The Doorway and the Deep (7 page)

“Fife,” said Oliver. “Maybe the Tailor just wanted to come home early, and that's all. Home-keeping hearts are happiest, for those that wander they know not where are full of trouble and full of care.”

“That's certainly what it sounds like,” said Adelaide, “which means we've been doing all this juvenile snooping for nothing. You're his nephew, Fife. If you're so convinced something's wrong, ask him yourself.”

“What an excellent idea!” Fife cried, clapping Adelaide on the shoulders. “Why didn't I think of it? Oh! Yes! Because, unlike some people, I don't have sponge cake for brains.”

Adelaide shoved Fife away. “You're so uncivil.”

“Ooh, ouch. Fifth me.”

“I can't believe y—
wait!
Where are you all going?”

The others, led by Lottie, were leaving the courtyard and heading back into the wood, the bickering Fife and Adelaide hurrying to catch up.

“I'm telling you all,” said Fife, “something is off. Something's not right, and I'm not going to shut up about it until we—
sweet Oberon, what is that?
”

Fife's yelling was unnecessary. The others had already reeled to a halt and were staring ahead at something in their path. Oliver's lantern light poured over a mound, dark and motionless. It was covered in something pale and slick.

White liquid—
blood
—was pooling around what Lottie was now sure was a dead body.

“I told you they existed! I
told
you!
The whitecaps strike again!
”

Fife was airborne. He flapped his arms frantically, face blotchy with panic.

Adelaide pressed her hand to her head and said, “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“W-what do we do?” Eliot asked. He looked ready to puke at Lottie's feet.

Lottie shook her mind free of the sight.

“We tell someone,” she said. “We have to
get
someone. Oliver?”

Oliver was still and silent, but Lottie knew this did not mean he was unreachable. It meant that, though he was paying attention, he was also thinking hard. Now, he looked to Lottie with resolve in his black eyes.

“Cynbel,” he said. “I'll fetch him.”

He ran back to the glass pergola.

Though he had stopped shouting, Fife was still hovering in a frenzy above Lottie's head.

“No one believed me! ‘Stuff and nonsense, Fife,' you said! ‘Just a myth,' you said! Now some wisp—so stupid to wander out at dawn—and now he's—he's
dead
, and—wait.
Is
it a he? Maybe a
she
, and, Puck's wings, it smells grotesque.”

Lottie had never seen Fife as hysterical as this. She barely avoided getting conked in the head by one of his flailing feet. Clearly, the one person who best knew what to do in this
situation was in no position to help. She sucked in a cold breath, steeled herself, and approached the bloodied circle of grass.

Adelaide gasped. “Lottie,
no!
Don't
touch
—”

Lottie knelt beside the motionless body. She could make out legs, curled inward, and shoulders, hunched tightly together. After another steadying breath, she pushed at the shoulders until the body lurched onto its back, revealing the wisp's face.

Lottie recognized him. He was one of the Wisp Guard. She had seen him before, patrolling the pergola and the surrounding wood. Lottie wondered if he had simply been doing his duty when the whitecaps attacked.

Then she felt it. The wisp's thumb brushed her wrist, ever so slightly.

“He's still alive!” she cried to the others.

Frantically, Lottie pushed away the wisp's heavy cloak. Something sharp caught at the hem. Lottie tugged it back to reveal a large spearhead, made of black metal, lodged into the wisp's side. Her hands came back slick with blood.

Fife hovered her side. He was no longer in hysterics, but he was still shaking badly.

“This can't have happened long ago,” he said, “or he would've lost all his blood by now. Come
on
, Spool.”

Fife held a yellow kingfisher. The genga was quivering,
clearly unnerved by the bloody tableau before it. Fife stroked her back reassuringly. Spool gave a nervous twitter, then puffed up her chest and, with a cough, produced a filmy vial from her beak. Hurriedly, Fife unstoppered the vial and poured its contents—Piskie Juice—on the wisp's wound.

“What else do we do?” Lottie asked. “Should we try to take the spear out?”

“
NO!
” Fife threw himself between Lottie and the body. “Oberon, Lottie, that is the very
last
thing you want to do.”

“Well, I don't know!” Lottie said, feeling panic seize her for the first time. “I'm not a healer apprentice like you!”

“Yeah, well you're an actual
healer
!”

Lottie shrank at Fife's words. Tears pricked her eyes. He was right: if anyone should be useful at a time like this, it was her. Healing was her keen, yet here she was, stooped next to a wisp who desperately needed healing, and she could do nothing. What good were her stupid lessons now?

“You shouldn't even be touching him,” Fife said, too distracted to notice Lottie's wet eyes. “You being half-human.”

“What's that supposed to—”

Lottie was interrupted by the arrival of Cynbel and several members of the Wisp Guard. Oliver was leading them. Hastily, Lottie blotted her eyes.

“He's still alive,” she said, as two of the guards pulled her and Fife from the body. “He needs help right away.”

A flutter of white wings zipped past.

“Keats will fetch Father,” Oliver said. “He'll know what to do. Lottie, your
hands
. Fife, her hands!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Fife said, uncorking yet another filmy vial that Spool had produced. “Ada, make yourself useful, would you? Get her cleaned up with this.”

Though she looked terrified to come anywhere near the bloodied body, Adelaide snatched the vial from Fife.

“Come on,” she said, tugging Lottie's shoulder. “Get away from them. You too, Eliot. It's not safe for you.”

Lottie stumbled after Adelaide to a clean patch of grass, where Adelaide sat her down and ordered her to hold out her hands.

“Keep them cupped tight,” she instructed. “Don't move. Just let the salve do its work.”

Then Adelaide poured out the contents of the vial—something sludgy and teal-colored. The sludge moved in strange ways across Lottie's skin, crawling up against the tug of gravity. It sizzled, but it did not burn, and as it slowly evaporated, it left her skin entirely clean of wisp blood.

“You okay?” Eliot asked, his hand on Lottie's knee. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” she said, “but, Adelaide, what do you mean, it isn't safe? What's wrong with wisp blood?”

“Hasn't anyone ever told you? Wisp blood makes humans fall into deep sleep. Too much, and—”

Cynbel's shouts drowned out the rest of Adelaide's words.

“Take him to the infirmary immediately!” he was barking to the other wisps.

“I don't think he should be moved,” said Fife. “If you just wait for Mr. Wilfer, he'll tell you the same—”

“Quiet, halfling,” Cynbel said. “You're no healer.”

“I'm
telling
you,” Fife argued. “He shouldn't be moved. He's losing too much blood as it is.”

“Take him,” Cynbel ordered the guards.

Four floating wisps hauled up the body. As they did so, blood gushed from the wisp's chest and spattered to the ground. They carried him off, leaving a trail of white in their wake, and Lottie remembered the line of poetry Oliver had quoted days earlier:
paint the ground with snowy blood
.

“As for you,” said Cynbel, turning on Fife. “You keep forgetting that your place in these woods is precarious. Wilfer may have authority here, but you do not.”

Fife floated to Cynbel's eye level, his face purple with anger. “
You
seem to keep forgetting that I'm a Dulcet.”

Cynbel smiled without humor. “You may be a Dulcet, but you will never have authority over
me
. Go tell ghost stories with the other children.”

As Cynbel floated away, Fife called him a long, sibilant word Lottie did not recognize but that caused Adelaide to gasp.

“What?” said Fife, shrugging. “That's precisely what he is.”

Oliver's brow was stitched in troubled thought, his eyes a deep yellow.

“Fife,” he said. “Whitecaps are supposed to drain their victims of blood, right?”

Fife nodded.

“Drain them
entirely
?” Oliver said.

Again, Fife nodded.

“What are you saying?” Lottie asked Oliver. “You don't think this was whitecaps?”

Fife didn't look too happy with this development.

“Who else could've done it?” he asked. “Who else would kill some random wisp on Autumntide?”

“I don't know,” said Oliver, “but you yourself said the wound had to be recent, and it's been nighttime for a while. The whitecaps are only supposed to come out in the day.”

“They could've overslept.”

“What about the spearhead?” said Lottie. “It was in the wisp's side. Do whitecaps use weapons like that?”

Fife licked his lips. “The stories say they just use their bare teeth.”

“Four rows of teeth, right?” Lottie said. “Wouldn't that leave marks all over the wisp's body? I didn't see any.”

“Who else would want to kill a wisp guard?” asked Eliot. “Does this kind of thing happen a lot?”

Eliot looked nervous. The color had gone out of his face. Lottie hadn't seen him so pale since back in September, when he had been gravely ill. She wrapped her hand around his.

“Of course not,” she said, looking to Fife for confirmation. “Does it?”

“Wisps are dying here all the time,” said Fife, “but from Plague, not murder.”

“Why are we still standing around?” Adelaide nodded uneasily at the bloodstained grass. “It smells foul, and I feel terrible. And for all we know, whatever attacked the wisp could still be close by.”

“Ada's right,” said Oliver. “We shouldn't be here.”

Together, they headed for the pergola, following the bloody trail the Wisp Guard had left behind. Eliot, whose mittened hand was still entwined with Lottie's, gave a sudden cough. Then another, dry and staggered. Then another.

“Eliot?” said Lottie. “Are you okay?”

Eliot nodded, but he coughed again, a series of jagged barks. Then, just as quickly as it had come on, the attack subsided.

“I'm fine,” he said, wiping at his watering eyes. He smiled sheepishly at the others. “Just swallowed the wrong way. It's the cold air, that's all.”

They continued on their way, but Lottie didn't stop staring at Eliot. She knew those coughs.

She knew it wasn't just the cold air.

THE CONGREGATION
of wisps was gone from the glass pergola. The table sat vacant, strewn with half-drunk cups of spiced cider. Only a few black-cloaked wisps remained, and they stood at a distance, speaking in low tones. The air was full of jittery unrest.

“Shouldn't we get inside, too?” said Adelaide, casting a nervous look around.

“Why ever do
you
want to go inside?” Fife asked. “What is there to hide from? I thought whitecaps were make-believe.”

Adelaide paled. “I didn't say it was a whitecap. I just think we should be in our yews, where it's safe.”

“Fife,” said Oliver. “Look.”

He pointed to a wisp guard floating at the entrance of the pergola. The guard was staring straight at Fife.

“Son of Silvia,” she called. “Your presence is requested in the Royal Bower.”

For a moment, Fife looked confused. Then his face hardened into a sneer.