Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev Read Free Book Online

crackle of black ice.
    Feet shooting from underneath her, Bertie fell upon her rear with a solid thunk ! Pain shot up her spine. She was sliding, the already-terrifying downward slope growing steeper with each passing second. Her hands scrabbled at an impossibly slick surface until the ice ended, and a Void began.
    Flung into it, Bertie screamed, loud and long, but now there was not so much as an echo for her trouble. She was Alice falling down the rabbit hole, without the niceties of a harness, counterweighted cables, and a dozen stagehands to guide her descent.
    “Little One, what have you done to yourself?” The voice came from every direction at once, then there was the brush of feathers against her cheek.
    Bertie windmilled at the darkness with both arms, her fears tangled about her like a winding sheet until she ceased her flailing to grab the medallion with both hands. “Help me!”
    “You’re having a nightmare.” This time, the voice came from just above her. Fingers like talons closed over her shoulders. “Calm yourself and open your eyes.”
    Without knowing why, Bertie obeyed, then wished she hadn’t. The creature standing before her was more bird than man, taller even than Ariel. Moonlight streamed through the window and over his broad shoulders.
    “Who are you?” Bertie’s skirts were twisted about her, waist to ankles, thwarting her efforts to scramble away from him. The caravan—for they were indeed inside the caravan now—was pitiably small, the sleeping berth a tiny prison in which she was trapped by a demented stranger. “What are you doing in here?”
    There was a horrible clearing of his throat, as though bird and man fought for use of the same muscles. Man won. “I was flying overhead. Your nightmare pulled me in, even as the medallion called to me.”
    “Why would it do that?”
    “Because I carved it.” There was the flare of a match as he relit the lantern. “I’m the Scrimshander.” With those words, the stranger began to tremble. The feathers obscuring his face drifted free from his skin to reveal tattooed swirls and flourishes. When he adjusted the lamp’s wick, Bertie saw that which she’d mistaken for a beak was only his nose, shadow-exaggerated. Cold sweat trickled down the small of her back when he reached out a tentative hand to caress her cheek, as one would comfort a small child. “I mean you no harm, Beatrice.”
    Bertie backed into the sleeping berth, as far away from this man, her curious rescuer, as she could possibly get. “How do you know my name?”
    “I was trying to reach …” He swallowed hard against something, then managed to say, “To reach the Théâtre.” Another shudder, another drift of feathers upon the floor. “But it’s difficult to be anything but a bird when I’m flying.” Standing in the narrow aisle, the Scrimshander shifted from one foot to the other, his head grazing the ceiling. Agitated, he shook himself, settling his remaining feathers— his wings! —back into place. “Why did you leave the nest? You were safe there, warm and cared for.”
    “The nest?” It took her a moment to understand what he meant by that. “You mean the Théâtre?” The shock of it all settled into her bones, and Bertie pulled the bed’s narrow coverlet around her shoulders. Tracing the quilted squares so she wouldn’t have to look at the Scrimshander, she noticed in a detached, mind-wandering-the-lily-fields way that they’d been cut down from worn-out costumes: here a bit of pink silk that reminded her of Titania’s robes; another of moss-soft green velvet, the sort that edged Puck’s tunic. The stitches, though perfectly straight and even, were hand-wrought. For a moment, Bertie could feel Mrs. Edith’s arms around her, could smell her lavender eau de cologne….
    I mustn’t cry.
    Tears would never do, not with the scrimshaw still hanging about her neck. The last time salt water had fallen upon the medallion, the Sea Goddess had