The Water and the Wild (27 page)

“I heard they suck your soul out of the soles of your feet,” Adelaide whispered.

“That's just Southerly garbage,” said Fife.

“But what
are
the flames?” Lottie asked.

There was such a long silence that Lottie thought Fife might not have heard her.

“They're wisps,” he finally said.

“What?”

“They're bad wisps. Criminals. When wisps are found guilty for crimes, they're disembodied down to their flames and sent to the swamp to live.”

“You mean,” Lottie said, trying to keep her stomach in its proper place, “we're walking through a jail?”

“More or less,” said Fife. “See, the prisoners want their old bodies back, but since they can't get those, they'll settle for anyone's; that's the only way they can ever escape the swamp. They stay on the edges of Sweetwater, where the oblivion's strongest. If you wander that way, the oblivion water will drive you so stark raving mad that whichever wisp is quickest can steal your body and rekindle it for its own. That's the only way prisoners get their freedom around here.”

“What a brutish penitentiary system,” whispered Adelaide.

“We don't all believe in dungeons and fifthing like the Southerlies do,” Fife said coolly. “Now, let's get this over with.”

Under Fife's lamplight, the webs shone bright, thin and translucent as lightbulb filament. They hung so close to the earth now that if Lottie had bent, her hands could have skimmed the swampy waters. Not that Lottie would do something as thoughtless as that. She was trying, instead, to come up with a
one thing
to focus on. The image flashed, once only but vivid, across her mind. She thought of Eliot's ceiling, of the deep blue sky and yellow stars that he had painted, and the way in which they swirled about ye ol' porthole. Yes, that is what she would concentrate on: Eliot's painting. She would think of the rough grain of Eliot's ceiling and the smell of fresh paint, and not on the sleepy, sugary scent misting up from below.

“It'll be all right,” said Oliver, turning back with reassuring blue eyes. “We are called, we must go. Laid low, very low, in the dark we must lie.”

“Ollie, please, not poetry,” sniffled Adelaide. “Not now. It's tough enough to walk a straight line.”

Adelaide really was having trouble walking. She wobbled at every step, her oversized satchel vise-gripped in her arms. Her breaths had become little more than unsteady coughs and heaves.

“Just think about your one thing!” Fife called back.

Suddenly, Adelaide stopped walking altogether.

“I can't do this,” she choked. “I can't do it anymore.”

“Yes, you can,” said Lottie, inching to Adelaide's side. “Fife says we just have to—”

“Fife doesn't know what he's talking about!”

“Here,” said Lottie, an idea lighting on her, “why don't you let me carry the satchel?”

“W-would you?” Adelaide stopped mid step. “I think that might help. Yes, I think that'd help.”

Carefully, Adelaide lumped the bulging bag into Lottie's arms, while Oliver and Fife went on ahead, oblivious to the exchange.

“That's better,” Adelaide told Lottie. “Much better. Thanks.”

“Sure,” said Lottie. “Now, let's get to the end of the swamp, huh?”

Only, Adelaide was not listening. Adelaide was not even standing where she had been just a split second before. She was running,
running
across the webbings—not forward, but outward, toward the edge of the swamp.

“Fife!” Lottie cried. “Oliver!”

But the boys must have been too far ahead, or some eerie magic over the swamp was too thick, because they did not turn at her call. So Lottie ran after Adelaide.

“Adelaide!” Lottie leapt across the web, from string to string. “Adelaide, come back!”

To Lottie's surprise, Adelaide stopped running. She turned back, her face tear-streaked in the moonlight.

“I can't do it anymore,” Adelaide whispered. “Don't you see? We're never going to get to the other side.”

“Yes, we are,” Lottie said gently, even though she felt a jittery lurch inside. “You're just not thinking of your one thing.”

Lottie realized as she said it that
she
wasn't thinking of her one thing, either.

“You know what my one thing is?” Adelaide said. “Father. All I can think of is getting Father safe, and all I can think of is how we never, ever will!”

Lottie stretched out a hand toward Adelaide. “We
will
. We're going to save your father, and we're going to save Eliot, too.”

Adelaide slapped away Lottie's hand. She was staring at her suspiciously. “Why did you offer to take my satchel?”

“Wh-what? What do you mean? I took it because you were tired, because—”

Adelaide gasped. “You took it because the Otherwise Incurable's inside, didn't you?
Didn't you?
”

“Of course not!”

“YOU DID!” Adelaide was hysterical. “Give it back! Give me the satchel back!”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Lottie said, stepping back. For the first time, her balance on the webbings wavered. “Something's wrong with you, Adelaide. I—I think the oblivion is getting to you.”

“Give it!” Adelaide shrieked.

“Fine!” said Lottie. She tossed the satchel to Adelaide, but it wasn't a very good throw. Her limbs felt strangely heavy. “There. You can have it.”

Adelaide caught the satchel. Immediately, she rummaged through it. “Where is it?” she demanded. “What did you do with the medicine? Where is it? Wait! Here.
Here
it is.”

Lottie gave an unwanted yawn. She tried to take another step, but her knee buckled and she fell, her shoulders catching in a thick curve of web. A scent began
to wrap around Lottie, thick and musty. She wiped at her blurring eyes. Flashes of green flame bobbed into the border of her vision.
Wisps
. She had fallen to the edge of the webbings.

Lottie shivered and felt a numbing sensation rushing up her neck. She tried to move her arms, but found that they were plastered down to the web in a cold and sticky hold. Beneath her, dark water churned and rippled. Green flames hovered closer.

Lottie tried to wrench herself free. She took big gulps of breath but only ended up sucking in more of that dizzying, musty-sweet scent. The green flames came closer still, pulsing nearer and nearer to where Lottie lay trapped.

“Stay back,” Lottie whispered. “Stay away.”

The flames did not listen. They loomed closer. Lottie's eyelids were itchy and her nose stopped up. Then her feet began to grow cold and heavy. Something wet was creeping up her legs. Lottie felt herself slipping out of the bindings of the web and into the the river. It was warm, so warm, and she was tired, so tired. The sweet smell grew stronger.

The last thing that she remembered was the sound of her own name.

“LOTTIE!”

Lottie's eyes snapped open. She coughed a warm, sweet liquid from her throat.

“She's all right,” said a shrill voice. “Fife, get over here!”

Lottie heard herself say, “Riddle larks and crackers?”

She tensed, staring up at Adelaide's face in alarm. What she had meant to say was “Where are Fife and Oliver?”

She did not have to wonder for long. The boys came into view, one behind each of Adelaide's shoulders.

“All hail the conquering heroine!” cried Fife.

Lottie moaned and shifted, and for a moment she panicked. She was still caught in a web, just as she had been before she had passed out. But there were no green flames here, no heady scents. The air smelled blank and crisp.

“The oblivion's just addled her brain,” Fife said, pressing a hand to Lottie's forehead. “It'll wear off in a little while. If we hadn't lost the satchel back there, we could've given her some food to help soak it out of her system.”

They had lost the satchel? Lottie sputtered out some of the remaining sweet taste from her mouth.

“Where's the Otherwise Incurable?” she tried to ask, which came out instead as “Whippersnapper on the fourth, why can't you, please?”

Fife snickered. Adelaide slapped him on the shoulder.

“This is your fault, you idiot,” she said. “I told you we shouldn't have gone through the swamp.”

“We voted on it,” Oliver reminded Adelaide.

“And we're alive aren't we?” said Fife. “No thanks to you, Miss Priss. It was
my
genga that chirped us to safety. If anyone's to blame, it's you. You didn't focus on your one thing. You ran off like a scared little—”

“I wasn't scared! I was—I was confused.” Adelaide held up the scarf-wrapped vial of Otherwise Incurable in her hand. Lottie sighed in relief. Eliot's medicine was safe.

“We all were,” said Fife, “but at least Lottie had the decency to be brave.”

“I thought she was trying to steal it,” Adelaide whispered.

“Oberon,” groaned Fife. “You're so paranoid. Lottie's not a thief.”

I'm right here
, Lottie thought miserably. It seemed that just because she couldn't speak properly, no one thought she could hear, either.

Except for Oliver. He sat by Lottie's side with an intent look in his green eyes. Lottie half smiled at him. He half smiled back, glanced at the bickering Fife and Adelaide, and rolled his eyes. He shrugged as though to say, “What can you do?”

She pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around. They were under the cover of pine trees, and beneath them the swamp water had cleared and narrowed back into the placid River Lissome.

“We're out of the Sweetwater,” she said. “We're safe.”

And this time, to Lottie's great relief, those were exactly the words that came out of her mouth.

Fife and Adelaide stopped, mid bicker, and stared at her.

“Yes,” said Oliver. “We're past the swamp. The safe part, I'm not so sure about.”

Oliver's teeth chattered a bit. His bandaged arm was exposed, and Lottie could see gooseflesh puckering up his elbow.

“Where's your jacket?” she said.

“We used it to dry you off,” said Oliver. “Those flames had dragged you halfway into the water by the time we pulled you out.”

“Oh.” Lottie looked down at her chilled legs and soggy sneakers.

“Close shave, that,” said Fife, sticking his tongue out at her. “You very nearly got sucked up. Just think! If we had gotten to you a moment later, some wisp murderer could be inhabiting your body this very second. Wouldn't that be the
weirdest
thing? Creepy, too. No one would expect some nice-looking girl to be a bloodthirsty murderer.”

Lottie, who had been close to tears, now couldn't stop a smile from surfacing. The idea of one of those
green flames possessing her body was a horrible one, but somehow Fife made it sound funny. And he had called her nice-looking.

“How did we get away from them?” she asked.

“It was all Ollie, really,” said Fife. “After we pulled you out of the swamp, the oblivion started to get to us, and bad. You'd passed out, I couldn't think straight, and Adelaide was having a breakdown. But Ollie? He was the hero. I don't think the oblivion even broke his concentration. You see, that's what comes from being a poetry-quoting machine: phenomenal powers of focus.”

“You're exaggerating,” Oliver said, eyes pink. “I just kept reciting my favorite couplet, that's all.”

“Whatever,” Fife said. “Ollie could hear the gengas chirping from the other side of the swamp. So he rounded us all up and led us in the right direction till we were clear of the oblivion and the flames altogether. Now is that one for the books, or what?”

“Definitely one for the books,” said Lottie, shooting Oliver a smile. “I'd say it's poem-worthy.”

Oliver's cheeks went red. He lowered Mr. Ingle's lantern to hide his face in the shadows.