The Water and the Wild (31 page)

“They look smaller than I remember them,” said Adelaide. “Last time Father brought us here, Ollie and I were little. We didn't stay for long. Father said the court wasn't a good place for children.”

“He said,” murmured Oliver, “that the court wasn't a good place for
anyone
.”

Fife had begun to add his own two cents about the Southerly Court when a harsh, brassy blast swallowed his words up. The sound grew louder, low and insistent. It was the sound of horns, and of something more, like a dozen harps whose full sets of strings had all been plucked at once. The noise was unforgiving and final. Then, just as soon as it had started, it stopped.

“What
was
that?” asked Fife.

Adelaide was bent over, hands clenched to her ears. “Is it over?” she shouted.

The others nodded. Adelaide straightened back up, eyes watering, and for the first time Lottie considered the fact that if a sound was painful to her own normal sense of hearing, it must have been doubly so to Adelaide's.

“It's the changing of the Southerly Guard,” said Oliver, his eyes dimming. “It means that we're too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?” said Lottie.

“He means it's too late to enter the court tonight,” Adelaide sighed. “Isn't that right?”

“The gates close at dusk and open at dawn,” Oliver said with a nod. “We've just missed them.”

“So now we've got to wait until morning?” Lottie said.

“There's nothing else to do,” Fife said glumly.

“It isn't right,” said Adelaide. “Father is so close.”

But, as Fife had already pointed out, there was nothing else that they could do, and night was coming on fast. They backtracked deeper into the wood, where the trees were thicker and provided better shelter, and made camp for the night. Oliver began a fire with brittle pinecones.

“If we're so close to court,” said Lottie, “won't the Southerly Guard be able to see the campfire smoke?”

“Travelers camp outside the court every night,” said Oliver. “I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary to see smoke around here.”

“Oi,” Fife said suddenly, squinting at Adelaide through the firelight. “Ada, what've you got there on your neck?”

Adelaide clamped her hand over her neck, but not before Lottie saw an ugly red mark that Adelaide's long hair had covered until now.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Adelaide said.

“Yes, you do,” insisted Fife, pointing. “You've got to. Lookit! Right there. It's all red, like a blister. Doesn't it hurt?”

“It's nothing.”

“It's not nothing! What, did one of those swamp flames get you, too?” Fife swooped his hand down his cheek to show off his own scar. “They can leave some mighty fierce scars. Did it hurt?”

Oliver hurled a pinecone into the fire and got to his feet, skulking into the wood without a word. Adelaide glared at Fife.

“It was an accident,” she hissed. “Oliver didn't see me out there in the swamp when we were dragging Lottie out of the oblivion. I caught him by surprise, and when he turned around, his hand just—” Adelaide motioned helplessly to her neck.

Fife straightened up. “Oberon. I didn't know. I swear I didn't.”

“You're worse than unrefined, Fife,” Adelaide whispered, getting up. “You're just a—a
fool
.”

Adelaide disappeared into the forest after her brother.

Fife held a sprig of pine needles that he now savagely ripped down to an ugly switch. Lottie nudged his shoulder.

“Don't worry,” she said. “Oliver can't possibly blame himself for—well, for
pigmenting
Adelaide. It was just an accident.”

“Of course he blames himself. Don't you think he blames himself for
that
?” Fife pointed at Lottie's arm.

She pushed back her sleeve, expecting to see the imprint of Oliver's hand.

It was gone.

Lottie gave a short gasp. She turned her arm over entirely, but she saw nothing but clean, unmarked skin. The handprint had vanished entirely.

Fife hadn't noticed Lottie's distraction. “He blames himself for everything,” he said, “especially when it comes to family.”

Lottie hastily pushed down her sleeve and looked back up. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you think Ollie's keen is fluked like it is?” Fife said. “He was born early. Way too early. His mother died because of it.”

Lottie felt weak. “I didn't know that,” she whispered.

She rubbed her arm and wished that she had never thought an ill thing about Oliver and his poetry.

“I think you should,” said Fife. “Just don't let Ollie know I told you, all right? People say it left Mr. Wilfer in a really bad way. Even Ada doesn't ever mention it.”

Fife sighed and tossed his switch into the fire. “I'm going to try to apologize, make things up. Will you be all right here?”

“I'll be fine,” said Lottie, even though she wasn't thrilled about the idea of sitting alone in the dark forest. Then, before she could stop herself, she asked, “Will you use your keen on him?”

Fife froze. “What?”

“I just guessed, with your keen, you must have the nicest-worded apologies.”

“Look,” said Fife, “I know you're still weirded out by my keen and all. That's fine. But for the record, there are some circumstances that a self-respecting sprite would never use his keen on. Apologizing? That's one of them.”

Fife headed the way of Oliver and Adelaide until he, too, was swallowed up behind branches.

Lottie scooted closer to the fire. She pushed back her sleeve again and stared at the place where the mark of Oliver's handprint had once been.

There was a faint rustling of Lottie's coat against her leg. She drew her eyes away from her arm to her coat pocket. She tugged out Trouble, cupping him close in both hands.

“You've been naughty recently,” she informed him.

Trouble gave an unconcerned tweet. He blinked rapidly at Lottie and nudged his beak against her thumb.

“We're almost there, you know,” she said. “We'll be in the Southerly Court tomorrow.”

He gave a single chirp in response. Lottie yawned.

“If I fall asleep,” she murmured, “will you keep watch?”

Trouble's black eyes glistened. He bobbed his head once. Lottie smiled sleepily in return.

Her eyes burned with tiredness, and she sank her nose onto her knees, head whirling with a stew of words and images: oblivion and webs and heirs and keens and seamstresses and her parents' photograph and the Otherwise Incurable and apple trees and a lone white finch.

She was back at the Barmy Badger. Eliot was in bed, sleeping, his uneven snores broken up occasionally by a hoarse cough. Mr. Walsch sat by Eliot's bedside, his head dropped in his hands, and Lottie could not tell if he was sleeping or weeping.

“Mr. Walsch,” she said, reaching for the man's slumped shoulders.

It did no good. Mr. Walsch could not hear her. Still, she spoke again.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I
am
coming back, I am!”

Mr. Walsch turned to face her.

But he was no longer Mr. Walsch.

His eyes shone greedily up at her, two silver pinpricks. Then his lips curled back in a snarl.

“She is the Heir of Fiske,” growled a voice.

“She belongs to the Northerlies,” said another.

“The Heir of Fiske!” both voices said in unison. “The Heir of Fiske!”

Lottie let out a cry and dove into the bed to escape the voices. But it was no longer Eliot under the covers. A cold, sneering face stared out at her from where Eliot had been lying. It was the face of Mr. Grissom.

“I don't understand!” Lottie said, but she could not hear her own screams.

She woke to the sound of voices.

“I still think we should tell her.”

Lottie gripped the grass about her face and peered up. It was dim morning. The fire had died out, and dew beaded the sleeves of her tweed coat. Though she was lying on her side, chilled through with cold, Lottie's hand pulsed with something dry and warm.
Trouble
. He was roosting happily on her palm. Lottie's eyes rested on him, and he gave a low, sleepy chirp. She closed her hand gently around the tiny black bird and carefully tucked him into her pocket.

The voices that had woken her now continued. Fife, Adelaide, and Oliver stood only a few feet off, their backs turned to her, talking in hushed tones.

“When we've gotten this far?” said Adelaide. “What good would that do, Fife?”

“I dunno, I just feel guilty about it.”

“Oh, honestly,” said Adelaide, “someone as unrefined as you talking about
conscience
. None of us should feel the least bit guilty. Father is in real trouble. Oliver and I can't possibly get on without him and neither can you, Fife. Who else is going to teach healing to a halfling?”

“We wouldn't have settled on this,” said Oliver, “if we thought Lottie wouldn't be safe.”

“If you plead before court, you've got to have something to plead with,” said Adelaide. “We all know that. We settled on it at the inn.”

“Yeah,” said Fife, “but what if Starkling doesn't agree to the trade?”

“He will,” said Oliver. “He has to. Otherwise, you know what'll happen to Father. He can't make the medicine from scratch in the time Grissom gave him. He'll be sentenced to death. Either we give up the medicine, or we lose him.”

“If it seems like Lottie suspects something,” said Adelaide, “one of us can just tell her—”

“No, we'll tell her before then,” said Oliver. “I don't like keeping it from her now, but I think that if we explain things when we reach the court, she'll agree. She's got to. Lottie's good. She'll see reason.”

Adelaide was the first to turn around at the sound of Lottie's approach. Her frowning face went ashen.

“O-o-ooh,” she gasped.

Lottie looked from Adelaide to Oliver to Fife. They were going to let Eliot die.

“It was all a trick.”

No one replied. They were going to take the medicine. She would have nothing to bring back,
nothing
. All she could feel was dry despair, and anger.

“You were lying all this time,” said Lottie. “You didn't plan to let me save Eliot at all. You're going to give up the Otherwise Incurable to the Southerly King.”

“No!” said Oliver, breaking from the circle and reaching out toward her. “It's not like that. Lottie, please understand, it's
our father
—”

“Get away from me,” Lottie said. “Don't
touch
me!”

Oliver went still, and Lottie realized too late what she
had said to turn his eyes that painful gray. He closed his shaking palms and lowered his head.

Lottie had thought they'd been friends. She had thought they'd understood each other. Now she wasn't sure if her words could even hurt Oliver. Maybe, even now, he was just playacting at being hurt, just like he had at helping her rescue Eliot.

“See! This is why we weren't going to tell her,” said Adelaide.

“Lottie,” said Fife. “Let us explain.”

Lottie shook her head, trembling. “I trusted you all.”

“But could we trust you?” asked Adelaide, holding up the green scarf, still bundled around the precious bottle. “You were trying to take the Otherwise Incurable every chance you got: at Iris Gate, at Ingle Inn, maybe even in Sweetwater! All you could go on about was getting back home. Did you even think about us? Our house overtaken, our father imprisoned, our good name slandered, and all because of
you
. But no, Lottie, from the famed house of Fiske, all you could think about was your stupid friend. There are more important things in this world than your precious Eliot!”

And in that moment, Adelaide's face looked no different from Pen Bloomfield's. Lottie lunged at Adelaide, fists first, and rammed her onto the mossy ground.