So Silver Bright (30 page)

What have I done?

Filled with sick regret but unable to turn back the clock, Bertie opened the vial and drank the traded words down, tasting sour cherry syrup over shaved ice, bitter lemon peel, and spices that recalled a nameless sorrow.

I should have found another way.
Remorse stabbed at her middle with every swallow.
I should have used the wish-come-true instead.

But it was too late for that, too late to do anything save watch the words reappear on the pages of the journal:

RARERIPE, HORBGORBLE, MOONGLADE, CURLIEWURLIE.

Never again would she underestimate the power of a single word.

Every word is a magic spell.

At the very least, she thought they would have to recite their lines again; a second, terrible idea followed, that perhaps they’d need to summon every new Player they’d met along the journey: the Innamorati, the characters at the Caravanserai, even Her Gracious Majesty and all the court at the Distant Castle.

And how could the brigands possibly recite their lines when they’re dead and snow-packed?

But the journal shuddered in her desperate grip, wavered, and disappeared like a conjurer’s trick. The next instant,
The Complete Works of the Stage
appeared with a thunderclap and a lightning flash upon its pedestal Stage Left, its glow twice as brilliant as before. The theater surrounding them reverberated with the shift, the double images solidifying into one: the very place they’d left not so long ago.

Bertie reached out to squeeze Ariel’s hand, not surprised to find it cold and unresponsive. He didn’t move, but every bit of his attention was focused upon the Exit door, and his eyes had the haunted expression of a trapped bird, a wild starling caged for market.

“Ariel—”

As though relishing the opportunity to interrupt her, a tinny voice came over the loudspeaker: “All Players to the stage, please, all Players to the stage.”

“Th’ Stage Manager,” Nate said with a bit of a laugh. “Now I know we’re home.”

“And my guess is he knows we’re back.” Ill-tamed bits of Ariel’s wind escaped him, as though trying to drag him from the room before it was too late.

The wisps of wind carried something else upon them: Ophelia’s perfume. The water-maiden shifted quietly into the here-and-now. At first she was as worn and faded as a bit of sheet music left carelessly in the sun, her limbs transparent, her dress no more than the suggestion of fabric and thread. Then corporeality spread like a warm flush, a waking dream made tangible.

“Ophelia.” Moving faster than a bird of prey, the Scrimshander caught her in his arms. “Before you disappear again, I would have you know that I still love you!”

When the water-maiden lifted her eyes to his, something about her face changed. Her expression sharpened, her mouth opened just slightly, and the smile she bestowed upon him was far more brilliant than the dream-lulled expression of a delusional maiden. “I know you, sir, I think.”

More than seventeen years had passed since they’d last seen each other, since they’d last spoken, since they’d been torn from each other’s arms. Bertie had regained her voice, but watching her father gaze down upon her mother, she was still speechless.

The warmth of Ophelia’s expression flickered. The Scrimshander stared back at her, a man stricken, and he held very still as she reached up with a hesitant hand to trace a finger down the bridge of his nose, along his high, curving cheekbones, down the length of his long neck to the swirling tattoos that decorated what was visible of his chest.

“I don’t remember these,” Ophelia noted, her nails skimming his skin until she raised gooseflesh.

“Those,” he said, sounding strangled, “are new since we last parted.”

Ophelia frowned. “Why would you do such a thing to yourself?”

His throat worked. “Punishment for my weakness. I should have found the strength to remain human—”

“You speak such nonsense,” Ophelia said with a faint laugh. “If you’ll excuse me, though, I will go in search of the healing waters.” When she pulled away from him, the hem of her gown fluttered, the Cobalt-Flame silk water-patterned and droplet-spangled.

“Waschbär,” Bertie whispered, hardly able to speak for the idea crowding into her head alongside the wish-come-true, “hand me your satchel.”

He obeyed, moving slower than she’d thought possible though her own hands fumbled as she reached down to the bottom of the bag for a piece of forgotten fabric. Wrapped about the journal, tossed aside as less important than the pages within …

It was the most important bit of all.

Bertie held it gently between her fingertips, noting its delicacy, catching the faintest fragrance of water lily for the first time. Turning, she offered it to her mother. “This belongs to you, I think.”

Puzzled, the water-maiden reached out to take the scrap of silk. “What is that bit of nothing?” But there was no need to answer. As soon as Ophelia’s fingertips brushed over the fabric, the confusion in her eyes dissipated, and all that had been clouded green was now faceted emerald. The bent reeds of her limbs straightened until she was as Bertie had seen her in the Queen’s mirror world: a woman whose strength and determination was balanced by mischief and perhaps even a bit of the reckless daredevil. Staring at her mother, Bertie saw more of herself in the water-maiden than she ever had before.

In the next instant, Ophelia had her arms about Bertie, murmuring apologies and seventeen years’ worth of motherly endearments that ended with “My darling girl, can you ever forgive me?”

“It’s I who should apologize,” the Scrimshander tentatively put forward. “For leaving you here, alone, to bear our child.”

Bertie dropped Waschbär’s bag to better enfold both her parents in the sort of hug she’d dreamed about for as long as she could remember. They stood that way, heads bowed toward each other, breaths exhaled as tiny laughs, tears flowing as free as the rivers until the reunion was interrupted by a hoarse choking noise.

“What is the meaning of all this?” The Theater Manager stood in the gloom of the wings, features half obscured by shadow. His gaze traveled from Bertie to Ophelia’s joyful but defiant face, to the Scrimshander, his muscles knotted with righteous anger.

“I’m afraid your brigands didn’t quite manage to get the journal back to you,” Bertie said. “And it’s been returned to its proper place within The Book. I would know what your plans were for it, given that I know
everything else
you have done.”

Cheeks blotched with anger, he stepped forward. “I ought to have destroyed it years ago.”

“And me?” Bertie demanded. “I am part of what happened outside these walls. Destroying the journal might have killed me!”

“Would that I had had the courage!” His carefully constructed mask slipped. “I knew you would be the downfall of this place! It was a mistake to let you live, a greater mistake still to let Mrs. Edith bring you back here. The moment she returned, I should have taken the journal from its hiding place and burned the cursed thing—”

“Why didn’t you, then?” Bertie flared in return, equal parts sick and relieved to finally know his true feelings toward her. “Why did you wait for me to leave, for the journal to go missing?”

“I can tell you,” Varvara said, stepping forward.

At the sound of her voice, the Theater Manager looked as though his collar strangled him. He took several involuntary steps forward, pulled by invisible puppet strings. “What are
you
doing here?”

“The wordsmith freed me from my prison.” Hair flaming with temper, the fire-dancer scowled at him. “Tell her how you’ve always feared the flames. Feared anything you could not control. If the journal’s destruction required fire, you would have never managed it unless driven by desperation greater than your cowardice—”

Her creator did not deny it. Instead, he clamped unforgiving fingers around her wrist. His other hand twisted the opal ring from her finger faster than any of the fairies could have downed a cupcake. Varvara began to shriek the moment the metal left her skin, an unholy wail that recalled the death of anything that had ever perished in the flames, but still he did not let her go.

“I’ve courage enough to return you to your prison.”

Varvara’s skin glowed white-hot, and he was forced to release her with a curse. “I will not be held captive again!” She turned and leapt through the air, fear and fury consuming her so that only flames were left for the split second when she passed, not by Ariel, but through him.

Wholly unprepared for the assault, he could not stop her from drawing all the winds of the world within herself as she glided through his body. Shirt charred and expression stunned, he teetered and fell into the orchestra pit as Varvara’s air-fed flames exploded from the stage in a thousand directions at once.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

So Do Our Minutes Hasten to Their End

“Ariel!” Bertie’s shout was
lost to chaos.

Within seconds, fire had consumed the lacquered wood paneling and stripped the flocked wallpaper from the walls of the auditorium. Crystals in the chandelier shattered and rained down like fireworks; in the center of it all, Varvara stood on her toes, spinning madly, sparking yet more fires upon the rug and walls as glowing tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Make it stop,” the fire-dancer pleaded. “I can’t—”

Wishing she could punch the Theater Manager, Bertie instead wrested the ring from his grasp, running forward only to be thrown back by a wave of superheated air and thick, black smoke. The sprinklers that should have poured blessed water down upon them by now only hissed steam like red-hot radiators on the boil. Flames licked eager tongues over the velvet curtains.

And Ariel is caught in this inferno.

Bertie pulled her sweater up until it covered her nose. Creeping forward on her hands and knees, she tried to ignore the tears streaming from her eyes. The speakers overhead clicked on again, and the Stage Manager’s panic fanned the flames.

“All Players to the stage!”

Bertie could hear the alarmed screams of the approaching company, the rustle of costumes in the hallway, the frantic footfalls headed their direction.

Nate’s determined shout carried over the assembling crowd. “Open th’ smoke doors!” Climbing the rigging, the pirate opened the first of the tiny vents above the stage. Right behind him, half a dozen mariners did the same. Nate twisted about on his rope to point at a blue-painted lever. “Activate th’ deluge system an’ call in every water set we have!”

His voice had a captain’s bellow about it now, and the company fell to their tasks, shoving at waves, pulling in rivers, lowering blue-gauze scrim, reaching for buckets of glitter-infused water. The tin handles were passed hand to hand, the contents sloshing over to decorate flame-licked hemlines and smoke-bedraggled stockings.

“Someone lower th’ fire curtain so th’ flames don’t spread t’ th’ stage!”

A member of the Gentlemen’s Chorus ran for the heavy lever in the Stage Manager’s corner, pulling it with a grunt. The iron curtain began to slide along the steel channels that would hold it in place.

The theater might well be doomed already, but I’ll be damned if it takes Ariel with it.

Bertie threw herself under the yet-moving curtain, skidding to the front of the stage as it slammed down behind her, nearly felling half the Ladies’ Chorus.

“Ariel?” With a grunt and a heave, Bertie slid into the orchestra pit, bouncing off a chair and a music stand, scorched sheet music fluttering around her like autumnal leaves. Though he was only a few feet away, it took countless precious breaths to find him, to crawl to his side, to drag him into her lap. The burning in her lungs was even worse than when she’d drowned. Everything about her was going hazy around the edges, but when Ariel exhaled a ragged breath, it cleared the worst of the smoke around them.

“You have to make her stop,” he managed to say between wracking coughs.

Trying to escape her own flames, Varvara leapt from the dress circle to the ledge on the upper balcony. Framed by an enormous glittering window, the fire-dancer twisted about to face them. Shooting-star sparks fell from her hands, and the truth raged from her lips like so much lava. “This was not my choice.”

“The Theater Manager can’t trap you again, Varvara!” Bertie screamed in return, holding up the ring. “But you have to stop, before you destroy everything!”

“He’ll use a different word-spell to put me back in the dark. I’d rather perish!”

“
I
can use the words to free you!” Clutching Ariel, Bertie tried to summon the silver light that yet lingered behind her eyes. “I wish for your freedom, Varvara! You will never be a prisoner again.”

The Queen’s gift swelled, filling her entire head, the words swirling like ink on the surface of a scrying mirror. Sweat poured down Bertie’s face; when a ruby droplet spattered her right hand, just over the handfasting mark, she realized her nose had started to bleed.

“Perhaps,” Ariel managed to wheeze, “it’s not as easy to use a wish-come-true as I thought.”

“I can’t force it to obey me,” Bertie said, falling back against the wall. “The Queen said the wish had to be worthy, but I’m the one who’s not worthy! I’m not strong enough!”

“You are!” Ariel gripped her shoulders, trying to transfer his strength to her, though it too was flagging. “You have to be!”

“I wish for your freedom, Varvara!” But Bertie’s ragged scream was lost to the back draft of heat and light that enveloped them. Wrapping her arms about Ariel, Bertie built a tiny shelter from the pieces of theater not yet burning, their world reduced to bits of oak and mahogany, splinters of cherrywood and pine, fitted together like a puzzle with all its pieces. Tiny vines unfurled from the wood, releasing precious oxygen, and Bertie managed to draw half a breath.