The Water and the Wild (7 page)

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm Lottie,” she said hurriedly, in place of an answer.

She was busy wondering just how hideous that Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer impression of hers had been. Mrs. Yates had taught her that first impressions were everything, and now she was afraid that this Oliver boy was going to forever think of her with crossed eyes and a flipped lower lip.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Oliver. “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, and true plain hearts do in the faces rest.”

“Beg your pardon?” Lottie sputtered. It sounded like the boy had switched, midsentence, into a foreign language.

“It's poetry,” Oliver said matter-of-factly.

Lottie did not know how to respond to
that,
so she tried another question.

“Where are we?”

Oliver frowned and scratched his ear. “Where do you think we are?”

“In a dream,” Lottie said. “Or maybe . . . maybe I'm dead. Maybe the tree killed me after all.”

“The apple tree didn't kill you.”

“How do you know?” said Lottie, looking up at Oliver, whose face had grown slyer.

Rather than answer, he pointed to the row of glass doors.

“If you'd like to know where you are, why not take a look?”

Lottie got up, and Oliver followed her to the open door. The scent of flowers grew stronger on the night air, and so did new smells of pine, of smoke, and of fresh-fallen water. She was standing on a terrace in the middle of a dim garden full of irises. Oliver pointed Lottie's gaze to a higher point, beyond the garden. She peered into the light of the half moon, and slowly images came into focus:
rows of cobblestone streets, wooden roofs, and flickers of lamplight; and towering over all of these things were trees, hundreds and hundreds of trees. Lottie had never seen so many trees in one place except in pictures from her geography textbook about places like the Black Forest and the Cascade Mountains.

“It's nice enough,” she told Oliver, “but I still don't know where we are.”

“You really don't recognize it? It
is
your own backyard.”

Lottie looked out again, then back to Oliver.

“No, it's not. I live in New Kemble, on Kemble Isle. That”—she swept her arm out toward the lights and trees—“is not New Kemble.”

“Myself unseen,” said Oliver, “I see in white defined, far off the homes of men.”

Lottie frowned. “Was that poetry again?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it didn't make sense,” Lottie informed him. “Don't you think I know what my own home looks like? If this is New Kemble, where is St. George's Church? Where is the old bell tower? You can see those things from any street in New Kemble, and that's a fact. Even
if it weren't, there's definitely not a whole forest growing in the middle of the city.”

“Well,” Oliver said in a very rational tone of voice, “it's not my fault that your people are worse landscapers. Or that you cut down all of
your
trees.”

Lottie let out a squawk of exasperation. “Why are you and Adelaide talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“With
yours
and
ours
and
ups
and
downs
? I just want to know where I am!”

“You're in New
Albion
,” Oliver said. “It's your city, only in
our
world. I don't know how else to explain it to you.”

Lottie narrowed her eyes at the boy named Oliver. Nothing he said made sense, so of course this all still had to be a dream. Lottie left the terrace and plopped back down on the settee inside. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and poked herself in the ribs, hard, in an attempt to wake herself up.

“What are you doing?”

Lottie's eyelids fluttered open. Oliver had followed her back inside.

She stared at him. “Nothing,” she said, and she stared some more.

Despite the bruises splotching it, Oliver's face was a nice one, framed by curly hair the shade of bronze. Lottie was sure that if Oliver attended Kemble School, he'd be a prime topic of swooning and giggling for Pen Bloomfield and her crowd. Lottie noticed that the boy's eyes had changed color again, this time to a pinked shade like fresh salmon. Lottie noticed, too, that Oliver was standing quite far from her, like she was about to sneeze and he didn't want to get covered in the snot.
Perhaps
, she thought miserably,
Mrs. Yates was right about first impressions, and now Oliver is afraid I'll pull another face on him
.

“So, how'd you hurt your arm?” she asked at last, pointing to his bandaged elbow.

“Same as anyone does,” said Oliver, but he was looking at Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer, not her. “I had an accident.”

“Oh, did you?” An urge was bubbling up Lottie's throat, threatening to pop loose. Suddenly, it did. “And were any
flying squirrels
involved in your accident?”

Oliver was quiet for a moment.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“I was there at the pub,” said Lottie, “when you and your friend—Flute, or something—came into the break room. You were all bloody. I know it had to be you, so don't deny it.”

Oliver's eyes had gone bright blue again. “So
you're
the one who went running out of the coats.”

Lottie nodded.

“Father didn't say you'd be so nosy,” Oliver muttered, and this would have hurt Lottie's feelings, except that she thought she saw Oliver smiling when he said it.

Suddenly, the wooden doors by the settee flew open, and Adelaide came leaping out.

“Lottie, you can—oh! Hello. Sweet Oberon, what happened to your arm?”

Oliver shrugged.

But Adelaide wasn't waiting for an answer. She had turned her attention right back to Lottie. “Father will see you now.”

Lottie cast a glance at the portrait of Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer. Was the letter-writer going to be like
that
? Pompous and ugly and intimidating?

“He,” faltered Lottie, “is a good person, isn't he?”

“Ugh,” groaned Adelaide. “Stop asking so many questions.”

“Be nice, Adelaide,” said Oliver. “She's just naturally nosy.”

He
was
smiling.

“Go on, go on,” insisted Adelaide, pushing Lottie toward the double doors. “Of course he's nice, he's my father. He'll answer your questions. He might even ask you some, too. After all, he's curious about you.”

“We all are,” Oliver said.

“What?” said Lottie. “What's that supposed to mean?”

But Adelaide only shooed at her impatiently. Lottie, reasoning that this was certainly not the strangest thing to have happened to her tonight, walked past the doors. They closed behind her with the faintest of clicks.

LOTTIE FOUND HERSELF
in what looked a lot like the abandoned laboratory of a mad scientist. The ceilings were high here, but there was not a window in sight. The floors were caked with so much dust that Eliot's green sneakers made an impressive
poof!
with each step that Lottie took. Hundreds of vials of all shapes—squares and ovals and diamonds and wonky pyramids—lined shelves running so high up the walls that Lottie could not see an end to them. There were even more colors in the vials' insides than there were shapes on the outside.

Maybe it was just the dust getting to Lottie's brain, but it seemed to her that each of those colors had a very personal feeling, all to itself, and that each of those feelings was obvious at a glance: the sapphire blues were wistful and those were not
just
blacks, but mournful blacks, and those the most content of violets. Beakers, candles, and other strange contraptions lay on the two long, brass-clawed tables that lined the room. This place looked nothing like the rich, spotless foyer outside, but it was just as overwhelming.

As fascinating as the laboratory was, Lottie was still looking for the letter-writer. The trouble was that there was no letter-writer in sight.

“Hello?” called Lottie, her voice bouncing back in distorted echoes.

She tucked her hands into the pockets of her tweed coat and walked carefully onward. Then she heard a trickling sound, followed by a long hiss. A scent, strong and chemical, wafted past her, stinging the edges of her nose. Just as she was about to call again, she saw something move by one of the tables. She hurried toward the movement.

“Ex-excuse me?” she called.

The figure stopped moving. Then it began to grow larger, and Lottie realized that this was because the figure was a man who had been stooped over a fizzing beaker and was only now straightening up to face her. The man lifted a pair of large, silver-rimmed goggles from his eyes and set them atop his head. He took a long look at Lottie. Lottie took a long look back at him.

The man's face was grooved, stubbly, and tired. The hair around his ears was thin, and his eyes were squinty. He dropped his goggles back on his face and squinted harder at Lottie through them. Then he removed the gloves from his hands.

“Moritasgus Horatio Wilfer,” said the man. “It's a pleasure.”

His voice shook, but he smiled. That was a relief. He was nervous, and he was nice. Nothing at all like a Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer.

“And you are, I presume,” Mr. Wilfer continued, “Miss Charlotte Grace Fiske.”

“Lottie,” she corrected, shaking his hand. “My name's Lottie, and I've got to get that cure for my best friend.”

Mr. Wilfer let go of her hand. “My! You don't lose a minute, do you?”

He shook his head and laughed. It was the sort of laugh that Lottie heard adults make every so often, to themselves, as though they were in on a private joke from their past. Lottie didn't like it; that laugh always made her feel left out.

“
Lottie
Fiske,” Mr. Wilfer said, turning back to his place at the table and setting aside some jars. “You're very grown up. More than I was expecting.”

“I'm not grown at all,” said Lottie. “Mrs. Yates' friends say I look too young for my age.”

Mr. Wilfer laughed the same laugh again. Lottie grimaced.

“Excuse me,” said the man, checking himself and wiping his hands on an apron tied around his waist. “I've forgotten my manners. Would you be so good as to join me in my study?”

He led Lottie farther into the room, past more rows of vials, beakers, and strange instruments. At the end of the laboratory was another set of double doors. Mr. Wilfer flung them open, onto a snug, tidy room as different from the laboratory as the laboratory had been from the foyer before it.

It was dim inside the study, but a fire was crackling in the fireplace, and its light waltzed on the rug beneath Lottie's feet. The ceiling was shorter here, and sloped, producing a cozy effect. Mr. Wilfer motioned for Lottie to take a seat, as he took his own chair behind a mahogany desk. Lottie's chair sagged dangerously, and as soon as she was stuck in its velvet cushion, she began to panic about whether she would ever get
un
stuck again.