggerated. Cold sweat trickled down the small of her back when he reached out a tentative hand to caress her cheek, as one would comfort a small child. “I mean you no harm, Beatrice.”
Bertie backed into the sleeping berth, as far away from this man, her curious rescuer, as she could possibly get. “How do you know my name?”
“I was trying to reach …” He swallowed hard against something, then managed to say, “To reach the Théâtre.” Another shudder, another drift of feathers upon the floor. “But it’s difficult to be anything but a bird when I’m flying.” Standing in the narrow aisle, the Scrimshander shifted from one foot to the other, his head grazing the ceiling. Agitated, he shook himself, settling his remaining feathers—his wings!—back into place. “Why did you leave the nest? You were safe there, warm and cared for.”
“The nest?” It took her a moment to understand what he meant by that. “You mean the Théâtre?” The shock of it all settled into her bones, and Bertie pulled the bed’s narrow coverlet around her shoulders. Tracing the quilted squares so she wouldn’t have to look at the Scrimshander, she noticed in a detached, mind-wandering-the-lily-fields way that they’d been cut down from worn-out costumes: here a bit of pink silk that reminded her of Titania’s robes; another of moss-soft green velvet, the sort that edged Puck’s tunic. The stitches, though perfectly straight and even, were hand-wrought. For a moment, Bertie could feel Mrs. Edith’s arms around her, could smell her lavender eau de cologne….
I mustn’t cry.
Tears would never do, not with the scrimshaw still hanging about her neck. The last time salt water had fallen upon the medallion, the Sea Goddess had manifested.
And kidnapped Nate.
Bertie sucked in a deep breath; only then did she smell the star-shine and salt upon the birdman, the wild promise of freedom that threw
open every door in her mind. For an instant, she was Ophelia, fleeing the theater, her arms clasped about his neck. A second later, Bertie was four years old again, throwing herself off the highest cliff she could find, trying to fly.
Like a bird.
“You’re the Mysterious Stranger.” She could hardly vocalize the second half of the realization. “You’re my father.”
He raised his voice to an insistent squawk. “You must go back!”
“Keep it down, unless you want the others to come running!” Bertie wasn’t about to be lectured by some stranger, father or not, even if he was large and intimidating. She peered up into glassy black eyes that were like something sewn on a child’s toy. “I can’t go back until I rescue my friend. He was kidnapped by Sedna.”
The birdman went very still, as though he’d been struck by a hunter’s arrow. When next he spoke, he struggled with words caught in his throat. “The Sea Goddess?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever business your friend has with the Sea Goddess, it is his own.”
“That’s not true.” Her mind was like a puzzle box, suddenly opening. “It’s my fault. For crying on this medallion … that you said you carved.”
For a moment, a glimpse of the Scrimshander was visible in the birdman’s face: the pride of an artist; the terror of a father. “You won’t be able to get to him. One must be dead to travel through the gateway to Sedna’s Kingdom.”
Bertie sat up on her knees. The blanket slipped down her shoulder, and she wished she was wearing something more than a much-maligned evening gown as armor against his piercing gaze. “That means there is a gateway, and you know where it is.”
He squawked and retreated half a step. “I don’t.”
“You’re lying.” Bertie wrapped her hand around the scrimshaw, hearing Nate’s words just as he’d whispered them to her in the Properties Department.
Sedna learned, in th’ hardest o’ ways, t’ look beyond th’ surface o’ a man, t’ see what hopes an’ dreams an’ fears lay nestled in his heart o’ hearts.