Authors: Lisa Mantchev
Bertie chewed her lip, tasting the very expensive rouge she’d painted on her mouth only minutes ago. They were much alike in some ways: mercurial, unpredictable. Air surely had more in common with fire than it did with earth. Indeed, speaking with Varvara had brought an unearthly glow to Ariel’s skin. Just now, he was gesturing with great animation to the sky, his entire being alight with enthusiasm and joy …
… and a yearning that was more clear at this distance than when Bertie stood just inches from him.
It took Fenek clearing his throat to realize she’d stopped moving.
“This way, if you please,” he said.
“Oh, yes. My apologies.” A blush joined her face paint, as though Varvara had placed burning hands upon both of Bertie’s cheeks.
Ten paces later, they stood before a door marked with a golden crown inset in frosted glass. Arranging her skirts and smoothing her hair, Bertie tried to take a deep breath as the servitor lifted his hand to ring the bellpull, but a colossal noise from within the royal chambers startled them both.
“I shan’t tell you again!” came a shrill, almost childlike shout from within. “Take it away, the horrid, nasty stuff!”
Muffled strains of “At once!” and “Our apologies!” gave way to scrapes of pottery and the clink of broken glass. When the door opened, two food-bedaubed maids exited, carrying a tray of soiled napkins and smashed bits of porcelain.
“Mind her temper this morning!” the first said in passing.
“Fetch me an omelet AT ONCE, DO YOU HEAR?!” preceded another dish skimming past the end of Fenek’s nose and shattering against the far wall.
“Your Gracious Majesty,” he said, displaying the courage of lions, “the Mistress of Revels is here, at your behest.”
Bertie half hoped the shouting monarch would send her away, but after a long moment of silence during which no more plates were broken, a haughty voice issued a command. “Show her in.”
Letting Fenek act as her shield, Bertie entered the Queen’s apartment behind him. Except, instead of the Queen, an eight-year-old girl sat in a large, tufted armchair, dolefully swinging her slippered feet and glaring at them both. She wore skirts of darkest blue, with the same royal cut and crest embroidered into the heavy velvet. Bertie recognized her from one of the portraits in the gallery.
She must be the Princess.
Bertie hastened to curtsy, though her gaze flickered about the room in search of the Queen. “Your Highness.”
The child did not mark the greeting, preoccupied as she was with glowering at the door. “I told them I wouldn’t eat porridge. Did they think me such a child that I wouldn’t remember my own proclamation?” She reached up to adjust a thickly jeweled crown, too large for her dainty brow.
Bertie stared harder at her then, at the impudent tilt of her nose, at the thick curls falling on either side of her face.…
It isn’t possible!
But Fenek, finding nothing at all amiss, bowed and said, “My Queen, you asked for the Teller of Tales to wait upon you this morning?”
“I remember that as well.” The childlike Queen spared Bertie a glance. “Your mouth is hanging open, Mistress of Revels. Have I a spot on my nose?”
“No. That is, you do have a bit of porridge, just there.” Bertie indicated the corner of her mouth. “But you must forgive me. I’d no idea—”
“You may go!” the Queen bellowed at the servitor. Only when Fenek hastily bowed and backed himself out of the room did she bounce from her chair and grab Bertie by both hands. “Come! We must hurry, before the maids return with my omelet!”
Bertie nearly fell, trying to keep up with her. “Where are we going?”
Her Gracious Majesty smothered an infectious giggle as she towed Bertie to the wall. What appeared to be a landscape painting of a large, rose-filled garden slid aside with a touch of the Queen’s ring-adorned finger, revealing a narrow hallway. “Down this way! I’ve something you must see.”
“Yes, Your Gracious Majesty?”
The Queen gave a breathless sort of laugh over her shoulder, running even faster, if that were possible. Instead of answering Bertie’s question, she tossed words over her shoulder like pearls. “The boon, silly! Remember? You wanted it for your family.”
“Yes, Your Majesty?” Puzzled, Bertie tried to keep up, her sandaled feet making a
slap! slap! slap!
against the polished floor.
The Queen’s curls bounced like bedsprings as she ran. “Yesterday I checked the tiny mirror on my pocket watch and wanted to say something that very moment, but that would have been too irresponsible for my older self. So I had to wait for the morning, when I started over as a child. Not too early, mind you, for babies aren’t any use at all, but I imagined that near breakfast time I would be able to help, and so I am!”
Such a stream of nonsense! Bertie couldn’t fully comprehend the reality of a queen who started her every day over again as an infant and aged with the passing hours. “Help me with what, if I might be so bold as to ask, Your Majesty?”
“It won’t work to wish your family back together,” the Queen said as the corridor ended in a small chamber filled with mirrors turned against themselves. “The way things are right now, not even my magic can help you.”
“The way things are?…” Either the room was cold, or the Queen’s pronouncement slid ice down Bertie’s spine.
“It will be easier just to show you.” Her Gracious Majesty jockeyed Bertie into the space on the floor marked with bits of mirror inset to form a star. “Stand just here, peer into the looking glasses, and tell me what you see.”
“I see only myself, Your Majesty, and you.” But the moment she uttered the words, they played Bertie false. True, at first she saw only her exotic reflection as the Mistress of Revels and the child Queen dancing with impatience behind her, but then a water-wavering form flickered in the glass. “I see…”
“Yes?” the Queen asked, her reflection also wavering.
It was Ophelia, staring back at Bertie, though her gaze didn’t register the presence of her daughter. The water-maiden sat at the table in her Dressing Room, flowers, perfume bottles, and makeup scattered before her. Soft electric lighting poured down upon her from the unseen rim of her mirror.
“That’s my mother,” Bertie whispered.
Someone stood behind Ophelia just as the Queen stood behind Bertie: a tall, dark form that could only be the Scrimshander.
“And that’s my father.” Bertie wanted to look away, but she couldn’t turn, couldn’t close her eyes. “This is when they met, when she left the theater with him.”
As if cued by the explanation, Ophelia turned about in her chair and began a conversation with the newcomer. Though Bertie couldn’t hear it, she could tell by the Scrimshander’s expression that the scene was unfolding just as the puppet creatures had performed it in
The Big Pop-Up Book of Scenery.
“You see, Your Majesty?” Bertie struggled to pull the words from a mouth seemingly filled with saltwater taffy and secrets. “It’s all as I told you.”
“Ah,” said the Queen, “but you were missing a piece! And it’s within my power to give you the bit you didn’t know!” The mirrored sections of the floor shifted, carrying them forward until the Queen pressed Bertie’s palm flat against the glass. The gleaming surface wavered, becoming a waterfall of mercury.
“Stop!” Bertie tried to pull back. “That’s not my place!”
But the Queen’s hand upon hers was a vise, her will ironclad. In the intervening minutes, she’d aged another few years and more greatly resembled the monarch of yesterday. Her clothes transformed with her, the lengthening of her skirts and the stiffening of her lace collar reflected countless times around them. “You must step through and collect the missing piece of your mirror.”
The past had a grip upon Bertie now, pulling from the other side, sucking her in before she had the chance to scream. Traveling through time and space in such a fashion twisted her inside out and upside down before the Queen’s mirror belched her out upon the dressing table. Ophelia’s makeup and hair combs and crystal perfume bottles scattered in every direction. There wasn’t enough room to balance herself, so Bertie half jumped, half fell to the floor.
“Your Majesty!” Scrambling to her feet, Bertie spun back to the mirror with undiluted panic aflame in every vein.
Barely visible, the young Queen waved to her. “Go find your missing piece!” she mouthed.
The light on the other side of the mirror faded, like stage lights behind a scrim curtain, until everything beyond the glass was dark. Bertie smacked her hands against the mirror once, twice, though she knew somehow it was too late. Left to stare wild-eyed at her own horrified expression, she was well-trapped now, eighteen years or so in the past, and right back where she’d started.
At the Théâtre Illuminata.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I Summon Up Remembrance of Things Past
This is where
it all began. With Ophelia. With the Scrimshander.
She had two choices now: pound her hands on the looking glass, demanding the demented child Queen permit her return, or stay. Stay … and perhaps better understand what had really happened, without the story filtered through memories and the telling of it.
With one last glance at her own face in the mirror’s silvered surface, Bertie turned and ran for the door, jerking it open in time to see her mother gliding through the Stage Door with the Scrimshander at her heels. Bertie managed to keep pace without them catching sight of her, ducking around the usual bits of scenery, unable to believe she was back and similarly unable to spare a moment’s joy at the homecoming, however unexpected.
Ophelia led her consort in front of the proscenium arch, where
The Complete Works of the Stage
bathed in a pool of its own golden light. The water-maiden turned the pages, the movement marked only by the whisper of paper, until she found what she sought.
“‘Do you doubt that?’” she said, quoting her entrance line before she smiled and tore her page out.
The Scrimshander shifted uneasily. “Are you sure you ought to leave?”
“I ought to have left a long time ago,” Ophelia murmured, “but now’s as good a time as any, I suppose.”
Green and gleaming, the Exit sign in the back of the auditorium flickered to life. The water-maiden tucked her page into her bodice, smiled up at the Scrimshander, and took him by the hand. Together, they ran down the stairs, up the aisle, and to the lobby door. There, they disappeared into a swirl of color and light that gave every indication a crowd was gathered for the evening performance.
“What are you doing backstage?” demanded a familiar voice.
Bertie nearly swallowed her tongue at the Stage Manager’s shout. Ducking her head and muttering uncharacteristic apologies to her nemesis, she wove a path through the scenery pieces and coils of rope.
“Come back here and show your face,” he commanded. “I would let the Theater Manager know who is ignoring the proper calls!”
“No time, so sorry!” Bertie dove for Ariel’s trapdoor, disappearing into the darkest bowels under the stage. She could hear the Stage Manager stomping about overhead, muttering curses and then giving up to summon an ocean scene. The gentle lap of mechanical water filled Bertie’s ears.
The Little Mermaid.
The night Ophelia left, they were—are!—performing
The Little Mermaid.
With a delicacy that recalled Varvara’s dainty steps en pointe, Bertie tried to pick her way through a darkness relieved only by the narrow slats of light easing fingers through the stage’s floorboards. Negotiating the maze of pulleys and lifts proved more difficult than she remembered, especially when she reached the tooth-and-claw machinery that rotated the ocean waves. Her skirts snagged on a splintered corner—
Mr. Tibbs should attend to this at once!
—and she was still jerking upon them to no avail when a familiar form appeared next to her, his cherry-tinted lantern driving back the gloom.
“Here now, ye’ll rip it like that,” Nate noted, the gentle chiding containing none of the tolerant exasperation he normally used with her.
Because he doesn’t know who I am.
As he worked to loosen her petticoat from its moorings, Bertie couldn’t help but stare up at him through the fall of her silver hair, the realization dawning that he looked much the same as he did now.…
And I haven’t even been born yet.
“Th-thank you.” The moment she was free, Bertie shrank back into the shadows, certain it would be a very bad idea indeed for anyone in this time and place to see her face.
“Yer not in th’ first act.” Nate peered at her, the lantern in his hand swinging to cast erratic illumination over the area under the stage. “What are ye doin’ down here?”
“I was summoned by accident.” Not even a lie, though the next bit of explanation would be. “A mistake with the Call Board, I assume.”
“Ye ought t’ get back t’ th’ Dressin’ Rooms, then. Ye don’t want th’ Stage Manager discoverin’ ye wandering about.” With a cavalier salute, Nate dismissed her and turned back to check the various bits of rigging that helped the
Persephone
dock after her flight.
“Right then.” Bertie remained rooted, fighting the urge to rush forward, to cling to him like a painted barnacle, to explain everything that had happened, to force their future friendship upon him this second. Adrift in this place that was strange and familiar all at once, she yearned for his steady words and steadier gaze, not the passing courtesy due a stranger. Realizing she had her hand outstretched toward him—the hand marked with his handfasting scar—Bertie forced herself to take a deep breath and a step back, then another breath and another step. The greater the space between them, the harder it was to move, and she emerged from the same side door Ariel always used, a sob climbing the back of her throat.
The chaos in the hallway thankfully smothered the noise. In the short time that had passed since she’d followed Ophelia, the corridor had filled with dodging mariners and the members of the Ladies’ Chorus wibble-wobbling down the hall in pearl garlands and fish tails, trailed by the tap-dancing starfish. None of them paid Bertie any attention, and she had to be quite literally on her toes to avoid getting jostled or stepped upon.