The Doorway and the Deep (5 page)

“I promised I'd write weekly,” he said. “Dad might worry.”

Lottie had once asked Fife why more wisps didn't simply come and go between Limn and the human world. Fife had looked at her as though she'd grown an extra nose. He had laughed. And then he had asked, very seriously, “Why would anyone want to go to the human world?”

“There's folklore in Limn about the sort of people who live there,” he'd said. “Nasty stories about bad witches and wars and torture. Not to mention, magic isn't at large there anymore. Who would want to visit
that
?”

“I think Father was right,” Oliver said. “Rest has been good for you, Lottie. Trouble's much better behaved now than he ever was during our lessons.” His eyes turned cloudy gray. “Maybe I'm a bad teacher.”

“You're not,” Lottie assured him. “Not at all.”

She meant it, too. As frustrating as her genga lessons had been, Lottie was certain she'd never met a more patient person than Oliver Wilfer. She was also grateful to Oliver for befriending Eliot so readily. It seemed that the two boys had an endless supply of things to talk about. Eliot rambled about painting, and Oliver about poetry, and sometimes they talked so long on their walks that even Lottie got bored.

Adelaide never joined them on these walks because she claimed that anywhere beyond the Clearing and the glass pergola was “unsafe.”

“What she really means,” said Fife, “is she doesn't like the stench of Plague.”

Fife didn't come on walks either, but only because he was too busy assisting Mr. Wilfer as he tended to ailing wisps and worked in his cottage laboratory, trying to invent a cure for the Plague. Every dawn, Fife arrived at supper with slumped shoulders but full of new healing terms he'd
learned that day. “Did you know that fresh-scraped lichen can soothe a cough?” he'd ask with a full mouth, berry juice running down his chin. And “Today, Mr. Wilfer showed me how to best sew stitches around joints!”

“At least Fife is doing something productive,” Adelaide would say, which wasn't meant as a compliment to Fife but a complaint that her father never seemed to have enough time for her.

But the past two days had been different. Mr. Wilfer had more time to devote to both Adelaide's and Oliver's sharpening, and if Adelaide was still upset, she couldn't possibly blame Lottie anymore.

“Look!” said Eliot.

A red banner, notched at its bottom, was staked in the middle of their path. Just past it, only twenty paces beyond, stood another banner, this one light umber.

“I guess they're decorations for Autumntide?” said Lottie.

Oliver shook his head. “I think they're wards.”

“Wards?” asked Eliot.

“Against whitecaps.”

“
Oh
.”

Lottie and the boys walked on, passing banner after banner, which bore no symbol, no mark. All were alternating shades of crimson and orange.

“Kind of creepy,” said Eliot. “I don't think I like Autumntide after all.”

Conversation petered out after that.

In the Clearing, they met Fife and Adelaide for supper. Adelaide was beaming. “Father and I had the most tremendous breakthrough today! I was able to achieve
transference
. Transference, already!”

Adelaide looked like she was expecting high praise, but Lottie had no idea what she was talking about.

“Uh,” said Eliot. “What's transference?”

“It's pretty rare,” said Fife. “It means passing your keen along to someone else. Just temporarily, mind. But not many sprites can do it.”

“You mean, you can make other people hear from far away, like you?” Eliot asked.

Adelaide blushed, grinning more widely than ever. “Yes, that's what it means. It can only be with one other person, and I have to touch that person for it to work. It's a thin connection right now, but the point is that I
did
it. Tutor told me that I wouldn't be able to until I was sixteen, if at all. Seems he was wrong!”

“That's wonderful, Ada,” said Oliver, pouring a goblet of water for himself, then for Eliot and Lottie.

“All I needed was some individualized attention,” Adelaide went on, turning to Lottie. “If only my sessions could be like that
all
the time.”

Lottie bristled. She was glad Adelaide had been able to spend time with Mr. Wilfer, but all the same, she couldn't
help feeling jealous. Here Adelaide was having a
breakthrough
after only two days of concentrated sharpening, and Lottie couldn't even keep her mind clear.

“Just imagine,” said Fife. “Imagine all the rulers who'll want you by their side, passing on all the foreign secrets you overhear.”

Adelaide wrinkled her nose. “I don't intend to be used for political purposes.”

“Well, what else are you going to do? Anyone with a hearing keen like yours becomes a spy, or a diplomat, or
something
political.”

“Politics are distasteful,” said Adelaide.

“But with your keen,” Fife pressed, “you could save lives. You know, if you used it for good.”

“Sweet Oberon, Fife, why do you even care?” Adelaide said, her voice going shrill. “It isn't as though I could go into politics if I wanted. I'm a traitor to the Southerly Court. We all are. We don't belong to anyone. No one will
want
us.”

An unpleasant silence wrapped around the table. This was not something they talked about. No one ever mentioned New Albion here. They didn't talk about how sometimes, on walks through the forest, wisps would spit at their feet or call out rude comments about Southerlies. It was as though they had all silently agreed never to mention those things. Now Adelaide had broken the unspoken rule.

“Um. The wafercomb is extra good tonight,” said Eliot. “
Yum
.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Fife. Snickering, he threw a hazelnut at Oliver, who threw a walnut back, and the tension fizzled away, forgotten.

As they ate, the Clearing turned lighter with the first rays of sun.

“It'll be day soon,” said Oliver. “We ought to get back to our trees before—well, before anything happens.”

“You too, Oliver?” Adelaide sighed.

“As 't were a spur upon the soul,” quoted Oliver, “a fear will urge it where to go without the spectre's aid.”

“Ugh,” said Adelaide. “I thought I could count on you at least to not hold to such silly superstitions.”

“Your father believes in whitecaps, you know,” Eliot said.

Adelaide went red in the face. “He does not.”

“He told us so,” said Lottie, exchanging a smile with Eliot. “He said we should be careful, or the whitecaps will gobble us up.”

“Technically,” said Fife, “whitecaps don't gobble. They suck and slurp.”

“Technically,” said Adelaide, “whitecaps do none of the above, because
they don't exist
. Now, I'm off to my yew but only because I'm tired of listening to so much stupidity, not because I believe in monsters.”

“I didn't believe in things like sprites and wisps a few weeks back,” said Eliot. “Sometimes you get proven wrong.”

Adelaide tossed her hair. “I'm never wrong. Coming, Lottie?”

Lottie thought Adelaide was being ridiculous, as usual. All the same, the sun
was
on the rise, and she was thinking about what Eliot had said. Sometimes you did get proven wrong, and Lottie reasoned she'd rather climb into a yew with ridiculous Adelaide than have her blood drained from her body by a drove of fanged whitecaps.

“Coming,” she said, waving goodbye to the boys. “See you tonight.”

“If we're still alive,” said Eliot.

Lottie knew it was only a joke, but her heart skittered at the very idea of Eliot not greeting her in the morning. She pushed the thought from her head and ran to catch up with Adelaide.

Lottie still hadn't lost the wonder she felt every time she watched a yew branch uncurl from a splintery whorl. The sight was equal parts beautiful and terrifying. In fact, Lottie thought, the same could be said of the wisps themselves.

“Oh, look!” cried Adelaide.

The last of the yew needles were falling. This was not the way Lottie was used to seeing leaves fall back in Kemble Isle—slow and sporadic, almost imperceptible
until the day she realized no leaves remained on the branches. This was something else. It was a sudden flurry of golden needles, whipped about by wind, turning circles and pinwheeling and catching in Lottie's hair. It was a honey-tinted snowfall.

Adelaide giggled. It was the first time Lottie had heard her giggle since she'd come to Wisp Territory.

“It's
beautiful
,” Adelaide breathed. “The loveliest sound, too. There's nothing so nice as the sound of leaves landing on the ground.”

“You're lucky you can hear it so well,” said Lottie. “It must be nice.”

Adelaide hopped up the branch of their yew, and Lottie followed her into the dim, warm, hollowed-out trunk. The curling branch sealed them back inside, safe from any intruders—whitecaps included.

“I didn't know things like that made you so happy,” said Lottie.

She liked this side of Adelaide—when she wasn't busy complaining or arguing with Fife.

“Autumn's the season I love best,” said Adelaide. “Back in New Albion, we have the loveliest festivals. When I was little, Father would take us to the pumpkin patches, and Oliver and I could get
three
pumpkins apiece. Father would call me his itty-bitty squash.”

Lottie's smile grew. Adelaide's disappeared. Her eyes went wide, like she'd just realized a huge mistake.

“You
cannot
tell Fife that,” she ordered. “Or Eliot.”

“Eliot wouldn't make fun of you, though.”

“I just don't want him to know. It's private.”

“Then I won't tell anyone,” said Lottie. “Promise.”

The girls changed into their nightclothes and, as was their routine, curled up in blankets on opposite sides of the trunk. It was a strange arrangement if Lottie really stopped to think about it: no bed, no chairs, no table, just one wide cushion inside a giant yew tree. Yet for all its strangeness, it was comfortable. It almost made up for all the nightmares.

Almost.

Lottie woke to Adelaide jabbing angrily at her stomach.

“Make him stop,” Adelaide groaned. “He's been going on for minutes straight.”

Lottie's hand shifted to the pocket of her nightgown. Trouble was still safely bundled inside, but he was squawking with shrill persistence. He wriggled against Lottie's fingers as she pulled him out.

“Trouble, hush,” she said, stroking his feathers. “
Hush
.”

Trouble did not hush. His squawks only grew louder. And he had been doing so well these past few days!

“What's wrong with him?”

“I don't know,” said Lottie, continuing to stroke Trouble. She drew him nearer and placed a comforting kiss atop his head. “Trouble, it's all right. Shhh.”

Adelaide rummaged on her side of the trunk. There was a flurry of violet feathers. Lila, Adelaide's own genga, perched on Lottie's shoulder and gave one sharp chirrup.

Trouble stopped squawking. He went deathly still and quirked his head toward Lila.

Lila chirped again. This time, Trouble bowed his head. He gave a contrite coo.

“What just happened?” Lottie asked Adelaide.

“I asked Lila to calm him down. She's good at it.”

Adelaide whistled, and Lila returned to her outstretched finger. She patted the bird once, then tucked her out of sight. Lottie looked to Trouble. His chest puffed in and out slowly, as though he were sleeping. Gingerly, she tucked him back into her pocket.

“Thank you,” she told Adelaide.

“Mm-hm.” Adelaide was pulling a brush through her long, brunette hair in measured strokes. “But you really need to learn how to control him. No one respects a sprite who can't command her own genga.”