Perchance to Dream Read Online Free PDF

marriage,” Waschbär suggested with a teasing grin. “Your firstborn child.”
    “I’m too young to get married and have kids,” Bertie protested, desperately trying to avoid making eye contact with either of her male bookends.
    “Come, come, there must be something!” Waschbär leaned back on one elbow, looking deceptively nonchalant. “If you cannot make the standard offerings, then you must make an unusual one. A dream, mayhap. A secret yearning of your heart.”
    Unable to do more than whisper, Bertie asked, “What happens when I give something like that to you?”
    Nate made a rude noise through his nose. “Naught good, I can tell ye that.”
    “Nothing good will come of this.” Ariel tried to keep the warning between the two of them but didn’t quite manage it.
    “Now then, air spirit, do you fear that you are the unwanted thing at this fire?” The sneak-thief’s eyes were bright, black buttons, if buttons could be amused. The firelight didn’t quite illumine their depths, so looking into them was like waving a flashlight around the under-stage area at the Théâtre.
    “Why don’t you give it to her out of the goodness of your heart?” Ariel let slip a blast of hot air, and the fire blazed before dwindling to embers.
    In the shadows, Waschbär chuckled. “If you’ve nothing to trade me, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, you will have to steal the journal from me.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Bertie stared at him, not quite sure she wasn’t hallucinating due to lack of food and a surplus of campfire smoke up her nose. “You want me to what?”
    A hidden owl hooted as Waschbär lifted the journal to his twitching nose and sniffed it. “Yes, yes, this is the thing that’s wanted here. A place to write your hopes and dreams, eh?”
    “And pudding,” Moth said. The others elbowed him but he wouldn’t recant. “If it were mine, I’d write about treacle tarts and jam roly-poly.”
    “Might I see it?” Bertie held out a hopeful hand, fingers nearly grazing the leather cover before the journal disappeared into the folds of Waschbär’s furs.
    “I think not.” He gave her a wink and a nod.
    “Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.” Mustardseed hammered two walnuts together with an aggrieved air. When they cracked open, he picked out the meats and wore one of the shell halves as a hat.
    “The very definition of stealing would suggest I take it against your will,” Bertie said with a frown.
    “There are many ways to use a word.” Ariel offered guidance as though it were no more than a bit of bread and cheese. “Reflect a moment upon Much Ado About Nothing. Act Two, Scene Three.”
    “Beatrice’s line,” Nate supplied. “‘Against my will, I am sent t’ bid ye come in t’ dinner.’”
    “‘There’s a double meaning in that,’” Bertie said, completing the quote. “A double meaning.”
    The sneak-thief took a coin from his pocket and flipped it over and about his fingers. The flash of silver changed to copper in an instant, then to gold. “Why, ’tis a cockle!” The coin morphed into a shell, heart shaped and striped. “Or a walnut shell. A knack, a toy, a trick; they are all words.”
    “Not just playthings,” Nate said, ghostly fingers seeking out the nape of Bertie’s neck. “We know better than that. They can be used as weapons, t’ cut and t’ wound.”
    There were so many things she wanted to say to him, none of which could be uttered before this audience. Vowing that the next thing to be stolen, after the journal, would be a moment alone with him, Bertie selected her words with care. “There are many ways to steal something. I might steal it the way I steal a glance.” She looked at Waschbär from under her eyelashes.
    “Yes, you might,” he said.
    “Or there is the way I might steal a kiss.” Plucking Mustardseed from the air mid-flight, Bertie planted her lips on his cheek, much to his chagrin.
    Waschbär smiled. “Yes, it might be stolen in that fashion.