That which I inherited from my father is gone; I am my mother’s child only.
“Ophelia?” Another knock, and a rattle of the doorknob. “Please let me in.”
All that was left was her hair. Imagining a dye brush in her hand, Bertie traced over her bedraggled silver locks, reshaping them into curls the hue of dark honey. With a few last finger-strokes across the mirror, she exchanged the Mistress of Revels’s bright skirts for a trailing gown of pale green.
Hardly able to breathe for looking at her reflection, Bertie turned, crossed the room, and unlocked the door.
The Theater Manager stood in the hallway, forehead crinkled into a mighty frown. “You’re here. Thank goodness!” He caught Bertie by the hands and squeezed, his relief grinding the small bones in her fingers nearly to dust. “I knew there must be a mistake!”
“A mistake?” Wisps of water crept into Bertie’s voice, wetting the words with Ophelia’s inflections. “Where did you think I would be?”
“I was told … that is to say…”
As he stammered, Bertie summoned one of Ophelia’s flickering-faint smiles. She knew why he’d panicked, why he’d hammered upon the door as though the building was on fire. Mrs. Edith had told him Ophelia was gone, and he’d raced down here to investigate.
But Bertie had given him an Ophelia to find.
“I know I wasn’t summoned tonight,” Bertie improvised, gesturing to the Call Board on the wall behind him, “but there was so much water on The Little Mermaid set. It calls to me, you know.”
“Yes, I’d heard that.” The Theater Manager must have realized he still had her by the hands, for he dropped them with a muttered apology and colored up to the tips of his ears. Though he looked much the same as he would in Bertie’s time, it wasn’t only the blush that suggested a greater youthfulness. He had the green air of an unripe apple, an uncertainty about what to do with his feet and his hands, and his gaze leapfrogged over Bertie-as-Ophelia’s face.
“I’m terribly sorry you were interrupted without reason,” Bertie said.
“Ah, yes, well…” He cleared his throat and summoned a smile. “I will excuse myself, then. I was working on my opera, and I’m afraid one of my characters isn’t behaving as she ought to. She’s a fire-dancer, you see, born of the flames.…”
With the least bit of encouragement, he might have continued, filling Ophelia’s sympathetic ear with his current artistic tribulations, but Bertie only gave him another half smile and tried to close the door. “If you are reassured that I haven’t disappeared into thin, thin air, I hope you will excuse me.”
“Ah, yes, but of course. My apologies.” He made her a stiff bow and checked his pocket watch. “The performance is about to begin, and I ought to check the Box Office, in any case.”
Bertie nodded and waited for him to turn the far corner of the hall before she closed and locked the door again. With fear and adrenaline subsiding, the potion had yet more room to wend its way through her body. As the familiar strains of The Little Mermaid’s overture drifted from the speaker in the corner, Bertie’s mind began to go blank, as surely as a bit of blackboard wiped clean. Every worry was a rainbow bubble that bounced against the inside of her skull, popping, fizzling. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, nothing save the need to drown herself in gentle currents. An invisible tether tugged her toward the stage, but she knew it wasn’t her play, wasn’t her call, that the mermaids and starfish wouldn’t appreciate her presence backstage during a performance. With a sigh, Bertie crossed to the basin in the corner of the Dressing Room, poured the contents of the ewer into the flower-rimmed bowl, and bent forward until her face was submerged.
“Not as good as a bathtub,” she murmured as the welcome liquid poured down her throat, “but it will have to do.”
* * *
Some days were better than others for remembering. Some days, there was yet a Bertie, pounding against the mirror and calling to the Queen, a Bertie who wondered if the miniature monarch would remember she’d shoved the Mistress of Revels through the looking glass, a Bertie who schemed ways to return to the Distant Castle and wring that child devil’s royal neck. But more and more often, there was only Ophelia staring back at her from the mirror, Ophelia drifting down the corridors to mingle with the Players, Ophelia, not at all interested in the offerings in the Green Room unless sushi or watercress sandwiches or oysters on the half shell were in the offing.
“What is wrong with you?” Hamlet demanded, having cornered her there one inauspicious morning.
By now, Bertie had lost track of time. The theater was deep into a season of classic Shakespearean performances, so Desdemona and Othello bickered in one corner of the tiny room while Miranda nibbled at bread and butter and tried to pretend she wasn’t eyeing Ariel with all the keen interest of an island-banished virgin.
Ariel. There was something about Ariel that this Ophelia remembered, a secret that none of the other Players knew. Sitting in the corner of the Green Room, the air elemental ate nothing at all, spoke to no one, and only responded when Prospero commanded him to prepare a plate of refreshments. This Ophelia thought him beautiful, noting the translucence of his skin and the wild silver of his hair, but the haunted look in his eyes unsettled her, as did the way he shrank into himself whenever anyone approached him.
In another lifetime, he will be brash. Fearless.
The thought came unbidden, and it confused her. How could he be anything more than his written part? The sort of hapless, hopeless character for whom she had no patience at all?
Pity he cannot escape through the water as I do.
A bit of wind ruffled the edges of her gown, mimicking the ripple of a swift river current. Through her eyelashes, she could see Ariel staring at her, a most curious expression on his face.
“You think to pity me?” His voice wrapped about her, a silk streamer fringed upon the ends.
“I did not say so.” Feigning great interest in a bit of cake frosted with sea-salted caramel, Ophelia reached for excuses and a fork.
“Your expression said as much, if not more.” Ariel was on his feet now.
Looking down, this Ophelia wished her teacup were big enough to fit her nose and mouth inside it, but drowning again would have to wait until later. “You seek escape, but cannot find it.”
“And what would you know of escape, precious mad thing that you are?”
“Only that it’s not hard to find if you know where to look.” Unable to bear the excess of air in her lungs for a second longer, this Ophelia set down her cup and slipped from the room. A glorious drowning she wanted this time, to feel herself drift through water without end. More than a teacup or washbasin or even a copper bathing tub could provide.
A copper bathing tub? When have I ever used such a thing? Mine is porcelain.
“Wait, I would have a word with you!” Ariel gave chase. Perhaps it pained him a bit, with the call on the board for The Tempest and the second act about to begin, but still he followed her, past the Stage Door and down to the Scenic Dock. It was dark there, and quiet, and this Ophelia had discovered a new set in progress only a few days ago. The magnificent tiled tub was part of a glorious Turkish-Bath scene, and though the flats about it were only half painted and the dome tilted against the wall awaiting frescoing, this Ophelia didn’t mark them. She cared only for the pool, the nearly bottomless pool, and the sensation of water against every bit of her skin at once.
Before she could clamber over the side, Ariel caught her with a strand of wind and held her back. “Is this where you’ve been seeking freedom? In an oversize bathtub?”
“It’s not the container, but what fills it.” She struggled against his winds, now joined by his arms, almost remembering in that moment that she, too, was a shell that contained more than this Ophelia and the need to drown herself over and over again. “It’s what fills it that matters!”
That time, when she spoke, the voice was Bertie’s own.
Ariel let her go, backing toward the door as though afraid
of what she might say or do next. “They underestimate you, I think.” Then, because he could resist no longer, he disappeared down the corridor to answer Prospero’s summons.
“Indeed they do,” said the fading strains of Bertie. “They underestimate both of us.”
* * *
The call for Hamlet came sometime later. How much later, this Ophelia had no idea, and by then, she didn’t care. What was left of Bertie was a tiny mewling thing trapped in a great darkness somewhere deep inside, silenced over and over again by the water, and so this Ophelia answered her call upon the board with cheerful good grace. She applied her makeup with deft hands, donned her costume with the aid of Mrs. Edith’s minions, and tried to ignore the sound of distant ocean waves crashing in her head.
“The sea,” she murmured into the folds of her costume. “I can smell the sea.”
She could also hear a man and a woman whispering to one another in the night. Water poured in about the lovers, and this time it was horrible, evil stuff, black and choking.
“I suppose I’m imagining things.” Puzzled, she stood waiting in the wings without the slightest flutter of nerves. The Danish Prince lingered about her before the curtain rose, trying to wheedle a kiss, a token, a favor of some sort, but she hardly marked him. The play was the thing, and she had a part to play.
A part to play.
This Ophelia licked her lips and tasted greasepaint. Something felt amiss as she listened to the opening of the play unfold. There was something she knew, something important about her first line.…
But before she could puzzle it out, the Stage Manager gave her an encouraging sort of nudge, indicating she’d nearly missed her cue. Gliding into the scene with her brother, Laertes, this Ophelia could hardly hear for the wind roaring in her head.
“Do you doubt that?” she said, just as she ought.
The words echoed through the auditorium, and then memories, Bertie’s memories, slammed into her with the force of the tsunami.
Ophelia’s opening line.
I’m the one who said it. I’m the one who acted her page back into The Book and pulled her here.
Bertie thought she heard her mother’s wail as the real Ophelia was transported into the theater and away from the Scrimshander. Despite wanting to flee the stage, Bertie was still too much Ophelia. She had to stay, to finish the scene, but the moment it was done, she ran for the door and down the dimly lit corridor.
Somewhere, a bird called out as it fled into the night.
Somewhere, a baby took its first breath and screamed.
Along with her disguise, the rest of Ophelia’s madness fell away from Bertie the moment she spotted her mother at the far end of the hallway. The real Ophelia stood, eyes vacant, a single diamond-tear clinging to her cheek.
“Mom—” Bertie choked out, but the water-maiden drifted past her in silence, stepping through the Stage Door, making her next entrance as though she’d not just given birth, as though she’d never been gone.
The distant figure of Mrs. Edith carried a blanket-wrapped bundle the opposite direction, and the child’s cry echoed in the corridor. Bertie took one step toward the Wardrobe Mistress—toward myself—but was stopped by the faint summons of an imperious sovereign.
“Beatrice Shakespeare Smith!”
It was Her Gracious Majesty, finally recalling her through the looking glass. Torn, Bertie turned first one direction then the other, unable to know what she would be able to change, if she stayed, or if it was really possible to change anything at all.
One step made her decision, another cemented it. She ran, Ophelia’s drowning dress falling away in tattered strips to reveal a new gown underneath, one of diaphanous black, cut from shadow-cloth and stitched together with secrets. Properly attired for mourning, Bertie burst through the door to Ophelia’s Dressing Room, reaching for the mirror and the beckoning hand of the child Queen who pulled her back through the glass.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Like Bubbles in a Late-Disturbed Stream
Regurgitated upon the floor of the mirrored room, Bertie felt as aged as the Queen. Now a sulky teenager, Her Gracious Majesty was dressed tip to toe in melodramatic black also and had her lace-mitt-covered hands planted upon her royal hips. Hauling Bertie up, she kept a death grip upon her subject and kicked the door open with one foot.
“You’ve been gone—”
“Months.” Almost nine of them, exactly, from the time Ophelia had fled the theater to the day she’d been pulled back.
By me. It was my fault she was separated from my father. That was the missing bit of the story. The missing bit of my mirror. The reason Her Gracious Majesty thinks we can’t ever be together as a family.
Shuddering, Bertie wished the Queen wouldn’t hurry them so. Thrust into the brilliant corridor that led back to the breakfast room, Bertie could hardly see for the glare of sunlight through the glass, could hardly hear for the echo of the ocean’s roar in her ears.
The Queen shook her head. “Maybe there it’s been months. Here it’s been less than two hours. But what hours!” Now the approximate age of sixteen, Her Gracious Majesty had a tiny pimple on the end of her nose and a vicious temper, as evidenced by the pinch she gave Bertie’s inner arm to hurry her along. “I am most peeved, forced as I was to call you back before you learned the whole truth of it, but someone is seeking you.”
The Queen gestured out the largest and clearest of the windows. The view fell away from them in tiers, the Distant Castle flowing into the territories of the unicorn and the lioness, the surrounding countryside a never-ending cake platter. The river coiled about them, sandy banks churning with waves and its waters rising to batter against the outermost gates.
In case Bertie missed it, the Queen jerked her chin at the Reine with a forehead-knotting scowl. “Whatever that is came here for you. When I stand upon the terraces, I can hear it calling your name.”
Bertie could guess easily enough who had come calling. “It’s the Sea Goddess, Your Gracious Majesty, the one from my life tale. She must have given chase up the river.”
“I don’t care who she is! She’s ignored two very pointed proclamations to depart, and she’s ruining my birthday celebration.” The Queen pointed at an impressive archway and the balcony beyond. “Tell her to go this instant.”
Having worn her mother’s face for so many months, Bertie’s mask was now thick enough to hide her irritation. “Of course, Your Gracious Majesty. At once.”
Because Sedna is so very likely to obey me.
The wind that whipped across the terrace was heavy with moisture, stirred by the very ebb and flow of the sea unnaturally driven to the Distant Castle’s gates. When the Sea Goddess spoke, it was a salt-spangled whisper against Bertie’s skin.
“Beatrice … Shakespeare … Smith.”
Bertie wiped it away as best she could, trying to not flinch. “Sedna.”
“You escaped.”
“I survived, as you did, because I must.” Bertie remembered the rocks of the cavern pinning her to the floor, the movement of water and sand up her nostrils and in her lungs, the welcoming arms of the earth that had enfolded her and given her a loamy passage back to the surface. “You have no right to follow me, to threaten me again. The Queen wishes you gone, as do I.”
“You do not command me, Daughter of the Earth, and the Queen passes into the dust every nightfall. What care I for the wishes of dust and yet more dust?” The water’s laughter sloshed over the gates.
“You forget,” Bertie breathed, suddenly inspired, “that earth controls the path of the river.” Concentrating upon the area nearest the bottommost glass archway, she held out her hand. “I call upon the dirt, upon every speck of sand and silt. Remake the landscape so as to drive this impertinent water back where it belongs.”
And the land did so, by inches, until the gates no longer creaked upon their joints. Bertie would have smiled, save for the sweat running down her forehead and into her eyes, burning like fire and sun together
.
Sensing a weakness, the river surged forward again, turning everything to mud that oozed between the glass bricks.
“The water cuts a path where it will,” Sedna purred. “It is steady. Patient. It washes away everything in time’s slow path.”
“Slowly it might, but for now you will be corralled.” Reaching out again, Bertie called to the deepest roots, to the largest boulders and the smallest stones. One by one, massive oak trees toppled before the gates, driving the river back to its banks. Bertie fortified the boundary with rocks, rolled into place like stalwart soldiers. The water hammered at the walls of its improvised playpen, cursing Bertie to the blue, blue skies, rising as though in a fist before smashing back into the riverbed.
“Yet another battle goes to you, then,” Sedna snarled. “But while you protect this place, you leave another defenseless. Rivers lead to cities, cities with pipes, pipes that snake directly into buildings. Your precious theater will suffer for your insolence.”
Sedna turned the tide, her waters rushing away from the Distant Castle in search of a more vulnerable target. Nearly hanging over the stone lip of the balcony, Bertie screamed a wordless threat at the disappearing Sea Goddess before whirling about to face a most flabbergasted Queen.
“That was quite something!” Her Gracious Majesty sounded a bit awed before she remembered just who she was and to whom she was speaking. “You will be suitably rewarded! Gold, perhaps, or jewels. A royal appointment as my personal Mistress of Revels—”
“My thanks, Your Gracious Majesty, but I would be remiss if I permitted harm to come to the Théâtre Illuminata while I lingered here in safety and comfort.” Bertie hoped interrupting the Queen wouldn’t result in a beheading just when she most needed to keep her wits about her, and she curtsied as far as her shaking knees would permit. “Can you send me back to the theater with your mirrors?”
“In the present?” Scowling, the Queen shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Their magic only reflects the captured images of events past.”