So Silver Bright (25 page)

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 like 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.

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.