Lottie sank her hands into her pockets. In one, she felt the absence of Trouble, and for a moment her worries caught on the panic of where he could possibly be. Then her attention shifted to the item resting in her other pocket: her mother’s ring.
She had to be careful. She had to remove the ring from her pocket, still in its silk covering, and once it was uncovered, she could not cut her own hand.
I’m sorry, Mother, she thought.
Tears stung her eyes as she pulled out the handkerchief, then cautiously but quickly unwrapped and discarded it from the delicate circle of lapis lazuli.
“What do you have there?” asked Iolanthe, eyes narrowing at the ring Lottie held pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
Lottie did not hesitate. She lunged forward, plunging the sharp diamond edge of the ring into Iolanthe’s arm and dragging it down her skin, leaving a wet, crimson cut in its wake. Then she pulled away, bloodied ring in hand, and ran.
She heard Iolanthe’s enraged shrieks and the sound of heavy footsteps behind her. Still, she ran. She ran in spite of pain, in spite of fear, in spite of deafening thoughts. She ran to the water, into the crashing waves, and threw the ring with all her might. It soared through the air in a high arc, glinted once in the burning sun, and then disappeared into the sea.
Lottie’s heart hammered.
“Please work,” she whispered to the water. “Please.”
When Lottie turned, she found herself face-to-face with Iolanthe. She stood shin-deep in the water. Her expression was livid.
“What have you done?” she demanded.
She made a grab at Lottie, who flung herself toward the shore. She tripped, but recovered fast enough to avoid Iolanthe’s grasp. When she reached dry sand, she tripped again and landed on her battered hands. She felt so weak. She felt she couldn’t move again. She closed her eyes against the wet sand and waited for Iolanthe to reach her.
But she never did. With difficulty, Lottie rolled onto her back and saw Iolanthe standing at the water’s edge. Her forehead was creased in concentration, her arms outstretched, fingers splayed. But she could move no farther. It was as though an invisible wall had been constructed on the edge of the tide, blocking her in.
It had worked, just as the riddle promised. Lottie had thrown Iolanthe’s blood into the water, and now Iolanthe was bound to the sea.
Lottie laughed. It was the worst possible time for a laugh, and yet clunky giggles emerged from her throat. Iolanthe had finally realized what was happening. She beat her hands against the air.
“Soldiers!” she screamed. “Help me!”
Four red-cloaked sprites hurtled into the waves. Two took Iolanthe by the arms, two by the waist, attempting to hoist her forward. But it was of no use. Though the soldiers could set foot on dry land, Iolanthe could not.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop it, you idiots! You’ll pull my arms straight from their sockets. Try it this way. You, take me by my legs . . .”
Lottie did not stay to watch. She had to get to the others. She lumbered up the bank to where Adelaide, Oliver, and Eliot stood, as fixated on the sight of Iolanthe’s predicament as the remaining soldiers.
“Lottie!” Eliot cried, pulling her into his arms. “What did you do? What happened?”
“She used the riddle,” said Oliver. “She bound Iolanthe to the waters, the same as the nix.”
Eliot backed away, face turned down. “No, I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean . . .”
He trailed off, but there was no question as to what Eliot meant. Lottie had not let herself think of it until now. She still didn’t want to. She looked to the sand where King Starkling had once stood, but even the stain had disappeared, swallowed up by the growing world gorge.
Oliver’s eyes were a troubled yellow. “So wrap up care in a cobweb,” he said, “and drop it down the well, into that world inverted where—”
Oliver stopped quoting. An awful sound had ripped through the air like thunder, turning them all silent and wide-eyed. Then the ground shook beneath their feet, and Lottie saw the source of the terrible noise: the world gorge was still expanding. It was splitting down the coast. A crack, wide across as a river, drove through the sand, opening wide and speeding straight toward—
“Oliver!”
His eyes met Lottie’s. They were a bright shade of gold that Lottie had never seen before. Then the chasm was beneath him, and Lottie stared in numb horror as Oliver lost his footing, wavered once, and fell.
“Oliver!” Lottie screamed again, running toward the newly formed fissure.
He had fallen in, but with one hand, he’d grabbed hold of a silvery edge jutting from the ravine wall.
Lottie dropped to her knees beside the chasm, where Oliver struggled to regain his grip. He tried swinging his free hand to the surface, but his fingers merely slipped through the sifting sand. He could not pull himself out.
“Stand back!” Lottie shouted to Adelaide and Eliot. “Grab my legs, both of you!”
She saw the fear in Adelaide’s face; she knew what Lottie was going to do. Still, Adelaide nodded. Lottie steeled herself. Adelaide grabbed her by one ankle, Eliot by the other. Then Lottie stretched out flat on her stomach and reached her arms over the edge.
“Grab hold of me!” she shouted to Oliver.
He looked up with black eyes. He shook his head.
Despite the chaos surrounding them, despite the ongoing roar of the world gorge expanding, Oliver said the words softly, like he might if he and Lottie were sitting together in a quiet park. “Lottie, no.”
“It doesn’t matter!” she yelled at him. “I can heal myself. Oliver, just grab hold.”
Oliver shook his head.
Lottie lunged forward. She wrapped both her hands around Oliver’s wrist.
“Don’t!” Oliver said. “Let go, Lottie. I’ll—”
“If you won’t grab me, I’ll grab you!” she shouted. “But it’d make things a lot easier if you just held my hand.”
“I can’t.” Oliver’s voice was broken.
But even as he said it, Lottie slipped one hand through his, threading their fingers and locking them tight. The pain was instantaneous. It was an overwhelming, unrelenting burning that felt like Lottie had stuck her hand into a roaring fire. A green pigment washed up her fingers, her knuckles, her wrist. Still, Lottie held tight. She didn’t cry out. She gritted her teeth and worked up the will to say, “Give me your other hand!”
This time, Oliver did not argue. He swung his hand up, and Lottie caught hold. The pain doubled, searing through her skin and coloring her other hand deep blue.
“It’s okay,” she gasped out. “We’ve got you now.” Then she called back to Adelaide and Eliot, “Pull us up!”
She felt a jolt on both legs. Her stomach dragged across the ground, and Oliver rose from the gorge by a foot. His hands and Lottie’s now rested in the sand.
“Good!” she said. “Nearly there. Just—”
The awful booming sound came again. The ground rumbled. A great crash echoed from somewhere nearby. The earth Oliver was resting on crumbled.
Lottie screamed. She lost her grip on Oliver’s left hand. A heavy weight pulled on her arm. Hot wind blasted into her face. She could no longer feel solid earth beneath her. She was falling into the darkness below.
She heard Eliot’s scream very near her ear. Adelaide’s shrieks came after, though higher up, at the surface. All was shouts and warm air and the rush of silver.
Then, all was darkness.
Then . . .
A light in the darkness.
And a voice that said, “My, my. Visitors.”
Quotations in order of appearance
“As ’t were a spur upon the soul, / A fear will urge it where / To go without the spectre’s aid” (Emily Dickinson, “I Lived on Dread”)
“Home-keeping hearts are happiest, / For those that wander they know not where / Are full of trouble and full of care;” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Song”)
“I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” (William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”)
“I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death.” (Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”)
“What though on hamely fare we dine, / Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that; / Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; / A Man’s a Man for a’ that: / For a’ that, and a’ that, / Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that; / The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, / Is king o’ men for a’ that.” (Robert Burns, “A Man’s A Man For A’ That”)
“God help me! save I take my part / Of danger on the roaring sea, / A devil rises in my heart, / Far worse than any death to me.” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Sailor Boy”)
“Yet, love and hate me too; / So, these extremes shall neither’s office do;” (John Donne, “The Prohibition”)
“Slow, slow as the winter snow / The tears have drifted to mine eyes;” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Change upon Change”)
“This told, I joy; but then no longer glad, / I send them back again and straight grow sad.” (William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 45”)
“Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side, / Withstand the winter’s storm, / And spite of wind and tide, / Grow up the meadow’s pride, / For both are strong.” (Henry David Thoreau, “Friendship”)
“Exultation is the going / Of an inland soul to sea, / Past the houses—past the headlands— / Into deep Eternity! / Bred as we, among the mountains, / Can the sailor understand / The divine intoxication / Of the first league out from land?” (Emily Dickinson, “Exultation Is the Going”)
“So wrap up care in a cobweb / and drop it down the well / into that world inverted / where left is always right, / where the shadows are really the body, / where we stay awake all night,” (Elizabeth Bishop, “Insomnia”)
K. E. ORMSBEE lives in Lexington, Kentucky. She lived in lots of equally fascinating cities before then, from Austin to Birmingham to London to Seville. She grew up with a secret garden in her backyard and a spaceship in her basement.
The Doorway and the Deep Page 29