So Silver Bright (20 page)

“Beatrice Shakespeare Smith!”

It was Her Gracious Majesty, finally recalling her through the looking glass. Torn, Bertie turned first one direction then the other, unable to know what she would be able to change, if she stayed, or if it was really possible to change anything at all.

One step made her decision, another cemented it. She ran, Ophelia’s drowning dress falling away in tattered strips to reveal a new gown underneath, one of diaphanous black, cut from shadow-cloth and stitched together with secrets. Properly attired for mourning, Bertie burst through the door to Ophelia’s Dressing Room, reaching for the mirror and the beckoning hand of the child Queen who pulled her back through the glass.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Like Bubbles in a Late-Disturbed Stream

Regurgitated upon the floor
of the mirrored room, Bertie felt as aged as the Queen. Now a sulky teenager, Her Gracious Majesty was dressed tip to toe in melodramatic black also and had her lace-mitt-covered hands planted upon her royal hips. Hauling Bertie up, she kept a death grip upon her subject and kicked the door open with one foot.

“You’ve been gone—”

“Months.” Almost nine of them, exactly, from the time Ophelia had fled the theater to the day she’d been pulled back.

By me. It was my fault she was separated from my father. That was the missing bit of the story. The missing bit of my mirror. The reason Her Gracious Majesty thinks we can’t ever be together as a family.

Shuddering, Bertie wished the Queen wouldn’t hurry them so. Thrust into the brilliant corridor that led back to the breakfast room, Bertie could hardly see for the glare of sunlight through the glass, could hardly hear for the echo of the ocean’s roar in her ears.

The Queen shook her head. “Maybe there it’s been months. Here it’s been less than two hours. But what hours!” Now the approximate age of sixteen, Her Gracious Majesty had a tiny pimple on the end of her nose and a vicious temper, as evidenced by the pinch she gave Bertie’s inner arm to hurry her along. “I am most peeved, forced as I was to call you back before you learned the whole truth of it, but someone is seeking you.”

The Queen gestured out the largest and clearest of the windows. The view fell away from them in tiers, the Distant Castle flowing into the territories of the unicorn and the lioness, the surrounding countryside a never-ending cake platter. The river coiled about them, sandy banks churning with waves and its waters rising to batter against the outermost gates.

In case Bertie missed it, the Queen jerked her chin at the Reine with a forehead-knotting scowl. “Whatever that is came here for you. When I stand upon the terraces, I can hear it calling your name.”

Bertie could guess easily enough who had come calling. “It’s the Sea Goddess, Your Gracious Majesty, the one from my life tale. She must have given chase up the river.”

“I don’t care
who
she is! She’s ignored two very pointed proclamations to depart, and she’s ruining my birthday celebration.” The Queen pointed at an impressive archway and the balcony beyond. “Tell her to go this instant.”

Having worn her mother’s face for so many months, Bertie’s mask was now thick enough to hide her irritation. “Of course, Your Gracious Majesty. At once.”

Because Sedna is so very likely to obey me.

The wind that whipped across the terrace was heavy with moisture, stirred by the very ebb and flow of the sea unnaturally driven to the Distant Castle’s gates. When the Sea Goddess spoke, it was a salt-spangled whisper against Bertie’s skin.

“Beatrice … Shakespeare … Smith.”

Bertie wiped it away as best she could, trying to not flinch. “Sedna.”

“You escaped.”

“I survived, as you did, because I must.” Bertie remembered the rocks of the cavern pinning her to the floor, the movement of water and sand up her nostrils and in her lungs, the welcoming arms of the earth that had enfolded her and given her a loamy passage back to the surface. “You have no right to follow me, to threaten me again. The Queen wishes you gone, as do I.”

“You do not command me, Daughter of the Earth, and the Queen passes into the dust every nightfall. What care I for the wishes of dust and yet more dust?” The water’s laughter sloshed over the gates.

“You forget,” Bertie breathed, suddenly inspired, “that earth controls the path of the river.” Concentrating upon the area nearest the bottommost glass archway, she held out her hand. “I call upon the dirt, upon every speck of sand and silt. Remake the landscape so as to drive this impertinent water back where it belongs.”

And the land did so, by inches, until the gates no longer creaked upon their joints. Bertie would have smiled, save for the sweat running down her forehead and into her eyes, burning like fire and sun together.

Sensing a weakness, the river surged forward again, turning everything to mud that oozed between the glass bricks.

“The water cuts a path where it will,” Sedna purred. “It is steady. Patient. It washes away everything in time’s slow path.”

“Slowly it might, but for now you will be corralled.” Reaching out again, Bertie called to the deepest roots, to the largest boulders and the smallest stones. One by one, massive oak trees toppled before the gates, driving the river back to its banks. Bertie fortified the boundary with rocks, rolled into place like stalwart soldiers. The water hammered at the walls of its improvised playpen, cursing Bertie to the blue, blue skies, rising as though in a fist before smashing back into the riverbed.

“Yet another battle goes to you, then,” Sedna snarled. “But while you protect this place, you leave another defenseless. Rivers lead to cities, cities with pipes, pipes that snake directly into buildings. Your precious theater will suffer for your insolence.”

Sedna turned the tide, her waters rushing away from the Distant Castle in search of a more vulnerable target. Nearly hanging over the stone lip of the balcony, Bertie screamed a wordless threat at the disappearing Sea Goddess before whirling about to face a most flabbergasted Queen.

“That was quite something!” Her Gracious Majesty sounded a bit awed before she remembered just who she was and to whom she was speaking. “You will be suitably rewarded! Gold, perhaps, or jewels. A royal appointment as my personal Mistress of Revels—”

“My thanks, Your Gracious Majesty, but I would be remiss if I permitted harm to come to the Théâtre Illuminata while I lingered here in safety and comfort.” Bertie hoped interrupting the Queen wouldn’t result in a beheading just when she most needed to keep her wits about her, and she curtsied as far as her shaking knees would permit. “Can you send me back to the theater with your mirrors?”

“In the present?” Scowling, the Queen shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Their magic only reflects the captured images of events past.”

It seemed hardly prudent to argue, but Bertie couldn’t stop herself. “If not the mirrors, what about a wish-come-true? Would that send me there?”

“No doubt.”

When Her Gracious Majesty said nothing further, Bertie pressed her only advantage. “You did say I would be suitably rewarded for turning the Sea Goddess away from your very gates.”

“So I did.” The Queen reached out her hand, and pressed the largest and most impressive of her rings to the center of Bertie’s forehead. “I would have you consider a few things, though, before I bestow this upon you. Wishes are not mere trinkets and trifles, nor are they a way for us to wriggle free from our troubles. Reflect hard, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith. A wish-come-true must be worthy of the wisher, and the wisher must be worthy of the wish.”

“I understand,” Bertie said, nearly cross-eyed from trying to look up at the massive sapphire digging into her flesh.

“You don’t,” the Queen retorted, “but with luck you might someday.”

Then Bertie’s head filled with light, the sort of brilliant silver illumination that suggested sunshine reflected off all the Grand Hall’s mirrors at once. By the time she drew a breath, the radiance of the wish-come-true was reduced to a lingering smear of sparkling light that danced behind Bertie’s eyes when she blinked or turned her head too quickly.

It was, she realized, a thing too weighty, too precious to waste on something as simple as mere transportation. “If you fetch my friends and my carriage, I will find another way to get us back with due haste.”

Her Gracious Majesty hiked up her royal skirts and scampered down the corridor, revealing dainty ankle-strapped Mary Janes under the yards and yards of silk petticoat and embroidered black velvet. “Fenek!”

The servitor appeared around the very next door. “Yes, Your—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish the royal address, for the Queen bellowed as she passed, “Come! The Mistress of Revels demands her cart and her companions at once, do you hear!”

“Of course!” His own voice raised, amplified by unseen means as he kept pace with them. “Calling the many-liveried butlers! Calling the ostlers! Calling the courtiers!”

They converged in groups of three or four, pouring in from the various corridors until the massive tidal wave of personages convened in the Grand Hall. Bertie was most relieved to see the members of her own company standing Center Stage.

Nate leapt at her, his face a study in panic and relief at once. “Bertie! Sedna’s here, in th’ river surroundin’ th’ castle—”

“Not anymore!” the Queen crowed, victorious. “The Teller of Tales banished her!”

“Ding-dong, the Sea Witch is dead!” Moth crowed, waving his tiny hat overhead.

“Not dead, stupid!” Mustardseed jabbed him with an elbow. “Just banished!”

Ignoring the byplay, Her Gracious Majesty issued orders like rifle fire. “Open the gates! Prepare and pack the Mistress of Revels’s caravan! And SOMEONE bring me an omelet!”

Nate drew Bertie off to one side as the Queen shouted and jabbed her finger at various members of her court. “Is it true? Sedna’s gone?”

Bertie wanted to rest her head upon his shoulder, but she didn’t have that luxury right now. “Yes, but I drove her away from the castle only for her to turn toward the theater.” Four horrified gasps from the fairies, and Bertie could only nod in acknowledgment. “She’s rushing there now, determined to clamber up the plumbing and no doubt flood the building to the rafters again. We have to get back. Immediately. So I can protect it.”

“You think we can protect the theater from an angry Sea Goddess?” Ariel’s soft question attacked from behind.

Both Bertie and Nate turned as one, though she spoke first. “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. I have to.”

“And I stand wi’ her.” Nate almost didn’t need to say the words, so aligned with her body was he.

“You’re both fools,” Ariel said with the sort of sigh he might direct at a pair of children playing in the mud. “And in great want of a babysitter. I suppose I have no choice but to accompany you on this mad journey.”

Not about to let him get away with using such a tone with her, Bertie shook her head. “Don’t be bound by a false sense of obligation, Ariel. We’ve no more need of your company than you have of ours, it seems. Stay here with the Queen, or visit the other Twelve Outposts of Beyond if you prefer.”

“I could never desert you, as well you know.” The air elemental’s hair coiled about his shoulders, drifting around him like wisps of smoke. Varvara, as yet silent, hovered just behind him, her own hair moving in superheated currents. “And Mrs. Edith would never forgive me if I left the two of you … to your own devices.”

Wishing she could understand just what he was playing at now, Bertie shook her head. “A pretty argument, except you’ve already deserted me thrice in anger, once upon the Innamorati’s train, just days ago at the Caravanserai, and again on the road. And so I tell you this: Leave again, and you needn’t ever come back.”

Fenek squeaked an interruption before Ariel could respond. “It is as you wished, Your Gracious Majesty! Their caravan is ready!”

“There now!” The Queen beamed, and as an unseen clock struck ten, time advanced upon her face; her pimple disappeared, and the roundness of her cheeks melted away until a beneficent woman of perhaps one-and-twenty stood before them. “To your carriage, good Mistress of Revels, and safe travels to you!”

Bertie paused long enough to curtsy—
may it be the last time!
—before she ran for it with her friends at her heels. Pirate, air elemental, fire-dancer, and fairies negotiated the hallways, clattered into the courtyard, and clambered upon the caravan. Ariel looked ten sorts of sour to see Nate in the driver’s seat, a position he had once occupied with grace and skill, though he made no comment.

“Ye might want t’ hold on to somethin’,” Nate warned Bertie before he signaled the mechanical horses.

The clockwork steeds launched themselves forward with matching pewter whickers, hurtling toward the bottom of the hill and the newly cleared opening just beyond the gates. Bertie squeezed the armrest hard enough to coax sap from the wood as the road leveled out. Passing under the glass archway, the caravan nearly overturned as Nate tried to avoid the felled trees and boulders that littered the road.

“Bertie—” he cried, guiding the horses around the worst of it. “Do yer best t’ clear th’ way!”

Concentrating until she was nearly cross-eyed, Bertie struggled to move the wayward branches and massive stones from their path. A particularly large specimen wiggled mica ears at them as they passed. It had, she realized, the sort of face worn by Pan and Puck. The sort of face that would be carved in the bark of a tree. The sort that
had
been carved into one of the trees in her dreamland forest. Leaves of ivy formed his features then; granite trapped him now. He taunted her from the heart of the stone, beckoning with loam-encrusted hands and moss-tipped fingers.

There are faster ways to travel, Daughter of the Earth.

There were indeed … like a wish-come-true. But Bertie resisted the lure of the glowing, magical thing lingering just behind her eyes; she couldn’t bring herself to use it just yet.