The Water and the Wild (17 page)

Even Lottie had to admit, she was glad that Adelaide had spent those extra minutes filling her satchel in Iris Gate. They would've all been far hungrier and colder otherwise.

“Watch this,” Fife said, spearing his piece of cheese with a sharp stick and singeing it in the fire. “It's better toasted.”

Adelaide glowered at Fife like he had just pronounced that meat was better eaten raw, and Lottie stifled a laugh into her hunk of bread. Oliver took an oversized bite of his cheese, swallowed, and spoke up.

“Right,” he said, dusting bread crumbs off his hands and into the flames. “The next order of business is setting up a night watch. I think we should have a rotation, always someone on guard while the rest of us get some shut-eye.”

They all agreed. Oliver offered to take first watch. Lottie jumped at the chance to volunteer second, relieved to be able to contribute something to a group in which she kept feeling outdone. Adelaide was to take the third watch and Fife the last.

“You might have a little trouble waking me,” Fife told Adelaide. “I'm a very sound sleeper.”

“No worries,” Adelaide said sweetly. “I'll just kick your face till you come to.”

That settled, Fife, Adelaide, and Lottie retired to their tents, leaving Oliver stationed on a log next to the campfire. Inside their tent, Lottie and Adelaide nestled into the extra blankets that Adelaide had packed. The blankets may have been dusty and moth-eaten, but they were warm, and Lottie was asleep in moments. Her last thought was of Eliot's green sneakers, still on her feet.

Lottie was home again. Or, rather, she was at the Barmy Badger. She and Eliot had climbed out of ye ol' porthole and were sitting up on the rooftop facing the back garden, their heels propped in the leaf-clogged gutters. Eliot was eating a green apple, a treat that Lottie had brought over from Thirsby Square. When he was finished, Eliot tossed the apple core off the roof, where it landed in the thick underbrush below.

“Careful,” Lottie warned him. “You might end up with an apple tree in your own backyard!”

Eliot laughed. “Maybe then I'll get my own magic box and birthday gifts.”

Lottie giggled. Eliot looked better, much healthier than he had the last time she'd seen him. He even looked a little—younger.

Then Lottie realized that she was dreaming, and not just dreaming, but
remembering
. It was a memory of last September, when she and Eliot had spent a whole Saturday eating themselves sick with apples atop his roof. It had been damp and windy that day, and the next Monday Eliot had missed school because of a cold
he'd caught. He'd missed Tuesday, too, and Wednesday, and then the whole week, and it was then that Lottie had thought for the first time that Eliot might be
very
sick—permanently sick,
broken
.

“Eliot,” she said now, though it was her memory-dream and not really her saying it, “just think. A few more years and we'll be out of this place, in Boston, together.”

“Taking the world by storm!” said Eliot, fist-bumping the air.

“Lottie and Eliot.”

“Eliot and Lottie.”

“Unstoppable!” she cried.

“Incurable,” said Eliot.

Lottie froze.

No, that word was not part of the memory. Not at all.

“What did you say?” Lottie asked quietly.

When Eliot turned to face her, the healthy gleam in his eyes had gone. He was no longer the Eliot from one year ago, but the Eliot from that last night in the Barmy Badger, when she'd stormed out on him without bothering to apologize.

“Incurable,” Eliot repeated. “Only two, three weeks to live.”

Lottie woke cold and rolled over to discover that Adelaide had stolen every spare scrap of blanket. She could not remember her dream, but whatever it had been had left Lottie with an achy, empty feeling, and the desire to move around. She poked her head out of the tent. The small campfire was dwindling. Oliver was hunched over it, facing the wood. A single bronze-colored curl was wrapped around his thumb, and he was twirling it slowly. Lottie checked her wristwatch and gasped. Oliver started at the sound. He smiled guiltily when he saw Lottie and dropped his hand from his hair. His eyes were a cautious shade of green.

“You let me sleep through half of my watch!” she accused.

“You need the sleep more than I do,” Oliver said, shrugging back toward the wood. “You're still getting used to a new world.”

Lottie drew near the fire.

“Maybe I was tired,” she admitted, rubbing at her still drooping eyelids, “but heroes need their sleep, too, you know.”

Lottie had heard that line in a war movie once and thought it clever to use now.

Oliver poked the fire with the branch in his hand. “I'm not a hero,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

Perhaps not quite so clever as she imagined.

“Well,” Lottie said, “what else do you call a mysterious boy who goes around quoting poetry and then taking charge like you did back there at Ingle Inn? That's heroic enough.”

“Wilfers always take charge,” said Oliver. “And poetry? Poetry's what makes it worth it.”

“Makes what worth it?”

“Life.”

“Oh.” Lottie rubbed her chilled hands together. “Well, if you are going to take over my post, can I at least join?”

Oliver tensed. “If you'd like,” he said.

Lottie sat down, and Oliver shrank away to the opposite side of the log. Lottie frowned. Did Oliver not want to sit next to her? Did he really not like her that much? Lottie ducked to sniff the underarm of her coat. She had been wearing the same clothes for a while now, and she was a little smelly. Lottie blushed and found that, unlike when she was around Eliot, with whom she'd traipsed through mud
and stinky things since she was a kid, she actually minded if Oliver thought she stank.

“Oliver,” she said, eying the distance between them, “if I asked you a question, would you answer it? I mean, really answer it, not just quote poetry.”

“As I ponder'd in silence,” said Oliver, “returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, a Phantom arose before me, with distrustful aspect.”

Lottie blinked. “Did you just call me a phantom?”

A grin crooked up Oliver's face. His eyes turned violet. “Lottie Fiske,” he said. “I think we're beginning to understand each other.”

Lottie laughed, but as she rolled her eyes, she found that tears were unexpectedly coming out of them. Something,
something
about Oliver had tugged her memory to Eliot—their card games and stargazing under ye ol' porthole, Lottie posing for painted portraits and her and Eliot's exchange of sweet-so-sours.

Oh, yes. She remembered: “You and I,” Eliot had said one day, as they took turns peering out of his telescope through the open porthole, “we understand each other, Lottie Fiske.”

Lottie's throat stung as her dream washed back over her. Had Eliot grown more ill in the past day? The tears came faster, and Lottie stopped them with her sleeve.

“Lottie?” said Oliver, looking flustered. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be difficult. I just—I find it hard to speak to people sometimes. It's easier for me to say what I feel using poems. But you can ask me anything. Please, just ask.”

Lottie patted the tears away hurriedly, letting out an embarrassing hiccup.
Terrific
, she thought,
now I'm smelling bad
and
blubbering
.

At last, she found her voice.

“Fife showed me his mark earlier. The mark of the Northerly Court?”

Oliver looked at Lottie with that sly expression from the night before, when they'd first met. “Is it true you don't have one?” he asked.

“What, a mark?” said Lottie. She tugged her wrist out of her coat sleeve to show Oliver. “No, of course not.”

“Then it is true,” said Oliver, leaning over to get a good look. “You haven't got a mark, and you're a Fiske to boot.”

Lottie leaned in closer at the mention of the name Fiske. As she did, Oliver backed farther away, inching down the log.

I must smell terrible
, Lottie thought miserably.

She put her hands in her pockets, and her fingers closed around Trouble's warm and downy body. She pulled him out. Trouble gave a terrific rustle of his feathers and a grateful tweet. He fluttered out of Lottie's hand and perched on her shoulder.

“His name is Trouble,” Lottie told Oliver, and she couldn't help but feel a little proud at the introduction. “Mr. Ingle had been keeping him safe for me.”

“He's beautiful,” Oliver whispered.

He reached out a finger to stroke Trouble's head, but Trouble gave an offended squawk and nipped at Oliver's hand with his tiny beak.

Oliver quickly tugged his hand away. “I guess there's a reason he's called Trouble.”

Lottie suppressed a smile, then took Trouble up in cupped hands and fixed him with a disapproving look. “Trouble,” she said, “that's not nice.”

Trouble just rustled his jet-black wings and gave a careless chirp. Lottie smiled and then carefully tucked him
back into her pocket. It was still such a strange sensation, and Lottie half felt like she was doing something wrong.

“I've never seen a warbler genga before,” Oliver said lowly. “Wilfers are served by finches.”

“So, what, there's a different type of bird for each family?”

Oliver nodded. “And every family member's genga is a different—”

“Color!” finished Lottie. “I remember now. Adelaide has a purple finch. It helped us down the apple tree in Thirsby Square. She called it—Lila, right?”

Oliver nodded. “Mine's called Keats. Father named him after his favorite human poet.”

Lottie bit her lip, then scooted in more confidentially. Oliver had reached the end of the log by now and had nowhere left to scoot. His eyes shifted to an apprehensive golden shade.

“Do you know how to use yours?” he asked her.

Lottie nodded. Then she paused. Then she shook her head. “But I'm going to learn.”

“You'll learn fast,” Oliver said. “It's not that hard. Gengas are very intuitive to their owners, you know. All of us are born with one. No one really knows how it happens,
but we need gengas. They're what connect us to the magic in Limn; they help us to sense it and use it. They help us to travel by tree. Only gengas can tell us which branch of an apple tree is a silver bough—that's the bough we have to pull to make an apple tree work. And, well, they're just nice to have around. I always feel much happier when my genga is flying.”

Lottie remembered the white finch back in Thirsby Square. She nodded. She thought she understood what Oliver meant.

“Gengas can do other things, too,” said Oliver. “Some are extremely talented. But you've got time to figure out what yours can and can't do.”

Lottie glanced down at the little lump in her pocket. Oh, the time she could spend just imagining what Trouble might be able to do!