“What are we to do about our fee if our hire is nowhere to be found?” The brigands’ Leader didn’t address the question to anyone in particular, though his snarl raised considerably in volume.
Sensing his distraction, Bertie dared to pick up the bit of money. She noted the weight of it, the imprint stamped on the front and back. Though lacking the necessary filing cabinets and reams of provenance paperwork, she still recognized its general origins. “This is from the Properties Department. I wonder if Mr. Hastings knew it had been taken.”
“The Properties Department, eh?” The Leader leapt upon the information as a starveling mongrel dog would a scrap of meat. “I think you ought to take us to this place. We will collect our payment, and you can have your little book back. How does that sound to you?”
It sounds too good to be true.
Bertie knew the chances were far greater that they’d lead the brigands into the Properties Department only to have their throats slit ear to ear, once the thieves realized the nearly boundless store of priceless artifacts contained therein could be theirs. She gathered her courage to her like armor. “I don’t think so.”
The Leader’s expression shifted from false amiability to undiluted malevolence. “Kill the tall one. It will give our hostess something to consider as we continue negotiations.”
“Which is the tall one?!” Mustardseed squeaked in alarm.
“Not I!” yelled the other fairies in one voice, even as the most likely candidates immediately backed up against each other, Nate with his fists at the ready and Ariel pulling a tempest from the space about them with both hands.
As the storm gathered strength, Bertie remembered she had her own source of power. Instinctively, she backed into the circle the boys had started. “If the mosaic can pull bits of my story forward, then I can do the same.” Even as she thought of the forest, of the trees, she directed her words to the brigands’ Leader. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
But it was Waschbär who answered, emerging from the tunnel to add his feral strength to their group along with the words, “I do, though it was many years ago.”
“Welcome to the party, turncoat,” the Leader said, offering cheerful hospitality at knifepoint. “I see you no longer travel alone.” Though he did not shift his eyes for more than a half second, Bertie knew he’d spotted the opal ring upon Varvara’s finger. “How much does that sort of companionship cost?”
Standing behind Waschbär, the fire-dancer’s eyes were dark and her expression carefully blank. Fed by Ariel’s windstorm, her hair blazed about her shoulders; only then did she bestow a vicious smile upon the brigands’ Leader. “You couldn’t afford me.”
Two livid red patches appeared on his cheeks and mottled his neck. Signaling to his comrades to close in, he hissed, “Let’s finish this.”
“Yes, let’s. When you liberated the journal from my possession, didn’t you recognize the caravan?” Bertie recalled the details from her own play How Bertie Came to the Theater. “It was many years ago that you tried to steal from a child traveling with her guardian, the previous Mistress of Revels. I was too young at the time to realize your coldness, your cruelty.”
Advancing as a group, the brigands hesitated.
“Candy fell from the sky that day.” The lady brigand finally remembered a girl who could make something of nothing with only a piece of paper and a crayon. “Peppermints and chocolate humbugs rained down on the road and fields.”
Now it was Bertie’s turn to smile. “Yes.”
“You wrote it and made it so,” the Leader said, the second to remember. “No wonder you want this!” He jerked the journal from his pocket and brandished his knife over the pages. “A pity it’s in my possession instead of yours.”
“The years have taught me many tricks,” Bertie said, “but the greatest is that I don’t necessarily need the paper. My power comes from the source itself now, from the trees.…” She had barely finished speaking when they answered her call: the great gnarled oaks pushing up through the floorboards, towering pines splintering the wood and popping nails from their places. Branches clambered over one another to reach a sky not there until the brigands were forced back, away from the holes opening underfoot, away from the tightly knit group gathered Center Stage.
“Stay close,” Bertie warned the troupe. “The trees will protect me, but they don’t care about anyone else.”
As one, Ariel and Nate took another step back, their shoulders meeting hers and Waschbär’s, Varvara pushed to the middle like the jelly in a doughnut. The five of them braced against one another for the next spurt of wild growth, and the sound of running sap was more thunderous than the rush of blood in their veins. Vines clambered up through the cracks in the stage next, unfurling leaves and trumpet flowers with choking puffs of pollen.
“Get to the tunnel,” their Leader wheezed. “We’ll leave them here to be buried!”
Bertie countermanded the order, summoning an errant green tendril to tangle about his ankle. The rest of his crew pushed and shoved their way to the open trapdoor, despite the ominous rumble that issued from within.
“Call them back,” she warned.
“Witch! Sorceress!” He raised his fingers in a ward against evil.
Bertie had to concede that’s probably what it looked like, given that the very forest primeval crept up around them, but still she protested, “This isn’t what I wanted—”
“Don’t apologize t’ th’ likes o’ him,” Nate said. “He would ha’e killed us wi’out thinkin’ twice about it, an’ may try it yet, given half th’ chance.”
“What would you say now to a trade?” In the green-filtered half-light, Ariel’s smile was unholy. “Your life for the little book?”
Before the brigands’ Leader could answer, the vine dragged him toward Bertie over splintered bits of wood that tore at his jerkin and nearly scratched the eyes from his head. Howling, he dropped the journal and sliced through the tendril with his wicked-sharp blade. With the uneven gait of a drunken sailor, he followed his comrades into the swirling-white storm brewing in the tunnel.
“Don’t—” Bertie tried to stop him, but too late. The forest closed ranks to stabilize the floor while everything else in the theater heaved and buckled and broke. The noise of it nearly deafened them as the stone walls of the tunnel turned to snow and tumbled inward. Tiles broke into jagged chunks of ice and shifted to fill the spaces between until not a single particle could be coaxed from its resting place.
“He didn’t remember,” Waschbär said softly with a twitch of his nose, “that the word-threat you used to banish us long ago was ‘avalanche.’”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For a Fantasy and Trick
“Leave it to you,” Ariel said with a shake of his head, “to conjure snow indoors.”
Bertie retrieved the journal and pressed it tightly against her chest. “Leave it to me to nearly kill us all in the process.”
Indeed, most of the troupe stood, silent and shaking with various amounts of residual fear and adrenaline. Only Varvara, wandering away to pick a haphazard path through the trees, was unperturbed, even when she nearly set a mound of moss aflame.
Nate retrieved his cutlass from the outer edge of the snowbank, in case the ice should not prove to be a sufficient cairn for their enemies. “It’s a mistake, havin’ somethin’ like her on th’ stage.”
“Here,” Waschbär said, guiding the fire-dancer to a small circle of stones. “You can kindle something here, to better purpose.”
Standing atop a mound of dry sticks and leaves, Varvara bestowed upon him a brilliant smile, then used her toe shoes to create sparks against the rocks. A conflagration soon blazed merrily with the fire-dancer sitting immediately adjacent, hair crackling to match, hands reaching for the flames.
By then, the grove was as it had been every time Bertie had visited it, whether rendered in scenic flats, painted upon rice paper, or growing from earth so old that it had forgotten time itself.
The trees towered over them, wearing their many years like a lush mantle about their shoulders. Sensing relative safety, the fairies emerged from Bertie’s hair to discuss important issues.
“I’m starving,” Moth whined, holding his stomach with both hands. “Near-death experiences do that to me!”
“We need jam cakes,” Mustardseed said.
“I propose a run upon the Green Room immediately, if not sooner!” Cobweb said, already flying for the Stage Door.
Bertie reached out and snagged him. “Not just yet. We don’t know if it’s safe beyond the grove.”
With grumbles and threats of mutiny, the fairies retreated to investigate their pockets for residual chocolate crumbs. In the ensuing quiet, Bertie traced the swirling markings on the journal’s cover. Frowning, she flipped it open to reveal the first page, which was—as expected—their own exit page, torn from The Complete Works of the Stage.
If I created the two theaters by acting this page into the journal, then maybe I can undo the damage I’ve done by pulling it out.
Her fingers slowly curled about the edge of the paper.
This could work. It could fix everything.…
It was true what they said about being able to taste victory: hot buttered toast from the Properties Department and tea poured out by Mrs. Edith. The flavors of home and safety and love she’d known growing up here gathered on the tip of Bertie’s tongue. She could taste her desperation as well, the thin acid of lemon juice, the ragged crystals of salt gathering at the corners of her mouth. Licking her lips, Bertie clenched their entrance page and pulled. The journal shuddered in her hands. A glow began to emanate from the binding, a spotlight coaxed to life.
Please let this work.
It has to work!
Any moment now the page would come loose from the journal, and everything would be set to rights.
Any moment now.
Sweat popped out on Bertie’s forehead and upper lip.
Any moment now …
Despite her greatest effort, the page didn’t yield. Like a dying lightbulb in the marquee, her hope flickered out.
“I tried something similar, once upon a time. Allow me to remind you of the futility of fighting such magic?” Indeed, Ariel had nearly destroyed The Book, pulling almost everything from the binding but unable to tear out his own entrance page.
Bertie—panting, furious, terrified—gazed up at him and, in the midst of sweating through her shirt, a new and unexpected bit of understanding for the air elemental clicked into place. “You must have hated the magic, the theater, for denying you.”
“I hate it still.” He covered her hand with his own and stroked the glowing paper. “But one learns to function even in the midst of nearly overwhelming desire when given no other choice.”
Bertie pulled away from him and his insinuations. “There’s always another choice.”
“True, when you’re accustomed to paving your own path where no one else can even fathom a road.” He accompanied the statement with a snow-tinged wind as he turned toward the Stage Door. “Though I would not do it to fill the bottomless-pit bellies of the fairies, I think someone should investigate the rest of the theater. You’re swaying where you stand, which means you need food and some strong coffee. I’ll start with the Green Room.”
“You’re volunteering?” While the idea of food caused Bertie’s stomach to turn over, a cup of coffee cradled in her hands might stave off the cold fears uncoiling in her extremities.
“I do have a history of fetching caffeinated beverages for you, milady, and there’s no sense sending a pirate for cappuccinos when he would surely come back with rum punch.” Ariel gave Nate a small salute and received a dark look in return. “I’ll take the opportunity to check the other rooms. The Theater Manager may well have gone into hiding when he heard the brigands coming. If he’s here, I’ll find him.” Without waiting for either an answer or permission, he disappeared into the gloom backstage, his exit marked only by the whisper of the door.
Bertie sank down to her heels. Though she’d started to hate the very sight of it, she couldn’t help but open the journal once again. By the mosaic’s account, it should have contained all that had happened outside the theater’s walls, but nothing preceded the troupe’s entrance page … no story of her parents’ escape from the theater or from Sedna, no watermark illustrations to show all that had transpired at the Aerie. Bertie flipped through the rest of the journal, noting the pages covered in her own scritch-scratching and longer sections of bold, distinct typeface that mimicked that of The Book.
Where have Ophelia’s memories gone?
Wanting to howl at the moon, she squeezed the journal hard between sweating hands. “The Greek Chorus lied to us. There’s yet another puzzle piece, another bit of broken mirror-story to find if we want to save Ophelia.”
Nate crouched next to her. “Did ye stop t’ think that mayhap she cannot be saved?”
“Don’t say that! It’s my fault she’s the way she is…” Bertie’s voice dwindled and died, unable to finish.
Nate chucked her under the chin, coaxing her to meet his gaze. “What d’ye mean by that, now?”
And then the story came pouring out, how she’d gone through the Queen’s mirror, how she’d found herself in the theater the night Ophelia had escaped. “You were there. I ran smack into you under the stage during the preset.”
Nate’s expression shifted from shock to disbelief. “That’s impossible.”
“You forget who you’re talking to,” Bertie said, shaking her head at him. “For me, all manner of impossibilities are mere child’s play.”
“Under th’ stage, just before th’ show?” Rubbing a rough hand over his stubbled face, Nate tried to bring the memories to the surface through the stern application of force. “I don’t remember it at all, but it’s most odd t’ think I knew ye before ye were born, that’s fer certain. What else did ye see?”
“Ophelia tearing her page out of The Book and exiting with the Scrimshander.” Bertie could hardly bring herself to admit what had come next. “I was stuck here, in the past, and so I took her place. Drank her perfume down and wore her face like a mask and nearly lost myself in her madness. I was the one who called her back, Nate. The one who acted her page back into The Book. It was”—here, her voice broke into as many pieces as a smashed mirror—“it was my fault she was pulled away from him. I ruined everything!”
“Ye couldn’t know. Ye weren’t even yerself, not really.” He reached for her hand and gave it a firm squeeze, meant to reassure. “If ye hadn’t said her line, an understudy surely would ha’e. What’s past cannot be changed.”
“Maybe not, but I can sure as hell try to guide what’s yet to be.” Bertie scowled at the journal. “She’s the only one shifting between the two versions of the theater, the only one who’s trapped, fading to nothing. We have to restore her memories to her … all of them, and not haphazard or piecemeal, but in their entirety.”
Ever practical, Nate looked about him as though charting possible locations for wayward memories. “Where d’ye want t’ start lookin’ fer them?”
“I thought they’d be inside this damn book.” A slow sigh escaped Bertie with the hiss of a pricked balloon as she tried to think like her mother, tried to step into her river-slick skin. “We should check her Dressing Room. That’s where my parents’ story started.”
“Hold there a minute, lass. Let’s consider some practicalities.” Nate led her to the prompt corner. Unearthing several flashlights, he passed her one with a short “Hold this.”
Bertie gave the flashlight a hesitant shake. Its luminescence not only held steady but slowly changed from dim yellow to lime green to vibrant lavender with small silver sparks, lighting a narrow pathway between enormous coils of rope and scenic flats lined up like soldiers in a regiment. “Ariel is searching the building for the Theater Manager. Should we get the others?”
Nate glanced over her shoulder at the fairies piled in a heap of moss li
ke a litter of sleepy kittens, unusually quiet and subdued due to lack of sugar, and Waschbär yet sitting with Varvara. The fire-dancer looked at her companion with eyes alight; the sneak-thief had his back to them, so there was no reading his expression just now.
“Let them be fer now. We can manage, just th’ two o’ us.”
* * *
It was indeed just the two of them, their footfalls the only disturbance in the otherwise deserted corridors. Everything else was exactly as it should be, the woodwork polished to a rich mahogany gleam and frosted glass sconces rendering the flashlights quite unnecessary.
“It looks just the same.” Bertie didn’t know why she whispered, nor why she tiptoed, yet she couldn’t bring herself to do otherwise.
Despite his sturdy build and boots, Nate exercised the same restraint. “Did ye expect peelin’ wallpaper, broken light fixtures, an’ a ceilin’ drippin’ cobwebs?”
“I don’t know what I expected.” They’d arrived at Dressing Room Four. Anxiety seeped through the spot where Bertie’s skull met her spine as she reached for the brass knob.
“Let me go in alone,” she whispered, and Nate fell back without offering a protest.
The interior of the room was darker than a night without stars. Bertie skimmed her hand along the wall until she located the key to the gas jet. When she twisted it, a blue-white flare illuminated the rest of the room. Flipping another switch fired the electric lights to life, their additional golden radiance pouring down the walls and onto the floor.
It was as if Ophelia had merely stepped out for a moment. Jars of cold cream, tins of greasepaint, and glittering perfume bottles beckoned from the dressing table. The chaise upholstered in pale princess-blue velvet occupied the far corner, and a folding screen took up most the room behind the door. Peeling paint indicated it had been decorated with a statuesque Grace, holding a leather-bound tome in one hand and a feather quill in the other.
Peering closer, Bertie realized the face of the woman on the screen was her own.