The Doorway and the Deep

by K. E. Ormsbee

  “I wish we’d heard back already from your search party,” Lottie said.

  “I do, too,” Rebel Gem said softly, surprising Lottie. “But worrying doesn’t change a single tick on the clock. Better we focus our energies on what we can change.”

  “Wait. If you’re a healer, then what’s your keen?” Lottie tried not to sound overeager. “Is it like mine?”

  “It’s a touch keen,” said Rebel Gem, “which I hear yours is, too?”

  Lottie nodded.

  “When I touch sprites,” said Rebel Gem, “I can feel their mental distress. Over time, I learned to ease the burden of a fellow sprite’s mind. You might say I’m a healer of troubled thoughts more than anything else.”

  “So, like a psychiatrist?”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I told Lyre to promise you sharpening lessons during your stay here,” said Rebel Gem. “I thought, if you’d like, I could train you myself.”

  Lottie felt dizzy. “I—that is, well, that’s very nice of you to offer. But, um. Well, this is a bit complicated, but I don’t exactly want to stay in the Northerly Court.”

  Rebel Gem’s calm expression did not change.

  “The Tailor didn’t even ask my permission about whether or not I wanted to come,” said Lottie. “And if he had asked, I would’ve told him that my friend Eliot has to get back to Kemble Isle, and I promised to go with him. He needs me around, you see, to stay well. And Dorian said you have a silver-boughed tree here?”

  Rebel Gem nodded.

  “Well, and it was a horrible shock, when Iolanthe invaded Wisp Territory and chopped down their tree. And then we had to come up north. But I wondered if, once I know Adelaide and Oliver are safe, I could take Eliot back to Kemble Isle. Just for a little while. Through Christmas, maybe. Which, um, is this holiday we celebrate back in—well, that’s not important. I just mean, I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but I really need to get back to the human world.”

  Rebel Gem raised a single brow but still said nothing. Lottie was afraid she knew what this meant.

  “You’re not going to let me do that, are you?”

  Rebel Gem placed her hand on Lottie’s shoulder. Like her voice, the grip was kind but very firm. “You have important work to do here, Lottie. I’m not sure you realize how important.”

  “I’m not sure you realize how important it is for Eliot to get back!” Lottie cried, yanking herself from Rebel Gem’s grip. “If you don’t let us use that silver-boughed tree, then you’re just—you’re a terrible person! I don’t care how nice you seem or how important you think I am to the Northerly Court. If you don’t let us go, you might as well be holding us captive. And if you’re holding us captive, you’re no better than King Starkling.”

  Rebel Gem did not react in the way Lottie was expecting. She had thought that Rebel Gem would be angry, or that her face would at least turn sour. Instead, she remained as placid as always. She crossed her arms, thoughtful.

  “I made a deal with Lyre Dulcet,” she said. “And a deal that’s been struck can’t simply be unstruck. I asked for your presence in my court in return for addersfork. If the Dulcets were to learn I’d given you up to the human world, they would perceive me as weak, malleable.”

  “Well, I’d see you as kind,” said Lottie. “Doesn’t that count for anything? Anyway, why do you care what the Dulcets think?”

  “I’m a ruler, Lottie,” said Rebel Gem. “I have a reputation to guard. I cannot afford to be considered weak by the Dulcets or the Southerly King or my own people. Politics is a messy business, and I’m very sorry you’ve gotten tangled up in it. When I made that agreement with Lyre I had no idea there were . . . extenuating circumstances.”

  “So that’s all Eliot is to you? An extenuating circumstance?”

  “Of course not. But you must understand my position.”

  “Why?” cried Lottie. “Why must I understand yours when you won’t understand mine?”

  Rebel Gem stared at Lottie in a quiet, expressionless way that made Lottie tremble with anger. Then, at last, she spoke.

  “Your Eliot can’t return to the human world alone?”

  Lottie shook her head. “He needs me by his side to keep him healthy. And even if you did let him go for a little while, by himself, how could I know you’d let him come back? Or that you’d let me follow later?”

  “And if I let you go,” said Rebel Gem, “how would I know that you would come back?”

  Lottie frowned. “Oh. I guess I see what you mean.”

  “I have a proposal,” said Rebel Gem. “A compromise. What if Eliot wrote a letter to his father?”

  Lottie nodded slowly. “That’s what we did in Wisp Territory. He sent letters back home every day.”

  “Then I will allow you to do so here,” said Rebel Gem. “That way, Eliot’s father will know you are safe and have merely been delayed. And if you really must return to the human world, I will grant passage to both of you, but only after the addersfork has been delivered to the wisps, and only under the condition that you return. I want your help here, Lottie, and whatever you may think, I’d rather not get it by turning you captive.”

  “Eliot and I still won’t be back in time for the holidays,” Lottie said glumly.

  “And I will be letting you return to your world with no guarantee you’ll ever come back to mine. That’s the nature of a compromise, I’m afraid: neither party is fully satisfied, but both get what’s most important to them.”

  “All right,” Lottie said slowly. “But you have to promise.”

  “Of course. That’s the nature of a deal.”

  Lottie stuck out her hand. “Then it’s a deal.”

  Rebel Gem smiled at the gesture. Rather than shake Lottie’s hand, she turned it palm up, then placed her own hand over it.

  “We’ve struck the deal,” she said. “Northerly style. I will grant you and Eliot passage back to Kemble Isle once the addersfork has been retrieved and given to the keeping of the wisps.”

  Lottie nodded. “Then someone had better get that addersfork soon.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Recoveries

  THE FESTIVITIES on the supping lawn were still in full swing when Rebel Gem and Lottie returned, but Lottie headed straight back to the caves—the collection of bedrooms and common areas that Rebel Gem laughingly referred to as the “Slab of Mab” before bidding Lottie goodnight. Lottie found Fife asleep in his room. Eliot was by his side, sifting through a stack of letters—his father’s letters.

  “I wish I hadn’t lost my sketchbook in the river,” he said, once he’d followed Lottie back to her own room, where they wouldn’t have to speak in whispers. “There’s so much here I want to get down on paper.”

  “You’d do it justice, too,” said Lottie. “I bet one day the sprites will have a whole gallery dedicated to the work of Eliot Walsch.”

  As they sat buried in the covers of Lottie’s massive bed, Lottie told Eliot about her conversation with Rebel Gem, starting with their agreement about the silver-boughed tree. Eliot’s shoulders slumped, but he didn’t look too surprised.

  “It makes sense,” he said. “Now that you’re here, why would Rebel Gem let you go?”

  “But it isn’t fair to you,” said Lottie.

  “At least I can let Dad know I’m okay. That’s what’s bothered me the most: we didn’t show up when we said we would, and he’s got to be so worried.”

  Lottie nodded tearfully. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Eliot, circling his arm around her. “And anyway, it’s been an adventure, just like you promised. It’s been fun.”

  “Not all fun,” said Lottie, clearing the tears from her face.

  “Yeah, but nothing’s all fun. Not even stuff like birthdays and Christmas.”

  Then Eliot told Lottie he had to fetch something from Fife’s room. He reappeared at her doorway minutes later with a book in hand—the same
book he’d been reading at Fife’s bedside. Once he was back on the bed, he opened the book and tore out its front page in one swift movement.

  “What are you doing?” Lottie asked, eyes huge.

  “There’s nothing else to write a letter on,” said Eliot. “And I want to send one first thing in the morning.”

  He then produced a stubby pencil from his shirt pocket and began scribbling away, while Lottie looked on in silence. When Eliot was done, he folded the letter once and slipped it under the cover of the book.

  “It’s not home for the holidays,” he said. “But it’s something.”

  “It’s something,” Lottie agreed.

  Then Eliot reminded Lottie of the first time Mrs. Yates had allowed Lottie to spend New Year’s Eve at the Barmy Badger. Together, they recalled the caramel cocoa Mr. Walsch had made, and how it had snowed so hard that night that ye ol’ porthole looked out on nothing but a sheet of white.

  They talked so long that Lottie swore she could taste the liquid chocolate on her tongue and smell the wooden scent of the Barmy Badger’s parlor and feel the soft wool of Eliot’s favorite blanket on her toes.

  She and Eliot fell asleep that way, led into dreams by memory.

  In the morning, no one demanded that Lottie return to the supping lawn for breakfast. She ate in Fife’s room, with the boys. She asked first thing if there was any news about Oliver and Adelaide, but the reply was only sad headshakes.

  The absence of their two friends had an effect on all their appetites. Though Lottie’s tray was piled high with clusters of grapes and soft cheeses and buttered toasts, she ate very little. She did, however, drink a hot, spiced cranberry drink in slow sips and found she liked this much better than the ale from the night before.

  The white-haired boy served them at Fife’s bedside, and all the while he kept a sullen eye on Lottie. After he had left them to their food and Lottie was quite certain he would not return, she said, “I think he hates me, and I don’t know why.”

  “Does he?” said Fife, scratching his tangled mess of hair. “Hadn’t noticed.”

  “He keeps giving me nasty looks,” said Lottie. “And last night, he was all gruff and snippy.”

  “Why do you care?” asked Fife.

  “He’s intimidated,” said Eliot. “You being the Heir of Fiske and all, he probably just doesn’t know how to behave.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” said Lottie, but she didn’t have any other explanation for the white-haired boy’s behavior, so instead she updated Fife on her news from the night before.

  “Hear, hear,” Fife said when she was through. “I can’t believe you bargained with Rebel Gem. And got away with it, too!”

  “You’re an expert diplomat,” said Eliot.

  “This goes to show that Rebel Gem can’t be all bad,” said Fife. “I mean, it’s rotten business about the silver-boughed tree, but at least she’s reasonable.”

  “What about sharpening lessons?” asked Eliot. “Are you going to do it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lottie. She wanted to explain that, somehow, benefiting from Rebel Gem—the only one who stood between Eliot and his father—felt like a kind of betrayal. But she couldn’t say that out loud. Not to Eliot.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Fife asked, aghast. “Puck’s ever-loving sake, Lottie, if you don’t take her up on this, I will never speak to you again. Here I am, stuck in this stupid bed, forced to convalesce. Meanwhile, you’ve got the chance to sharpen your keen under Rebel Gem, and you don’t know?”

  “I don’t see why you wouldn’t,” said Eliot. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted? To get better at healing?”

  “Oh, I see,” said Fife, crossing his arms. “She’s only pulling our leg, Eliot. Well, aren’t you, Lottie? Because you can’t seriously be thinking of refusing sharpening lessons from the Healer of the Wolds. The Healer of the Wolds. She’s the only legitimate healer left in the North!”

  “But she’s practically made us her prisoners,” said Lottie. “I don’t like being part of a deal. I can’t explain it, but I don’t want to—I don’t know—give her the satisfaction.”

  “You can’t think of it like that,” said Fife. “You’ve got to think of it as benefiting from your captor during your captivity. That’s how all the greats did it, in the old stories. They didn’t just loll around woefully while they were imprisoned. In secret, they trained and strengthened themselves until the opportune time came to overpower their captor. They defeated their enemy using the very succor they’d found at their enemy’s table, and, sweet Oberon, I sound just like Ollie.”

  “Fine,” said Lottie. “If you put it like that.”

  She’d been watching closely to see if Fife’s tongue emerged during any of this pretty speech, but it hadn’t. Maybe, she reflected, Fife could be just as eloquent without the use of his keen.

  “When do they say you can get out of that bed?” asked Lottie.

  Fife’s face darkened. “It’ll be another two days at least,” he said. “It’s only one silly little gash, but they say the stitches will come loose if I move around too much.”

  “Luckily, we’ve come to the really good part in our book,” said Eliot.

  “Good part?” Fife snorted. “If you call mixed metaphors and a surplus of adjectives good. Good as a Northerly book can get, I guess. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on a novel.”

  “At least you’ve got something to keep you entertained,” said Lottie, smiling at Eliot. He really was good to keep Fife company all this while.

  “Eliot,” she said, a thought occurring to her. “Where’s your room, exactly?”

  “Oh.” Eliot shrugged. “I haven’t got one. That is to say, I haven’t needed one.”

  Lottie recalled how she’d first found Eliot, asleep in the chair by Fife’s bedside, and realized he’d been here day and night. She turned to Fife. He looked a little sad, and a little guilty, too.

  “Eliot insisted on staying here,” he said.

  “Fiske.”

  Lottie turned to find the white-haired boy standing in the doorway.

  “Rebel Gem wants to see you,” he said.

  “I haven’t finished—”

  “Now.”

  Lottie cast Eliot and Fife a glance that said, See? I’m not making it up.

  She grabbed a piece of toast to go.

  “Fine,” she said, deciding that she would walk very close to the white-haired boy the whole way there, eating with her mouth open, and let the crumbs fall where they pleased.

  “Wait!” cried Eliot. “Here. For the apple tree.”

  He placed something in her hand. It was a folded piece of paper, ripped along its edge, with printed words on its back and Eliot’s handwriting on the front. His letter home.

  Lottie tucked the letter into her coat pocket. She nodded, and Eliot nodded back—a silent promise exchanged.

  The white-haired boy led Lottie down a passageway she had not walked before. It required slipping behind a thick, brown tapestry marked with the emblem of a bird in flight—a genga, Lottie assumed. The ceilings here were low, and the ground sloped downward. Lottie tripped once on a loose rock and righted herself by grabbing hold of the wall. She swiped her hands off with a disgusted gasp. Something goopy was caked to her palms. She tried to clean it off as best she could, but her hands still felt dirtied the rest of the way.

  At last, the cramped passageway led not into a throne room, as Lottie had been expecting, but outdoors. It was a gloomy, moss-covered space, bordered by pine trees. Lottie’s boots squelched into a patch of mud, and while she was working to unstick them, a voice said, “Afraid of a little dirt?”

  Lottie looked up. The boy had disappeared. In his place stood Rebel Gem, cloaked in green.

  “No,” Lottie said, abandoning her work and straightening to a prouder posture. She had a mind to tell Rebel Gem that she’d never been afraid of dirt, even as a kid. She and Eliot had gotten into all sorts of scrapes.

 
; “Good,” said Rebel Gem. “One can’t afford to be prim in our line of work.”

  “Where are we?” asked Lottie, looking around at the pines, trying to sort out just what made this place special enough for Rebel Gem to be standing in it.

  “We’re outside.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Lottie. “I just thought you’d be in your throne room.”

  “My throne room?” Rebel Gem pushed back her hood, laughing. “Merciful Titania, there aren’t any throne rooms in this court.”

  “But,” said Lottie, “you’re basically a queen.”

  Rebel Gem looked suddenly serious. “We have no queens or kings here. And I hope we never will.”

  “But what about those crowns in the House of Fiske?”

  “The Fiskes ruled before the Schism,” said Rebel Gem. “Afterward, we Northerlies swore we’d never have a king or queen again. The Southerlies and wisps can have their pomp and ceremony. We prefer a simpler way of things in the North. Now, come on.”

  Rebel Gem placed her hand on Lottie’s back and guided her to a bench in the middle of the clearing. It was wide across, and so high that Lottie had to hoist herself up. Once sitting, her feet dangled above the ground.

  “I know you’re new to this world,” said Rebel Gem, “but sometimes I forget how new. If you have questions, Lottie, I want you to ask them. Better to hear the truth from a Northerly than believe that palaver from down south.”

  But, thought Lottie, you haven’t given me much reason to trust your word over theirs.

  “You do wish me to help, don’t you?” asked Rebel Gem.

  Lottie thought of Fife’s irate expression back in the cave, when she’d said she wasn’t sure about sharpening. She thought of Eliot’s face turned pale with a cough.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” said Rebel Gem, and she really did look pleased about it. She seemed so much younger now than she had just seconds before, and Lottie wanted badly to ask her how old she was and how someone like her could come to rule the Northerlies, and if they didn’t believe in queens and kings then what was she exactly, and—