by Amy Ewing
Sera wondered how she was meant to be brought down from the ceiling. But the answer came later in the day, when Francis arrived to take her out of her crate.
Sera did not try to run—there were too many people around; she would not get far if she did. She had to believe that Agnes would help her, and Leo too, as strange as that felt. She had seen into his memories, and what she’d seen had only inspired pity. She found she could not hate him, now that she understood him.
She could hate his father, though.
James sauntered up as Francis was letting her out; he smiled and offered her a hand that she took only because she had longed to know what his skin felt like. Warm and rough, as it turned out. His hands were large, his fingers strong, and they inspired a flood of other sensations all over her body. Mother Sun, being attracted to someone could be quite befuddling and downright irritating when you were trying to focus your mind on other matters. Sera wondered how her mothers were not distracted by each other all the time.
It felt good to be free of the crate. She stood and stretched as the swing was slowly lowered from the ceiling. There were circles of iron on the chains and Sera quickly learned that they were for her, to keep her attached. Francis helped her onto the wooden platform, locking the iron around her wrists. He looked miserable, and when their eyes met, he muttered, “I’m sorry.”
He stepped back and the swing began to move. The initial lurch was frightening, but then she was rising up and up, away from all the staring faces, away from the horrid crate, and she felt a whoosh of freedom, like she was back at the top of the temple. The glass ceiling came closer, but she was lifted higher until she was behind the curtain that ran along the top of the stage, and the red seats disappeared.
She looked around—perhaps there was some window or vent up here she could crawl through. But the scaffold she was attached to was sunk into flat wall on either side. There were no windows or doors or other visible means of escape. And she couldn’t get out of these irons anyway.
“She seems awfully calm up there,” Martin said.
“Guess her kind isn’t afraid of heights,” James replied.
Afraid of heights? Sera wanted to laugh. She wondered how long they would keep her up here—she certainly preferred it to the crate and all the staring.
As it turned out, they kept her there the whole afternoon. The performers repeated the same part of the story over and over, and Sera would be lowered down so that she hovered at a level with Boris’s topmost branches, then raised back up again.
It was maddeningly repetitive. Sera could not help but feel that every second that passed was a second she was not on her way to the tether, and though she knew it was not an easy task to accomplish, she still wished she could have the sense that something was happening. Surely Agnes or Leo had to come to this place sometime. Unless they had been found out, or sent away. Sera had not considered that possibility, and it stunned her into stone as she was brought back down to the stage and shuttled to her crate.
“Excellent work, everyone, excellent work today,” Martin said, clapping his hands. “It’s all coming together. I’m confident we’ll be ready to go by opening night. And in the nick of time too, it’s only days away!”
The performers began putting on hats or shawls and leaving the theater in twos and threes. When only Martin and James were left, the theater doors opened and the red-haired man called Kiernan entered, followed by Leo. Sera’s heart leaped with hope, an odd reaction to seeing the person she had so recently despised. She watched them through a break between two of Boris’s saplings.
“Good evening, Mr. Jenkins,” Kiernan said, shaking Martin’s hand. “Mr. Roth,” he said with a nod to James. “How did it go today?”
“Very well,” Martin replied. “You may tell Xavier she fits in perfectly. The height doesn’t seem to bother her at all. And as you can see, something has definitely been having an effect on Boris. I don’t know what Francis is watering him with, but these flowers are just . . .”
“Magnificent,” Kiernan agreed. “Leo, we’ll take some cuttings of the new ones; I don’t recognize all of them. Boris could be gifting us with new species. How exciting!”
Sera kept her eyes trained on Leo, waiting for a moment when she could speak to him, swallowing down all the questions she had.
“I hear you refused Xavier’s offer to travel with young Mr. McLellan and myself around Kaolin,” Kiernan said to James.
Leo’s scissors froze in the act of cutting a flower, and Sera listened closely.
“I’m no salesman,” James said, flashing Kiernan a charming grin. “The stage is the place for me, and if Xavier is no longer in the theater business, well then, I think our work together is at an end.”
Kiernan gave him a pitying look. “My dear boy, your work with Xavier will be at an end when he says it is at an end. Surely you have taken the measure of him by now. He is not one to be trifled with or refused.” Kiernan’s normally cheerful face grew somber. “Trust me on this.”
James shifted from foot to foot. “I’ve been in worse scrapes with worse men.”
“No,” Kiernan said, and something about his tone made Sera shiver. “You have not.”
James smoothed back his hair, a casual movement that she thought was an attempt to hide his unease. “Well, I’ve got an appointment with the owner of the Lugsworth Theater. See you later.”
“So James isn’t going on the train, then?” Leo said after he left.
“He is. He just does not realize it yet.” Kiernan sighed. “A shame. He is so young and talented, but I fear he did not know what he was getting into when he signed on to work with your father.”
“Not many people do,” Leo said.
Kiernan smiled at that. “He is an expert businessman. Makes it a point to know everything about everyone.”
“What does he have on you?” Leo asked, and Kiernan’s smile faded.
“He helped me out of a spot of family trouble, that’s all.”
Leo let the subject drop, but Sera got the sense he did not quite believe the man. The two of them moved over to Errol’s pond, and from what Sera could hear it sounded like Kiernan was giving advice or instructions on how to re-create the pond somewhere else, detailing the type of moss and the temperature of the water and such.
“And we must never touch Errol with our bare hands,” he was saying, “or with anything metal. He’s got quite a strong voltage. We use wooden hooks and nets.”
She waited impatiently as Kiernan ran through more instructions, hoping Leo would not leave without speaking to her. The chance came at last when Kiernan was packing up his things, putting jars of flower cuttings into his square black bag.
“Excuse me just a moment, dear boy, nature is calling,” he said. “I must use the facilities before we leave.”
“No problem, Mr. Kiernan,” Leo said. “I can finish putting these away.”
He knelt by the bag, carefully placing each jar inside, until Kiernan was gone. Then he hurried over to the crate.
“I have the necklace,” he said, fumbling in his pocket. “Agnes and I are working together to get you out. She’s got passage for you on a ship, if you can believe it. But we still need to get you out of here. I thought I’d be coming around the theater more, since I’m working with Kiernan now, but you wouldn’t believe the way that man can go on and on about a leaf or a water sample. I’ve been stuck in his lab for almost a week.”
At last, he produced the necklace, and Sera let out a wild sound, half sob, half laugh, as she reached through the slats and took the moonstone in her hand. Such a small thing yet of unnameable value—a piece of her home, a connection to her friend.
“I would give it back to you now, but if anyone found it, they’d take it away,” Leo said.
Sera could not take her eyes off it, blurred as they were with tears. “I understand,” she said. “This is enough. For now.” She stroked the moonstone gently. Holding it in her hands made her miss her City more than ever.
“The problem is the Pembertons,” Leo said, almost to himself, and Sera got the feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d mulled over this issue. “There are so many of them, day and night, guarding all the exits. Even if I could distract a few of them, it wouldn’t be enough.” He sighed. “Besides the fact that I still don’t have the key to this damn chain.”
“There are no windows in this place?” she asked. “No . . . no spaces I could crawl through?”
“That’s the only window,” he said, pointing up to the glass ceiling. “So unless you can fly across the rooftops of Old Port, I don’t think—”
“Yes,” Sera said, ashamed she had not thought of it before. The glass ceiling, the one place where she could see the sky. Mother Sun had been calling her from there all along. “That is how I get out.”
“I don’t think that will work,” Leo said. “First you’ve got to get up there, then you’ve got to break the glass, then you’ve got to get to the Seaport. And like I said, unless you can fly—”
“These rooftops,” she said. “They have spires? They are like dwellings?”
“Um, yeah, I guess there are spires, and apartment buildings and churches and factories—”
“And are they close together or far apart?”
“Close together,” he said. “Most buildings in this city are right on top of each other.”
Sera smiled triumphantly. “Then I can fly,” she said. The moonstone glowed, as if applauding her words.
Leo looked about to protest, then stopped himself. “That still doesn’t get you out of the crate.”
“They put me in the story as a performer,” she mused. “I am brought down from the ceiling on a swing.”
She studied the theater. If she could get some momentum, she should be able to jump to the top balcony. And the walls were covered in painted wood carved into various shapes, providing excellent hand- and footholds. The ceiling itself was separated into panes by thick lengths of iron, a lip of iron ringing the entire circle.
She sighed. “But the swing has metal bracelets for my wrists. I do not know how to get out of them.”
“Plus, you’d still have to break through that glass,” Leo said.
Sera bit her lip.
“I think we need to find another way,” he said. “Besides, you’ll only be on the swing for the . . . for the . . .” He sat back hard and slapped his hand to his forehead. “For the show. The show. My god, could it be that easy? Well, not easy, no, not in the slightest, Agnes will have a heart attack when I tell her, but . . .”
“Leo, you aren’t making any sense.”
“What if you broke out during the play?” he said. “There will be so many people . . . a distraction could work then. There’s no way Father would be able to control the situation. It will be dangerous, and certainly the timing would have to be . . . but this whole thing is dangerous, isn’t it? Now, what sort of distraction, that’s the question. . . .”
“Well,” Sera said, thinking it was high time she took some control over her predicament. Mother Sun had been watching her, trying to guide her, to show her the way out, and all this time she’d been sitting around feeling hopeless. “We have a Cerulean, an Arboreal, and a mertag in this theater. I’m sure Boris and Errol and I can come up with something.”
“You and . . . Boris . . . and Errol,” Leo repeated. He glanced at the tree, then the pond. “You can talk to them too?”
“Of course,” she said.
“But what about the shackles? Can they help you get out of those as well?”
“No,” said a small voice from offstage. “But I can.”
Leo jumped as Francis emerged from the darkness.
“What . . . you . . . were you listening in this whole time?” Leo demanded. But Francis only had eyes for Sera.
“You can understand us, can’t you?” he said to her. “I knew it. I could tell by your eyes. And I’ve been wanting to help you, to help all of you, Boris and Errol too. None of you should be here. It isn’t right.” Leo and Sera were both staring at the small, pale young man, dumbstruck. “I would let you out now if I could, but they don’t let me keep the keys. People don’t understand, you know? They think they’re so smart and anything that isn’t human is just a dumb brute. But I worked with animals my whole life before coming to Old Port, and they’re just as intelligent and sensitive and deserving of respect as . . . as James Roth or Xavier McLellan himself.” He looked Leo in the eye as if daring him to contradict. “I hate this place. I hate what your father is doing.”
Leo was blinking very fast. “Sorry . . . who are you? You’re the one who feeds them, right?”
“Francis has always been kind,” Sera said, gripping the blanket he’d given her with one hand. “I believe we can trust him.”
“If you want to get her out of the shackles, I can do that. It’s my job to put her in them, so . . . I just won’t lock them.” Francis shrugged, his face turning red, as if embarrassed that was all he had to offer. “If you think that will help.”
“Yes,” Sera whispered, wishing he could understand her. “Oh, thank you, Francis. Thank you.”
“She says thank you,” Leo said. “And . . . yeah, I mean . . . thank you.”
Francis smiled at her shyly.
The door to the theater opened with a loud boom, and Francis vanished backstage as Leo turned and grabbed the star pendant, stuffing it into his pocket. Sera felt an ache in her fingers at the loss.
I’m coming back, Leela, she vowed.
“All set then, Mr. Kiernan?” Leo was saying, closing the bag.
“Yes, yes, thank you for your patience. I’m afraid my stomach is still adjusting to the Kaolin diet. Come, let’s retire to my lab. I must store these samples properly.”
Leo half turned in Sera’s direction as if to say goodbye; then the two men left the theater. The lights switched off and the flowers around the pond began to glow. Sera stared up at the glass circle.
I hear you now, Mother Sun, she thought. I see you. Thank you for Agnes and Leo, for Errol and Boris, for Francis, and for the hope you have given me. But how am I to get through that glass?
A light on the ground caught Sera’s eye as a tiny crowned sprite scampered up from the earth around Boris’s roots and into her crate. She held out her hand and it climbed up into her palm. This one was slightly thicker and taller than the last one—Sera waited for her to dance, but instead she twirled around and lifted herself right off Sera’s palm, floating and twisting in the air, little sparks shooting out from her tiny hands and feet like embers that were hot where they touched Sera’s skin. Another sprite darted out from beneath a silvery white root and propelled itself, floating and sparking, toward her sister. They whirled around each other joyfully before floating back to the ground and disappearing underneath Boris.
She didn’t realize Errol had been watching until his filaments flashed. “Tree sprites,” he said in awe. “I have not seen tree sprites in many years. Sparkle and swim, they do. Fly and dance. Tricksy, like minnows. Tasty like minnows too. But must be careful. They burn and bite.”
He crawled over and began rooting around in the earth.
“Errol, stop, don’t eat them,” she cried.
“Why not, Sera Lighthaven?” he asked, looking up, his face crusted with dirt. But Sera had a sudden inspiration.
“A distraction,” she murmured. “Boris, are you awake?”
The Arboreal roused herself with a rustle of branches. “Who speaks to me?”
“It’s Sera.” Boris was always forgetting her name. “Tell me, how many sprites do you have beneath your roots?”
“Many hundreds, and more, ever since you sent me seeds of love and light,” Boris said. “In times past so few, so few, without a Mother to guide them. Their home was lost, across the sea, across the years. But now they keep me warm. They sing in their sleep.”
Many hundreds. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? “And just what exactly can they do?”
�
��Why,” Boris crooned, “they can do anything the Mother asks them to.”
“All right. Good.” Sera collected her thoughts, deciding where she should start. “I need your help with something, if you are willing. You too, Errol.”
Errol cocked his head, a daisy dangling from the corner of his mouth. He swallowed it and looked at her with a plaintive expression.
“Whatever you need, Sera Lighthaven.”
Sera raised her eyes to the sky once more.
“I need to find a way to break that glass.”
35
Agnes
“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” AGNES DECLARED WHEN LEO HAD finished detailing his conversation with Sera from the night before. They were combing through the racks of dresses at Elvira Chester’s Fine Gowns and Ladies’ Wear. “That’s insane.”
“This whole thing is insane,” Leo pointed out.
“And you trust this boy, this Francis?”
“Sera does,” he said. “He’s been taking care of all of them while they’re stuck in the theater. He seemed sincere in his desire to help, I’ll say that. Didn’t think much of Father. And let’s face it, we need him.”
“But how is Sera supposed to break a glass ceiling?”
“She seemed to think she could figure something out,” he said.
Agnes let out an exasperated growl, and one of the salesgirls shot her disdainful look.
Xavier had insisted that Leo choose something for her to wear to The Fabled Fate of Olverin Waters and His Triumph Over the Mistress of the Islands. That was the title for this final production, and Agnes thought it quite the mouthful. But she supposed it got the point across. Xavier had never been one for subtlety when it came to his plays.