So Silver Bright (19 page)

“Ophelia?” The Call Boy’s shout carried over the noise. “You’re wanted in the Theater Manager’s office at once!”

With muttered apologies she wished could be swear words, Bertie pushed and shoved her way through the Players, ducked into Ophelia’s Dressing Room, and slammed the door shut behind her. Wheezing, she turned the key over in the lock and ran for the mirror.

“Your Majesty!” Bertie’s palm met the glass with a smack, though she didn’t dare raise her voice above a harsh whisper. “Open the mirror, damn it all!”

But the only response was a knock at the door. “Ophelia? Is everything all right in there?” A pause, then the doorknob rattled. “I would have a word with you, please.”

The Theater Manager.

Bertie scrabbled through the pots of rouge and tubes of greasepaint for something she could use to disguise herself. Her fingers closed around something cold and familiar: a faceted perfume bottle that felt quite at home in her hand. The crystal glimmered in the lights surrounding the mirror, producing a rainbow that snaked over Bertie’s palm. Not quite the “Drink Me” bottle from the Properties Department, but she could imagine that it was, could envision it labeled as E
AU D’
O
PHELIA
.

Even as she removed the stopper, Bertie concentrated on the scent that naturally enveloped her mother: water lilies and white roses and the pale moss that clung to the rocks of an ice-fed stream. There was the salt of tears shed as well, and under that something wistful, something longing, something dark that lurks in the shadows below the water’s surface.

Bertie had the bottle to her lips before she could think twice. There was no triple apple this time, no coffee, no buttered toast, just the taste of the ocean, salty as an oyster swallowed straight from its shell. Turning back to the mirror in desperation, she concentrated upon her image: so like her mother’s, and yet not.

I have my mother’s eyes. Let’s see what I can do about the rest.

With salt water still spangling her lips, Bertie smoothed a hand over the mirror, recalled her mother’s delicate features, and shaped her own face into something more of a heart.

Now to do something about my height.

Placing a hand atop of the reflection of her head, Bertie pressed down until she shrank, reducing the inches bestowed upon her by the Scrimshander. Stature adjusted, she set about removing the rest of the bits he’d gifted her until almost-Ophelia gazed back at her from the surface of glass.

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.