The Water and the Wild

by Katie Elise Ormsbee

  “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.

  “Get off! Get off!” Adelaide shrieked.

  “Don’t you dare talk about him! You know nothing about Eliot!” Lottie reeled back her fist and aimed a punch at Adelaide’s nose.

  Before she could bring the fist down, fingers wrapped around her wrist.

  “Intervention,” Fife grunted, tugging Lottie off Adelaide.

  The force of his yank sent Fife and Lottie tumbling. Under the mound of her right elbow and Fife’s messy black hair, Lottie could see Oliver standing helplessly by, his hands clutched behind his back. Lottie struggled to free her wrist from Fife and, unsuccessful, she did the first desperate thing that came to mind: she used her teeth.

  “Oberon!” Fife howled, letting go. “You’ve gone mad!”

  Lottie staggered up, panting. Then she began to run.

  “Lottie!”

  She ran faster, faster, accustomed now to leaping around brambles and over logs like a sprite. She ran into the thickening forest, never looking back.

  “Lottie!”

  On and on, never to forgive them, never to forgive them for betraying her, for lying to her. What could she possibly do without the Otherwise Incurable and without Mr. Wilfer? Eliot only had two, maybe three weeks, and she was lost in a strange wood when all she wanted was to leave this horrible world of Southerlies and Northerlies and diseases and healers and false friends.

  “LOTTIE!”

  She did not turn back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Southerly Dungeons

  LOTTIE EXPECTED every minute to hear a voice at her ear or feel a hand on her back. After all, Adelaide would be able to hear her, and Fife could surely float quickly enough to catch up. She ran on, fought a patch of thistles, sloshed down a slope of mud, but still Lottie heard and felt nothing. So, they had decided to let her go, had they? They probably thought that she would come sniveling back. Well, how little they knew her!

  The wood that had been so dark and foreboding before Lottie’s dream was now filled with morning light. An unexpectedly warm breeze swirled leaves down Lottie’s path, and the branches rang with the early chatter of squirrels. If she had not been so angry, she might have enjoyed it.

  Instead, Lottie shouted a word aloud that Mrs. Yates had grounded her for saying a month ago. It did not make her feel much better, so Lottie said the word louder and aimed a kick at a nearby bush, which turned out to be hiding a particularly large rock. Lottie said the word five more times, howling and hopping in pain. Then she limped on, feeling worn and wicked.

  The Southerly Court had been close back at the campfire; Lottie had seen it with her own eyes. But that had been before she ran away heedlessly. Now she was smacking into tree branches and untangling her way through shrubberies with no sign of a wall in the distance. Lottie blamed it on her awful sense of direction, and the more she wandered the more her old eight-year-old fear bubbled up. The others could waltz right up to the Southerly King, trade the medicine he wanted for Mr. Wilfer’s freedom, and live happily ever after. Meantime, Lottie would be left in Hingecatch Forest, wandering alone while Eliot got sicker and sicker in New Kemble.

  Maybe, Lottie began to think, she had been wrong to run away.

  Lottie had thought that Fife had been her friend. Hadn’t he stitched up her wounds? Hadn’t he gone back to his home, even gotten a scar on his face in Sweetwater for her? Or was all of that just pretend, like Oliver’s talk of poetry and of the art inside of Lottie and of he and Lottie understanding each other? Lottie had even thought that Adelaide, despite all her nonsense about refinement and sophistication, had begun to like her—she had even halfway apologized to her!—and wasn’t that how friends worked, by liking and helping and talking to each other?

  Or was friendship different with sprites?

  It didn’t matter now. Lottie had run away from the others just like she had from the Barmy Badger and from Eliot. Now there was no chance of knowing if they were ever her friends.

  Unless Adelaide could still hear her . . .

  Lottie turned around. “Adelaide?” she called. “Can you hear me? Fife? Oliver? Anyone?”

  The only reply was the distant squawk of a crow. Lottie started to trudge back in direction of their camp. Or was that the right direction? All the trees here looked the same. Her hands were chafed and powdery from cold, and her ankles and shins now ached with cuts and bruises. When she stopped to tie her loose shoelaces, Lottie’s hands came up sticky with blood from a scratch that her feet were too numb to feel.

  Lottie shoved her hands deep down into her coat pockets. One hand brushed against Trouble. Perhaps he could help her. Lottie tugged him out. Trouble’s head was ducked, his breast heaving slowly and gently. Lottie brushed one of his wings in an attempt to wake him.

  “Trouble?” she whispered. “I’m lost. Can you help me?”

  Trouble blinked open sleepy eyes. He released one long, low, mournful tweet.

  Lottie sighed. “I guess you don’t know this wood any better than I do.”

  Trouble nudged his head against her palm. He chirruped in what Lottie took to be an encouraging way.

  “At least you didn’t betray me,” Lottie murmured, tucking him back into the safety of her pocket.

  As she did, her hand ran up against something small and crinkled. She pulled it out. It was a sweet-so-sour—the one that Eliot had tossed her that last night at the Barmy Badger. If ever Lottie needed an excuse to cry, it was now. She untwirled the neon green wrapper and tucked the sweet-so-sour into her mouth. Then, sniffling, she walked on.

  From nowhere in particular, the voice of Mr. Kidd, Lottie’s English teacher at Kemble School, popped in and whirled about her mind’s ear: “For the world’s more full of weeping,” said the voice, “than you can understand.”

  “For the world’s more full of weeping.

  Full of weeping.

  Weeping.”

  “You had it just about right, Mr. Kidd!” Lottie shouted. “Just about—”

  A snarl brought her up short. She turned around. Two pinprick eyes were glaring at her.

  It was the Barghest.

  Only, this was not one of her nightmares. This was Lottie, alone, in a strange wood, with an animal that wanted her dead.

  The Barghest snarled again.

  Lottie ran.

  She heard a long, shrill howl and the fast padding of paws behind her. It would catch up with her, Lottie thought in a panic, in no time at all. Then she remembered. How could she have forgotten?

  Lottie stumbled to a stop, whirling around to face the Barghest.

  “Stop!”

  The doglike creature ground its claws into the dead leaves separating it from Lottie. It let out a high, whining noise.

  “D-don’t hurt me,” said Lottie, stepping back.

  The animal licked its mouth and pawed a few steps forward, but there it stopped.

  Lottie tried to think quickly. She remembered what had happened in the mulberry bushes behind Iris Gate and in her nightmares: the Barghest had spoken to her.

  “I want you to talk,” Lottie said. “Can you talk?”


  The Barghest whined again; then it opened its mouth.

  “Yes,” rumbled the Barghest, and its voice sounded the same as it had in Lottie’s nightmares, like the crunch of broken glass.

  Lottie winced, but kept staring defiantly back into the Barghest’s eyes.

  “I want you to tell me your business, Barghest.”

  The creature lowered its head in something like a bow. “I must obey the Heir of Fiske,” it barked. “I have followed her with the express purpose of delivering a message from the Northerly Court.”

  Lottie blinked uncomprehendingly. “Wait,” she said. “Do you mean that all this time, you were just going to give me a message?”

  The Barghest nodded.

  “Then what was all the biting for?” she asked angrily. “You nearly chomped my hands off back in the wood!”

  The Barghest bared its yellowed fangs in what looked like a smile. “Sincerest apologies,” it said, “but I was ordered to catch your attention in any way possible. Rebel Gem’s orders. He sent me from the Northerly Wolds to warn the Heir of Fiske of the dangers of the Southerly King.”

  “Would you stop calling me the Heir of Fiske?” Lottie said. “And why do you keep doing everything I tell you to?”

  The Barghest pawed the ground. “All of my pack made an oath to the House of Fiske that we would obey their every command until the day we died. After the Plague, we thought we were free from our oath. We did not know that any Fiske had survived. Then rumors came into Albion Isle about a child, the daughter of Eloise Fiske and her human. Rebel Gem sent the Barghest to find you. He wants the Heir of Fiske’s allegiance.”

  Lottie shook her head. “I’m not an Heir of anything,” she said. “I can’t do anything. Not even . . .” Lottie trailed off.

  “Rebel Gem said that the Heir of Fiske would be reluctant,” barked the Barghest. “He said we must give the Heir time, but that in the end, she would join our side.”

  “Well,” said Lottie, “you can tell Rebel Gem and anyone else that he has the wrong girl. I’m a halfling. I haven’t got a keen, and I can’t command or rule, or whatever else it is that people think I can do.”

  The Barghest’s pinprick eyes dilated into black, watery orbs. It looked, of all things, sad. Lottie only grew angrier.

  “I can’t fix anyone. If anything, I just end up making things worse!”

  She was yelling by the end, and her breath was suddenly short. A bad spell was coming on. Lottie crumpled down in the middle of the path, and tears gushed out and dropped, splat by splat, onto the ground. She could not tell whether it was the bad spell or the sobs that squeezed her ribs until they ached with stupid, useless pain.

  Lottie felt something hot and moist against her ear. She hiccupped, clutching at the stabbing in her chest, and looked up. The Barghest had pressed its muzzle to her face, not to bite her, but to nudge its matted fur against her hair. It looked like it wanted to comfort her. Lottie sank her head back into her knees and tried to take deep breaths, fighting against the pain until the bad spell passed away.

  “Barghest,” she whispered at last, “I think I got you wrong. I think I might have gotten everyone wrong.”

  “What does the Heir of Fiske order?” growled the Barghest, pawing back a few paces.

  “Stop calling me that.” Lottie studied the Barghest, whose hulking black frame seemed much less frightening than it had before.

  “Do you know the way to the Southerly Court?” she asked.

  The Barghest shuddered out a guttural growl. Slowly, it nodded.

  “Can you take me there?” said Lottie. “Can you help me find the others?”

  “The Southerly Court is not welcoming to the Barghest, but I will take you there if I must.” The Barghest crouched down on its hind legs and lowered its head. “You may ride on my back.”

  Lottie went pale. She was just getting used to the idea that the Barghest did not want to rip her to shreds. Riding on its back was hardly a comforting prospect. Still, her bramble-cut legs were begging for relief and, judging from how quickly she had seen the Barghest run before, she knew how much faster a journey it would be. She flexed her stiff hands, then picked nervously at the bandage on her right wrist. Carefully, Lottie loosened the cloth and peeked underneath. The chafing had healed. She unwound the bandage from her left hand. There was no blood, no gash where the Barghest had bitten her. All that remained was the line of puckered skin that Fife had stitched up the night before. She curled her fingers in on her palm. She pulled herself up, swinging one leg over the Barghest’s slick, broad back.

  “Hold on to my fur,” the Barghest ordered. “Keep low.”

  Lottie clenched her fingers into the damp fur at her disposal and nodded. “I forgot to ask you, Barghest, if you have a name.”

  “The Barghest have no names,” it growled.

  “Oh.” Lottie lowered herself against the animal’s thick mane. “Then I guess I’ll just stick to Barghest, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Whatever you choose.”

  The Barghest galloped off for the Southerly Court.

  Once Lottie grew brave enough to pull her face out of the Barghest’s thick mane, she saw that they were no longer traveling through the forest but across a field. Blank sky stretched across the horizon, and beneath it cut the stone walls of the Southerly Court. Even though there were no longer branches and brambles to avoid, the Barghest still swerved erratically, forcing Lottie to reclutch a fistful of fur at every bump and jostle. She could not understand its unsteady canter at first. Then her eyes adjusted to the morning sun, and Lottie saw that hundreds upon hundreds of jaggedly hewn tree stumps surrounded them, pocking the green grass all the way up to the Southerly Court walls.

  “What happened here?” she called to the Barghest, just as it took a great leap over one of the trunks, forcing Lottie to clench her ankles into its belly.

  “The Plague,” rasped the Barghest. “This was once the apple orchard of the sprite kings. Sprites and humans could come and go between worlds freely here. No more. The Plague poisoned them.”

  “But they’re not all stumps. Look!” Lottie nodded to a lone tree amongst the nearby stumps, then to another, farther out. They looked sickly. “What about those?”

  “There were survivors,” the Barghest snarled as it ran. “There always are.”

  “I’m glad,” Lottie said.

  “You should not be,” said the Barghest, crouching to take a new bound. “It is the survivors whose lot is longest and hardest.”

  The Barghest bounded on, faster than before, and Lottie struggled to keep her watering eyes open against the wind. She could see, as they came closer to the walls, a break in the white stone. A great silver gate stood ahead, open and crowded with the figures of sprites bustling in and out of its hold.

  “Are we going through there?” Lottie called over the wild wind.

  The Barghest shook its head and veered instead to the left.

  “The Southerly Guard will not let a Barghest through the court gates,” it called back. “We will go the way other beasts do.”

  Lottie began to notice a thick, squelching sound as the Barghest ran on. She looked down to find that they were crossing over a watery expanse of mud. The water grew murkier and deeper, too, until it was lapping against Lottie’s ankles. Suddenly, the Barghest gave a great leap, and a warm spray of mud splashed into Lottie’s face.

  The Barghest had come to a stop. Lottie wiped the mud from her face and blinked upward. The Southerly walls were towering just above them, larger and more imposing than ever. The walls, Lottie saw now, were built upon a hill, and she and the Barghest stood at its base. This particular side of the hill was covered in slick muck that seemed to have originated from a wide grate above, built into the face of the wall.

  Lottie slipped from the Barghest’s back and set her feet down into mushy ground.

  “Are we going through there?” she guessed, pointing to the grate.

  The Barghest only bounded ahead, fi
nding foothold after foothold on his ascent up the slippery slope. Lottie had a harder time of it and ended up getting her tweed coat muddied to within an inch of its periwinkleness. At last, she squelched to a stop next to the Barghest, inches from the grate. The wall was less than pristine white here, and an unbearable stench surrounded them. The smell reminded Lottie of the time that the house on Thirsby Square had reeked for a full week after Mollie Browne’s eviction and before Mrs. Yates had discovered a rotten hard-boiled egg that Mollie had wedged between the sofa cushions as a farewell present.

  The grate looked larger than it had looked from the bottom of the hill. Both Lottie and the Barghest could fit through its rusting bars with a little maneuvering. Lottie hoped that she had not upset the Barghest when she had given it a helpful push from behind; it struck her as a very proud creature.

  Once they had passed through the thick bars, they sloshed into a dank, dark pool of water that came up to Lottie’s shins. Though they were now within the city walls and though the sun was shining down brightly on them, neither of those advantages improved upon the foul smell.

  “Is it really that easy to slip into the Southerly Court?” Lottie panted.

  “No,” replied the Barghest. “We’re not in the Southerly Court yet, only Southerly City.”

  They waded out of the muck and up a silty incline. Lottie just managed to keep down a shriek as something slithered across her green-sneakered foot. But her sneakers reminded her of Eliot, and Lottie felt a new determination as she pulled herself up out of the sewer ditch and onto street level.

  All this time, Lottie had been spending every scrap of her energy on trying to get within these walls. She hadn’t ever stopped for a moment to consider what the city might actually look like. Had she imagined something, though, it wouldn’t have been a thing like the scenes that now so solidly smacked her senses. The streets were cobblestone, as they had been in New Albion, but they were narrower here, and rougher, too. Each side of each street was nothing but floor topping floor topping floor of fogged-up windowpanes, short doors, and swinging signs. A spiced, woodsy smell shot through the alleyways and mixed with occasional spurts of smoke from underground grates that Lottie and the Barghest passed in the push and pull of the crowd.