The Scrimshander wasn’t the only one trying to recapture my features.
Bertie’s breath caught when Ophelia slowly shifted into the here and now, her hands and face paint daubed. All the shades of spring splashed her gown: the pinks and greens and blues of flowers and grass and a sky wedding-veiled with clouds. The water-maiden held a paintbrush in one hand and a tattered bit of cloth in the other. Bertie nearly cried when she realized her mother clutched the cotton-print kerchief that Child Bertie had worn on her journey with the Mistress of Revels, her plummet from the White Cliffs, her rescue by the Scrimshander, her return to the Théâtre Illuminata.
I brought it home with me, and Ophelia found it. Kept it.
Bertie crossed the room with tentative steps, afraid her mother would evaporate like ocean mist into midday sunlight. “I…” Her throat was so dry that the words were a frog-croak. “I need to find your memories. Where did they go?”
Ophelia held the scrap of fabric up to her cheek, cradling it as she would a child. “What memories do you seek?”
“Everything that happened between you and my father. Everything that happened at the Aerie.”
“The Aerie?” The water-maiden stopped to consider such an idea. “I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else. You want the woman who smells of salt and destruction. The one with the starfish hands.”
“You remember Sedna?” Bertie took a tiny, cautious step forward.
“The Sea Goddess,” Ophelia corrected. “From The Little Mermaid.”
Not the answer Bertie wanted to hear. “You left the theater, Ophelia, with the Mysterious Stranger. You had a daughter. What happened to those memories after the Theater Manager stole them from you?” Bertie held the journal out to her mother. “Is there anything in here that can help you?”
Ophelia spared it only a glance. “’Tis but paper, and no place for what is water-bound.”
“Water-bound?”
“The memories disappeared into the water,” Ophelia said, impatience leaching into her voice. “Everything finds its way to the water, eventually.”
Bertie felt the same impatience, the same need to reach out and shake someone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—understand. “But I don’t know what that means!”
In response, Ophelia closed her eyes and faded away. Bertie lunged at the spot where the water-maiden had stood only seconds before, trying to catch hold of her mother’s hands, her skirts, anything.
“Come back!” But the words were spoken too late to do either of them any good.
Nate’s voice from the doorway startled her. “Do ye see anythin’, lass?”
“Give me a moment.” Concentrating upon the painted screen, Bertie conjured words like please and return, but there was nary a shimmer to suggest Ophelia would come back. Wrapped in disappointment as thick as a woolen cloak, Bertie exited the room and addressed her words to the floor. “She was there for half a second, maybe more, but I was too thickheaded to do anything about it.”
“What about yer wish-come-true?” Nate asked. “Usin’ it t’ recall Ophelia’s memories t’ her isn’t th’ same as tryin’ t’ reunite yer family, is it?”
Bertie’s forehead puckered as she tried to force reason and logic into her swimming head. “That’s splitting hairs, but I think we should try it.” Reaching up, she covered her eyes with her hands, willing the silver power to billow, to burgeon, to suffuse her body until every bit of her soul was bathed in refracted light. She tried to conjure the perfect image of Ophelia as she ought to be: solid, serene, and in full possession of all her faculties.
“I wish for Ophelia to remember.”
At the last second, doubt seeped in. Perhaps it was the same, wishing Ophelia’s memories restored and wanting to see her family reunited.
Perhaps I don’t deserve my own happily ever after, after all.
A quaver in her voice sent tremors through the wish-light. Her memory of Ophelia flexed into a funhouse reflection, distorting her mother into something terrifying and nearly Sedna-like before sucking the power back within itself and flinging Bertie against the nearest wall.
“Lass!” Nate caught her before she fell to the floor, but even his solid presence wasn’t enough to steady her head or slow her galloping heartbeat.
“That answers that question.” She’d wasted the wish. Tears threatened until a dim silver light returned to haunt the space inside her head, as mercurial and taunting as one of Ariel’s winds.
Not wasted, then, small thanks for that.
Despite her vicious scowl, Nate looked encouraged. “An’ yer breathin’. I don’t think yer bleedin’ from anywhere, but fer god’s sake, lass, have a care wi’ that thing!”
“I promise I won’t wish for anything again until I can do so with utter conviction.”
I will be worthy of the damn wish.
Wondering if she could stand without his aid, Bertie noted her legs wobbled like something turned out of a jelly mold and allowed him to support her as they made their way down the hall. “We’ll just have to figure out where her memories are hidden without supernatural aid.”
“What did she tell ye when ye spoke?”
Trying to clear the ringing from her head, it took Bertie a few minutes to recall her mother’s words. “She said her memories were in the water.”
“Ophelia always did ha’e th’ uncanny habit o’ turnin’ up every time she heard th’ water runnin’,” Nate said with a snap of his fingers. “Didn’t matter if it was th’ Turkish Bath or a faucet in th’ Wardrobe Department.”
Given they’d just reached the massive mahogany door that led to Mrs. Edith’s domain, his timing was impeccable. Once Bertie would have bounded in without so much as a knock to announce her arrival. Now she hesitated, trying to gather what little strength she could—from the ancient wood flooring to the creaking timbers that supported the ceiling overhead—before turning the knob. A tiny part of her believed that whatever magic had spliced the theater in twain, it could not have waged a war and won against the formidable Wardrobe Mistress.
“Mrs. Edith?” Bertie’s inquiry echoed off the high ceilings and the lead-glass windows. Normally covered in heaps of shining silks and rich velvets, bits of lace like cobwebbing, buttons, bobbins, and bits, the worktables stood empty. The sewing machines sat eerily silent and still. Overhead, costumes swayed like rows of hanged men and women.
“She’s not here, lass.” Just behind her, Nate nudged Bertie into sacrosanct territory. “So she can’t gainsay yer turnin’ on th’ water.”
The scent of lavender yet lingered in the air, suggesting purple-hazed fields and Victorian sachets. “It still feels like trespassing. Like Mrs. Edith might appear at any moment, demanding to know what I think I’m doing.” Bertie would gladly exchange a tongue-lashing for the chance to be held by those familiar arms, to be reassured in grandmotherly tones that everything would work out as it ought, that the Wardrobe Mistress felt it in her bones.
Bertie’s fingers sought out the scrimshaw medallion about her neck. “Do you think my father would know which waters Ophelia meant?”
“He might, but he’s not here now t’ tell us, is he?” Nate closed the door behind them and switched on the working lights.
“No, he’s not.”
There was nothing for me there.
Wishing she could tell the Scrimshander he was mistaken, Bertie crossed to the dyeing vats and opened the spigots to full. Water gushed into the enormous cauldrons, splashing up the sides and spattering Bertie’s cheeks and forehead when she leaned over to check the rising level. “Your memories are in the water, Ophelia. Come take a lovely bath and explain that to me.”
The minutes passed as the vats filled, but the water-maiden made no appearance.
“I would ha’e thought her enticed by such a summons.” Nate wet his sleeve to the elbow reaching into the tub, splashing the contents about. “Maybe she didn’t mean this kind o’ water, then.”
“She didn’t mean seawater.” Not a
trace of doubt marred Bertie’s words. “That’s Sedna’s domain.”
Nate stiffened. “Could th’ Sea Goddess ha’e stolen them?”
Sedna kidnapped Nate. She might hold Ophelia’s memories prisoner as well.
“Let’s hope that isn’t the case.” Bertie continued to back away from the idea until her posterior activated the brass control mechanism for the overhead costume rack. With the hum and whir of an enormous music box, the conveyance awoke, shuffling the vestments of queen and courtier, lover and beloved past them.
A flicker of palest green caught Bertie’s eye: Ophelia’s tattered drowning dress, the one she wore in Hamlet every time she fell into the river and died. It slid away from them, as though trapped in a dream, and the flower of an idea bloomed in Bertie’s head.
“Not actual water, but wooden water, maybe. The river scene.” Bertie jammed her thumb against the control. When the gliding dance of costumes came to a standstill, she scrambled from a stool to the top of the worktable. Reaching up, she captured the drowning dress’s padded hanger. The garment slithered down her front like a cool rush of water.
“What,” Nate asked in a dire tone, “do ye plan t’ do wi’ that?”
Bertie turned to him, holding the dress up before her. “They say I have my mother’s eyes.”
“And?” His tone held all the wariness of a soldier facing an unknown enemy.
“Ophelia might come to call if we bring in the Hamlet set for her death scene.” In the theater’s version, Gertrude gave her speech describing the young maiden’s drowning standing before a scrim curtain; behind it, bathed in watery light and flower petals, Ophelia enacted the sequence, a ghost before she’d even died. “Especially if I take her part from her. Especially if that’s the water where her memories are hidden.”
“Yer thinkin’ o’ drownin’ yerself?” Nate shifted his feet.
Bertie thought of all the times she’d drowned while masquerading as the water-maiden, certain she wouldn’t be able to manage Ophelia’s tranquil resignation now that she no longer wore her mother’s face and Eau d’Ophelia no longer flowed through her veins. “I’ll do whatever it takes to pull her through.” Expecting vehement protests, she put on her most belligerent expression.
“Ye won’t have t’ do it alone.” Nate’s quiet reassurance was not dimmed by the distance between them. “I can see if th’ Stage Manager’s headset will work t’ call th’ scenery in, but if it doesn’t, I know where th’ flats are stored.”
She couldn’t help but stare at him a moment, wondering what had happened to the overprotective streak that ran as deep and as strong as his countless mariner superstitions. “You’re not going to try to stop me?”
“If I’ve learned anythin’ in th’ last few weeks,” Nate said, his voice low, “it’s that ye won’t be swayed once ye’ve made up yer mind, an’ I can either help ye or get out o’ th’ way.”
Unable to stop the smile that threatened to take over her face, Bertie squeezed his arm. “That must have been quite the epiphany.”
“Aye, well, pound a rock against a rock an’ one o’ them will give eventually.” He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. “Tell me what ye want done.”
“We’ll need to get the green lights rigged.” Bertie couldn’t repress a shudder at the idea, but forced herself to add, “And a scrim.” She draped Ophelia’s dress over her arm and mustered as much bravado as she could manage on such short notice. “If you’ll see to the scenery, I’ll fetch the flowers.”
Nate saluted and moved toward the Stage Door. Bertie headed the opposite direction: down the hallway, along the path nearly worn into the floorboards by the many times she’d escaped to the Properties Department.
Stepping inside, she hung Ophelia’s costume on the side of a massive armoire and turned to study the room. It was as neat and tidy as the Wardrobe Department—she saw this within seconds—and its curator similarly absent. Atop his desk and the adjacent filing cabinets, massive stacks of paperwork awaited Mr. Hastings’s return. The teakettle sat on a burner, filled with water but cold to the touch. A paper-wrapped loaf of bread was safely interred in its tin box. A quick squeeze revealed it was only slightly stale, but for once, Bertie had no desire for toast.
A terrible silence shifted around her with the occasional stray dust mote, magnifying the sense of a sanctuary lost. Moving through the dream of days past, she stepped over to the ancient record player, twisted the power knob, lowered the arm, and released music that was the ghost of an orchestra. Not a tango this time, but a slow waltz; Bertie’s heartstrings felt as taut as the violin that sang to her from the past. The flesh of her arms rippled with tiny bumps, the hairs on the nape of her neck rising to match, until the recording ended with a hiss, a pop, a whirring of internal gears before the arm lifted and reset to the beginning of the song. Easy enough to imagine she wasn’t alone, that the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chorus whirled past her, faces fantastically masked, hands properly white gloved, fans dangling from delicate wrists and tuxedo jackets impeccably pressed …
“Shall we dance?” Ariel said as he entered, not requiring a formal jacket or a mask to belong to the scene.
“No, thank you.” Bertie cut the power to the record player. The turntable ceased spinning, depriving the needle of the music’s rise and fall, and her imaginings faded into the gloom.
“It seems the Green Room is yet able to produce food, though I question its selection of cherry turnovers alongside a haunch of roast mutton.” He offered her a thick ceramic mug, its contents gently steaming. “Coffee?”
“Not just yet.” Remembering Ophelia’s blooms, Bertie set off down the nearest aisle. Her fingers skimmed the shelves, over ship’s lanterns, iridescent carnival glass, brass-trapped globes mapping worlds that didn’t exist. “Did you find anything or anyone else?”
“I didn’t sense so much as a mouse stirring under the floorboards. It’s a safe bet that we’re the only ones in this version of the theater.” Without effort, he managed to keep up with her rapid search despite the full cup in his hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Acquiring the necessary properties to summon a water-maiden.” Bertie turned a corner and tried to leave her prickling worries behind, wedged between stained glass panels and a timeworn carousel horse.
“Without chaperone or bodyguard?”
“Nate is seeing to the scenery, and hopefully the others are helping.”
Ariel abandoned her coffee so he could catch hold of her elbow. “You need to take more care with Varvara. She’s dangerous, something neither you nor any of the others seem to grasp just yet.”
Bertie shook free of him, impatient to resume her search. “Varvara might be like you in many ways, but she is more human than fire.”
“There you are wrong.” There was no melodrama in his words, just conviction. And fear. “She is everything that is wild and untamable and burning.”
Staring up at him, Bertie realized how very tired she was of fighting with everyone and everything around her. Fighting to bring her family back together, fighting to unite the theaters, fighting to prevent her friendships with Nate and Ariel from crumbling to dust. At the end of the row, practically beckoning with its down coverlet and tempting pillows, sat a stack of twenty feather beds upon twenty mattresses. Certain she wouldn’t notice a pea nestled at the very bottom, even if it were the size of a goodly boulder, Bertie contemplated crawling atop it and tumbling into an endless slumber.
When he noticed the direction of her gaze, Ariel shook his head. “You aren’t the sort to draw the covers over your head and hide.”
“I could be. Give me enough time and pillows.”
“Liar.” He delivered the accusation with a half smile. “What are you looking for here, besides vindication?”
“Ophelia’s flowers.”
Ariel slowly rose from the floor, supported by winds that stirred up dust and bits of Mr. Hastings’s paperwork. Bertie tried not to cough as he plucked a lidded ba
sket from the uppermost shelf and alighted next to her.
“These are what you’re seeking, I think.”
Bertie turned back the lid and saw that they were indeed. “‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’” Pray, love, remember. “‘And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.’” They were all there: fennel and columbines, rue and daisies. With a frown, Bertie plucked an unexpected rose from the glorious assortment within the basket’s wicker walls, its fragrance more startling than the thorn that pierced her flesh. The bloom tumbled to the ground, blood-red petals yet moist. “They’re freshly picked.”
“Did you expect different?” Ariel knelt, retrieving the flower.
Looking through the rest of the basket, Bertie saw with growing wonder that the green stems wept a bit of liquid from where shears had parted them from the shrub. “I always thought them clever silk and paper reproductions.”
“If that logic held true, the food in the patisserie set would be plastic and papier-mâché.” He held the rose out to her. “Is that how you’d prefer it?”
Bertie refused the offering, overly reminiscent as it was of their long-ago tango, and instead heaved the basket onto her hip. “I don’t think the Fates are all that interested in my preferences.”
“Even if they aren’t, I am.” Taking full advantage of the fact that her hands were occupied, Ariel tucked the rose behind her ear. His fingers lingered there a moment longer than necessary, straying through her silver hair and coming to rest on the nape of her neck. “If you cannot save her, what is left for you here?”
“Not much.” The truth slipped out before Bertie could stop it.
“I see.”
“Do you?” Bertie wished she could better read what flickered in the smoke gray of his eyes. “When you look at me, do you see that losing Ophelia in such a fashion might break my heart in a million pieces? Do you see yourself trying to put me back together, like bits of smashed mirror that will always be fragmented and flawed, no matter how careful your work?”
His mouth tightened. “Against my better judgment, I would have you know that your flaws are also your saving graces.”