So Silver Bright by Lisa Mantchev Read Free Book Online Page A

scream of the gulls, a bit of distant laughter—filled Bertie’s head so that she could hardly make out his next words.
    “I will not go back to that place again.”
    They were softly uttered, featherlight, but disappointment lanced through Bertie like a glass blade cutting across her middle, the pain of it tempered only by the sudden and immediate flare of her anger.
    “Why the hell not?” She shoved his hand away, feeling as though he’d slapped her. Indeed, the blood surged to her face like the sap in a spring-awakened tree, and she could feel red-rose livid spots of color blooming on her cheeks.
    “Not that I won’t, but that I cannot.”
    “Of course you can! All I ask for is a short journey, a single meeting, a few minutes’ pleasantries with the woman you once loved!”
    “Beatrice—” he tried to interrupt, but she shouted over the top of him.
    “I’ve asked nothing at all of you for seventeen years!”
    “Beatrice—”
    “And the moment I make a request, you deny me—”
    He broke in again to say, “I was just there, Beatrice. At your Théâtre Illuminata.”
    That brought her to a sputtering halt, the words of her tirade jerked out of her mouth like fish from the ocean. “You were?” The word-fish gaped, trying to suck in water, drowning in the air about them. “But when … how?”
    He turned toward the sea, shoulders hunched. Fingertips curved into talons, they gripped the balcony railing and gouged it in ten places. “I flew hard soon after leaving you upon the beach, and the winds were in my favor. I left you a note, although perhaps you did not have the chance to read it before the destruction of the Aerie.”
    I have gone to fetch her.
    “Not Sedna?” Bertie’s tongue felt thick and rum addled, except she’d had nothing to drink. “I thought you meant you were going to be with her.”
    “With the Sea Goddess who nearly killed you?” Her father’s face tightened, a sailor’s knot tied in his forehead and others appearing in the corded muscles of his neck. “Do you really think me capable of such a thing?”
    “Do I know you at all?” Her temper flared to match his. “You’re no more than a stranger to me, and you gave me no word of farewell, only a cryptic note I might just as easily have overlooked as misunderstood!”
    Her father twitched as though she’d ruffled every one of his feathers. “Then let me hasten to reassure you that I did not go to seek out Sedna.” When he paused, the silence filled with everything that had ever gone unsaid between them, crowding Bertie back against the railing until the stone dug unmercifully into her back. She didn’t think it possible, but his next words made her thankful it was there to hold her up. “I went to fetch your mother.”
    Bertie’s head filled with a roar similar to the thunderous applause during a standing ovation. “Where is she?”
    He shook his head. “There was nothing for me there.”
    And all that was hope and joy burst like a soap bubble against a needle. “Did you not seek her out? Wouldn’t she come with you?” Bertie suddenly understood the terror of a winged creature, batting at the bars of a cage too small.
    “Forgive me.… The words do not come naturally when I am so recently changed back into this form.” One hand clutched his ill-fitting shirt, the other curled into a fist at his side. “The theater was closed to me—”
    “Do you mean the doors were locked?” As Bertie watched him struggle to answer, she lost her grip on her patience. “Did you try the front door? The Stage Door? Breaking a window? You couldn’t have tried much of anything if your only souvenir is a handful of sorry excuses.”
    The Scrimshander shook his head, radiating sadness and—worse yet—resignation. “You are blessed to be a daughter of the earth who is ever growing and ever changing, but creatures of the air are caught between freedom and our abilities to fight the headwinds. Sometimes we must bow our heads