“That’s super rude, Trouble,” Eliot called. “She was worried about you!”
Lottie, however, was distracted. There was something else in her pocket that had not been there before—something cold and hard-edged. She pulled it out.
It was a key. It was small, just the length of her index finger, and looked like an ordinary house key. It was only when Lottie turned it over that she saw the little black diamond embossed on its top.
CHAPTER TWO
A Key to Nowhere
“THE MARK of the Northerly Court.”
Fife gawked at the key in his hand, poking at the black diamond etched into brass.
“This is the weirdest thing,” he said. “What unsavory characters has Trouble been hanging around?”
They were all sitting inside the boys’ yew tree, circled around the pillowed floor. Lottie had called them there to discuss the appearance of the strange key in her pocket.
“Trouble was gone for less than a day,” said Lottie. “He couldn’t have just flown into Northerly Territory and back again. Could he?”
“Gengas can be quite fast,” said Adelaide.
“Or it could be from spies in these parts,” said Oliver.
“What, like those Northerlies, Roote and Crag?” said Fife. “Or Dorian Ingle? The Barghest?!”
“Fife,” said Adelaide, “I swear to Titania, if you go into another one of your Barghest frenzies . . .”
Adelaide was referring to Fife’s recent obsession with the fact that the fiercest beasts in all of Albion Isle had made a vow of obedience to the Fiskes. This led to Fife getting very worked up about the possibility of Lottie commanding a whole army of Barghest and developing a special howl that could be heard across the Isle. Adelaide called these Fife’s “Barghest frenzies.” He indulged in one at least once a week.
Lottie found this interest unsettling since she could not, in fact, call any Barghest with a special howl and since she had no idea how to even find the particular Barghest who had helped her escape the Southerly Court. Since she’d returned to Limn, there had been no sign of the Barghest—or of the Northerly spy Dorian Ingle.
“Maybe,” said Eliot, “Trouble just found the key lying in the dirt somewhere and thought it looked pretty?”
The others exchanged glances.
Fife said, “Doubtful.”
“There wasn’t anything else in your pocket?” Adelaide asked. “No note, nothing to explain the meaning of the key?”
“Nothing,” said Lottie. “What I can’t make out is if Trouble just found the key, or if . . .”
“If what?” asked Eliot.
Lottie let out a shuddery sigh. “If someone else summoned Trouble? Is that possible?”
“Of course not,” said Adelaide. “No one can summon a genga other than the genga’s owner. They respond only to the exact timbre of your voice.”
“That’s not entirely true,” said Oliver. “There are some keens—”
“Ugh!” Fife tossed the key from his hand, as though he had been burned. “Stop talking like that, Ollie. Splinters are the worst.”
Eliot frowned. “Splinters?”
“Sprites who use their keens for illegal purposes.” Fife lowered his voice dramatically. He wiggled his fingers and made an eerie whistling sound.
“Like what?” Lottie asked, rubbing at her goose-fleshed arms.
“Impersonating other sprites,” said Oliver. “It’s against Southerly and Northerly law, but there are some keens that can do it. Mainly taste and touch. They say some splinters can alter their appearances. Others can imitate another sprite’s voice. Even summon their genga. It’s possible.”
Lottie’s eyes widened. “You mean someone else out there could be impersonating me?”
Lottie had the sudden, uncomfortable sensation of being naked, though she was very well bundled up in three layers of clothes.
“It’s possible,” Oliver said again, “though I don’t know why a splinter would use their keen just to send you a Northerly key to nowhere.”
“It’s not a key to nowhere,” Eliot said. “We just don’t know where the where is yet.”
“Well, it’s nowhere I’d like to go,” said Adelaide. “You should throw it away. Or bury it.”
“Have you asked Trouble about it?” said Oliver.
Lottie nodded glumly. “He won’t listen to me. Every time I’ve tried to ask him where he’s been, or where he found the key, he just flies off.”
“So we don’t know where it’s from,” said Fife, “and we don’t know what it’s for. Talking about it won’t change anything. I guess we just wait and see if anything else weird happens.”
Fife looked a little too excited about the prospect of something weird occurring again.
Lottie felt protectively at her coat pocket, where Trouble was currently sleeping. She tucked away the Northerly key in her other pocket. She did not intend to follow Adelaide’s advice and bury it. She didn’t trust the key, and Lottie thought it better to keep things she didn’t trust close by, where she could keep an eye on them.
Lottie’s first day of “rest” wasn’t restful. She slept, but her dreams were nightmares—as they often had been since her return to Albion Isle. Fife had explained that bad dreams were common in Wisp Territory. It was something in the air, something unseen, that crept into the ears and wound around the brain and turned even the cheeriest dreams to bleak, black mist.
Lottie once asked Mr. Wilfer if there was a remedy to the nightmares.
“There are remedies,” he replied, “but they can be extremely addictive. Dreams are a delicate, dangerous business. Other healers might disagree with me, but I don’t dabble in anything that so strongly alters the workings of the mind.”
This had sounded very noble and impressive at the time, but after nearly a month’s worth of bad dreams full of choking Northerly vines and unfriendly Barghest with bared teeth, Lottie was weary of sleep. She no longer looked forward to sinking her head into the pillow, even after a full and tiring night. She dreaded that moment just before unconsciousness, when her thoughts turned nonsensical with disconnected words and impossible images.
This time, her nightmare was worse than usual. In it, she was back in the throne room of the Southerly Palace, surrounded by dark tapestries and shelves full of strange-looking bottles. Her feet were dragging her toward the throne, where King Starkling sat smiling lazily at her. As Lottie came closer, the king’s deceptively young skin began to bubble and split, revealing a thick, tar-like substance beneath. He smiled wider, revealing blood-coated teeth.
“Tsk, tsk,” said Starkling. “Not sharpening, I see. This is hardly the time for a vacation when there are only two, maybe three weeks left to live.”
Lottie emerged from the dream with a shriek, waking Adelaide. Her skin was damp, her shoulders trembling. She apologized, sure that Adelaide would be angry at the disturbance. But then Adelaide did something entirely unexpected. She found Lottie’s hand in the dark, and she wrapped her cold fingers around Lottie’s wrist.
In a soft voice, she said, “It’s okay. I have them, too.”
“What are they about?” Lottie asked.
There was a long silence. Finally, Adelaide said, “My mother.”
Lottie remained quiet, unsure of what to say.
“I wasn’t even two years old when she passed,” Adelaide said, “so it’s quite impossible that I could remember her. But—it’s silly, I know, it’s not as if it’s really possible—but I dream I remember her voice. I remember a song she would hum as I fell asleep.”
“It’s not silly,” said Lottie. “Sometimes I think I can remember my parents’ faces, even though the image is just from the picture I have of them.”
“No, but it’s not like that,” Adelaide said impatiently. “I hear her voice like a real, true memory. I hear the melody.”
Then Adelaide hummed. It was a gentle sound, one that took Lottie off guard; she wasn’t used to hearing gentle things from Adelaide. The song
was sad, though there were no words to make it so. Its drooping melody made Lottie feel as though she had lost something, something she could never reclaim and never replace. And though it was sadness that carried her to sleep, Lottie had no more nightmares that evening.
That week, the forest turned golden. In a single day, the yew needles fell from their branches to the earth, transformed by death to a glittering yellow. The grass, too, faded from pure white to the color of cream. Late autumn had settled on Wisp Territory, thick with cold and the scent of smoke. Lottie was glad she and Eliot had packed sweaters, mittens, and warm boots. Now more than ever, she made use of her periwinkle coat and green scarf.
Resting was difficult work, Lottie discovered. She spent nearly every hour of the next two days with Eliot, and though Mr. Wilfer had told her that her presence alone improved Eliot’s health, she still noticed when he coughed extra loud or overlong, and each time her heart spasmed with guilt. How was she going to make Eliot better if she wasn’t even trying to improve her keen? What if he got worse again, and this time she couldn’t heal him?
Trouble, at least, was better behaved than usual. He kept close by Lottie and did not squawk obnoxiously or nip at her fingers or peck about her belongings—all of which he’d been wont to do before. It was as though Trouble sensed Lottie’s anxiousness and, out of sympathy, had become less of a nuisance. This evening, the eve of Autumntide, Trouble flew serenely overhead as Lottie, Eliot, and Oliver walked down a path to the Clearing.
They had just paid a visit to the red apple tree, where Eliot had sent his weekly letter to Mr. Walsch, all under the watchful eye of the wisp guard. In just two days, Lottie and Eliot would use the tree to return to Kemble Isle for Thanksgiving. Still, Eliot insisted on sending his letter.
“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.
The Doorway and the Deep Page 3
