Eyes Like Stars Part 33

As the caravan rolled forever Center Stage, Young Bertie scattered rose petals and turned cartwheels. She scrambled over boulders and up trees, leaping down with a fearlessness that took Bertie-the-elder's breath away.

"Get down from there," Mrs. Edith called to Young Bertie when the child stood on the roof of the caravan, her arms thrown out wide.

"But I like to see everything!" Young Bertie protested before she jumped off.

"It's a miracle I didn't break my neck!" Bertie exclaimed, both fascinated and horrified. She suddenly recalled her maneuver on the chandelier, hanging upside down by her knees and reaching for Nate. . . .

"Our journey was fraught with danger," Young Bertie said. "We hit potholes-"

The caravan hit a pothole with a b.u.mp and a shudder.

"See!" yelled Moth. "I told you there were potholes!"

"The horses stampeded," continued Young Bertie, "although they did not run over us with their big metal-shod hooves."

"Aw, nuts," said Mustardseed. But he was cheered by the mad dash, which included sparking horse shoes and a small brushfire.

"We were set upon by brigands," Young Bertie said as she sat upon the stage with a fat stack of paper and a box of crayons.

The Brigands charged in with weapons drawn.

"Who are you?" Young Bertie asked.

"We're the bad guys!" their leader announced.

"What are you going to do?"

"Plunder and pillage!" one of them yelled.

The others immediately shoved him. "Not in front of the kid. Ralph! Fer cryin' out loud . . ."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry! We're here to take your candy!"

Young Bertie considered this idea as she drew a bright red jelly bean on the paper. "That's not very nice."

"Well, no, I suppose not," said the Lead Brigand, scratching the end of his nose with a dagger.

"Do you steal candy from a lot of people?" she asked next, adding peppermint canes and chocolate humbugs to the drawing.

"Everyone we meet," said another Brigand.

Young Bertie looked up from her paper. "I don't think I believe you. You don't look very trustworthy."

"Brigands aren't supposed to be trustworthy," said their leader. "It ain't in the job description."

Young Bertie looked up from her paper. "See this word? C-A-N-D-Y spells 'candy.' Maybe now you want to turn out your pockets?"

"Er, well," the Lead Brigand said, caught in his lie.

"Go ahead," she urged. "I double-dare you."

The Brigands weren't about to ignore a double dare, and they turned out their pockets. Approximately seventy-nine pounds of jelly beans, peppermint canes, and chocolate humbugs. .h.i.t the stage in a rain of cellophane-wrapped sugar.

"Whoa, wait just a second," their leader started to protest. "Where did all this come from?"

"It's there because I wanted it to be there," Young Bertie explained. She held up her drawing. "See? I put the word on paper, so it's true. Would you like to see me spell 'avalanche'?"

The Brigands stormed out Stage Left, crawling over one another in their eagerness to flee.

"You always had a way with words," Mrs. Edith said. "Anywhere you thought to go, we went: the mountains, the valleys, the mystical places, and the mundane. But over and over again, you were drawn to the sea."

The shifting kaleidoscope of gray returned, but this time, Bertie could make out the call of gulls and waves smashing against the rocks. Chalk-white cliffs rumbled into place.

"This is where I went with your father." Ophelia peered at the set with luminous eyes.

Bertie's heart thudded. "You remember this place?"

Ophelia twisted her hands together in a knot. "I . . . I think so!"

"But that's good!" Bertie's heart leapt at the thought that something had triggered Ophelia's memory. "I wonder-"

"Bertie!" Ariel spun her around in time for her to see her younger self climb to the top of the towering wooden cliffs and stand facing the audience.

Young Bertie looked over the edge, down into the orchestra pit. "I wonder."

"What do you wonder, dear heart?" Mrs. Edith asked her, trying to catch up.

"I wonder if I can fly."

Mrs. Edith held out her hand. "Come back, dear. You're making me very nervous."

Bertie started to shout that it was making her nervous, too, but she couldn't manage it. The scrimshaw hummed, and Bertie stood in two places at once: next to Ariel on the stage, and atop the cliff, looking down, not at the musicians, but at the frothing churn of a restless ocean. She'd never before been afraid of heights, but vertigo seized her. "Step back!"

Young Bertie only grinned. "Why?"

Mrs. Edith answered the question. "Birds fly, my darling, not little girls."

Instead of obeying, Young Bertie put her bare toes over the edge. "Maybe I'm not a little girl. Maybe I'm a bird, too."

Mrs. Edith shook her head, a desperate note creeping into her clipped tones. "You're not. Come away from the edge."

"Come away from the edge," Bertie echoed.

Bertie's younger self looked directly at her older incarnation, smiled sweetly, spread her arms . . .

And jumped.

Everyone in the audience screamed as the stage plunged into a blackout. When the lights faded up to half, Mrs. Edith sat upon the caravan once more, holding a sodden and limp child-Bertie in her arms.

"What happened?" Bertie whispered. "After I jumped?"

The Wardrobe Mistress's expression was both grim and determined. "By some miracle, you survived, and I took you straight back to the theater."

The curtain painted with the Theatre's facade skimmed into place. Mrs. Edith climbed down from the caravan as the child sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"What is this place?"

Mrs. Edith beckoned to her. "Your new home, my dear."

Young Bertie hopped down and frowned. "I don't want to stay here."

"You'll have your own room," said Mrs. Edith.

"I don't want my own room."

"Of course you do," said Mrs. Edith. "Every little girl wants her own room that she can paint any color of the rainbow. And you'll have friends-"

"I don't want friends," said Young Bertie.

"Of course you do," said the Wardrobe Mistress. "Fairy friends who will sing you to sleep and tell you bedtime stories and weave ribbons into your hair."

"She's not talking about us, is she?" asked Moth. "Because I've never put a ribbon anywhere on your person."

"Shut up," Bertie said without taking her eyes off the scene.

"You'll be able to play in Paris and London," Mrs. Edith said. "Visit Neverland whenever you want. There are pirates and peasants and clowns."

"No clowns," said Young Bertie. "Clowns creep me out."

"All right," Mrs. Edith conceded. "No clowns."

"And no one will boss me around or tell me what to do," Young Bertie continued.

"All right," said Mrs. Edith. "You'll answer to yourself and no one else. It will be lonely that way, I fear."

"I like being lonely," said Young Bertie with her fists balled at her side. "I don't need anyone, do you hear me? I don't need you."

The Theater Manager appeared in the doorway. "You're back. And this is-"

"Beatrice," Mrs. Edith answered. "Beatrice Shakespeare Smith."

The Theater Manager nodded to Young Bertie. "How do you do?"

"Much better than you think," the child said, crossing her arms.

"Has her mother returned to us?" Mrs. Edith said, wording the question so carefully that Young Bertie almost missed it.

"My mother?" the child asked. "Is she here? Can I meet her?"

"I'm sorry, Beatrice," the Theater Manager said, "but that woman has never returned."

To fill the silence, the Wardrobe Mistress said brightly, "I think you will find Bertie has a talent for writing that is quite extraordinary. She has power over words."

The Theater Manager looked down at Young Bertie, the polite mask her older counterpart knew so well settling into place. "Ah. I shall have to watch her carefully, then. Such a skill might prove useful to her someday." He knelt next to the child. "You can stay, on the condition that you forget how you came here."

Young Bertie looked as though she might make a run for it, but under the combined, stern gazes of the Theater Manager and Mrs. Edith, she deflated. "All right. Fine. I'll forget, and I'll stay. But only until I'm ready to remember all this." She held her hands up to her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

"What are you doing, child?" Mrs. Edith asked with a quaver in her voice.

"I'm squeezing all my memories out."

"My dear-"

"Leave me alone!"

Ghostly figures danced across the back wall: fleeting tricks of lighting specials that suggested a small child's adventures with her guardian. The amber wash on the scene began to fade as the mechanical horses pulled the caravan offstage.

"What is this place?" Young Bertie whispered into the growing darkness.

"Your new home, my dear," said Mrs. Edith, no longer wearing her brightly colored gown but costumed once again as the Wardrobe Mistress.

"How did I get here?" Young Bertie asked, her forehead puckered in a frown.

"We'll talk about that later." Mrs. Edith patted her on the shoulder and exited.

Young Bertie stood alone, Center Stage. For a moment, Bertie thought that was the end of the story, the end of the play. Tears gathered in her eyes for that lost little girl.

But as the child went through the gla.s.s revolving door, violins and flutes started to play a merry tune, softly at first, then with growing insistence and speed as new memories streamed in to replace those she'd lost. The Mistress of Revels was gone, but her good work continued behind the scenes, for there was the Harlequin in his brilliant diamond-patched jerkin juggling flaming billets of wood and tiny stuffed animals. The Fairy Court in shades of moss and rose, surrounded by a thousand gold-and-silver flickering fireflies. The pirates swinging on ropes, hanging by wrists and ankles while brandishing swords and flinging gold coins. The tap-dancing starfish, triple-time-stepping.

Young Bertie slowly yielded to the enchantment of the Theatre, her smile growing ever wider as she frolicked amongst the Players.

Mrs. Edith was right. I was happy here.

The music built to a crescendo as the Players rushed to the side of the stage to surround the elder Bertie.

"Come," they insisted, "you're part of this!"

"Are you insane?" she protested.

"You must! It's the finale!"

When Ariel laughed, Bertie grabbed him by the elbow. "You're coming, too!"

But he didn't protest, and though it wasn't the tango, he knew every bit of the ch.o.r.eography. Young Bertie disappeared through a trapdoor with a wink and a wave. The four fairies rushed in to surround Bertie's head like a halo. The Gentlemen of the Chorus twirled her about, one right after the other, as pirates and starfish and fae rushed to take their places for the final pose: Bertie, sitting on Ariel's shoulders, her arms outstretched, surrounded by the Players.

The cannon fired with an almighty boom! and a shower of golden confetti sifted down from the flies. Panting from exertion, Bertie smiled when someone clapped once, twice. She'd almost forgotten the second part to her bargain with the Theater Manager, and so she held her breath until the applause rolled toward the stage in waves, just as the water had. Flowers. .h.i.t the floorboards alongside cries of "Brava!"

Bertie lifted a hand to cut out the glare of the lights; the audience had found its collective feet.