The Water and the Wild

by Katie Elise Ormsbee

  “You don’t believe me yet,” Mr. Wilfer said. “I understand. This is hardly the ideal way to tell you everything, all at once. I hadn’t even intended for you to root shoot until your sixteenth birthday.”

  “Did my letter change your mind?”

  “That,” said Mr. Wilfer, “and something else. Something complicated.”

  Lottie wasn’t much in the mood for complications. Eliot was what mattered.

  “All right,” she said. “Say I believe you, Mr. Wilfer, and all of this business about cooking up medicines. If it’s true, then I can’t go back to Thirsby Square. Not until I’ve got a cure for Eliot.”

  “That is what I expected,” said Mr. Wilfer. “I’ve made all the arrangements to have you stay with us for however long it takes.”

  “It can’t take long,” Lottie whispered. “There isn’t much time.”

  Mr. Wilfer looked Lottie straight in the eye. She had never seen a man—not even Mr. Walsch on his worst day in the calligraphy office—look so tired as Mr. Wilfer did at this moment. Still, Lottie could not help but ask the question.

  “What’s the final ingredient for the Otherwise Incurable?”

  “It is late,” said Mr. Wilfer, “and both you and I are weary. Adelaide will show you to bed. In the morning, we will revisit this conversation.”

  “But—” protested Lottie.

  “This,” Mr. Wilfer assured her, “is better.”

  When Lottie emerged from the laboratory, Mr. Wilfer instructed a waiting Adelaide to take their guest to a bedroom on the second floor, at the tip-top of the foyer’s spiral staircase. Oliver was nowhere to be seen, which was disappointing. Even though his poetry quoting and eye color changing were more than a little strange, Lottie had decided that she liked the sly-faced boy. She also would have much preferred Oliver to Adelaide as her guide through the house called Iris Gate. The entire journey up the stairs, Adelaide spouted off boring facts and corrections as though she were preparing Lottie for a short-answer quiz at Kemble School.

  “The banister is very old,” she said solemnly. “The wood was a gift from the Southerly Court to our great-great-grandfather as a token of friendship. So don’t clutch it so hard, please. Oh, and be careful walking on the hall rug. It’s fine wisp-weaved, practically antique. I should’ve asked you to take off your shoes. You clomp so carelessly. I guess that’s a human trait.”

  Lottie was annoyed, but she said nothing. Mr. Wilfer was offering her a chance to save Eliot, after all, and she was a guest in Adelaide’s house.

  The guest bedroom was smaller than any of the other rooms that Lottie had seen, but it was still terrifyingly large for a bedroom, and Lottie had begun to suspect that perhaps she had shrunk during her bumpy tree ride here. The room’s vaulted ceiling towered over a lush-carpeted floor, and a marble fireplace yawned in one corner next to a big canopied bed.

  “Father said you might be coming one day soon,” Adelaide said, tugging down the bed’s duvet, “so I made some arrangements. You should sleep like a changeling.”

  She pointed out a neatly stacked pile of clothes. “Those are mine. They’ll be a little long on you,” Adelaide eyed down the good six-inch difference between her and Lottie, “but they’re still better than what you’ve got on.”

  Lottie did not particularly like having her wardrobe under attack. She put up with enough of those remarks from Pen Bloomfield without Adelaide’s contributions.

  “That’s so awfully good of you,” Lottie said in a very awful way.

  Adelaide blew a puff of air through her lips and rolled her eyes.

  “It was a thrill,” she said, sounding anything but thrilled. “There’s an adjoining bathroom just there, and if you need anything, I’m the next door down.”

  Lottie nodded, already certain that she would much rather do without something than ask her snotty hostess—who was still lingering in the doorway.

  “All right, thanks,” said Lottie, hoping that Adelaide would take the hint and leave.

  But still Adelaide stood in the threshold, hard-faced.

  “Lottie,” she said, the venom-sweetness gone from her voice, “do you really need that medicine?”

  “I told you I did,” said Lottie. “That’s the whole reason you brought me here, isn’t it?”

  Adelaide shook her head. “You don’t understand. Father hasn’t been making it for you. He’s been making it for someone else. Someone more important than you.”

  “Who?”

  “King Starkling,” Adelaide whispered, her voice chilled. “He’s the ruler of the sprites. Ruler of the Southerly sprites, that is—and they’re the only sprites that really matter. If Father gives the medicine to you instead of the king, he’ll be in the worst sort of trouble.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Lottie. “If some king wants it, then why would Mr. Wilfer tell me—”

  “Because he’s a good person!” cried Adelaide. “And because you’re a Fiske.”

  “What does that mean?” demanded Lottie. “What’s so fantastic about being a Fiske?”

  Adelaide wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you know?”

  Lottie shook her head. Adelaide sighed. Her eyes dropped, her shoulders slumped, and Lottie knew that she had won the argument. She just didn’t know what the argument had been about.

  “Look,” said Lottie. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I just want to save Eliot. Then I’ll leave you alone, I promise.”

  Lottie thought this would make Adelaide happy. Instead, Adelaide stiffened.

  “Fine,” she spat. “Go ahead and do it. Take the medicine. You’re so selfish!”

  With that, the door slammed shut. Lottie stared at it for a full minute. Numbness, like a worm, had inched into her ribs, coiled its way around them, and now prevented Lottie from feeling anything.

  She peered into the adjoining bathroom, which looked just like a normal bathroom from back in New Kemble, except that the faucet was lined with pearls and a glass chandelier hung directly over the toilet. Though she was tired, even more so Lottie felt dirty from biking in rain all day, avoiding death by tree, and traveling underground or upground, or however it was that she’d gotten to this place. She peeled off her clothes and climbed into the shower. As the hot water streamed down on her, the numbness began to unwind itself from Lottie’s ribs, and she began to properly think and feel again.

  Could she really believe any of it? That she had fallen down a tree into another world? Lottie looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She pressed her thumb to her perfectly smooth forehead, which showed no trace of a scab or a scar. Mr. Wilfer’s medicine had made that wound better. He could make Eliot better, too. Whatever else she believed, Lottie had to believe there was a cure.

  Lottie tried on the nightgown that Adelaide had left her. It pooled past her toes and cinched her at the waist, and the frills along the cuffs and collar scratched her skin. She grunted and pulled the gown off, deciding she preferred her old clothes, dirty and damp as they were.

  Lottie fell back onto the giant canopy bed, but she could not possibly sleep at a time like this.

  There were questions that Mr. Wilfer had left unanswered, but that didn’t mean Lottie couldn’t try to answer them for herself. She laced Eliot’s sturdy green sneakers back on and then sat down by her door, counting off minutes and listening closely for any movement outside. Each time she thought it might be safe to crack the door open, though, she swore she heard a rustle or a scamper or a flitter in the hallway, and she would have to start counting over. Perhaps she was so tired that she was simply hearing things, but Lottie didn’t want to risk getting caught.

  At last, convinced that it had been dead silent outside her room for more than an hour, Lottie stretched out her tired legs, creaked open the door, and, after glancing left and right a total of five times, crept out. It was so dark in the corridor that she could not make out the end of the hallway. Deep shadows hit her feet as she padded down the passageway to the spiral stairs.
r />   Then Lottie felt something rush by. The air went cold beside her, and something ever so slightly brushed her cheek. She bit the inside of her lip, trapping in a yelp, and scampered all the way down the winding staircase. The foyer was empty, and that gaping archway at the end of it looked larger and more like a hungry mouth than ever. Lottie wanted very much to run back up the stairs and jump back into that comfy canopy bed. She simply couldn’t, though, because she’d already come so far and was now only a nose’s breadth away from the laboratory doors.

  Lottie glanced around, swallowed, and tried a door handle. It was locked. She cursed under her breath. The foyer echoed the bad word back, making Lottie blush. Steeling herself, she tried the handle of the other door. This one obligingly gave way. Lottie slipped inside the laboratory. She walked briskly down the long, drafty room, careful not to sneeze at the clouds of dust circling her or to look around at those looming vials and instruments lest she frighten herself. At last, she reached the second set of doors and, remembering her previous luck, tried the left door first. The handle slipped down, the door creaked open, and Lottie was back in Mr. Wilfer’s study.

  The room was far less cheery now that the fire had died out, but moonlight streamed in from a row of curtainless windows, and its light was bright enough to show that the study was a wreck. Since Lottie had last been there, desk drawers had been opened and dozens upon dozens of papers scattered on the floor. There were discarded vials, too, some broken, some unstopped, and all of them empty. There was one vial, however, that remained unstopped and unbroken. The vial marked Otherwise Incurable sat inside the glass case on the mantel of the darkened fireplace. Lottie crept closer, staring at the anxious red liquid in the medicine vial. She found that if she looked very closely, the liquid almost seemed to be looking back at her, like it was waiting for something to happen, waiting for her to do something.

  She reached for the glass case.

  “Looking for something?”

  Lottie’s breath hitched. She turned around. There, on Mr. Wilfer’s desk, sat Adelaide Wilfer, blue eyes cold as windowpane frost.

  “Come to steal Father’s medicine, have you?”

  “I—” stammered Lottie.

  Adelaide jumped from the desk and approached Lottie with frightening speed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she hissed. “I knew you were no good the moment I set eyes on you!”

  Lottie backed away. “I just wanted to look around!” she insisted.

  Adelaide’s eyes narrowed. “You could be charged before the Southerly Guard for snoopery and attempted thievery!”

  “I’m not a thief!” Lottie shouted. “And so what if I’m snooping? What would you do if your best friend was—dying?”

  She’d done it. She’d managed to say the word. Dying. That’s what was happening to Eliot. Now that she’d said it, though, Lottie didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment, just a sensation like her heart was being shredded by a cheese grater.

  “I’d act with a little more dignity,” said Adelaide. “That’s what I’d do. Father has shown you nothing but kindness. Who’s the one who sent you all those birthday gifts? Who promised to help your stupid friend? Who welcomed you into our house? Who’s putting his life in danger for you? And how do you repay him? By stealing. Disgusting! Do all humans have as little self-respect as you?”

  Lottie searched for words, but none came. She’d told Adelaide the truth, and even if she could come up with another explanation, Adelaide wouldn’t listen.

  “You followed me,” Lottie said, remembering the brush of cool air on the stairwell. “How could you have heard me? I was so quiet.”

  “No,” Adelaide said. “You weren’t.”

  Neither she nor Lottie said anything more. Adelaide only took Lottie by the arm and, with a grip much stronger than Lottie expected, pulled her back through the house, all the way up to the guest bedroom.

  “Just because Father trusts you doesn’t mean I do,” hissed Adelaide, pushing Lottie into the guest bedroom and slamming the door shut. “Just try stealing from us now!”

  Lottie heard the telltale click of metal slipping against metal. Adelaide had locked her inside the bedroom. Even though Lottie knew that pounding her fist against the door would do nothing to unlock it, she still pounded, each time harder than before.

  “Adelaide, let me out! I’m not a thief!”

  Adelaide did not answer.

  Lottie began to feel an all-too-familiar tightening in her sides. She was getting a bad spell. She sank to the ground, setting her head down between her knees, and hugged her ankles tightly, willing away the white splotches that appeared on the insides of her eyelids. Fight it, thought Lottie. Don’t give in. Fight . . .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Fife

  THWOCK.

  THWACK.

  THWOCK.

  Lottie opened her eyes to a room full of pale light. The first thing she became aware of was that her arm, the arm she had slumped atop when she had drifted to sleep on the floor the night before, was horribly sore. The next things were that a window was open, its shutters were thwack-thwocking in the wind, and on the window ledge sat a boy who was grinning at Lottie.

  “Hallo,” said the boy before somersaulting onto the floor.

  A shock of black hair, green eyes, and a mad grin were now just a foot from Lottie’s nose.

  “Are you a robber?” asked the boy. Then he stuck his tongue out at Lottie. Though he wasn’t exactly sticking his tongue out at her; he was just sticking his tongue out, as if he expected to catch a falling snowflake upon it.

  “I’m not a robber,” Lottie said.

  “That’s good news. Always a smart idea to check. Nice to meet you, then.” He clapped his hands and then offered one of them to Lottie. When she didn’t take it, his eyes darted between his hand and her face. “Oh. I see you’ve met Ollie.”

  “How do you know Oliver?”

  “He’s my best friend,” said the boy, jolting up so that he was squatting on the balls of his feet. “Anyway, you haven’t met me. I’m Fife Dulcet.”

  “Lottie Fiske.”

  Lottie wondered straightaway if that had been wise to say. She might not be a robber, but who was to say that this boy wasn’t one—or something worse? Mrs. Yates had taught her not to give her name to strangers. But then, Lottie had been doing a lot of things lately of which Mrs. Yates would not approve.

  Fife, in the meantime, had fallen onto his backside. He let out a low, wondering whistle.

  “A Fiske!” he cried. “From Earth!”

  “I’m from New Kemble,” Lottie tried to explain.

  Fife didn’t seem to be listening. He leapt over Lottie and jiggled the door handle.

  “What’s this?” he asked. “Who’s locked you in?”

  “Adelaide,” grumbled Lottie, wiping sleep from her eyes and stumbling to her feet.

  Fife guffawed. “Ah-del-aide,” he said in an upper-crust drawl. “So you’ve met her, too.”

  “Yes, and I wish I hadn’t,” said Lottie. “She’s awful.”

  “You’re not alone in that sentiment, Lottie Fiske,” Fife said, patting her on the back. “Ada’s a few airs short of a charmer.”

  “She called me unrefined.”

  “Oh, she calls me that all the time,” Fife said with a dismissive wave. “Consider yourself in good company.”

  “Does she criticize your clothes, too?”

  “Constantly,” Fife said, looking around the room and settling his sights on the window. “There are a few rules to keep in mind when you come to play at the Wilfers: (a) Don’t roughhouse with Ollie, and (b) Don’t take anything Adelaide says personally. Simple as that.” He frowned in contemplation. “Well, I might add (c) Don’t ever combine beet root with pure extract of wishful thinking. It might cure a headache, but it gives you some ghastly bloating.”

  “Oh.” Lottie nodded uncertainly.

  “Mm. Well, enough of that. I bet you’re itching with cabin fever. Lucky for you, I’ve got us a
n escape route.”

  He pointed to the open window.

  “What?” Lottie shook her head. “Oh no. No, no. I’ve had enough of going out windows.”

  “Tush,” said Fife. “I’m sure it’s just that you haven’t done it properly. Not like this.”

  Fife ran toward the window and leapt right out of the room and out of sight.

  Lottie shrieked. She dashed to the ledge, afraid that she was going to find little bits of Fife scattered all over the garden path below. Instead, she bonked foreheads with the boy, who was hovering cross-legged just beneath the windowsill.

  “Ow.” Lottie rubbed her head. Then her stomach rumbled, and she remembered that she hadn’t had supper last night.

  The window didn’t look quite so bad as it had before. Fife was smiling at her, and she ventured a smile back.

  “Judging from your awed reaction,” said Fife, “I’m guessing Ada didn’t do anything like that.”

  “No,” Lottie said. “We climbed down a tree in Thirsby Square.”

  “What?” cried Fife. “Climbed down a tree with your bare hands? How barbaric. You’re much safer with me. C’mon.”

  Fife reached up and caught a fistful of Lottie’s hair.

  Lottie yelped. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ve got to hold on to you for it to work. Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Why don’t you take this instead,” Lottie suggested, wiggling her fingers at him.

  “Now she gives me her hand,” sighed Fife.

  Fife let go of Lottie’s hair and instead folded his fingers through hers. Then he pulled her straight out of the window. Though the guest room was only on the second floor, the two of them had a considerable distance to go down (the house did have very high ceilings, after all), and down they went.

  It was a thrilling descent for Lottie. First of all, she’d never floated through midair and, second, no boy—not even Eliot—had ever held her hand quite so tightly as Fife was holding hers now. They sped closer and closer to the ground until, not quite knowing how, Lottie found her nose buried in a flower bed of irises.