The Doorway and the Deep (18 page)

“It's not much longer,” Adelaide said. “We should dock in a few hours, and then Dorian says it's just a short walk to the court gates.”

Lottie nodded, but she'd grown distracted by the sight of Nash, who sat with his head turned down, arms still bound. The events of last night were crowding in on her memory, piecemeal.

He tried to kill me last night
, Lottie thought.
I could've been
killed.

“We've all been talking about it,” said Adelaide, dropping her voice to a whisper. “You healing Nash like that. Where did it come from, Lottie? Was that something Father taught you?”

Lottie shook her head. “No. I can't explain it entirely. I just know it had something to do with Nash. I think it's because I felt sorry for him.”

Adelaide looked aghast. “You felt
sorry
for
him
?”

“Well, no, that's not exactly what I mean. I just . . . 
felt
for him. And then the bad spell came on, so I did what I did
before with Eliot: I took his hands, and I let go. I told you, it's hard to explain.”

“It was certainly something to watch. And, well, not that I think that horrible man deserved any kind treatment, but”—Adelaide leaned in closer, dipping her voice even lower—“
thank you
. I know how wretched Oliver felt about those bruises, and he's much better off having seen them healed, you know?”

Lottie ventured a glance at Oliver, who sat talking to Eliot. They were both laughing, and Oliver's eyes were a happy violet—a color Lottie hadn't seen much of lately. She smiled at the sight. Then the boat heaved, and Lottie went tumbling forward.

“What was that?” she asked, righting herself.

“Just ice on the water,” said Adelaide.

“Tougher to navigate than it looks,” called Reeve.

Lottie looked out at the chunks of ice surrounding them.

“It looks
very
tough to navigate,” she said.

The boat shuddered again, but this time Lottie had a better grip and didn't topple.

“Pretty soon, I guess we'll be able to ice-skate to the Northerly Court, huh?” she called to Reeve.

But Reeve was no longer smiling.

“That,” he said, “wasn't ice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dorian!” shouted Reeve, ignoring her. “You're going to want to look at this.”

Dorian bounded across the boat to where Reeve sat. Nash's knife was still in his hand. He squinted at the horizon, then shook his head.

“It's too early in the season,” he said. “It can't possibly be.”

“It can't,” said Reeve, “but it is.”

The boat heaved again, this time sending Eliot flying. He nearly landed in Oliver's lap.

“Steer right,” Dorian said, his voice lifting to a shout. “Right!”

“If I veer much farther, I'll run us straight into—”

The boat shuddered once more.

“What can we do to help?” Lottie shouted to Dorian.

“Stay put, and stay silent! Reeve, are you asleep at the rudder?”

“Doing the best I can!” Reeve shouted.

“Whoo, we're going to die,” Fife said chipperly. “How'll it be, do you think? Drowning, or the jaws of whatever river monster is boxing us in?”

“Not now, Fife!” snapped Adelaide.

“Aren't you scared?” Eliot asked him.

“Witless,” said Fife, grinning.

“You've something wrong with your head,” said Adelaide.

“Who of us can swim?” Fife asked. “I know Ollie can, and—well, Ada, have you ever touched a body of water?”

“For your information, I'm a fabulous swimmer, thanks very much.”

“I know how,” said Lottie, “but Eliot doesn't.”

“Right,” said Fife. “Well, look, if it comes to it, I can float us out one at a time, and—”

“Brace yourself!” Nash shouted. “It's coming on fast!”

A hard jolt knocked Reeve from the rudder. The boat wavered for a brief moment, motionless on the water. Then they sped backward, fast, into the current.

Reeve didn't try to regain control of the rudder. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a rust-colored robin. He put his lips close to the genga's head, whispering something. The bird twittered in reply and then flew to the bank and into the wood, out of sight.

Of course, Lottie realized. Reeve was sending out his genga to alert someone that they were in danger. Lottie shoved her hand into her own coat pocket. It was empty. Panicked, she checked the other one, though she knew that she only ever stored Trouble in her right pocket, not her left. Her heart pattered. Trouble wasn't there. When had he left her? Where could he possibly be at a moment like this?

Lottie's thoughts came to a splintering stop when a sound, low and loud, blasted into the air. She couldn't identify it. It was like nothing she'd heard before. It was so deep
and overwhelming that it felt like the sound was in the water and in the trees alike, spinning itself around the boat like a physical
thing
. Just when Lottie thought she could take no more of it, the sound ceased. Then, ahead of the boat, the water broke apart in a great heave, sending waves crashing toward them. Lottie's senses were hit hard with
cold
and
wet
. She was suddenly dripping, and the base of the boat was filled ankle-high with water.

“Hold it off, Reeve!” shouted Dorian.

Reeve was leaning far over the boat's edge, hands plunged in the icy water. He was forming waves, it seemed, but they were small and choppy, not like the massive ones that had crashed over the boat. Those bigger waves had come from something else entirely, something that now towered high above the boat.

It was a monster. Lottie couldn't think of a better word for the massive creature that had emerged from the river. Its body stood as high and wide as a three-story building, broken into thick, fleshy segments, from which poked row after row of spindly legs. Its skin was slick and white. Two large red eyes protruded from the top of its body, which was crowned by a set of short antennae. The monster's mouth was open, baring a row of black, jagged teeth.

Lottie thought of the ghost stories Reeve and Nash had told in the dark. One of them hadn't been just a story.

“It's an ice crawler,” Oliver whispered.

The monster's mouth opened wider, and that low sound filled the air again. From where Lottie was crouched, the ice crawler's throat looked infinite.

Reeve was still at the boat's edge, using his hands to whip up waves from the river water, even as the boat sped backward, putting distance between them and the ice crawler. The waves spiked like jagged mountaintops and shot in front of the boat, growing ever higher. Reeve was trying to form a wall between them and the monster.

But it won't do any good
, thought Lottie.
That ice crawler is far more solid than a wall of water
.

“It isn't going to hold!” Reeve yelled.

“The boat's going to capsize!” Dorian called to the others. “We've got to get to shore!”

Fife was already hovering above the water's surface.

“Take Eliot first,” Lottie said. “
Please
.”

Fife nodded doggedly. “But I'll come back for the rest of you,” he said. “I'll take him to shore and come back for you all, I promise. Just hang in there!”

Fife swung his arms around Eliot's middle and lifted him into the air.

“No!” screamed Eliot. “Lottie!”

Lottie's heart stammered, but she said nothing, only watched as Fife and Eliot disappeared into the growing shadows of twilight, through the spray of water on the Lissome.

“Nash,” said Oliver, turning to Lottie. “We should loose his bonds.”

“
What
?” shrieked Adelaide.

“We're going under,” Oliver said. “He at least deserves a chance to fight for it!”

But Lottie didn't need Oliver's reasons. Whatever Nash had done earlier, even Lottie didn't wish drowning on him. She stumbled to where he sat and began struggling against his gauze binding.

“Please,” Nash whimpered. “Please help me.”

“I will,” said Lottie, “but you've got to hold still.”

It took several seconds' worth of squinting and tugging, but she found the first of the knots and set about undoing it. The boat juddered. Reeve and Dorian continued to exchange frantic yells. Lottie didn't look up. Setting sights on that ice crawler would do nothing for her concentration.

She loosened the first knot, then the next, and the third. The gauze came free in her hands, and Lottie threw the last of it into the wind. She found her gaze meeting Dorian's, and she saw something there she had not expected: an apology.

“It's all right,” Lottie said, not at all sure that Dorian could hear her. “You did what you could.”

The current was dragging them at a disorienting speed, and for the moment it had put some distance between them and the monster. Meantime, Reeve's wall of water had grown
so high that all Lottie could see over its crest were the stubby antennae of the ice crawler.

At last, the creature had become aware of its escaping prey. It tilted forward and broke through Reeve's wall, shattering it to watery pieces and plunging back into the Lissome. Reeve hung over the boat's side, spent from effort. For a terrifying moment, the monster was nowhere to be seen.

Then the ice crawler burst from the river once more, this time just a foot from the boat's edge. A fresh shock of icy water poured down on them, soaking Lottie's face and forcing her eyes shut. She wiped the water away, freeing her vision in time to see Dorian leap before the ice crawler, sword in hand.

The monster bellowed its air-rippling cry. Dorian lunged forward and drove the blade into the monster's flesh. There was a horrendous
squelch
. Dorian drew the sword out and plunged it again and again. The cries of the ice crawler grew louder, but Lottie didn't know if Dorian's fighting was doing any good; the ice crawler was so big and Dorian's incisions so small. Reeve still hung slumped by the boat's edge, and Lottie began to wonder if he was even conscious. And Nash . . . Nash was nowhere to be seen.

Hurry up, Fife
, she thought.

Why didn't we escape to the bank earlier?
she thought.

But it was too late for thoughts like those.

Lottie looked toward the tree-crowded riverbank, but she could see no sign of Eliot or Fife. All was turning black in the onrush of coming night.

Then another thought came to Lottie, more horrible than all the rest:

What if the ice crawler could move in water
and
on land?

Water swept over the boat once more. It was up to Lottie's shins, and she realized with horror that the boat had reached its limit. They were sinking—low and low and lower still.

The ice crawler bent its body toward them, its segments folding in on themselves. Several pairs of legs grabbed hold of the boat as though it were little more than a flimsy matchbox. The legs clenched, and the wood cracked, and Dorian gave a hoarse shout as he once more ripped his sword across the ice crawler's flesh.

The boat tipped forward into the water. The ice crawler was bringing them down, and Fife hadn't returned from the bank, and Lottie saw now that there was only one thing left to do.

“Come on!” she screamed to the others. “We've got to jump for it!”

She didn't know if they'd heard her. She'd barely heard herself over the ice crawler's bellowing. Lottie looked to the bank. She thought she could see the dim outline of something hovering above the water, but she couldn't be sure. She jumped.

LOTTIE FISKE
was a girl well acquainted with pain. She had fallen out of trees and crashed her bike more than once and been plagued her whole life by bad spells. But no difficulty that Lottie had experienced before now could quite prepare her for the blinding, howling cold that burst into every particle of her body as she plunged into the River Lissome.

When her head came to the surface, all was havoc and a clamor of sounds. The river's current whipped at her legs, dragging them back under the water and, with them, Lottie's head. Her hands and feet had gone numb. She took a frantic gulp of air before she was pulled down. Her coat was heavy,
so heavy, and her boots felt like they were made of metal, and why, thought Lottie, did she not think to take them off beforehand?

In the midst of the confusion, she understood with sudden clarity that she might not resurface. The current was too strong to fight. And where was Fife? And what was happening to the others? Then those thoughts scattered to make room for the overwhelming realization that pressure, unbearable pressure, was pushing into her chest, and she could give it no relief—that this pressure would build and build until it burst, and then her thoughts would be no more.