The Water and the Wild Read online

  “Lottie? Lottie!”

  Fife was running toward her, his hair wild and flopping. Adelaide and Oliver were trailing close behind.

  “Queen Mab!” Fife swore, sliding to his knees and grabbing Lottie’s hands. “You had us scared out of our wits! When Adelaide told us you’d snuck out—and then, all that awful yelling . . .”

  Lottie stared at the warm, pulsing hands that Fife had clamped around hers, and rather than feel embarrassed, she was simply relieved. Fife did not seem to hate her after all.

  “Just—just a nightmare,” she said.

  Oliver nodded, his eyes a pale, uneasy green. “We had them, too.”

  “It goes with the territory,” Fife muttered. “Literally.”

  “Mine started out so nice,” said Adelaide. “We were back in Iris Gate, and Father had these very well-respected ladies over from the Southerly Court to tell me all about the latest hairstyles. Then”—she shuddered—“they all started to rot. Just rot with the Plague. I could see straight through their rib cages, down to their spleens.”

  “So you all woke up screaming, too?”

  The three looked uneasily at Lottie.

  “Not exactly,” said Fife, licking his lips. “Not that you’re a coward or anything! I should’ve warned you; nightmares are common around here.”

  “What was the dream about, Lottie?” asked Adelaide.

  “Nothing,” Lottie said hastily. “It was nothing. I’m fine. Promise. I didn’t mean to make anyone worry.”

  “Too late for that,” said Fife. “But it’s as good a time as any for us to be awake. It’s nearly dusk.”

  Lottie looked around. The meadow was darker now than it had been when she’d fallen asleep, but it was impossible to tell where the sun hung in the sky—if it was still hanging at all.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Wisps always know what time it is.”

  He stuck his tongue out teasingly at her, and Lottie could not help but smile.

  “Come on,” said Fife, helping Lottie to her feet. “Let’s leave this sorry place behind.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Seamstress of the Wisps

  FIFE LED THEM down the path back to the glass pergola, holding aloft Mr. Ingle’s trusty lantern. Lottie had not realized how much brighter Cynbel’s lantern had been—or perhaps just how very dark it was in this part of the wood. Whatever the reason, even with lantern light, Lottie could barely see well enough to place one foot in front of the other.

  Then the strange white dirt began to lighten beneath her feet, reflecting a warm glow that came from the glass pergola, just ahead. A minute later, the glow had grown so bright that there was no need for Mr. Ingle’s lantern at all. A minute more, and they had crossed a thin glass bridge that crossed the River Lissome and led up to the wide steps of the pergola. A chill seeped up from the glass steps, right through the rubber soles of Lottie’s sneakers. Lottie shivered. She grabbed her elbows and bit her lip to keep her teeth from knocking into each other.

  “Why is it s-s-so cold?” chattered Adelaide.

  Oliver touched one of the threshold’s columns. “It’s enchanted,” he said.

  “Didn’t you know that?” said Fife, who plowed past them, decidedly not intrigued by their discovery. “The Seamstress likes her home kept cold. I’m sure it must’ve come up once or twice in our conversations about home.”

  “You never talk about home,” said Adelaide.

  Fife raised an eyebrow. “Ah. There you have it. That might be why you didn’t know.”

  Inside the vast pergola, columns lined up before Lottie for what seemed like an eternity, and through the very middle of the glass floor flowed the River Lissome itself, cutting the walkway into two clean, even paths. She saw now that in the open spaces between the columns, steps led down and out of the pergola on both its sides into miniature courtyards, each hedged by a fence of willow reeds. Beyond those fences, the wood of white yews grew as thick as ever. One of the courtyards contained a five-tiered glass fountain that gushed and splattered silvery water. Another, a little farther on, was lined with the most marvelously carved wooden benches that Lottie had ever seen. Oliver had stopped in front of a courtyard decked by swords. The weapons were fixed along the fence’s willow reeds as though they had grown as naturally from their perches as blossoming flowers. They were strange swords, pronged at their ends like snake tongues, and their hilts were nearly as long as their blades.

  “Wisp blades,” Oliver murmured. “I bet these haven’t been touched since the Liberation.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Lottie said.

  “That’s because the wisps made them,” said Oliver. “They say that the blacksmiths here devote an entire year to the welding of just one sword.”

  “What’s the Liberation?” Lottie asked, but Oliver had walked on.

  Then came a most unexpected sound that Lottie had not heard since she left Thirsby Square. It was something sweet and limber, like warm taffy. It wasn’t quite giggling or singing or humming, but it sounded like each and all of those. It was everywhere, filling the glass pergola with a coziness that Lottie had not thought could exist in this wood. It was music.

  A coracle was floating down the slow-moving River Lissome, and inside it sat two wisps. They held a long, clear instrument that spiraled at one end and flattened at the other. One wisp moved his long fingers over openings on the flattened end, while the other blew long gulps of air into the spiraling funnel. The sight was entrancing, like watching the weaving of a tapestry, and the notes slipped into Lottie’s tendons and marrow, so deep inside that her very body sang with the melody. It was a mournful song, yet somehow clever, too—like a court jester singing a dirge.

  One of the musicians looked Lottie’s way. This wisp’s eyes did not remind her of something bad. Instead, she remembered a night in Thirsby Square when she had snuck a Danish pastry up to her bedroom and eaten it under her bed in sheer delight. She heard, too, in her memory’s ear, the notes of a song that a visiting orchestra had played in Kemble Town Hall. The name of the song, she remembered, had been “Gymnopédie No. 1,” and it had filled Lottie with inexplicable happiness. Lottie felt a rush of that happiness once again. She took a step closer toward the music . . .

  . . . and her foot sank into the River Lissome for the second time that day.

  “Easy, there,” said Fife. He was at her side, and he laughed as Lottie hung on to his arm and pulled her foot out of the water. “Have you got a death wish, or what?”

  Lottie rubbed at her eyes. “The music was just so nice.”

  “Those guys are on their way to wake up the Seamstress,” said Fife. “Nice alarm clock, if you ask me. Foot all right?”

  Lottie nodded. “The water’s warm. I didn’t expect that.”

  “The Lissome gets warmer the farther south it flows. They say that the Northerlies use it as a road, to ice-skate here and there. It’s chilly up in New Albion. And down in the Southerly Court, the palace taps it for their hot baths.”

  “If the river goes straight to the Southerly Court,” said Lottie, “then doesn’t that mean we could follow it there?”

  Fife nodded. “That’s what we’re going to do. If Her Seamstress ever decides to wake up, that is. Now c’mon, let’s dry up that foot of yours.”

  He led Lottie into one of the courtyards. This one was not like the others. It was entirely enclosed in glass. At its center stood a great bronze basin, and from that basin shone a blinding white flame. This was, Lottie realized, the source of the light that filled the whole pergola.

  “Behold, the Great Lantern!” said Fife. “Don’t look straight at it, or you’ll burn your eyes out of their sockets.”

  Fife grabbed one of the dozens of empty globes that hung along the courtyard wall and that looked just like the ones Cynbel and his lantern bearers carried. He held the globe up to the flames licking from the bottom of the basin, and the center of the globe caught alight.

  “There,” he sai
d, holding the globe near Lottie’s soaked foot. “This sort of fire will have you dried up in no time.”

  Just as Fife had promised, Lottie’s foot did dry, all in the space of seconds. Fife blew out the flame from the globe and hung it back on its peg.

  “What sort of fire is it?” Lottie asked.

  “It’s the fire that keeps the wisps alive,” said Fife. “Or at least, it keeps them free. The Great Lantern’s been lit for as long as anyone can remember. A long time ago, the Southerly Guard floated their boats up the Lissome, stole the lantern, and took it back to the Southerly Court. From then on, the Southerlies had the power to enslave the wisps. They forced them to craft for free—all the swords and carpentry and clothes and pottery. It was like that for, I dunno, about three hundred years? Then this guy named Dulcet came along. He was sick of slaving away for the Southerlies, so he built up a resistance, and he made an alliance with some Northerlies. Together they stole back the Great Lantern, called it the Liberation. That was a hundred years back, and the flame’s been kept in this courtyard ever since, under enchantment. No one but the Dulcets have access to it.”

  “But we’re here,” Lottie pointed out.

  Fife smirked. “Dulcets and their guests.”

  Lottie stared. “You mean, that Dulcet guy was your great-grandfather?”

  “Great-great-grandfather, if we’re going in for the specifics,” said Fife. “There he is, right there.”

  Fife nodded Lottie to the back of the courtyard, behind the Great Lantern, where a bust was carved into the glass wall. Its features were hard and handsome. Lottie could see Fife’s own face in them, and for some reason, that frightened her.

  “He’s sort of a hero,” Fife said with a shrug. “Ever since he won back the lantern, a Dulcet’s always been on the throne. Mom and my uncle were twins, so they’ve joint-ruled the place since before I was born.”

  Lottie touched the icy cheek of the wisp named Dulcet. “That makes you royalty, then, doesn’t it? You’re an heir to the throne!”

  “Halflings aren’t heirs,” Fife said. “Halflings aren’t anything around here. Anyway, I’m nothing like them. Dulcets are great sewers.” He pointed to Lottie’s stitched wrist. “That’s the only sort of sewing I enjoy.”

  “Well,” said Lottie, “you’re good at it.”

  Fife smiled without feeling.

  The musicians on the Lissome had begun a new song, and unlike the one before it, this one was lively.

  “They’re playing the Sempiternal,” said Fife, and Lottie was sure that he had looked wistful for the briefest of moments.

  She followed Fife out of the courtyard of the Great Lantern, and together they watched as the musician-laden coracle drifted farther away from them, under an icy archway at the end of the pergola and toward (Lottie presumed) the Seamstress’ bedchamber. Even now that she could no longer see its source, Lottie could still hear the music. Oliver and Adelaide could, too; they were dancing to it along the River Lissome’s bank.

  Adelaide was twirling, her cheeks pink with laughter. Even Oliver grinned as he clapped his hands in a sweeping circle.

  “Doesn’t he have to be careful?” Lottie asked Fife. She felt instinctively at her arm, just where she knew there to be the fading mark of a handprint.

  “Careful not to touch Ada, you mean?” said Fife. “Sure. But that’s the beauty of the Sempiternal. In this dance, the hands are forbidden.”

  “What keeps the dancers together, then?” Lottie said, staring transfixed as Adelaide and Oliver spun around each other, their hands lifted above their heads as though to catch falling snow.

  “The elbows sometimes,” said Fife. “But most of all, the music.”

  He ran up to the dancing pair with an indignant shout. “Hey! Leaving out me and Lottie, are you?” He motioned to Lottie. “Go on, Ollie. Teach her.”

  Lottie suddenly felt hot and shy all over. No human boy had ever asked her to dance before, let alone a sprite or a wisp.

  “I’m not a good dancer,” Lottie said, by way of an excuse.

  “Oh come on,” said Fife. “Everyone in all of Limn knows how to dance the Sempiternal. Sprites and wisps . . . probably even the rabbits.”

  Oliver, to Lottie’s great surprise, had extended his arm to her. “Take my elbow,” he offered, his eyes an earnest blue, “and I’ll teach you.”

  “I—”

  “Just do it,” Adelaide commanded. “It’s a refined dance, and Oberon knows you could use some refinement.”

  It was Oliver’s smile, not Adelaide’s or Fife’s words, that convinced Lottie. Carefully, she latched her fingers around the crook of Oliver’s elbow. He pulled her toward the riverbank.

  “Ollie’s an excellent teacher!” Fife cried triumphantly. From her periphery, Lottie saw Adelaide whack Fife upside the head. Lottie giggled, and Oliver smiled.

  “So, what do I do?” she whispered to him.

  At the moment, she was only swaying from side to side, her hand still lodged against Oliver’s elbow.

  “Father always told me,” said Oliver, “that the key to the Sempiternal is to imagine that you’re a bird. Not a genga, just an ordinary bird—one that’s been trapped inside a cage and hung over the edge of the steepest cliff in the Northerly Wolds. You’ve been trapped there, hanging all day.”

  Lottie winced. “That sounds painful.”

  “Yes,” Oliver said. “But then your cage is cut free. You fall and fall, and just before your cage crashes on the rocks below, your cage door rattles open in time for you to fly free. The Sempiternal is that split of a moment, when the door hinges pop and you know that you’ll survive. You may be falling, but you can fly, and because of that you’ve got the most terrific feeling of freedom. That’s what the Sempiternal is about. You’ve got to think of it like that.”

  Lottie nodded. “Okay.”

  “Now,” said Oliver, “we link elbows.”

  They did so. Lottie’s fingers were quivering. She clenched them into a fist.

  “Then we spin around, five times in a row,” said Oliver.

  They did so, slowly, so that Lottie’s mind wasn’t reeling too badly with dizziness when it was all done.

  “Then,” said Oliver, “we release the elbows. You spin—just twirl in a circle. Yes, like that. And I clap. Then we spin around each other, twice, our hands raised.

  “Then,” he said, slipping his elbow back into hers, “we do it all over again.”

  So they danced the Sempiternal again to the now faint music of the wisps. Oliver’s blue eyes shone, and he gave an encouraging smile when Lottie tripped over herself on one of the spins. When they had danced it through, they began a third time.

  “Oliver,” Lottie said, once she felt she could talk and move at the same time. “When we first met, you were afraid to so much as sit next to me.”

  Lottie lost sight of Oliver’s eyes as they twirled past each other. When they came back into focus, they were a pale orange.

  “Yes,” said Oliver.

  “So, why are you dancing with me now?”

  “Dancing is . . . different,” Oliver said softly. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like poetry, but for your limbs. I feel comfortable dancing. I feel comfortable dancing with you.”

  Lottie didn’t know why she had gone warm in the face. “It’s hard, though. Poetry, too.”

  Oliver nodded. “They’re not supposed to be easy, just worth it. Keens, too, you know. Sharpening your keen can be very uncomfortable, until you find the balance of it. Balance—that’s the beauty of the Sempiternal. There is a magic made by melody. A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool heart, that sinks through fading colors deep.”

  Lottie smiled. Then she tripped again. But this time, rather than catch herself, she kept falling forward, her arm unthreading from Oliver’s and her feet tripping over each other until Lottie hit something hard and spice-scented. She looked up in a panic and found herself staring into the eyes of Cynbel the wisp. She’d run straight into his
hovering knees.

  “Oops,” she said, breathless.

  Cynbel paid Lottie no mind. He was looking beyond her, at Fife. “I thought I told you, halfling, that I would take you to your mother’s presence in due time.”

  “Yeeeah,” Fife said, squinting. “I vaguely remember that. What can I say? We got bored.”

  Cynbel grunted. “If you weren’t her son, I swear to Stingy Jack himself, I’d run you through with—”

  “Calm down, Cynbel, or you’re gonna ground yourself,” said Fife. “Is my mom awake, or what?”

  “Yes,” said Cynbel. “She is.”

  “Then what are you waiting for, ignis fatuus?” he said. “Lead on!”

  Cynbel hesitated, as though he were still half considering running Fife through with one of those strange, pronged wisp swords. Finally, he seemed to give that idea up, and with another grunt he led them on.

  They passed several more courtyards and then, abruptly, the pergola ended. Beyond the last of the columns loomed the largest and whitest weeping willow that Lottie had ever seen. An awning of gauzy netting stretched beneath the tree’s drooping branches, and there amongst them hovered the cross-legged figure of a woman. She was as tall, pale, and dark-headed as the other wisps, but her hair had been cropped short about the ears and laced with a shoot of baby’s breath. In the woman’s lap rested a ball of white thread. In her hand, which seemed to have stopped mid stitch, was a threaded glass needle.

  Cynbel raised his glowing globe before the lady and gave a deep bow, which Lottie thought looked a little ridiculous when done in a hover.

  “May I introduce Her Grace,” said Cynbel, extending his arm toward the woman, “Silvia Dulcet, Seamstress of the wisps.”

  In New Kemble, Lottie had once gone with Eliot to see a film at an old, run-down cinema that had since closed. The film had been silent, from the twenties, and the only sound in the entire auditorium had come from the live organist, Mr. Jeliby (whom Lottie and Eliot both liked for giving them free oranges to eat during the feature). On the screen, there had been a short man with a square mustache and a short lady with a bob cut, rouged-up cheeks, wide eyes, and a puckered mouth. For every extraordinary thing that happened in the film (which was always the man’s fault), the little woman would widen her wide eyes, pucker her puckered mouth, and lift her hands up to her cheeks. She made no sound, of course, but Lottie could distinctly hear the woman’s scream in her mind. It was an insincere, overly dramatic scream, to match the woman’s face.