The Water and the Wild

by Katie Elise Ormsbee

  “What a fake!” Lottie and Eliot had agreed when they left the cinema. “What an absolute fake!” Actors were paid to fake things, Lottie had acknowledged, but they certainly did not need to remind the audience of it every other second. Of course, that film had been made in the 1920s, and no one acted like that anymore.

  No one, Lottie had thought, until she was introduced to Silvia Dulcet, Seamstress of the wisps.

  At her introduction, the lady inclined her head downward toward the four of them. Immediately, Silvia’s wide eyes went wider and her puckered mouth puckered further. Then, since this was real life and not a silent movie, a sound really did emit from the woman, and it was just as fake a thing as Lottie had ever heard.

  “My son!” Silvia cried. She tossed aside her needle and thread and swooped down to bundle Fife into an embrace.

  Silvia proceeded to shower Fife in kisses and breathless, enthusiastic questions that she gave him no chance to answer. By the look on Fife’s face, Lottie wasn’t sure if, given the chance, he would have answered. He remained stiff in his mother’s arms and, when finally released, did nothing more than redden and lower his head.

  “Would you just look at her?” Adelaide whispered, leaning toward Lottie in hushed awe. “They say that even the ladies of the Southerly Court take their fashion cues from Silvia Dulcet.”

  Lottie, who had been preoccupied with the fake pucker of Silvia’s lips, had not yet given consideration to her gown. But Adelaide was right: Silvia really was prettily dressed. Thick, silver-colored silk spilled off the Seamstress’ shoulders. A belt of braided flower stems hung loose across her narrow waist, and long, glassy stones slipped like tears down the gown’s floating train. Lottie would never have dared to wear something so grand even to a Kemble School dance, but it suited the Seamstress extraordinarily well.

  When she was done with Fife, Silvia became aware of his companions and asked, mouth pleasantly puckered, to be introduced. Fife sulkily obeyed. Silvia beamed at Oliver and Adelaide as Fife introduced them. Oliver looked curious and Adelaide positively terrified to make the Seamstress’ acquaintance.

  Then Fife motioned to Lottie, and Silvia’s expression changed. A frown disfigured her pretty lips. When Lottie dipped into a curtsy, following Adelaide’s example before her, she saw Silvia put her finger to her nose, as if she had just been given a difficult math problem to solve.

  “So,” said Silvia, “all of those absurd rumors are true. A Fiske child does exist.”

  Adelaide gave a small cry. Oliver, too, looked startled. Fife just slapped his hand over his face. So much for keeping her identity a secret.

  Silvia glided closer to Lottie, her head tilted. She reached out a thin, spindly-fingered hand toward Lottie’s cheek and stroked it. Her touch felt like a trickle of cold rain.

  “How do you know about me?” Lottie asked.

  Silvia lifted Lottie’s chin with her thumb.

  “Why,” she said in a soft, lazy drawl, “one can see it in your face. Such a striking resemblance. So much of her in you.”

  “You knew my mom?” Lottie asked with some difficulty.

  Silvia smiled. “I was acquainted with the House of Fiske in my time. Normally, I care very little for such things that intrigue common sprites and”—she wrinkled her carefully upturned nose—“humans. Still, I do keep up with the times. It is my privilege. It is my duty.”

  “Your duty as the queen of the wisps?” said Lottie, braver now that Silvia’s hand had left her skin.

  If Lottie had known that her question would cause Silvia to laugh—that painful sound!—she would not have asked. Even the laugh, even that was fake. It rang out hollow and deliberate, as though the “ha-ha-ha!”s themselves were conscious of being heard.

  “Seamstress of the wisps,” she corrected Lottie with an indulgent smile. “You realize, don’t you, how very important it is to address a wisp by her proper title? It would be a horror, you know, to misaddress a sculpting Gambol as a glassblower or a welding Aspen as a weaver.”

  “Dulcets sew,” Fife said helpfully. “That’s their craft.”

  “Oh,” said Lottie. “Sorry, Your Seamstress.”

  “Mm,” Silvia said. “Granted, in the old days, before the embargo, my job was more extensive than simply sewing.” She sent a sweeping gesture toward the River Lissome. “I would inspect each of our coracles on their way to the Southerly Court. It was hard work, but the ruler of the wisps must ensure the quality of exported goods!

  “And now—now all that is left for me and my brother to do is to inspect coracles piled with the dead. Now, my trade is little more than a mortician—sewing up the coffins of the plagued and sending them to their graves. It is a very thankless task.”

  “Mother,” said Fife, sounding tired, “Lottie doesn’t want to hear about your troubles. She’s got enough of her own. We all do.”

  Silvia’s eyes widened into two awful bulges.

  “What Fife is saying, Your—erm—Seamstress,” said Lottie, curtsying again for good measure, “is that we’re trying to get to the Southerly Court.”

  “And we’re having difficulties,” added Fife.

  “Yes, yes,” Silvia sighed, waving her hand. “Of course you are. You’re mere babes. Babes in the wood, with Southerly fiends and Northerly dogs chasing after you. Tragic.”

  At this, Silvia produced a teary hiccup and blotted the edge of her eyes with her silk-cuffed wrist.

  “You do know,” she said, “that the king would very much like to get ahold of your pretty friend here? A Fiske in the Southerly Court—that doesn’t sound wise.”

  Lottie hesitated. Slowly, she said, “We know it won’t be easy, but we have a plan. The others know—”

  “So,” interrupted Silvia, who looked monumentally bored, “you’ve come to me to seek safe passage through the rest of the wood, is that it?”

  “Just until we reach the edge of the Southerly Court,” said Fife. “If you remember, you promised you would—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Silvia, rolling her eyes. “I swore I’d honor any request of my son, should he return to my bower. And you have asked so little of me, Fife. Visited so little. How could I not oblige you and your darling friends with this little favor?”

  Fife looked worn. “That’s really nice of you, Mother.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Silvia. “Very well, then. You shall have what you’ve requested, sweet son of mine.”

  The sweet son of Silvia looked like he’d just been rapped on the head with a saucepan. He stared at Silvia stupidly, as though she’d begun talking in Greek and he couldn’t make sense of what he’d just heard.

  “Uh, Fife?” squeaked Adelaide, poking him in the elbow.

  Fife shook his head. “You’re joking,” he said at last.

  “Joking? Fife, darling, I do not joke. Why, you act as though I wouldn’t want to help you.” Silvia looked hurt—phenomenally hurt. “All I ask in return for my generosity is that you grant me a little tête-à-tête with your little friend here.”

  The Seamstress smiled encouragingly, and it took Lottie a few dumb moments to realize that Silvia was talking about her.

  “That’s very kind of you to offer, Your Seamstress,” said Lottie, “but we really should be getting to the Southerly Court. We’ve already lost a day, and we’re in a hurry.”

  “She’s not offering,” Fife said darkly. His fingers were clenched so tightly into his palms that Lottie was afraid that the nails would draw blood.

  Silvia’s smile broke open to reveal teeth. “No, I am not offering. I am demanding.”

  Adelaide gave a consternated cry.

  “Oh, darling girl,” Silvia said, shaking her head at Adelaide, “don’t disfigure your face in that nasty way. It’s exceedingly unbecoming. I really can’t comprehend all these glum looks. It’s not as though I’m requiring something painful from you. There are merely some things I need to discuss with the Fiske girl.”

  “Is that all you want?” said Fife. “T
o talk to Lottie?”

  “It is the price you must pay for safe passage,” said Silvia. “Unless you’d rather risk it alone back in that dangerous wood?”

  “I’m your son,” Fife whispered.

  “Yes,” said Silvia, her smile disappearing. “Had you not been my son, Fife, love, I would not have even entertained your request.”

  “Fife,” Lottie said, stepping forward. “It’s all right. I’ll have the talk with the Seamstress. It’s just a talk, after all.”

  Silvia turned from her son to Lottie. “There!” she said. “Your friend knows what’s good for her. A brief, private audience, and then we’ll all be on our way.”

  Silvia took Lottie’s hand in hers, and Lottie’s sneakers left the ground. She was floating like Silvia, though not nearly so gracefully. She had to flap her hands to keep from tumbling into a back somersault.

  “Fife,” said Silvia, “I’m sure you can entertain your guests in our absence. The Fiske child and I will be on the roof.”

  “The roof?” Lottie flapped more frantically, this time propelling herself into a front flip.

  Silvia floated higher. She pulled Lottie past the highest branch of the willow tree and upward still, until they alighted on the tightly woven glass beams atop the pergola. At her feet, Lottie could see the three small blurs that were Oliver, Adelaide, and Fife. Here, above the trees, a slivered moon spilled down its silvery beams.

  The rooftop edges were curled and chiseled into grand arabesques, and crawling white moss hung over them in cascading clumps. Down the middle of each glass beam ran thick lines of potted white soil filled with stakes of birch wood, and about the stakes hung clusters of pale, tufted flowers.

  “This is where the Halcyons, our gardeners, come to harvest their flowers,” said Silvia. “Care for some? They’re perfectly edible.”

  The Seamstress held out a cluster of the flowers between her pale pinky and thumb.

  “No thanks.” Lottie may not have made much of a dent into Spenser’s Faerie Queen, but she’d read enough of the Brothers Grimm to know that taking food from a strange woman was not advisable.

  “Let us walk,” Silvia said.

  Even up here, with only Lottie for company, Silvia strolled with measured, self-aware steps. Her chin was tipped carefully upward, as though she suspected that at any moment men with cameras might jump out from behind the flowers and take her photograph. Lottie just tried to keep up with Silvia’s long-legged steps.

  “What do you think of our territory here, Miss Fiske?” Silvia began.

  “It’s pretty,” Lottie said truthfully. “I’ve never seen grass like yours. Or trees. Where I come from, branches stay in one place.” She reconsidered this. “Generally speaking.”

  “Do you consider it a tragedy, then, that my people are dying?”

  “Yes . . . ?” Lottie wondered if this was a trick question. Silvia tilted her chin higher, expectantly, so Lottie went on.

  “I think it’s horrible. My best friend is very sick, you see, and that hurts me so much some days that I can hardly breathe to think about it. If Eliot is only one person, then to live here where so many people are suffering—that’s got to be unbearable.”

  Silvia strode to a stop. “So you will help us?”

  Lottie blinked at the Seamstress. “Beg your pardon?”

  “This is no time for false modesty, child!” Silvia cried in a most melodramatic pitch. “You are a Fiske. You are the only Fiske left alive, and you’ve come to our world at a very dark time, just like so many islanders have hoped you would. So are the rumors true, or not? Do you have the keen of the ancient Fiskes, or not? Can you command?”

  Lottie thought of what Mr. Ingle had told her back at Ingle Inn. The Fiskes’ powers, he said, had faded away over centuries and centuries. How could Silvia expect her, a halfling, to be able to do anything?

  Lottie backed up a pace. “I don’t have a keen. I’m only a halfling.”

  Silvia puckered her lips, considering this information. Then she grabbed Lottie’s right hand and yanked back her coat sleeve.

  “Impossible. You aren’t even marked.” Frowning, she looked up. “Give me an order.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Command me to do something.”

  Lottie swallowed. “Um. Turn in a circle?”

  Silvia remained still. “Another.”

  “Clap your hands.”

  Silvia did not clap her hands. She was staring at Lottie with a stunned, glassy expression.

  “I can’t command anyone,” said Lottie, feeling more confident now that, for the first time, Silvia looked unconfident. “If that’s what you’re talking about. I can’t rule like those old Fiskes used to do. I’m just Lottie.”

  Silvia dropped Lottie’s wrist. She closed her eyes, and she breathed in once—slow, long, and deep. She opened her eyes again. They looked wet in the moonlight.

  “Yes,” Silvia said. “You’re only a halfling. I had thought—my son, you know, has the abilities of a sprite. I thought it would be the same with you. Sprites have always said that the Fiske keen would return and that they would rule the Isle again. But then, sprites are exceedingly stupid. All they have is a legend.”

  “I told you,” said Lottie. “It doesn’t matter if I’m a Fiske. I’m not good for anything.”

  “No,” said Silvia, “you’re not. King Starkling will continue to rule, and my people will continue to die. All the same, I had to ask.”

  Silvia was no longer puckering her mouth. Her eyes were not wide, but only drooped and dull. For some time now, Lottie realized, the Seamstress of the wisps had been nothing but sincere.

  Silvia’s mouth quivered in a thin, bleak line. “Well, life is full of these little disappointments. My brother warned me that my hopes were foolish. He himself is in the northern territories to seek out a new cure, but I know that he will return empty-handed.”

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Lottie.

  Like the crack of a struck match, Silvia’s smile notched back in place. Whatever sliver of sincerity the great lady had just revealed was now gone. Lottie could see that even before Silvia spoke.

  “There’s nothing more that our little interview can afford me,” she said, “and I trust you won’t mention its purpose to anyone else. It’s time that you and your friends were on your way.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sweetwater

  “MY SEAMSTRESS,” said Cynbel, once Silvia had floated Lottie back down to the pergola floor, “three new corpses have arrived, in need of your needle’s attention.”

  Silvia dismissed the captain with a wave of her hand; her fingers, Lottie noticed, were trembling.

  “So,” Fife asked, “are you finally going to let us go?”

  Silvia twittered out a laugh, and the sound corkscrewed pain deep into Lottie’s ears.

  “Let you go? Cobwebs and peaseblossoms, child; by the way you talk, you would think that I was holding you all captive here!”

  “Well,” said Fife, “weren’t you?”

  Silvia smilingly ignored her son. “Cynbel was instructed to give you all provisions for the journey.”

  In answer, Adelaide raised up her satchel. A few nuts and berries came skittering from the satchel pockets, which were packed to overflowing.

  “Very good,” said Silvia. “Now kindly follow me.”

  Silvia led them down the steps of the pergola, past the white weeping willow, along the River Lissome, and into the wood itself. There were no more yews in this part of the wood, only tall birches clumped together and lining the River Lissome. Above the water and the wood hung white, netted strings. They began at the river’s edge and sprawled out and up into the darkness, forming a canopy over the forest, as wide across as the river and as thin as gossamer.

  “You know the way to the Southerly Court from here?” asked Silvia.

  “Follow the River Lissome,” said Fife. “Take it southward until the webs run aground again.”

  Silvia nodded. �
�You know the risks of the webbings, my son, but do your little friends?”

  “What are webbings?” said Lottie, and even as she asked the question she realized that those netted strings stretched before her were not strings at all. They spanned out just as a spider’s web would, in patch after patch of interwoven circles.

  “They were Dulcet the Great’s idea,” Oliver said excitedly, “when the Southerlies invaded the wood during the Liberation. Using the webbings, Northerly allies could look out and attack from above, same as the wisps. They say that Dulcet spent thirteen nights straight sewing the webs all by hand. In fact, there’s a fragment of a poem that tells about how his needle—”

  “Ollie,” Fife said. “Not the time, mate.”

  “I did promise that I would give you safe passage,” said Silvia. “Walking aloft on the webbings, you’ll be clear out of any danger of the Barghest or Southerly Guard, right up until you reach the borders of the Southerly Court.”

  “But how do we walk on webs?” asked Lottie.

  “They’re enchanted, fretful child,” said Silvia, turning up her snub nose. “You’ll be perfectly safe on them. The only thing that could possibly undo that enchantment would be for you to follow a swamp flame off your path, and I trust that none of your band would be foolish enough to do that. Now! Kisses all around, and be on your way. What a sweet sadness parting can be!”

  “Oh, positively saccharine,” muttered Fife.

  Silvia observed her son for a half moment. She stooped, ran one spindly finger down the swoop of his nose, then drew him into her arms and pressed a kiss into his hair. When Silvia backed away, hand raised in farewell, Lottie thought she saw a solitary tear glint on one of her long lashes. Of course, it could have just been Lottie’s imagination, or the shadow play of the moon and the swaying birch branches.