The Doorway and the Deep

by K. E. Ormsbee

  PRAISE FOR THE WATER AND THE WILD

  “The Water and the Wild is a debut children’s fantasy that feels akin to the British childhood favorites I grew up reading—The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark Is Rising, and Alice in Wonderland. So introduce your child to a modern classic in the making or read it yourself in nostalgic remembrance.” —Jill Hendrix, Fiction Addiction

  “Engaging. Imaginative.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Humorous descriptions and vivid creatures. Should keep many readers intrigued.” —Publishers Weekly

  “An exciting journey full of obstacles and fun action.” —VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)

  To Kenneth and Ann Ashby,

  who gave me summer days on the farm

  and to George and Betty Ormsbee,

  who gave me bittersweet Irish ballads—

  I love you.

  References to poems are marked with a .

  Find a complete list of the poems referenced.

  Text copyright © 2016 by K. E. Ormsbee.

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Erwin Madrid.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Names: Ormsbee, Katie, author.

  Title: The doorway and the deep / by K. E. Ormsbee.

  Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2016] | Sequel to: The water and the wild. | Summary: Even after escaping from the Southerly Kingdom, Lottie Fiske has returned to the magical Albion Isle, despite the fact that she is a wanted criminal there, because she is seeking answers about her abilities, and her parents—but war is threatening Limn, and the answers she needs seem to lie in the Northerly Kingdom, along a road full of dangers.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016000984 | ISBN 9781452136363 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781452159072 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Magic—Juvenile fiction. | Orphans—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | Adventure stories. | CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.O637 Do 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000984

  Design by Amelia Mack.

  Typeset in Jannon Antiqua.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  Chronicle Books—we see things differently. Become part of our community at www.chroniclekids.com.

  “To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain

  To miseries enough; no hope to help you,

  But as you shake off one to take another;

  Nothing so certain as your anchors.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE WINTER’S TALE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sharpening Lessons

  A RED APPLE TREE grew in the heart of Wandlebury Wood. It was a burst of color in a land of white. Its roots sank deep into the earth, so deep they reached other worlds altogether. Though the bark was grooved by the grinding of time, it showed no sign of decay.

  A solitary guard hovered beside the tree, though there was little activity to keep him busy these days. Since the Plague had come to Wisp Territory, there had only been two travelers to emerge from the apple tree’s trunk: a girl with a periwinkle coat, and a boy with a slight cough.

  Not five minutes’ walk from the red apple tree was a place known by its current residents as the Clearing. Here, set apart from the surrounding forest, three yews grew from an expanse of white grass, canopied by silvery fabric and strings of globed lights. Autumn was in the air, and hard gusts of wind often blew through the Clearing, causing the fabric to billow, the lanterns to teeter, and the long white grasses to whisper amongst themselves. Such a wind was blowing now, on the cusp of a new dusk. It was whipping up the lemony hair of a girl who stood upon the branch of one of the yews.

  “Trouble’s missing,” she said.

  “Urgh,” the tree replied.

  Lottie Fiske peered into the tree’s hollowed-out trunk. She had just learned in the past week how to keep her sneakers balanced on a yew branch without toppling over.

  “Fife?” she called.

  “Something is talking. Why is something talking?”

  A plume of black hair appeared in the trunk hole under Lottie’s nose. Fife blinked up at Lottie, his eyes bleary in the glare of the setting sun.

  “Um,” said Lottie. “Good evening.”

  “Shhh,” said Fife, flapping a hand at Lottie’s mouth. “The talking. Make it stop. So . . . loud.”

  “I need to talk to Oliver,” said Lottie. “Trouble’s gone—”

  “—missing,” Fife finished. “Huh. Did you check your pockets?”

  Lottie gave Fife a dirty look.

  “What? It’s funny.”

  “He was in my pocket when I went to sleep, and when I woke up he was gone.”

  “Wait. He’s just been gone for a day?” Fife snorted. “That hardly qualifies as missing.”

  “But you don’t understand! He left without my permission. Gengas aren’t supposed to do that.”

  “Yeah, but Trouble’s trouble. Didn’t Ollie tell you that the first rule of training is to remain cal—”

  “I AM REMAINING CALM.”

  “Lottie?”

  Two glowing eyes, bright yellow with concern, appeared behind Fife’s mane of hair.

  “Lottie,” Oliver said again, his voice hoarse from sleep. “Why are you shouting?”

  “I wasn’t—Fife, stop laughing.”

  Fife just laughed harder, his shoulders shaking as he floated out of the yew. He turned a double somersault and landed in a thick patch of mud at the tree’s base.

  “Quit worrying!” he called up. “You’ll feel much better about the whole thing once you’ve eaten some breakfast.”

  “I’m confused,” said Oliver, rubbing his eyes. When he lowered his hand, his irises had dimmed to a groggy gray. “What’s the problem?”

  “Trouble. He flew off, and he hasn’t come back.”

  “Has he done that before?”

  “Of course he hasn’t! Don’t you think I would’ve told my own genga trainer if Trouble was misbehaving?”

  “You didn’t tell me about the candy incident.”

  “Ooh!” shouted Fife. “Don’t forget the green paint incident. That one’s a classic.”

  Lottie sniffed proudly. “I had complete control of those situations.”

  That wasn’t true, and both Lottie and the boys knew it. The last time Trouble had misbehaved, they had all nearly been banished from Wisp Territory. It had taken several hours of heated discussion between Mr. Wilfer and Silvia Dulcet to sort things out.

  It was a tricky position to be in, having to depend upon the generosity of the wisps. But Iris Gate, the Wilfers’ home in New Albion, was a charred husk and now belonged to King Starkling. Lottie, Fife, and the Wilfers were wanted criminals on Albion Isle—now more than ever after their escape from the Southerly Court. In the end, Silvia Dulcet, Fife’s mother and the Seamstress of the wisps, had offered them shelter.

  Mr. Wilfer remained one of the most revered healers on the island, so Silvia had struck up a deal with him: she would provide a home for him and his guests if Mr. Wilfer would work on a cure for her people’s plague. The arrangement had been, in the words of Fife, “very symbiotic or some such crap.”

  These arrangements were made while Lottie was still back on Kemble Isle, staying with Eliot at the Barmy Badger. Mr. Walsch had taken his son to see the doctor a few days after Lottie’s return from Albion Isle. It had been an eventful visit, and Lottie had spent the
entirety of it grinning from ear to ear.

  It was impossible, the doctor had said. Unprecedented. Unbelievable.

  The doctor had gone on to use several other big words beginning with “im” and “un,” but the long and short of it—all that really mattered—was that Eliot Walsch had made a remarkable recovery since his last visit, when that very same doctor had said, “Two, maybe three weeks to live.”

  “The disease is still present,” said the doctor, “but Eliot himself is in excellent health, considering. I simply can’t explain it.”

  Lottie didn’t mind that the doctor had no explanation. She had one of her own.

  She had a keen.

  With the touch of her hands, she could heal others.

  She had healed Eliot.

  So Lottie’s status as a wanted criminal hadn’t deterred her from returning to Albion Isle. She still had a good deal to learn about her keen, and, according to Mr. Wilfer, if she wanted to be the best healer she could be, she needed to train. Lottie did want to become a good healer, but more than that, she wanted to make Eliot Walsch better for good.

  Eliot’s father had been wonderfully understanding about the whole thing. He wasn’t like other adults—people like Mrs. Yates who didn’t believe in magic and thought there was only one proper way to do things. Mr. Walsch believed Lottie’s story about another world—an Albion Isle just on the other end of an apple tree’s roots. Not long after that doctor’s visit, Mr. Walsch sold the Barmy Badger and moved to a cottage south of New Kemble. It was a humble stone house, much smaller than the Barmy Badger had been. But in its backyard grew a whole grove of apple trees—some green, some red, some yellow. Lottie, who knew full well the precious value of an apple tree, thought Mr. Walsch could not have chosen a better new home.

  On the pale October morning when Lottie and Eliot pulled the silver bough of one of those trees, Mr. Walsch hugged them tight and bid them goodbye.

  “When you get a chance like this, kiddos,” he said, “you must take it.”

  Eliot promised Mr. Walsch he would send a letter home every day, using a certain copper box Lottie had retrieved from the stump of her apple tree in Thirsby Square. He and Lottie both promised to return in a month’s time for Thanksgiving dinner and the winter holidays.

  And so Lottie and Eliot had come to live in Wisp Territory, where Lottie fell into a steady routine. At dusk, she sharpened her keen with Mr. Wilfer. In the hours just before dawn, she trained her genga with Oliver. The space of time between, she spent with Eliot and the others, exchanging stories, playing games, and going on what adventures they could within the confines of Wisp Territory.

  This particular morning, according to her routine, Lottie should have already been eating her breakfast in the Clearing. But this morning, Trouble was missing.

  “Lottie,” said Oliver, “I wouldn’t worry too much. Trouble is your genga. He’s got to return to you sooner or later.”

  “Yeah,” said Fife. “If he doesn’t, he’ll die of loneliness.”

  “Not helpful, Fife,” said Oliver.

  Lottie felt ill.

  “You look pale,” observed Fife. “Breakfast is definitely in order.”

  Adelaide and Eliot were already out of their yews. Eliot sat cross-legged in the long grass, bent over his sketchbook, his left hand smudged black with charcoal. Lottie was used to finding her best friend in this posture. Today, working under lantern light, Eliot was sketching Adelaide. She sat across from him, hands folded in her lap, lips pulled up in an aggressively pleasant smile. Since Eliot’s arrival in Wisp Territory, Adelaide had made it clear that she considered Eliot to be refreshingly refined. Lottie thought what this really meant was that Adelaide had a bit of a crush on him.

  Since Lottie had first arrived in Wisp Territory, she had lived here in the Clearing. Like the glass pergola, where Silvia and her royal entourage resided, this place was set apart from the plagued wisps living under quarantine in the surrounding territory. Silvia had designated the Clearing as a safe haven for Lottie and her companions, though Lottie didn’t think this was so much an act of kindness as it was an attempt to keep them under her watch. Silvia saw Lottie and the others as helpless children—“babes in the wood,” she’d once called them—who couldn’t look after themselves. This would’ve bothered Lottie more, perhaps, if the food Silvia provided at the Clearing’s dining table were not so good.

  As usual, the low, long birch table was decked with an assortment of foods: wild cherries, blue-speckled eggs, nuts, berries, pink honey, and paper-thin bread that the wisps called wafercomb. Lottie’s stomach grumbled at the sight of the spread. Maybe Fife had been right, she thought, and all she really needed was a stomachful of food to put things in perspective.

  It had been difficult at first to grow accustomed to breakfast at sunset and supper just before sunrise. But after a little while, Lottie had actually come to like the wisps’ nocturnal lifestyle. She missed sunshine, but Wisp Territory looked its best in the dark, lit by the warm gold of lanterns and haunted by shadows.

  Lottie took her usual seat at the table, next to Eliot. He put away his sketchbook and cast her a grin.

  “Thank goodness,” he said, reaching for a fistful of hazelnuts. “I’m starving.”

  Lottie wanted to point out that Eliot could’ve gone ahead and eaten without her, but she was well aware Adelaide considered such behavior “unrefined.”

  “There’s only one thing more unrefined than eating before everyone is present at the table,” Adelaide had said once, “and that’s showing up late to breakfast.”

  This morning, however, Adelaide didn’t seem to mind her companions’ tardiness. Her eyes were glimmering with excitement, and the moment the others were settled, she said, “Autumntide comes soon!”

  Fife made a gagging noise.

  “I passed the pergola yesterday,” said Eliot, “and I overheard the guards talking. They said there’s going to be cider and music and dancing. Sounds fun, right?”

  “It sounds like it might actually be a civilized gathering,” said Adelaide. “The Seamstress is said to wear the grandest ball gown for the occasion. I hear she takes the whole year to sew it.”

  “Hm,” said Oliver. His eyes were a nondescript brown.

  Fife looked like he’d swallowed his tongue and that it had gone down quite the wrong pipe.

  “What’s wrong with Autumntide, Fife?” Lottie asked.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong?” said Eliot. “It kind of sounds like Halloween. Halloween is my favorite.”

  “First off,” said Fife, “I have no idea what Halloween is, but it sounds idiotic. Second, Autumntide isn’t some grand party like the Southerlies think.”

  Adelaide’s nose crinkled. “Well, certainly it couldn’t be like a proper Southerly party. Wisps don’t have the resources to—”

  “Ada, have you ever actually been in Wisp Territory for Autumntide?”

  “What a stupid question,” said Adelaide. “You know I haven’t. And for your information, I’d rather not be here at all. I’d rather be safe at Iris Gate, in a clean room, next to a well-tended fireplace, drinking proper tea and doing homework for Tutor. But since that isn’t possible, I’m trying to make the best of my circumstances.”

  Adelaide looked very proud of herself. Fife said something under his breath that sounded a lot like “ridiculous.”

  “Well then, you tell me, Ollie,” said Lottie. “What’s so bad about Autumntide?”

  “There are poems about it,” he said.

  “Good poems, or bad?”

  “Uh.” Oliver’s eyes flickered to an unsettled pink. “Poems about death.”

  Lottie felt Eliot’s shoulder tense against hers.

  “They’re just stories, though,” said Oliver. “Right, Fife?”

  Fife nibbled on a berry. He said nothing.

  “Stories about what?” Lottie pressed.

  “Well,” said Oliver, “the legend goes that at Autumntide, the whitecaps come out and, um, ‘paint the
ground with snowy blood.’”

  “‘Snowy blood,’” said Lottie. “You mean, wisp blood?”

  Adelaide let out a high-pitched laugh.

  “Whitecaps,” she said, “don’t exist.”

  “Sorry,” said Eliot. “What’s a whitecap, exactly?”

  “Something that doesn’t exist,” Adelaide said helpfully.

  “Does too,” said Fife.

  “Oh, and I suppose you’ve seen one?”

  “No. But I have seen the ground painted with snowy blood. Every year, at least one wisp gets killed. Everyone knows to be extra careful around Autumntide, but there’s always some stupid type who goes out and gets themselves, well, whitecapped.”

  “Yes, but what are whitecaps?” asked Lottie.

  “They’re short,” said Fife. “They’ve got four legs, four arms, four fingers on each of their four hands. And their eyes—”

  “Let me guess,” said Adelaide, rolling her own eyes. “There are four of those, too.”

  “No, ten,” said Fife, matter-of-factly. “And solid black, like pots of ink, so you don’t ever know where they’re looking. They hibernate underground, but every year, around this time, they come to the surface and feed with their four rows of teeth. For whatever reason, there’s something about wisp blood that drives them crazy. They’re wild about it. It’s said that, before they feed, they dip their cloth hats in the blood of their victims as part of their killing ritual; that’s where the name whitecap comes from. I don’t believe someone has to die on Autumntide, but wisps have to be extra careful this time of year.”

  Eliot was shaking. Lottie looked over in alarm, concerned that he was frightened or, worse, feeling ill.

  He was laughing.

  “Sorry,” he said, lowering his hand from his mouth, “but whitecap? It’s such a funny name. Sounds like a procedure you get done at the dentist’s.”

  Adelaide said, “Everyone in New Albion says whitecaps are just something wisps made up to frighten sprites.”

  “Well, that doesn’t make sense, does it?” said Fife. “Considering it’s wisps they’re after.”