The Water and the Wild (21 page)

Birds did not chirp here. Nothing stirred or darted from brush to bush. A stink that Lottie had first thought had come from a burst toadstool by the path did not go away after she had passed by it. Instead, the stench grew stronger, so strong that her eyes stung and her tongue swelled with a heavy, salty taste.

“What is this place?” she whispered to Fife.

He looked sullenly back at her. “It's where I come from.”

“One impulse,” Oliver murmured, “from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral evil and of good, than all the sages can.”

“That's rot, Ollie,” said Fife.

“No, this
smell
is,” said Adelaide, whose words sounded thin through her daintily pinched nose.

Up ahead, a bronze archway stretched over the path. It was thick, sturdy, and ugly. It seemed so out of place in the wood that Lottie almost laughed, but the urge caught in her throat when she came close enough to read the words inscribed on the archway:

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A TERRITORY DEEMED CONDEMNED AND QUARANTINED
.

B
Y ORDER OF HIS SUPREMACY
, K
ING OF THE
S
OUTHERLY
C
OURT, ALL WISPS EXHIBITING SYMPTOMS OF THE
P
LAGUE ARE HEREBY RESTRICTED TO THE PERIMETERS OF THE
W
ISP
T
ERRITORY
. A
NY WISP, INFECTED OR OTHERWISE, TO SET FOOT IN THE
S
OUTHERLY
C
OURT OR ANY DISTRICT UNDER
S
OUTHERLY DOMINION WILL BE DULY APPREHENDED AND PUNISHED
.

“If it's under quarantine,” Lottie whispered, “then doesn't that mean we could get sick?”

“Of course not,” said Adelaide. “Ollie and I are properly inoculated against wisp strains every year. And you and Fife are immune to the Plague. All halflings are.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Now you do.” Adelaide grabbed Lottie's hand and jerked her past the quarantine notice. “Just don't mention the Plague here, and whatever you do, don't look around.”

Lottie, however, could not help but look. With an increase in that putrid smell came an increase in noise: ragged coughing, muffled moans, and shrieks that hurt Lottie's ears even more than the wisps' laughing had. The sounds came from the air, from the trees, from deep in the wood. Lottie saw lanky figures huddled into yew roots. Their green eyes had hollows around them, their black hair was flat around their faces, and their skin had gone oily and sallow. A few of them raised their spindly arms toward Lottie in a silent plea that she could not understand. Braver ones called down from the trees.

“Southerly scum!” one shouted, causing Adelaide to jump and nearly yank Lottie's shoulder clear out of its socket.

“Scum!” repeated several other voices, hoarse and discordant.

“Down with the Southerly houses!” cawed one.

“Down with all Southerlies!”

“Down with the Southerly King, the Great Enslaver!”

“The Mighty Coward!”

Adelaide buried her head into the crook of Lottie's neck.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she whimpered. “They're just too awful. Do you hear them? How can they say such dreadful things?”

Lottie winced. Adelaide's fingernails were biting into her bandaged wrist.

“What do they mean?” Lottie asked Oliver.

Oliver shook his head. “Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?”

Lottie groaned. “Oh, would you stop quoting!”

She realized only too late that the words had come out as a shout. The shout echoed, and the cries of the plagued wisps stopped. The lantern bearers turned around, all eyes fixed on Lottie as though they expected an apology. Lottie stared up at them defiantly. She
wasn't about to apologize. But as she stared harder into Cynbel's eyes, Lottie remembered with sudden vividness the time she'd had to explain to an enraged Mrs. Yates that she had smashed her prized potted gardenia with a soccer ball. It was a paralyzing memory that forced Lottie, at last, to lower her gaze.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout.”

“Very good,” said Cynbel. “Not another peep from any of you.”

They trudged on. Lottie ventured a look at Oliver. Here was the boy who had saved her from certain death in Skelderidge Park, and Lottie had yelled at him for quoting what, under other circumstances, would've been a pretty bit of poetry. What had gotten into her? The same thing, she supposed, that had gotten into her two nights ago at the Barmy Badger.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated, this time for only Oliver to hear. “Really.”

Oliver just nodded.

“Please, oh please, show mercy on a child!” cried a strangled voice from above.

A wisp in the branches clutched a pale baby to her chest. The child coughed and cried and coughed again. A hollow-eyed boy, no older than Lottie, stared down at her from another branch. She unwillingly thought of Eliot.

Adelaide tugged Lottie on. “I told you not to look, remember? Their eyes can trigger memories. Good memories or terrible ones. They use their eyes to manipulate you. The Plague is all very sad, of course it is, but there's nothing we can do about it.”

As they pressed on, the yews began to thin again, and the path grew broader. The shouts from the trees eventually died down into an uneasy quiet. In time, Lottie saw no more stares from the branches or hands stretched up from the ground. In fact, the sickly looking wisps had dwindled away altogether, and, to Lottie's great relief, so had the putrid smell.

“Where've they all gone?” Lottie asked.

“They have been cleared out,” announced Cynbel. “None of the plagued are allowed into royal territory.”

Lottie looked around. This
was
different territory. The yews were taller here. Underfoot, grass had replaced the stone path. The grass, like the yews, was pure white, and
it reached as high as Lottie's knees. The wood remained frighteningly silent. Birds still did not chirp, and all Lottie could hear was the creak of the wisps' lanterns and the swish of grass against her legs.

When their guides finally floated to a stop, it was at the threshold of a great pergola. Columns stretched ahead in two long rows, and above, beams crisscrossed in a thick latticework, so tightly woven that only the smallest chinks of sunlight shone through to the floor below. All of it, the entire pergola, was made of clear, shining glass.

Lottie gaped at the sight. She took a step toward it.

“Watch out!” cried Oliver.

But it was too late. Lottie's leg was thigh-deep in warm water. She was standing in a narrow river. Its current tugged Lottie's feet over the slippery stones below, and she flailed her arms, trying to regain her balance.

Then she was lifted up, floating. Fife's arms were around her middle.

“This is no time to take a dip, Lottie Fiske,” he scolded, lowering her to solid ground.

Lottie reddened tremendously. She even forgot to tell Fife thank you.

It was as though the river had appeared from nowhere. It was silent and slow, and so clear that Lottie could see straight through to its white stone riverbed.

“It's the River Lissome,” Adelaide whispered. “It looks so different here than it does back home.”

“That,” said Fife, “is 'cause it hasn't been tapped and tampered with by Southerly authorities.”

“What's the River Lissome?” Lottie asked, shaking out her soggy sneaker.

“It's the river that runs all through Albion Isle,” said Oliver. “It starts in the Northerly Wolds and leads straight to the Southerly Court.”

“Oh!” Lottie's eyes lit with understanding. “I think you mean Kemble River.”

“Is that what the humans call it, then?” said Fife. “How fantastically original.”

“That's how we get a lot of our energy in New Kemble,” Lottie said. “We've dammed most of the river up.”

Fife made a face like he'd just eaten a pouch full of jacks. “Suit yourselves.”

The will o' the wisps had paid no mind to their guests' conversation. Half of them had disappeared altogether
into the dim wood. Another two had floated into the great glass pergola itself. Only Cynbel remained beside them. He wore a bored expression and made no effort to add a wise word or two about the nature of the River Lissome. The two wisps who had gone inside the glass pergola now reappeared. Each whispered something into either ear of Cynbel, and then they too floated off into the wood.

“Well,” Fife said, “what did they say?”

“The Seamstress has already retired to bed,” said Cynbel. “You and your company will have to wait for an audience when she awakes this dusk.”

Fife made a honking noise. “Can't you just wake her up?” he demanded. “Titania's sake, I'm her son!”

Cynbel folded his arms severely. “And she is our Seamstress. No subject of hers would dare disrupt her dreaming.”

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?”