The Doorway and the Deep

by K. E. Ormsbee

  “It’s no good,” she told Fife and Eliot that night. “The whole thing’s pointless. Maybe Rebel Gem is just torturing me for fun.”

  “Possible,” said Fife. “You know that saying about Northerlies.”

  “Neither of us know the saying,” said Eliot. He pointed at himself, then Lottie. “We are mere earthlings.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I don’t remember it verbatim. Just something about them not being trustworthy and stuff.”

  “But you’re half Northerly, aren’t you?” said Eliot.

  “Yup,” Fife said proudly.

  “How bad was sharpening for you?” Lottie asked him, trying to sound casual.

  “Hm? Oh, plenty bad. I didn’t have a fancy tutor like Ada and Ollie, so I had to figure it all out on my own. I went a whole year without being able to taste the sweet in anything. Chocolate tasted like dirt. It was brutal.”

  Lottie sighed. “It doesn’t sound as bad as what I have to do.”

  “Oh, get over yourself. You wouldn’t believe the stuff Ollie had to endure—all those experiments to see if his involuntary pigmentary transference was curable. And when she was eight, Ada overworked herself and went deaf for a spell. She was so scared she’d never hear again that she cried for weeks straight.” Fife shuddered at the memory. “Point is, you’re not special, Lottie. It’s always painful one way or the other.”

  “I know I’m not special,” Lottie mumbled.

  “Do you?” Fife smirked. “I mean, you’re the Heir of Fiske. That’s got to be going to your head. I bet you think someone wrote a prophecy about you. I bet you think there are clans in the Wolds that worship you. I bet—”

  Lottie shoved Fife against the pillows, laughing.

  “Ow, ow, hey!” gasped Fife. “I’m the invalid here!”

  “Not for long,” said Lottie. “Aren’t you allowed out of bed tomorrow?”

  Fife’s expression turned wicked. “This court won’t know what hit ’em. Spool’s been scouting all the best places for me to wreak havoc.”

  “We should go exploring together!” said Eliot, hopping excitedly on the bed. “Once you’re through with lessons, Lottie, let’s all look around. It’ll be just like it was in Wisp Territory, only better, ’cause we’ll have daylight on our side, and we, um, won’t have to avoid the plagued areas.”

  It occurred to Lottie then that Eliot hadn’t yet seen anything outside the caves. She’d been so preoccupied with and exhausted by sharpening lessons that she hadn’t once thought how bored he must be. She cast a glance at his sketchbook, which lay open on the floor, filled with drawings. The sketch visible was of a whorl-branched yew tree in Wisp Territory. The sight made her feel funny.

  Disquiet had been growing inside of Lottie ever since her first lesson with Rebel Gem. It was something left unsaid, something she should have brought up every time she and Rebel Gem compiled their lists, but she hadn’t. She’d never talked about the two things that made her the most angry, fearful, and sad.

  She hadn’t talked about Eliot.

  She hadn’t once mentioned her parents.

  Those were people too real and feelings too leaden with hurt. But the more Lottie ignored them, and the more she told herself it didn’t matter they weren’t on her list, the more her heart thudded in protest. Perhaps, Lottie thought, as she stared at Eliot’s charcoal drawing, nothing was hindering her keen but her.

  That night, as she lay awake in bed, she took up what had become a nightly ritual. She removed her mother’s lapis lazuli ring from the safekeeping of her coat pocket, and she turned it over in her fingers, careful of its sharp edges, marveling at the smoothness of the band and the intricate notches that made up the flowering bud.

  My mother wore this once, she thought. My father placed it on her finger, and there was love, so much love caught up between them in this ring, this ring I’m holding now.

  The thought made her ache in an old, familiar place she had been acquainted with ever since the day she’d learned what the word “orphan” meant. She ached, but atop that ache, spread like a balm, there was happiness, too. She knew more now about her parents than she’d known before. She owned something they had touched and treasured. For all the anger and fear and sadness Lottie had felt these past few days, there was also this single happy fact.

  Lottie was the first to arrive for lessons the next morning. She didn’t take her customary seat on the bench, but instead paced from one end of the clearing to the other while Trouble swooped overhead, following her steps with laps of his own, singing a minor-key melody. Lottie hadn’t ventured into the House of Fiske since that night at the supping lawn, but Trouble didn’t seem to mind. During her training sessions, he flitted from branch to branch, watching her in a quiet way. At night, he perched on her bedpost and roosted there contentedly. It seemed that, for now at least, Trouble had no more plans of his own. He was willing to sit by her side. For now.

  Lottie was so lost in her pacing and in Trouble’s song that she didn’t see Rebel Gem arrive.

  “Fine morning for wearing out the moss with your boot heels,” she said, taking a seat on the bench.

  Lottie started. She’d been repeating to herself what she intended to say when Rebel Gem arrived. She’d been reminding herself that if she did not speak first thing, she would lose the nerve. So now she marched up to Rebel Gem, building courage with each step.

  “Oh dear,” said Rebel Gem. “What new demands are we making today? Don’t tell me your friends weren’t happy with their gifts.”

  “It isn’t about that,” said Lottie. “I think I’ve been doing something wrong.”

  “We’ve talked this through, Lottie. You can’t expect progress this early, when—”

  “No, it isn’t that,” Lottie interrupted. “I know I’m not special. But there is something I could do to make sharpening better. I haven’t been entirely honest on those lists. I haven’t been telling you everything.”

  Rebel Gem’s mouth parted with realization. Then she smiled and said, “I know that.”

  “What? But—but how could you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you hide things from me?” said Rebel Gem. “You barely know me. I didn’t expect you’d tell me your deepest, darkest emotions straightaway. That takes time. To be honest, I thought it’d take far more time than this.”

  “But—but—” Lottie sputtered.

  “I think,” said Rebel Gem, “you’ve forgotten what I am. Sensing others’ states of mind is my specialty.”

  “Well, do you think that’s what’s been holding me back?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You would’ve resisted,” said Rebel Gem. “Your thoughts and feelings are your own, Lottie. You would’ve fought me tooth and claw had I tried to pry into them any deeper than I already have.”

  This was probably true, Lottie acknowledged. Her frustration, boiling before, settled into a simmer.

  “I should say them out loud,” she said. “I think it would help.”

  “If you’d like.” Rebel Gem’s air seemed almost indifferent; it was only her attentive brown eyes that made Lottie feel that what she was about to say was important.

  “I’m most angry about my parents dying,” Lottie said. “I’m most sad that I never even knew them, and I never will. All I have is a picture and a ring. And I’m most afraid that I’ll lose Eliot like I lost them—only it’ll be much worse, because I know Eliot, and I can’t bear the thought of him not being. I’m afraid of that more than I am of anything else in this world.”

  Rebel Gem said nothing for a long while. Wind rattled through the pine needles and blew back the slack hair from Lottie’s face.

  “Yes,” Rebel Gem said. “I do believe those are the deepest things within you, Lottie Fiske. The deepest you know about, anyway.”

  Lottie had expected to feel better. Instead, she felt laid bare, like she’d been curled beneath the shelter of a rock, and that rock had just been lifted and tosse
d aside, exposing her to the harsh light of the sun.

  I shouldn’t have told her, thought Lottie. I shouldn’t have said a thing.

  Rebel Gem fiddled with something at her neck, tugging it out from beneath her cloak. It was the locket Lottie had seen her touch so many times before. Rebel Gem now unclasped it and pooled its chain in her palm. She held it out toward Lottie.

  “This was my father’s,” she said. “It was his father’s before him, and his father’s—tracing back to the days of the Schism, when the House of Vance moved northward into the Wolds. It was meant for his only son, but when I was your age, my brother was killed. He was posted as a lookout on the border, and one day he was ambushed by Southerly soldiers. The Southerlies took his body, so we could never give him a proper burial, never say a true goodbye. It killed my father. And on his deathbed, he gave me this.”

  Lottie was grateful to have something to look at other than Rebel Gem’s saddened eyes. She stared at the locket. There was a black diamond carved upon it, and within that a golden V.

  “I’m sorry,” Lottie said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “My brother was my best friend,” said Rebel Gem. “If he had lived, I would’ve wanted to rule with him as my most trusted counselor. He was far wiser than I was. Far calmer under pressure. He didn’t wish to serve as a soldier on the border; it was my father who volunteered him for the post. And if I’m honest, Lottie, I never forgave my father for that. When I look at the pendant of Vance, I don’t think of him, but of my brother—the one who should’ve worn it.”

  “Oh, don’t,” said Lottie, gasping for breath.

  A searing pain cut across her chest. Lottie had been vividly picturing Rebel Gem’s story. She saw an old man, proud and stooped, dressed in leather, sending his young son southward. She saw Rebel Gem waving goodbye to her brother with a tearstained face. She saw blood soaking the ground, a body thrown into an unmarked grave. Then the face of the body appeared in Lottie’s mind, and it was no longer the vaguely filled-out features of Rebel Gem’s unknown brother.

  It was Eliot.

  “Don’t,” Lottie repeated. “Don’t say any more. It’s terrible. I can’t—I can’t breathe.”

  She was having a bad spell.

  Pain exploded in Lottie’s chest. She felt like her lungs were shrinking and a black vacuum expanding in their place. She felt something else: Rebel Gem’s hands on her shoulders.

  “Move the pain, Lottie,” she whispered.

  Lottie had done this twice before. She knew what to do. The pain was already surging from her chest up into her throat, then through her shoulders in a spindling spasm, down her arms and into her hands. Lottie grabbed hold of Rebel Gem’s elbows.

  She felt the pain pooling in her palms like liquid, then draining away from her into Rebel Gem’s skin. Lottie’s eyes flew open as the bad spell subsided. Rebel Gem seemed utterly unaffected. Her face remained a calm veil as Lottie let go, chest heaving.

  “Did I—” Lottie gasped, “did I do it? Did you feel anything?”

  “Yes,” said Rebel Gem. “You did it.”

  “My keen worked?”

  “I’m afraid it was wasted on me,” said Rebel Gem, “but had I been ill, it would be a different story.”

  Lottie stared at Rebel Gem’s locket, dropped on the muddy ground between them.

  “Did you do that on purpose?” Lottie asked. “Did you try to make me upset?”

  Rebel Gem didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to.

  “That was a mean thing to do!” Lottie cried, stumbling back. “Did you know I’d see Eliot when you told me that story?”

  “I knew nothing about what was in your heart,” said Rebel Gem, “save that you were experiencing three very strong emotions at once, and that all you lacked was the opportunity to empathize.”

  Lottie shook her head. “What does that mean?”

  “When you told me about your parents, you felt anger and fear and sadness, and you felt something beyond that, too—the unnamable thing. But the only way you could move those feelings was to project them onto someone else’s story: mine. You empathized with me, and as you did, all those emotions you’d felt for yourself suddenly reached out for me.”

  “I moved,” Lottie murmured.

  Rebel Gem nodded.

  “Is that it?” asked Lottie, dumbfounded. “I just have to feel bad for someone else?”

  “You have to empathize with someone else,” Rebel Gem corrected. “And even then, sharpening isn’t a science. It isn’t something you can re-create again and again, the very same way. We’re still learning, but at least we know now how to approach things. That’s progress.”

  Lottie marched back to Rebel Gem with new resolve. “Then let’s try it again. I want to see if I can still do it.”

  “That’s not a good idea. You’re a little delirious right now.”

  “I am not,” Lottie retorted, just before her knees buckled.

  Rebel Gem caught her, then helped her to sit on the bench. Even after Lottie had regained her balance, Rebel Gem did not let go. Lottie felt a cold sensation rush down her back, pronging out in many directions. The anxiety, the fear, and the anger that had been thrashing inside her now vanished, swept away by a whisper in the deepest place of her ear.

  “Everything will be set aright,” it said. “Don’t fret so.”

  Lottie felt grounded, as though she’d been in a rocking boat all this time and had only now been placed safely upon the shore.

  “W-what’s happening?” she asked.

  “I’m taking your cares away,” said Rebel Gem. “I’m wrapping them up and setting them aside. Just for now. You deserve it. You’re tired, and your heart needs rest.”

  “But I wanted to practice again,” Lottie said weakly.

  “You would only hurt yourself. It’s dangerous to overstrain your keen, and it’s already had more than enough strain for one day—for a whole week, really.”

  Lottie wanted to protest, but she was reminded of what Fife had said about Adelaide overworking herself and going deaf for weeks. She swallowed her retorts and nodded.

  “But I did it,” she said with satisfaction. “I did it.”

  “You did. Far sooner than I thought possible, too.”

  There was a long silence during which Lottie did nothing but grin.

  Then Rebel Gem said, “There’s something we need to talk about, Lottie. Something serious.”

  Lottie’s grin vanished. “What?” Her thoughts immediately flew to Eliot.

  “I’m hesitant to even bring it up. I don’t want to scare you. But if you’ve progressed this far, then you need to know the . . . risks.”

  “Risks?” Lottie frowned. “You mean, overextending myself? I already know about that. That’s why I’m resting, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s about what you’re capable of. What your keen can do. If it’s anything like mine—and so far, it has been—then you don’t just have the potential to heal. You could do the opposite, too.”

  Lottie stared at Rebel Gem. “You mean I could hurt people? Like Oliver can?”

  “Not exactly like Oliver. His keen is something he can’t control. You and I, Lottie, we can affect the insides of another person. That is a great advantage when it comes to making that person feel better. But if we were to channel our keen in a different direction, we could also use our power to harm someone. Harm them in the worst possible way. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You mean,” said Lottie, “if I’d concentrated on hurting Nash back on that boat—if I’d wanted to make his bruises worse, rather than better . . . I could’ve?”

  “You could have, but a true healer would never do such a thing. Healers help, we do not harm. It is not our place to play judge or to exact punishment. Our place is only to feel someone else’s pain and do what we can to relieve it. I’ve only told you about this now so there’s less chance of an . . . accident. I don’t think you bear ill will toward any of your friends, but if yo
u were purposefully trying to hurt them . . . I just need you to be aware of the danger.”

  “Fine. I’m aware.”

  Lottie couldn’t keep the anger out of her words. She was upset with Rebel Gem, and she couldn’t place why. Perhaps it was because Rebel Gem suddenly reminded her of Mr. Wilfer, cautioning Lottie to wait, treating her like she didn’t know her own strength.

  “Come on,” Rebel Gem said softly. “I’ll take you inside to your friends, and you can tell them the good news.”

  Lottie tried to push her irritation aside as they walked up the sharp incline of the cave passageway.

  Rebel Gem isn’t like Mr. Wilfer, she told herself. She’s actually helping you sharpen your keen. And you did it. You’re not useless, you’re powerful. You did it.

  “By the way,” said Rebel Gem, “I’ve received some news I think you’ll find most agreeable. My genga returned early this morning.”

  Lottie, who’d been turning heavy-lidded, snapped to attention.

  Oliver, she thought. Adelaide.

  “She encountered a party of three travelers on the widest of the wooded paths, headed here,” Rebel Gem went on. “Your friends are both well, as is Dorian. I expect they’ll arrive at court within a day.”

  Lottie cast Rebel Gem a sharp look. “If you knew all this earlier, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to distract you from your lesson.”

  “Distract me? I was already distracted. I’ve been worried sick about them!”

  “All right. No need to—”

  Lottie slapped away Rebel Gem’s hand, which had been approaching her shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said. Then, thinking better of it, “Please. I don’t want any more of your keen, thanks.”

  “Beg your pardon. I didn’t realize how quickly it wore off on halflings.”

  They emerged from the passageway into the blazing light of the great meeting room. The usual groups of sprites were huddled about the fireplaces, and Lottie recognized a few of the faces as ones she had seen at Rebel Gem’s table, the night at the supping lawn. One of them noticed their entrance and waved both arms in their direction.