The Water and the Wild

by Katie Elise Ormsbee

  “You do know what sort of danger you’re placing yourself in?” Silvia said, turning to Lottie. “If the king got his hands on you, I fear you’d come to a nasty end.”

  “I—I’ll be careful,” said Lottie.

  “Goodbye, Your Seamstress,” said Oliver. “Thank you for your kindness.”

  Oliver bowed, Adelaide curtsied, and Lottie forgot what she was supposed to do and ended up making an awkward curtsy-flop-trip. Fife did nothing but turn on Mr. Ingle’s lantern, hold it high, and float off, up the steady incline of the webbings over the river.

  “Well,” he said, “are we heading south or what? We’re burning moonlight.”

  Oliver and Adelaide, like Lottie, remained still. They were all eyeing the webbings with distrust.

  “Oh, c’mon,” said Fife. “You heard her: it’s completely safe.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!” said Adelaide. “You’re floating.”

  “Well, I can’t help that. You want me to hold your hand or something?”

  Adelaide’s eyes burned. “No.”

  Still, she did not move. Oliver’s eyes had turned a grainy brown, like cinnamon. He was uttering something under his breath—poetry, Lottie guessed.

  Lottie made the mistake of looking up through a wide gap in the silken webs, which climbed foot after foot into the air, high above the dark wood. It was a long way to fall. Lottie shifted her sneakers back from the riverbank. Eliot’s sneakers. Eliot. He couldn’t get any better if she didn’t move forward.

  Lottie stepped out. She placed one sneaker on the web, then the other. It was that easy. Just as Silvia had promised, the web held. Lottie did not even need to balance herself. She stood upright with perfect ease, as though she were merely taking a stroll in Skelderidge Park back home.

  “Told you,” Fife said. “Now come on, the rest of you. Are we going to the Southerly Court or not?”

  Lottie turned back to tell Silvia something. What, exactly, Lottie wasn’t sure of, even as she turned. Perhaps a “thank you” for the enchantment and the safe conduct, or an apology for not being able to do anything for the Seamstress’ plagued people, or maybe just a simple goodbye. But Lottie did not end up saying a thing. The Seamstress of the wisps was gone.

  The strands hummed with wind as the quartet walked along the webbings, over the River Lissome. Fife swooped ahead to lead the way, the light of the lantern bobbing and darting along with him. He kept well ahead of the others, his expression creased in lines that Lottie now knew meant that Fife was in no mood to talk.

  Lottie had thought that walking on webs would be a slow, arduous process of watching her every step, edging along gaps in the threading and constantly balancing and rebalancing. Instead, Lottie felt the enchantment of the webbings working on her feet; her shoes shifted and slid of their own accord, a shoot of web always firmly under her steps as she followed the webbings up a sloping incline, from just above the river water to high up in the trees. The only real difficulty turned out to be that Lottie tended to forget she was quite so high up, and each time she accidentally looked down, a sickening swash of vertigo swam up her throat.

  Lottie tried to distract her thoughts, but they kept circling back to the memory of how Silvia Dulcet had looked at her, back at the glass pergola. How could someone as important as the Seamstress of the wisps really think Lottie could be a ruler? That she could take the place of a king? Lottie, of course, knew that was a ridiculous idea. She had enough trouble making good grades at Kemble School, and Mrs. Yates had told Lottie that she wasn’t even responsible enough to own a hamster. There wasn’t a chance she could run a whole island full of sprites and will o’ the wisps and quarrels and plagues. That might be true, but the rumor was still out there, and the king still wanted her dead because of it. Lottie thought she might just agree with the Seamstress of the wisps. How stupid these sprites really could be.

  They traveled along the webbings for full hours, mostly in silence. Lottie walked alone, just behind Fife’s guiding light. She glanced back once and saw an ashen-faced Adelaide holding Oliver’s elbow.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Oliver whispered, and he placed a careful kiss on his sister’s temple.

  Adelaide, Lottie noticed, was having trouble breathing. She inhaled in short, raspy retches.

  “What if we’re too late?” Adelaide wheezed at last. “We’ve wasted so much time. King Starkling could have already held his trial. Father could already be—”

  “No,” said Oliver, his eyes a determined indigo. “We’ll get there in time.”

  The webbings had begun to dip so that now the four were no longer walking above the trees on either side of the river but alongside them. Here, birches mingled with thickly twisted pines. The grass grew green, short, and jagged, and then it disappeared completely under a siege of watery ground.

  Now black reeds edged the bank of the River Lissome, and gnarled, moss-covered conifers emerged from its waters. The river was slowly broadening, turning into swamp. The webbings, which until now had stretched as wide as the river, stretched wider still to accommodate the breadth of the darkening waters. It was a quiet swamp; there were no buzzing bugs or bellowing bullfrogs. It did not smell putrid here, as it had back in the quarantined Wisp Territory. In fact, it smelled pleasant—so pleasant that Lottie thought she ought to stop walking altogether, close her eyes, and breathe the air in. Not for too long . . .

  “None of that,” said Fife, shaking Lottie’s arm. “That’s what they’d like you to do.”

  “Who?”

  “Them.”

  Fife pointed ahead, and for a moment Lottie saw nothing but dark, rippling water. Then a green flame trembled into focus. Then another, over there! And another! There were dozens flitting this way and that, all along the edge of the swamp.

  Adelaide breathed harder. “Where are we? Are those—are those flames? Fife Dulcet, where are we?”

  “Sweetwater.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Look, I didn’t tell you we’d be passing through before because I knew you’d freak out.”

  “Well, of course I’m freaking out!” shouted Adelaide. “Sweetwater is the most dangerous place in all of Wisp Territory! Even the wisps are afraid of it!”

  “Yeah, well, the wisps are a bunch of spineless dolts,” Fife said. “Don’t be such a priss, Ada. We’ve got to go through the swamp. It’s the only way to the Southerly Court.”

  “I don’t want to,” whispered Adelaide.

  “Then go home.”

  “Stop it, Fife,” Oliver said, his voice unusually hard. “Don’t take it out on her.”

  Fife licked his lips and crossed his arms. Oliver turned to Adelaide.

  “Fife knows this territory better than the rest of us,” he said. “If going through Sweetwater is the only way, then we’ll just have to. That’s my vote. What do you think, Lottie?”

  “How is Lottie supposed to know?” Adelaide cried before Lottie so much as opened her mouth. “She doesn’t know all the horrible stories about the swamp. She doesn’t know the danger!”

  “There isn’t any danger,” said Fife, “if you pass through the right way.”

  “Oh, and I suppose that being half wisp makes you a qualified guide?” Adelaide grabbed Lottie’s hand. “Don’t let him take us there. That’s where all of the bad wisps go.”

  Lottie flustered under the stares of the others. “Is it really that bad?” she asked. “It’s just a swamp, isn’t it?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Fife. “The swamp’s filled with oblivion. You know, pure oblivion, not from concentrate.”

  “It’d help,” said Lottie, “if I knew what oblivion was.”

  “It’s dangerous stuff,” said Fife. “Gets to your brain, turns you batty.”

  “HA!” Adelaide pointed at Fife in triumph. “You just admitted it. It is dangerous!”

  “Like this entire trip of ours has been a walk in the park,” said Fife, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I’m not suggesting we take a
skinny-dip in the swamp. We walk the safe route. We’re fine if we stick to the center of the webbings, away from the banks.”

  Lottie considered all of this for a long minute.

  “I vote yes,” she decided.

  Adelaide’s face contorted, gaping and livid.

  “I’m sorry,” Lottie told her, “but it sounds like Fife knows what he’s talking about. What’s important now is getting to Mr. Wilfer as soon as possible, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t bring my father into this!” said Adelaide. “Fine, go on, then. Right down to Sweetwater, to our pretty deaths, just so Fife can show off!”

  “I’m not showing—”

  “Quiet, all of you!”

  It was the first time that Lottie had ever heard Oliver shout. The forest fell silent.

  “We voted,” said Oliver. “Three to one. That’s how we decided this, and that’s what we’re going to do. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Fife.

  Lottie looked warily over at Adelaide. “Agreed,” she said.

  “Have it your way,” mumbled Adelaide. “But don’t blame me when you’re choking in oblivion, half dead, your body stripped from your soul. No, no! On our merry way!”

  Fife had stopped paying attention to Adelaide and instead pulled Spool from his pocket. He ducked his lips against the yellow kingfisher’s back and whispered a single, indiscernible word. The genga fluttered from Fife’s hand and straight into the swampy blackness beyond.

  “I’m sending Spool ahead of us, in case we run into trouble,” said Fife.

  “Good idea,” said Oliver, reaching into his own pocket.

  Keats emerged, a blinding flurry of white feathers, and swooped toward the swamp, following Spool into the darkness. A flash of lavender followed him, trilling a shrill song—Adelaide’s genga, Lila.

  Lottie drew Trouble out of her pocket. He looked particularly small and still in her hand, and Lottie realized that he was sleeping. She poked lightly at his back.

  “Um, Trouble?”

  Trouble opened one eye. He gave a short, unhappy tweet.

  “Come on, Trouble,” Lottie whispered. “Don’t you want to go with the others?”

  Trouble closed his eye. He ducked his head and went right on sleeping.

  “Are you ignoring me?”

  She looked up and saw that Adelaide was suppressing laughter.

  “It’s okay,” said Oliver. “You’re still learning.”

  “What am I doing wrong?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” said Oliver. “Trouble just seems to be—um—”

  “Badly behaved,” said Adelaide. She sounded smug.

  Lottie felt her cheeks go red. She slipped Trouble back into her pocket.

  “Now listen up, ladies and gent,” said Fife, “’cause this is important: the key to getting through the swamp is to keep your mind focused, steady, and tuned to one thing. It doesn’t matter what. Could be a phrase, or an image—but just one thing. Simple. If your mind starts to muddle up, just remember that one thing and keep walking straight. That’s how you get through the swamp.”

  “Have you done this before, Fife?” asked Lottie.

  “Uh.” Fife licked his lower lip. “No.”

  “We’re going to die,” Adelaide said.

  “We are not going to die!” Fife snapped. “Just keep your mind focused. The deeper we go into the swamp, the more of those flames there’ll be. They can’t touch you as long as you walk straight. They’re not allowed past the swamp banks.”

  “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.