The Water and the Wild (23 page)

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.

“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.”

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 said, 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!”