Perchance to Dream (5 page)

Like a bird.

“You’re the Mysterious Stranger.” She could hardly vocalize the second half of the realization. “You’re my
father
.”

He raised his voice to an insistent squawk. “You must go back!”

“Keep it down, unless you want the others to come running!” Bertie wasn’t about to be lectured by some stranger, father or not, even if he was large and intimidating. She peered up into glassy black eyes that were like something sewn on a child’s toy. “I can’t go back until I rescue my friend. He was kidnapped by Sedna.”

The birdman went very still, as though he’d been struck by a hunter’s arrow. When next he spoke, he struggled with words caught in his throat. “The Sea Goddess?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever business your friend has with the Sea Goddess, it is his own.”

“That’s not true.” Her mind was like a puzzle box, suddenly opening. “It’s
my
fault. For crying on this medallion … that
you
said you carved.”

For a moment, a glimpse of the Scrimshander was visible in the birdman’s face: the pride of an artist; the terror of a father. “You won’t be able to get to him. One must be dead to travel through the gateway to Sedna’s Kingdom.”

Bertie sat up on her knees. The blanket slipped down her shoulder, and she wished she was wearing something more than a much-maligned evening gown as armor against his piercing gaze. “That means there
is
a gateway, and you know where it is.”

He squawked and retreated half a step. “I don’t.”

“You’re lying.” Bertie wrapped her hand around the scrimshaw, hearing Nate’s words just as he’d whispered them to her in the Properties Department.

Sedna learned, in th’ hardest o’ ways, t’ look beyond th’ surface o’ a man, t’ see what hopes an’ dreams an’ fears lay nestled in his heart o’ hearts.

Except the medallion showed her a heart that beat simultaneously in both man and bird. He was bound with two water-ribbons, one the color of the moon reflected on a drowning pool, the other brilliant sunlight on the ocean’s waves. Following the silver one immediately to his right, Bertie found a woman, eyes sparkling with sequins, hair twined about with flowers, floating in the eddies of her own salt tears.

My mother.

When the Scrimshander-within looked at Ophelia, his face in profile was that of a man in love, as unmistakably human as it was vulnerable.

Bertie swallowed, not wanting to tear her gaze away from the pair of them, standing together just as she’d always imagined, but the golden ribbon led in the other direction. Turning, she saw that the sunlit streamer danced through sparkling sand and disappeared into the waves. Just beyond the surface, the Sea Goddess beckoned to the birdman with her starfish fingers, calling to him with whale song.

Bertie’s father turned to look at Sedna, the other side of his face that of a bird.

“Sedna ran away from her family to be with you.” Bertie’s accusation caused the scrimshaw’s vision to dissipate. Easier to see him now that the pink light of dawn teased its way over the window sash. “You were married to her.”

He didn’t deny it. “You must return.”

“I can’t.” Bertie scrambled out of the berth and backed him against the door, armed with only her anger and an accusatory finger she pointed at his face. “You saw to that the day you coaxed my mother away from her home. You stole Ophelia, Sedna stole Nate; twice pages have been torn from The Book and taken into the outside world.”

“Your story belongs at the Théâtre.”

“Not anymore, it’s doesn’t.” Reaching over to the table, she snatched up the journal to show him their exit page bound within.

He recoiled from the unearthly glow, filling the caravan with his panicked cry. Through ringing ears, Bertie heard Ariel’s matching shout, muffled though it was by wooden walls. The Scrimshander beat his wings at her, sending the journal flying. When the air elemental jerked the door open, her father flung himself skyward.

“What’s going on!?” Ariel peered, wild-eyed, into the caravan.

“Never mind about me, catch hold of him!” Shoving past Ariel and nearly falling down the stairs, Bertie caught sight of the enormous winged creature overhead. Bird instincts warred with those of a father, and indecision caused him to circle, dipping and wheeling but unable to break free. She stamped her bare foot in the grass. “Come down here at once!”

“Are you all right?” Ariel immediately followed his first question with an encore. “What the hell was that thing?”

“He’s—” The idea filled her throat with cinders and ash, choking her before she could finish.

When the Scrimshander keened again, Ariel turned, lifted his hands, and sent all his winds to knock the bird-creature from the sky. Thrown back by one current and then slammed forward by another, it panicked.

Bertie lunged at Ariel, grasping his arms and forcing his hands down. “Don’t, he’s my father!”

The air elemental stared at her as though she spoke in tongues. “Your … father?”

“He knows where to find Sedna,” Bertie said. Overhead, the Scrimshander circled again, free of the caravan’s confines but seemingly undecided about fleeing. Spiraling up then dipping down, his flight pattern matched the heaving of her midsection as she waited for him to break away.

By now, the fairies had rounded the corner of the caravan, flying full tilt into Bertie’s hair. “What’s going on?”

“We were making breakfast!”

“The porridge is going to burn.”

“Never mind the porridge.” Bertie turned around, scanning a floor littered with feathers, the bedding half-dragged from the sleeping berth. The journal was nestled on the limp goose of a pillow, a most unusual egg. She fell upon it with a cry, then reached up for the fountain pen, still atop the table. Ariel caught her around the waist as she came through the door, and the two of them nearly fell down the stairs.

“You’re going to kill us both—”

“Get out of my way!” She shoved him aside and, gaze still locked upon her father, opened the journal. “I don’t want any misunderstandings this time.”

Ariel assessed their reluctant guest circling overhead, one hand twitching to stir a faint breeze. “I don’t think you have time for fancy turns of phrase, milady.”

He’s right, damn him.

Uncapping the fountain pen, she scribbled:

Father and daughter are still linked, as
though by a finely wrought chain of gold.

Pink flooded the valley, and with another raucous cry, the Scrimshander’s indecision evaporated. He fled the grasping fingers of first light. Bertie watched him go, tasting bitter disappointment over her most recent written failure.

“We have to follow him—” But she didn’t get to finish the command. With a jerk like a tightrope walker’s wire gone taut, Bertie dropped the journal and the pen into the dew-damp grass when the Scrimshander began to tow her in his wake.

CHAPTER FIVE
Our Valour Is to Chase What Flies

B
ertie
caught
a
glimpse
of the encampment, everything angled Down Center Stage to face an imaginary audience, but only as she kicked over a cooking pot, leapt over the campfire, and tripped over a mound of furs that might have been the still-sleeping sneak-thief.

“AAAAAH!” the fairies screamed directly into her ears, clinging to her hair and rattling about her shoulders like Cleopatra’s beaded headdress.

At the edge of the clearing, Ariel caught Bertie under the arms. The Scrimshander towed both of them forward a half-dozen steps, though the air elemental dug his similarly bare heels into the ground.

“Cut him loose!” Ariel strained to hold her.

“I can’t!” Bertie managed to say before pain swallowed the protest. As the Scrimshander struggled to flee, the connection she’d wrought threatened to tear her heart from her chest. “For God’s sake, let go!” Another tug that pulled them farther afield. “Get me the journal!”

Ariel’s arms tightened, then released. He shouted to the fairies, “Stay with her!”

“Aye, Captain!” Moth said as Bertie was pulled into waist-high grass. It slapped at her skin, leaving welts along her arms. The heavy skirts of her evening gown protected her legs somewhat, but rocks dug into the soles of her already-abused feet, and each unwilling step felt like—

The little mermaid, walking on her human legs.

“Tell me when it’s over!” Peaseblossom screamed, her tiny eyes squinched shut. To underscore the plea, Cobweb hummed a dire tune, the sort a string quartet would play aboard a sinking ship.

Abruptly the Scrimshander circled overhead, his avian instincts perhaps warring between the need to protect his hatchling and the desire to flee. Bertie couldn’t help but notice the beauty of his flight, couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like to soar, but she dared not stop running, even when unexpected company joined her.

“And what are we fleeing this fine morning?” Waschbär’s jovial greeting belied the ridiculousness of the circumstances under which it was uttered. Naught but twitching noses protruding from the sneak-thief’s right-hand pocket, Pip Pip and Cheerio added their own good-mornings between Waschbär’s nimble leaps.

“Not fleeing,” Bertie said between gasps for air. “Following.” She tapped the scrimshaw. “Found this high in the nest of a bird, did you say?”

“I might have,” he admitted.

“No mere coincidence, I think.” Pressing one hand against the cramp in her side, she pointed with the other. “That bird-thing is going to lead us to the Sea Goddess.”

“Appropriate enough, since that ‘thing’ is a seabird. A fulmar.” The sneak-thief moved through the grass as though accustomed to unscheduled jaunts across the countryside. “And now one is bound to the other, bonds both familial and spiritual.”

“Only one of those bonds is my fault.” Landing on a particularly pointy rock, Bertie used a word that would have caused the stagehands to blush.

The ferrets looked at her, tiny expressions appalled, but Waschbär only grinned. “How long do you think you can keep up this brisk pace, pray tell?”

“Not much longer,” she was forced to admit. “But it will be easier to keep up with the caravan.”

“Naturally. Until he flies where such a conveyance cannot follow, and then what happens to you?”

An escalating rumble swallowed the end of the query, and Bertie nearly tripped when she caught sight of the foot-high letters on the side of the caravan: “B
EATRICE
S
HAKESPEARE
S
MITH
& C
OMPANY
” painted in red with “T
OURING
P
LAYERS OF THE
T
HéâTRE
I
LLUMINATA
” under it in blue.

“I did the bit in Crimson Lake!” Moth said into Bertie’s right ear. “Free advertising.”

Mustardseed sounded aggrieved. “We only managed to do one side last night before we ran out of Prussian Blue—”

“Ascension first, discussion afterward.” The sneak-thief neither blinked nor asked permission before he grasped Bertie by the waist and tossed her at the still-moving vehicle. “Allez-oop!”

It was the cry of trapeze performers and trampoline jumpers, but there was nothing graceful about the way Bertie smashed into the railing alongside the driver’s seat rather than triumphantly atop it. Pain bloomed in both knees, shins, and elbows on impact. Ariel clasped her by the wrist and heaved her the rest of the way aboard.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” was Moth’s wry observance.

Not waiting for her to settle, Ariel shoved the reins at her.

Bertie had no choice but to grasp them. “What are you doing?”

“Taking precautionary measures.” He looped a sturdy leather belt through the wrought-iron railing and buckled the strap around her waist. “Otherwise an untimely change in that thing’s flight pattern might pull you right off.” With a glance at the sky, he guided the caravan onto a road of packed dirt, a welcome change from the field. The only signpost marking their new route was tilted and time-scabbed, thickly grown over with moss.

Behind the seat came the scrabble of fingernails against wood and a thud as Waschbär boarded. The fairies, finally convinced Bertie wasn’t going to be dragged off to oblivion, emerged from her hair.

Peaseblossom zipped about Bertie’s face and hands. “Are you hurt?”

“She’s not gushing blood.” Mustardseed looked disappointed. “Not that I can see, anyway.”

Moth jabbed her nose with his finger. “Who are you, and what have you done to the Bertie who doesn’t get out of bed before noon?”

“That bird-thing worked better than an alarm clock—”

“That bird-thing is my father,” Bertie said without preamble. The fairies fell several inches as they all forgot to fly, but she paid them no mind, turning to Ariel. “Did you find the journal?”

With his gaze still fastened upon their airborne compass needle, he handed it to her. “What are you going to do now?”

Bertie stared hard at the bird-creature, and when her eyes watered a bit, she wiped them carefully, blaming it on the sun.

The connection between them lengthens,
every unspoken hope forging a link that she
adds to the invisible chain.

I hope you can lead me to Nate. I hope you don’t break free.

When the Scrimshander wheeled away again, the tugging upon her heartstrings was delayed by a few seconds. “Better, but not perfect.”

Peaseblossom patted Bertie on the cheek. “Are you all right? About meeting your father?”

She couldn’t bring herself to share the tone of his voice, the regret in the words “Little One,” the feeling of having his hand touch her gently upon the cheek even if it was only for a moment. The bone-disk was warm against her skin, and the etching of the Théâtre on the surface shimmered. “Not just my father. He’s the Scrimshander who carved the medallion, too.”

“Golly,” Mustardseed finally managed. “D’you think Nate knew?”

Bertie’s arms came out in goose bumps. “I don’t know.”

That’s certainly something to ask him, when next we meet.

The troupe bounced along for a minute, everyone catching their collective breath and wincing with each jolt of the wagon, each rock caught under the wheels. While Ariel sat easy in the seat, one booted foot up and shoulders relaxed, Bertie clung to the wooden armrest and braced her feet against the running boards. She could have hooked her arm through his and been far more comfortable, but the few inches of space between them was a chasm filled with unasked questions and urgency.

Her chest constricted, the invisible tether pulling her forward. Held in the seat by the leather belt around her waist and her white-knuckled grip on the armrest, Bertie snapped at Ariel, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

“Perhaps you’d like to write something to that effect in your journal, milady?”

“There’s no need for sarcasm.”

“Of course not! I was merely minding my own business, getting dressed—”

Bertie interrupted. “I note you managed to tuck in your shirt and do up your trousers since last I saw you.”

“—when both the poetically quiet predawn and my ears were assaulted with screaming and chaos.”

Bertie jabbed a finger at the sky. “‘If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father.’”

“Don’t you start quoting
Henry the Eighth
at me!”

Waschbär popped up behind them. “None of this is strictly her fault, if you consider the circumstances.”

“No one invited you.” Strands of silver hair moved over Ariel’s shoulders alongside his irritation. “We’ve no valuables to steal, so you might as well be off.”

Twisting around, Bertie grasped a handful of Waschbär’s fur coat to make certain he didn’t scamper away. “I need you to stay with us. In case the connection breaks.”

“You want me to join your merry band?” The sneak-thief peered at Bertie with black-button eyes that reminded her uncomfortably of her father’s.

“Yes. Please.” Trying to recall any part of the previous night’s conversation that might sway him, Bertie was inspired when Pip Pip and Cheerio poked quivering noses out of Waschbär’s coat pockets. “Sharing food and safety in numbers.”

The sneak-thief studied each of them in turn, taking in something more than the troupe and the caravan with his steady gaze. Bertie did her best to project fellow-feeling and camaraderie, letting warmth pour from her smile like a spotlight. Waschbär’s grin was her answer, though all he said was, “Will there be dessert?”

Bertie tried not to contemplate how much a six-foot-tall raccoonlike man could consume in the way of sugarcoated edibles. “As much as you can eat,” she promised rashly. “With meat and cheese and bread, besides. I have to feed the fairies … one more mouth won’t make much of a difference.” When the ferrets chattered, Bertie amended, “Three mouths, that is.”

“In that case, it would be my greatest pleasure to join your group!” Waschbär whistled a merry tune as the ferrets clambered onto his shoulders.

“This is a theater troupe, not a menagerie.” Ariel gave the sneak-thief a withering look that he then shifted to Bertie. “You don’t know anything about your newest recruit, except that he’s a criminal.”

“And a tracker. So, against the dire moment the Scrimshander breaks the connection between us, he stays.” Looking up, Bertie could almost see it: a thin gold chain running into the sky like a kite string. Attached to a most unusual kite, though.

If you wanted to protect me, why did you abandon us at the theater?

And why are you running from me now, right when I need you the most?

“Perhaps we ought to contemplate breakfast.” Waschbär’s casual statement recalled her to their foodless plight.

Peaseblossom squeaked in outrage. “The porridge! What happened to the porridge I was cooking?”

Bertie thought of the cooking pot she’d kicked over during her hasty exit. “I’m afraid I might have trod upon it.”

“Do not suffer these oats to be eaten,” Mustardseed said with grim satisfaction.

“‘Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas,’” Moth quoted. “‘Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease.’”

“Tee-hee,
Pease
.” The boys rolled about, holding their stomachs and laughing at their own terrible pun until Cobweb sat up and said, “Bertie, would you please conjure some pancakes?”

“Now?” She thought of what she’d done to Nate, of the pain in her chest with every tug of the chain, and fear—of the words, of the journal—filled her from her maligned toes to her considerably rumpled hair.

“Chicken!” Moth put his thumbs in his armpits and strutted down the length of the armrest.

“I didn’t say I was afraid.”

“You didn’t have to.” Waschbär leaned over the back of the seat and placed a finger alongside his nose. “Your scent did.”

What does fear smell like? Perspiration and iron-tang and—

“Lemons,” Waschbär said.

“I beg your pardon?” Bertie said.

“You smell of lemons.”

“Of course I do.” She frumped around in her seat, fairly certain her posterior was also riddled with splinters. “Then my discomfort should smell of grapefruit, no?”

Waschbär reached out a single curved claw and traced it down the journal’s spine. “No sense having something with that sort of power without knowing how best to use it. Otherwise it’s of no more use to you than a sword too heavy to lift.” His voice held no hint of reprimand or coaxing, but nudged her all the same. “You’ll feel the strain of its weight, its power upon you.”

Bertie placed a hand on the leather cover. “Could you feel it? The power, I mean.”

The sneak-thief lolled back, managing to look at ease despite the rough condition of the road. “I’d have to be ten sorts of fool to miss it.”

“And only one sort of fool to steal it.” Ariel’s breeze caught the cover of the journal, ruffling the pages.

“Could you not use the journal to transport us, bag and baggage, to your desired destination?” Waschbär suggested.

“Because the link to my father fared ever so well.” Bertie gestured to the leather belt looped about her waist even as she checked the sky. A mere speck far above them, the Scrimshander had gained altitude if not distance. “Do we fancy a nice plummet that ends with us landing on the Sea Witch?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Moth said, “as long as we can sing ‘We’re Off to See the Scrimshander’ first.”

“I say you need rehearsing, and lots of it,” said Cobweb. “I suggest you rehearse up some fruit pies and chocolate buttons!”

“What do fruit pies have to do with anything?” Bertie couldn’t help but laugh at the idea.

Mustardseed held up an admonishing finger. “Remember your
Titus Andronicus,
Bertie! ‘I of these will wrest an alphabet, and by still practice learn to know thy meaning.’ That’s wholly applicable here.”