The Water and the Wild Page 15

  Fife’s expression softened. He licked his lips. “Please, Cynbel?”

  “Put your tongue away, son of Silvia,” said Cynbel. “Your keen has no power over me. Do you think that the Tailor and the Seamstress would appoint a captain of the wisps who was susceptible to silly sprite tricks?”

  “It was worth a try,” Fife muttered. “And for the record, hot stuff, I’m not a sprite.”

  “Oh?” Cynbel pointed to Fife’s wrist. “How, then, do you explain that abomination?”

  Fife tugged his shirtsleeve over his black diamond tattoo. “I—I—” he faltered into silence.

  “Do not presume,” said Cynbel, “to count yourself amongst the honorable wisps or to question their practices. You’re lucky, halfling, that the Tailor has traveled to the northern territories this autumntide, or such an audience with your mother would be forbidden.”

  “He can’t tell her what to do,” Fife said, voice low. “Mother promised me that—”

  With no warning but the swipe of his arm, Cynbel grabbed Fife by the shoulder and hoisted him a full five feet in the air.

  “That is enough of your presumption, halfling!” he shouted. “You will not question the power of the Tailor in these woods. You will approach your mother when she awakens, and no sooner. In the meantime, you will receive the hospitality that wisps show all guests of Her Seamstress—lodging, sustenance, and protection.”

  Cynbel tossed Fife to the ground as if he were no more than a piece of litter. Fife picked himself up, glowering at Cynbel and rubbing his shoulder.

  “I have rights here, too,” he muttered.

  “Halflings,” said Cynbel, “have no rights. You should be groveling at our feet in gratitude for the kindness we are showing you, and that is not for your sake; it is for the sake of our Seamstress.”

  Cynbel threw back his floating black hair and motioned to the right of the River Lissome, away from the towering glass pergola. “Now follow me.”

  Cynbel’s glowing globe led them onto a broad dirt pathway. The dirt, like the trees and grass here, was white; it coated Lottie’s wet green sneakers like powdered sugar.

  “Marvelous,” Adelaide grumbled. “Just marvelous. We were supposed to reach the Southerly Court today. That’s a whole day lost, just because your mother chooses to turn in early. Are you sure there’s no other way—?”

  “There’s no other way,” snapped Fife. “If you want the trip to be short, you can go find the Southerly Guard. And if you want it to be really short, you go can find the Barghest. The Seamstress is the only one who can grant us safe passage through the wood. We’ll just have to wait.”

  “But it’s past dawn,” said Lottie. “Why is your mother sleeping, anyway?”

  “Wisps are nocturnal,” said Oliver. “They sleep during the day and craft at night.”

  That did make a certain sense, Lottie supposed. After all, in so dense of a wood, it did not make a difference whether it was properly night or day.

  “Craft?” she echoed. “What sort of crafting do they do?”

  “They practice trades,” said Fife. “You know, carpentry, weaving, welding, glazing—that sort of thing. Every wisp family specializes in a certain trade. Then they ship their stuff out on the River Lissome. It’s how they make their living.”

  Lottie now understood the meaning of those signs that hung from the yew trees. Carpenwisps carved wood and the Smithwisps fashioned metal. But did they do so with an abandoned anvil?

  “Those trees looked deserted, though,” she said.

  “They are,” said Fife, “because the wisps are dying.”

  Lottie felt ill. “I’m sorry, Fife,” she whispered. “I didn’t know that things were like this.”

  “Oh, stop it, please,” groaned Fife. “If you apologize, I’ll have to stop secretly hating you for making me go through with this.”

  “I wish we’d never come,” Adelaide said. “To be humiliated and taunted by those awful wisps, to see all those terrible things. And for what? We would’ve been better off running from the Barghest. We would’ve—”

  “Shut up, would you?!” shouted Fife. “All of you, just SHUT UP!”

  The other three stopped in their tracks, stunned.

  Cynbel, clearly irritated by the slow going, turned back. “I will wait for neither stragglers nor bickerers.”

  “We’re coming, you white-veined ninny,” Adelaide snapped, and she pushed past Fife in a brisk, stiff march after Cynbel.

  Oliver’s eyes had turned a deep, troubled black. He started to say something, but Fife stopped him short.

  “I think I’ve done quite enough by bringing you all here, all right? Never in my sane life would I come back home. I did it for her”—he pointed accusatorially at Lottie—“not for my own emotional health. So I’d thank you all very much to keep your noses out of family affairs and let me decide how I’ll deal with Her Grand Seamstress. Got it?”

  There was a horrible silence, and then Oliver motioned Fife aside. He said something too low for Lottie to pick up. Whatever it was slackened the tight lines in Fife’s face. He did not look quite so angry, but Lottie was still scared to say anything more. What if that terrible look on Fife’s face was meant for her alone? Lottie did not want to know. She turned and ran on ahead.

  “I think Fife hates me,” she said once she had caught up with Adelaide.

  Adelaide sniffed, and Lottie noticed that her cheeks were blotchy, like she’d just had a cry.

  “Fife doesn’t hate you,” Adelaide sighed. “He’s just plain angry. He always gets like this about his family.”

  Cynbel stopped overhead. They were standing on the edge of a canopied meadow where long sugar-white grass bent under the weight of a breeze. Here it was not so dark. Drooping swathes of thin, silvery fabric hung across the break in the trees, filtering the meadow’s sunlight into a dappled haze. Below the chiffon arches, strands of globed lights crisscrossed on thin strings and cast teetering shadows. In the middle of the meadow stood three gnarled yews, their branches uncurled.

  “All that you will need,” said Cynbel, “has been provided within the trees, courtesy of the Wisp Court. Be at your leisure, rest, and take victuals and libations. I will call again just before dusk, to take you before Her Seamstress.”

  He gave one dismissive nod, then drifted off, leaving Lottie, Adelaide, Fife, and Oliver alone.

  “Be at our leisure,” growled Fife. “Our leisure, my foot.”

  He pushed past Lottie and Adelaide, still muttering to himself as he stalked away. He hopped onto the uncurled branch of one of the yews and floated his way up to the gaping hole in its trunk.

  “Well, go on,” Fife called over his shoulder. “You heard him. Be at your leisure.”

  With that, Fife slipped into the hole and out of sight. The yew shuddered, and the branch that Fife had climbed now curled in on itself until it was in the shape of a perfectly whorled snail’s shell.

  “We shouldn’t have come,” Oliver said in a small voice.

  “Nonsense, Ollie,” said Adelaide. “You shouldn’t feel bad. Fife is unrefined, and his behavior just now was accordingly unrefined. That’s all there is to it.”

  “No.” Oliver shook his head. “We should never have brought Fife back here. That’s all there is to it.”

  Oliver climbed up the branch of the second yew tree until he too was swallowed into the tree trunk and the branch had creaked back into a tight roll, sealing him inside.

  “Well,” sighed Adelaide, “nothing to do but go on and wait until dusk. I’ve never stayed in a wisp yew, obviously, but I’ve heard they’re surprisingly luxurious.”

  “Luxurious” was hardly the first word that came to Lottie’s mind. Apple trees had been one thing. Yews looked much more dangerous. There was something fundamental within Lottie that told her it was not a good idea to go sliding into tree trunks.

  Adelaide grabbed Lottie’s hand. “Oh, come on,” she said. “It can’t be that bad. We’ll go together.”


  The two of them inched their way up the last uncurled yew branch. A cool draft was blowing from the hole in the trunk, and it smelled unexpectedly nice, like caramel and nutmeg. Lottie peered inside, but she could not see so much as an inch beyond her eyelashes.

  “How far down do you think it goes?” Lottie asked, just as her foot lost its treading.

  Lottie lurched for one horrible moment, then felt weightless for two more, and then she collided with something solid but soft. Adelaide was screaming above her like a maniac.

  “LOTTIE FISKE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

  “I can hear you, Adelaide. I can see you. I’m right here.”

  “WHERE?!”

  Lottie reached out of the trunk hole, which wasn’t any higher than her chin. She caught ahold of Adelaide’s shoe, and Adelaide shrieked again.

  “It’s just me, you loon,” said Lottie, poking her head out. “Come on, I think it’s safe in here.”

  After just a little more persuading, Adelaide finally dropped into the trunk. A splintering sound followed, and the girls watched as the branch they had climbed curled in toward them and sealed them up in darkness.

  “Stupid wisps,” said Adelaide. “They didn’t even think of lighting.”

  The moment the words had left Adelaide’s mouth, the tree was flooded with light. A chandelier made of willow reeds creaked above them. Its twelve candles had lit at the same time, all of their own accord.

  Adelaide, it turned out, had been right: as far as tree trunks went, this was the height of luxury. They were standing on a massive ottoman made of fine purple silk that filled the width of the hollowed-out trunk. On one side of the circular room was a pile of downy pillows. A wooden ledge jutted out from the opposite wall, and on it rested a platter piled with fruits and nuts, a large bronze pitcher, a jar of sugar cubes, and two thimble-shaped tumblers.

  The berries on the platter were so bright that Lottie squeezed one to make sure it wasn’t fake. Its tight skin broke between her fingers and juice splattered out. She gave her thumb a cautious lick, then proceeded to eat twenty more.

  Adelaide, meanwhile, had gone from criticizing the wisps on the lack of light to criticizing them for its very existence (“a complete fire hazard, twelve open flames inside a tree!”). Eventually, she calmed down and identified the bitter-smelling liquid in the brass pitcher as Wisp Wine. Lottie took one sip of the liquid and promptly spit the tongue-burning stuff back into her cup. She decided that she did not like wine, no matter what Adelaide muttered under her breath about Lottie being “thoroughly unsophisticated.” After all, Lottie noted, Adelaide did not so much as touch the pitcher.

  After taking a taste of all the fruits and nuts, the girls were more than full, and they settled down into the mound of plush pillows with nothing to do but wait for dusk.

  “So Fife’s really half wisp?” Lottie asked Adelaide. She was still worried about Fife’s outburst.

  Adelaide nodded. “So testy about it, too. Though if I had to call a rotting place like this my home, I guess I’d feel the same way.”

  “What about his father?”

  “No one knows who that was,” Adelaide said in a hushed tone. “All anyone knows is that he was some Northerly, since Fife has the mark on his wrist to prove it. They say the whole thing was a nasty business. Wisps have ancient laws against halflings in these parts. The Tailor, the Seamstress’ older brother? He was outraged. He banished Fife from the wood when he was old enough to float. Not that I think Fife would’ve wanted to stay. Who would?”

  Those were terrible truths to utter, but there was a sparkle in Adelaide’s eyes as she spoke, as though she almost enjoyed this revelation of secrets. This was a scandalous matter, and Lottie knew from life at Kemble School that the more scandalous a matter was, the more thrilling it was to let it slip from the lips.

  “So Fife is a halfling,” said Lottie, “like me.”

  “I don’t know why you want to find stuff in common with Fife.” Adelaide rolled her eyes and nibbled on a hazelnut.

  Lottie could tell that Adelaide wasn’t in the mood to talk about things concerning Fife.

  “So,” Lottie said instead, “why is everyone here sick?”

  “It’s the Plague,” said Adelaide, who looked delightfully terrified to be saying so many scandalous things in one go. “Plagues have been on the Isle since—well, since the beginning of Limn, I guess. But there’s never been an outbreak so bad as this.”

  “The wisps back there were shouting things about the Southerly King,” said Lottie.

  Adelaide nodded. “But what can he do? He’s not the king of the wisps. It isn’t his fault that wisps haven’t got the medical resources that the Southerly Court has got. Southerlies are very advanced. We hardly ever get sick.”

  “Does that mean you have a cure for the Plague?”

  “Oh, of course,” said Adelaide. “Every Southerly is inoculated against the Plague now, standard-issue. But the ingredients are rare. We don’t have enough to hand out to everyone. So the wisps barter for what they can, and the important wisps get the inoculations. Not that keeping their rulers alive is doing the rest of the wisps much good. My tutor says that wisps stopped trading with the Southerlies out of protest, but it hasn’t done any good. The king’s not giving in, and the wisps are just getting poorer and sicker.”

  “Then what’s going to happen to them?” Lottie asked, though she was afraid she already knew the answer.

  “They’ll go extinct. Nearly a quarter dead as it is. I guess by the time Ollie and I are grown, there won’t be any more wisps left on the Isle.”

  Adelaide rattled off this information like she would a boring newspaper headline, topping it with a long yawn. She sank deeper into the pillows and looked just seconds away from sleep.

  “That’s horrible,” said Lottie.

  “I guess it is,” Adelaide said with a noncommittal shrug. “But you have to understand, Southerlies and wisps despise each other. They did long before the Plague ever struck.”

  “It must make things extra hard for Fife to have a sprite for a father, then.”

  “I don’t know,” said Adelaide. “He never talks about that. I don’t think he cares about the wisps at all. Not much reason to, at the rate they’re going.”

  “So, Southerlies hate Northerlies, and wisps hate Southerlies. Does anyone get along in your world?”

  Adelaide yawned. “Do they in yours?”

  While Lottie was thinking this over, Adelaide began to produce delicate, high-pitched snores.

  Lottie wasn’t tired, and she decided that she wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day cooped up in a yew tree, however luxurious it was. She needed fresh air, and she needed fresh thoughts.

  Escaping the tree turned out to be easier than Lottie had first thought. She hadn’t needed a secret password or an incantation or a magical wave of her hands, though she tried out each of these methods. Only after an hour of tiring attempts did Lottie actually try touching the branch that sealed off the tree hole and, like magic (which Lottie guessed it was), the branch moved at once, uncurling from Lottie in a loud crackle. She glanced back to see if she’d woken Adelaide, but the thin-limbed girl was still sprawled out on the pillows, her snores deeper and daintier than ever.

  Clumsily, Lottie crawled down the tree. Then she set out at a fast trot toward the edge of the meadow and settled into the long, white grass. It felt heavenly, after so much running and tripping in the forest, to simply sit out-of-doors. Even though dew was soaking through her clothes, Lottie preferred this to the silken luxury of the yew tree.

  Lottie sank onto her back and spread her hands out in the downy white stalks of grass. A shiver traveled from her fingers to her chin. It was cold here, so close to the ground, as though Lottie were lying on packed ice. Every time a fresh breeze shuddered into the meadow, Lottie could hear—if she concentrated hard enough—the creak of branches. That smell of nutmeg that had been inside the yew tree still teased its way in and out of Lottie’s nose. Whe
n she lay like this, with her eyes closed and her legs numb, it was hard to think that there were will o’ the wisps dying of the Plague just paces away. Or that an evil king had kidnapped Mr. Wilfer. Or that Lottie was a whole world apart from Eliot. All was blank and cold and quiet, and in that blankness Lottie fell fast asleep.

  She was back in the Barmy Badger, in Eliot’s room. Eliot sat propped in bed with a sketchpad on his lap. He was pale, and beads of sweat hung around the rims of his glasses. As Lottie drew nearer, Eliot looked up.

  “Lottie!” he cried.

  On his sketchpad was a charcoal-drawn girl who looked remarkably like Lottie herself, and under the picture were the words MISSING PERSON.

  “Lottie,” said Eliot, “I’ve been worried sick!”

  Warm relief washed over Lottie. Eliot was still alive. She reached out her arms to hug him but found that she could not. She had no hands with which to touch him. She had no skin, no substance at all.

  “I’m coming home, Eliot, just as soon as I can,” she told him. “I’m going to make you better.”

  But Eliot shook his head. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  As he spoke, the edges of his room began to curl back into darkness, like a piece of paper withering in a fire.

  “Are you all right?” Lottie asked frantically.

  Eliot reached out a hand. “I can’t hear you!” he said again, his own voice fading.

  Then Lottie was no longer in Eliot’s room, but wandering through a row of dark, looming mulberry bushes. Leaves rustled and owls hooted. The mulberry grove was deserted; there was not another person in sight. Lottie began to run.

  Two pinprick eyes appeared in front of her. The Barghest emerged out of the darkness, snarling and champing its teeth like it was laughing at her. Its voice was a wretched noise that sounded like the creature was choking on broken glass.

  “The Heir of Fiske,” growled the Barghest, sauntering closer to a frozen Lottie. “The Heir of Fiske.” Its eyes went greedy, and it leapt toward her, mouth gaping.

  Lottie was screaming, screaming as she never had before in twelve years of frights and nightmares. Her eyes shot open. She was wrapped in damp grass, her hair matted to her neck in a coating of sweat.