by A. C. Wise
Sapphire steps behind her, draping the necklace around Ruby’s throat. The gold is warm and heavier than it has any right to be. It chases the breath from her lungs. She’s dizzy, wanting to claw the necklace away, but when Sapphire asks if it’s too tight and moves to adjust it, Ruby bats her hands away.
Sapphire’s lips move, but the words are lost in a rush of dark wind. Torchlight flickers at the edge of Ruby’s vision. She’s somewhere else; the walls are stone. Then Sapphire is shaking her, eyes wide with fear.
“Come on. We have to get out of here.” She grasps Ruby’s arm, dragging her.
Ruby stumbles in Sapphire’s wake, her body numb and distant. It registers finally that Sapphire is saying “What’s wrong?” over and over again.
“The necklace,” Ruby gasps.
Her voice is scraped raw. She can barely breathe. Together, fumbling, they get the necklace off and it drops heavily to the grass. Chill air hits Ruby like a slap, and her teeth chatter.
“What happened?” Sapphire says.
At the same time, Ruby says, “We have to take it back.”
“We can’t. Didn’t you hear the front door open? Either Forsythe is back or the guard saw us.”
The inside of Ruby’s skull is filled with the steady hum of wings; it’s impossible to concentrate. “I need to lie down.”
“This was a mistake.” Sapphire reaches for Ruby’s hand, but Ruby’s legs won’t cooperate.
Sapphire’s eyes widen. She slips her shirt over her head, revealing the camisole underneath. Using the folded cloth, Sapphire scoops up the necklace. With the gold sheen hidden, Ruby’s legs unlock, but they still tremble.
“What are we going to do?”
“I have money, credit cards,” Sapphire says. “We could get on a train.”
“A train? To where?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Panic edges Sapphire’s voice.
It’s all starting to unravel. Ruby takes a deep breath, forces her voice to remain even. “We’ll take the necklace to the bridge. We’ll throw it in the river and forget the whole thing.”
Looking stunned, Sapphire nods. Ruby concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other and not thinking about anything else. Her skin itches. She twists her fingers into the slithery fabric of the skirt, fighting their desire to pluck the necklace from Sapphire’s hands. Just one more look couldn’t hurt, could it?
Wind tugs a curl of hair free to brush against her cheek, making her jump. Ruby stops, and Sapphire nearly collides with her. They’re already at the mid-point of the bridge, water glittering darkly below them. Ruby reaches for the shirt-wrapped bundle, but stops.
“You do. I can’t.”
“I can’t either.” Sapphire looks stricken.
“We’ll do it together.”
Ruby places her hands atop Sapphire’s meeting her eyes. Even through the cloth, the necklace feels warm. There’s a faint buzz, an insect trapped beneath the combined weight of their palms. They step closer to the rail, and Ruby peers over the edge. She’s struck by the impression of falling, not down, but up into the sky—the lights on the black water a scatter of stars.
“I still can’t do it,” Sapphire says.
“Neither can I.” Ruby’s voice husks.
A streak of light in her peripheral vision draws her attention. Ruby turns her head just in time to track a shooting star, blazing toward the horizon. And there, where it disappears, a blaze of light upon the water—a massive ship making its slow way from the harbor out toward the open water. The harbor itself is visible, other ships docked and glowing welcomingly. A slow grin stretches across Ruby’s face, pulling up until her cheeks until they ache.
“I have an idea,” Ruby says, pointing at the ship. It’s ridiculous and impractical, and Ruby has no idea how much Sapphire has on the credit cards she mentioned, or whether she’s even willing to share it. But for one moment, everything feels possible. “We’re not going to take a train, we’re going to take a cruise.”
RUBY WAKES WITH HER HEART POUNDING, SWEAT STICKING HER nightgown to the small of her back. It takes a moment to orient herself, to recognize the thrum of the ship as more than the rush of blood in her ears.
As they stood on the pier watching the cruise ship pull in, everything still seemed like a grand adventure. But once they were on board, watching the shore dwindle, doubt had settled in.
“I can’t afford this.” Panic needled her with a silent tally of necklaces she’s have to steal to pay Sapphire back.
But Sapphire had only waved Ruby’s concerns away. “Call it a present from my aunt.”
The breezy way Sapphire had said it, someone who’d never needed to worry about money, made Ruby’s stomach twist. It was still a lark for Sapphire; she didn’t need to steal.
And now, in the dark, the doubt is even worse, edging on panic. The shore is miles away. Only water surrounds them. Ruby’s never been this far from home before, and it’s so big out here.
It’s all unraveling; the walls of the tiny cabin are closing in. She tries to breathe, calm herself and ignore the unfamiliar shadows on the wall. Something rustles in the corner of the room.
“Sapphire.”
In the narrow bunk beside hers, Sapphire groans and rolls over, putting her back to Ruby.
“Sapphire!” Ruby bunches the sheets in her fists, listening for the rustling noise to come again.
Sapphire pulls her pillow over her head. Ruby untangles herself from the sheets and stands, shaking Sapphire’s arm.
“What’s happening?” Sapphire’s words are slurred; she fumbles the sleep mask from her eyes.
“I heard something.”
“Ships make noise.”
“It wasn’t the ship. I think we should…”
The rustle is unmistakable this time. Ruby instinctively lifts her feet, nearly falling onto Sapphire’s bed.
“Ow, you’re hurting me.” Sapphire pulls away even as a shadow skitters across the room and disappears under the door.
“There!”
Sapphire’s eyes widen. “I saw it, too.”
“What was it?”
Something tickles at the back of Ruby’s mind—the sensation of wings against palm. The memory of feeling weightless and dizzy and of torches flickering at the edge of her vision creeps back under her skin. She kneels dragging Sapphire’s hastily-packed suitcase from under the bed and flips it open.
“What are you doing?”
Ruby ignores her, pawing aside Sapphire’s clothing to reveal the necklace nestled at the bottom of the suitcase.
“Did you touch it?”
“No. What’s going on?”
With trembling hands, Ruby lifts the necklace so Sapphire can see. The metal is no longer warm. It no longer buzzes in her hands. The scarab is gone, the bezel’s tines bent as though the jewel forced its way out.
“We have to follow it.” Ruby’s voice is flat. “Get dressed.”
She grabs a handful of clothes from Sapphire’s suitcase and tosses them on the bed before gathering her own clothes—new ones, bought for her by Sapphire, because there wasn’t time to go back home. If she gives herself even one moment to think about how ridiculous this is, she’ll break into hysterical laughter and never stop.
Carved scarabs don’t run lose on cruise ships. But as she dresses, Ruby listens for the rustle and tick of tiny legs. There’s no such thing as living jewelry but then she isn’t a thief either. She doesn’t do things like this. But she did. And now she has to face the consequences.
“Come on.” Ruby’s pulse thumps as she steps into the corridor, Sapphire close on her heels.
“I guess it’s good luck we picked a ship full of octogenarians after all,” Sapphire murmurs, tension clear in her voice, despite her best effort to hide it. “They’re all asleep or in the casino. It’s like a ghost ship.”
Ruby freezes at the click-click of jointed legs.
“That way.”
They follow the sound through the silen
t dining rooms, past the empty cigar lounge, making their way to the theater at the aft of the ship. Plaster columns painted with hieroglyphs guard the door. Of course, Ruby thinks, they couldn’t have ended up on a ship with a Greek theme, or a tropical theme, or anything other than Egyptian. Inside the theater, tiered seats lead down to the darkened stage.
“What do we do if we catch it?” Sapphire asks.
“Shove it back in the necklace and throw the whole thing overboard. Like we should have done on the bridge.” Ruby surprises herself with the vehemence in her tone.
Halfway to the stage, Ruby freezes. Sapphire bumps into her with a sharp intake of breath. The curtains rise, drawn by an invisible hand and lights snap on, pooling overlapping colors—amber, emerald, sapphire, and ruby. The stage is flanked by two impossibly tall figures, mirror images of the goddess Isis, each one with a wing raised to stretch across the top of the stage, meeting in the middle.
The shadow skitters across the stage, larger now, six legs moving in a blur as it scales the figure of Isis on the left.
“What…” Sapphire starts to say, and the words die in her throat.
The scarab, grown to the size of Ruby’s fist, settles at Isis’ throat. With a grinding noise, the statue turns her head, fixing Sapphire and Ruby with baleful eyes the color of blood. Isis rips her wing away from the wall in a shower of plaster dust. More dust plumes into the air as the goddess steps from the stage.
Ruby scrambles back, her heel catching on the step behind her. She goes down, knocking into Sapphire’s legs, sending them both tumbling.
“Throw the necklace at her,” Sapphire yells.
“What?”
“It’s the kind of thing that would work in a movie.”
“Just run!” Ruby pushes Sapphire ahead of her.
She glances over her shoulder at the statue. At least it’s slow. The thought isn’t much comfort as Isis rips a seat from the nearest row and hurls it toward them. Ruby ducks.
“Run a zigzag pattern,” Sapphire yells.
“That’s crocodiles.” Ruby pants, but does as Sapphire suggests, cutting back toward the stage. Maybe there’s another way out.
From behind, Isis is hollow. The edges of plaster where she pulled her body away from the wall are ragged. Her feet grind as she pivots back toward the stage and takes a heavy step. Too heavy. A tiny fissure runs up the goddess’ leg.
Another chair hurtles toward them. Ruby catches it awkwardly, staggering. She does her best to heave it back toward the goddess, but her strength, not being supernatural like the statue’s only gets her so far. The chair falls short and as she’s trying to catch her breath, another chair comes their way. This one misses, striking the second Isis statue, shattering its leg.
“We have to get out of here. There’s got to be another exit.” Ruby pulls Sapphire toward the stage. “Isn’t Isis supposed to be the protector of children?”
“She’s also the goddess of marrying her brother and raising him from the dead, so she’s not all sweetness and light.”
A chair hits the painted screen at the back of the stage and the catwalk it hangs from trembles.
“There’s the door.”
“Shit. It’s locked!” Sapphire smacks the door with the side of her fist. “Emergency exit my ass.”
“Try the other side.”
Ruby turns just as a golden arm smashes down between them, knocking her off her feet. A crack races up the goddess’ arm and part of it crumbles she draws back for another blow. Ruby scrambles toward stage left. She can’t see Sapphire anymore, and panic squeezes her tight. If anything happens to Sapphire and it’s her fault…
Tears blur her vision and Ruby blinks them back, furious. She shoves to her feet, ready to throw herself at the plaster goddess and tear her apart with her bare hands if she has to.
“Get down,” someone yells and Ruby is yanked, hard.
She lands on her knees. There’s a crash and plaster dust fills the air. Ruby coughs, her eyes stinging. Isis’ left arm, broken off at the elbow, lies on the stage. Ruby whips her head around, looking to see who pushed her and her mouth drops open.
The woman is almost as tall as Sapphire. What she lacks in height, she makes up for with silver platform heels, and a frosted-blonde bouffant with a pair of rabbit ears perched on top like a crown. She’s flanked by a woman in a green dress and a woman in a copper dress and they both look angry. Ruby’s mind whirls, grasping after some piece of information that feels so irrelevant she can’t help speaking it aloud.
“You’re the singers from the lounge show on the Lido Deck.”
The blonde takes her eyes off the goddess for an instant and looks at Ruby.
“Shh, you’ll blow our cover. We’re actually here to save the world.” She winks, and as the gold-and-plaster goddess lunges toward them, the three women spring into action.
The one in the rabbit ears drops to a crouch and comes up with what looks like a spear in her hand. She hurls it, and the tip punches through Isis’ leg. The goddess’ plaster feathers sweep the space where the three women were standing an instant before. More dust rains down and Ruby throws her arms over her head.
The woman in green takes a sash from around her waist, whipping it over her head like a lasso. The ends are weighted with jangling coins, lending the cloth momentum. With a flick of the woman’s wrist, the cloth catches the goddess around her left ankle. The woman in green pulls back and the goddess stumbles.
Isis raises her wing to swat, but the woman in copper is there, planting her feet in a wide-legged stance and firing a gun. Ruby claps her hands over her ears. The goddess reels back, a smoking hole where her left eye used to be. Hairline cracks craze her cheeks and Isis lets out a hollow, impossible roar.
“Now you’ve done it,” the blonde says, grim.
“Got a better plan?” the woman in copper snaps back.
“Aim for the scarab.” Ruby doesn’t know where her voice comes from, but it’s there, ragged and choked with plaster dust.
The three performers who aren’t performers exchange a look and the blonde shrugs. “You heard the lady.”
The woman in copper takes aim, but as she does, Isis reaches above her head, snagging the lighting array with her blade-like wing. Sparks explode. Ruby covers her head again. A can light hits the stage, narrowly missing her. On the far side of the stage, there’s a shout of pain. Sapphire.
Ruby ignores the chaos, crawling toward the sound. There’s smoke in the air now, and Ruby gropes blindly until her hand finds warm flesh, sticky with blood. Her heart lurches into her throat, but slender, calloused fingers find hers and grip hard.
“Ruby?”
“I’m here. I can’t see.”
“Something is pinning my leg.” Sapphire’s voice is raw.
By feel, Ruby finds part of the lighting array. She grips it, palms slicked with sweat and heaves upward. Sapphire hisses in pain.
“Don’t move,” Ruby says.
She stands, still holding the twisted section of metal. There’s a shout. Isis howls, and a golden leg narrowly misses crushing Ruby as the goddess staggers backward.
Putting all her rage and fear into the motion, Ruby swings the lighting rig as hard as she can. The resulting crack reverberates through the theater; in its wake, there’s a moment of ringing silence. Then Isis’ entire left leg crumbles. The goddess pitches to the side. Chunks of plaster hit the stage. A blur of shadow breaks free, skittering across the stage, running for the second plaster goddess.
The woman in the bunny ears snatches her spear. “Oh, no you don’t!”
In a graceful leap, she clears the rubble and drives the point down, pinning the scarab to the stage. There’s a crack like thunder, a flash like lightning, and Ruby is on her back, blinking. A hand reaches to help her to her feet.
“Still with us?” the woman in green asks.
Ruby nods, but her shaking legs betray her and she folds back into a sitting position.
“Sapphire,” she croaks
, pointing, and the woman in green nods.
The blonde smoothes a hand over her bouffant as the woman in copper retrieves the broken pieces of lapis lazuli from around the point of the spear, which Ruby sees now is actually a harpoon. The woman in copper hands the broken pieces to the blonde, who frowns.
“Cursed,” she says.
“You don’t say.” The woman in copper rolls her eyes.
“It’s her ankle,” the woman in green calls from the edge of the stage. “Penny, will you give me a hand?”
Penny holsters her gun. Between them, the two women get Sapphire upright, her weight on only one leg.
“Do you know anything about this?” the woman with the bunny ears holds out the broken pieces of the scarab.
Ruby swallows, her throat raw. The woman arches a perfectly-shaped eyebrow, waiting.
“We stole it.” Ruby’s voice is so small in the large space of the ruined theater. “From a man named Forsythe.”
“Mmhmmm.” The woman nods, as though none of this comes as a surprise, but she wanted to see how Ruby would answer, testing her. “A lot of people could have gotten hurt, or even killed.”
“I know.” Ruby grinds the heels of her hand into her eyes, glad for once she isn’t wearing make-up. “It was stupid. We were stupid. We thought…”
Ruby stops. She can’t even say it out loud. A hollow laugh bubbles up through her. She looks around at the shattered remains of the goddess and the twisted lighting rig. In the tiered rows of seats, there are gaps where the plush covered chairs have been torn free like rotten teeth. And here she is with clothes pulled over her nightgown, covered in plaster dust, and she just stopped a living statue from destroying a cruise ship.
“Are you going to arrest us?” Ruby asks.
The woman reaches out a perfectly manicured hand. “We’re not that kind of heroes.”
Ruby blinks, staring at it for a moment before lifting her gaze to the woman’s violet eyes. After a moment, she takes the woman’s hand and uses it to steady herself as she gets to her feet.
“How did you know to be here?” Ruby asks.
“My bunny-sense was tingling.”
Ruby’s mouth forms an “o,” and it’s a moment before the woman’s deadpan expression cracks.