The Water and the Wild (24 page)

“Halflings aren't heirs,” Fife said. “Halflings aren't anything around here. Anyway, I'm nothing like them. Dulcets are great sewers.” He pointed to Lottie's stitched wrist. “That's the only sort of sewing I enjoy.”

“Well,” said Lottie, “you're good at it.”

Fife smiled without feeling.

The musicians on the Lissome had begun a new song, and unlike the one before it, this one was lively.

“They're playing the Sempiternal,” said Fife, and Lottie was sure that he had looked wistful for the briefest of moments.

She followed Fife out of the courtyard of the Great Lantern, and together they watched as the musician-laden coracle drifted farther away from them, under an icy archway at the end of the pergola and toward (Lottie presumed)
the Seamstress' bedchamber. Even now that she could no longer see its source, Lottie could still hear the music. Oliver and Adelaide could, too; they were dancing to it along the River Lissome's bank.

Adelaide was twirling, her cheeks pink with laughter. Even Oliver grinned as he clapped his hands in a sweeping circle.

“Doesn't he have to be careful?” Lottie asked Fife. She felt instinctively at her arm, just where she knew there to be the fading mark of a handprint.

“Careful not to touch Ada, you mean?” said Fife. “Sure. But that's the beauty of the Sempiternal. In this dance, the hands are forbidden.”

“What keeps the dancers together, then?” Lottie said, staring transfixed as Adelaide and Oliver spun around each other, their hands lifted above their heads as though to catch falling snow.

“The elbows sometimes,” said Fife. “But most of all, the music.”

He ran up to the dancing pair with an indignant shout. “Hey! Leaving out me and Lottie, are you?” He motioned to Lottie. “Go on, Ollie. Teach her.”

Lottie suddenly felt hot and shy all over. No human boy had ever asked her to dance before, let alone a sprite or a wisp.

“I'm not a good dancer,” Lottie said, by way of an excuse.

“Oh come
on,
” said Fife. “Everyone in all of Limn knows how to dance the Sempiternal. Sprites
and
wisps . . . probably even the rabbits.”

Oliver, to Lottie's great surprise, had extended his arm to her. “Take my elbow,” he offered, his eyes an earnest blue, “and I'll teach you.”

“I—”

“Just do it,” Adelaide commanded. “It's a refined dance, and Oberon knows you could use some refinement.”

It was Oliver's smile, not Adelaide's or Fife's words, that convinced Lottie. Carefully, she latched her fingers around the crook of Oliver's elbow. He pulled her toward the riverbank.

“Ollie's an excellent teacher!” Fife cried triumphantly. From her periphery, Lottie saw Adelaide whack Fife upside the head. Lottie giggled, and Oliver smiled.

“So, what do I do?” she whispered to him.

At the moment, she was only swaying from side to side, her hand still lodged against Oliver's elbow.

“Father always told me,” said Oliver, “that the key to the Sempiternal is to imagine that you're a bird. Not a genga, just an ordinary bird—one that's been trapped inside a cage and hung over the edge of the steepest cliff in the Northerly Wolds. You've been trapped there, hanging all day.”

Lottie winced. “That sounds painful.”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “But then your cage is cut free. You fall and fall, and just before your cage crashes on the rocks below, your cage door rattles open in time for you to fly free. The Sempiternal is that split of a moment, when the door hinges pop and you
know
that you'll survive. You may be falling, but you can
fly,
and because of that you've got the most terrific feeling of freedom. That's what the Sempiternal is about. You've got to think of it like that.”

Lottie nodded. “Okay.”

“Now,” said Oliver, “we link elbows.”

They did so. Lottie's fingers were quivering. She clenched them into a fist.

“Then we spin around, five times in a row,” said Oliver.

They did so, slowly, so that Lottie's mind wasn't reeling too badly with dizziness when it was all done.

“Then,” said Oliver, “we release the elbows. You spin—just twirl in a circle. Yes, like that. And I clap. Then we spin around each other, twice, our hands raised.

“Then,” he said, slipping his elbow back into hers, “we do it all over again.”

So they danced the Sempiternal again to the now faint music of the wisps. Oliver's blue eyes shone, and he gave an encouraging smile when Lottie tripped over herself on one of the spins. When they had danced it through, they began a third time.

“Oliver,” Lottie said, once she felt she could talk and move at the same time. “When we first met, you were afraid to so much as sit next to me.”

Lottie lost sight of Oliver's eyes as they twirled past each other. When they came back into focus, they were a pale orange.

“Yes,” said Oliver.

“So, why are you dancing with me now?”

“Dancing is . . . different,” Oliver said softly. “I don't know how to explain it. It's like poetry, but for
your limbs. I feel comfortable dancing. I feel comfortable dancing with
you
.”

Lottie didn't know why she had gone warm in the face. “It's hard, though. Poetry, too.”

Oliver nodded. “They're not supposed to be easy, just worth it. Keens, too, you know. Sharpening your keen can be very uncomfortable, until you find the balance of it. Balance—that's the beauty of the Sempiternal. There is a magic made by melody. A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool heart, that sinks through fading colors deep.”

Lottie smiled. Then she tripped again. But this time, rather than catch herself, she kept falling forward, her arm unthreading from Oliver's and her feet tripping over each other until Lottie hit something hard and spice-scented. She looked up in a panic and found herself staring into the eyes of Cynbel the wisp. She'd run straight into his hovering knees.

“Oops,” she said, breathless.

Cynbel paid Lottie no mind. He was looking beyond her, at Fife. “I thought I told you, halfling, that I would take you to your mother's presence in due time.”

“Yeeeah,” Fife said, squinting. “I vaguely remember that. What can I say? We got bored.”

Cynbel grunted. “If you weren't her son, I swear to Stingy Jack himself, I'd run you through with—”

“Calm down, Cynbel, or you're gonna ground yourself,” said Fife. “Is my mom awake, or what?”

“Yes,” said Cynbel. “She is.”

“Then what are you waiting for, ignis fatuus?” he said. “Lead on!”

Cynbel hesitated, as though he were still half considering running Fife through with one of those strange, pronged wisp swords. Finally, he seemed to give that idea up, and with another grunt he led them on.

They passed several more courtyards and then, abruptly, the pergola ended. Beyond the last of the columns loomed the largest and whitest weeping willow that Lottie had ever seen. An awning of gauzy netting stretched beneath the tree's drooping branches, and there amongst them hovered the cross-legged figure of a woman. She was as tall, pale, and dark-headed as the other wisps, but her hair had been cropped short about the ears and laced with a shoot of baby's breath. In the woman's lap
rested a ball of white thread. In her hand, which seemed to have stopped mid stitch, was a threaded glass needle.

Cynbel raised his glowing globe before the lady and gave a deep bow, which Lottie thought looked a little ridiculous when done in a hover.

“May I introduce Her Grace,” said Cynbel, extending his arm toward the woman, “Silvia Dulcet, Seamstress of the wisps.”

In New Kemble, Lottie had once gone with Eliot to see a film at an old, run-down cinema that had since closed. The film had been silent, from the twenties, and the only sound in the entire auditorium had come from the live organist, Mr. Jeliby (whom Lottie and Eliot both liked for giving them free oranges to eat during the feature). On the screen, there had been a short man with a square mustache and a short lady with a bob cut, rouged-up cheeks, wide eyes, and a puckered mouth. For every extraordinary thing that happened in the film (which was always the man's fault), the little woman would widen her wide eyes, pucker her puckered mouth, and lift her hands up to her cheeks.
She made no sound, of course, but Lottie could distinctly hear the woman's scream in her mind. It was an insincere, overly dramatic scream, to match the woman's face.

“What a fake!” Lottie and Eliot had agreed when they left the cinema. “What an absolute fake!” Actors were paid to fake things, Lottie had acknowledged, but they certainly did not need to remind the audience of it every other second. Of course, that film had been made in the 1920s, and no one acted like that anymore.

No one, Lottie had thought, until she was introduced to Silvia Dulcet, Seamstress of the wisps.

At her introduction, the lady inclined her head downward toward the four of them. Immediately, Silvia's wide eyes went wider and her puckered mouth puckered further. Then, since this was real life and not a silent movie, a sound really did emit from the woman, and it was just as fake a thing as Lottie had ever heard.

“My son!” Silvia cried. She tossed aside her needle and thread and swooped down to bundle Fife into an embrace.

Silvia proceeded to shower Fife in kisses and breathless, enthusiastic questions that she gave him no chance to answer. By the look on Fife's face, Lottie wasn't sure if, given the chance, he
would
have answered. He remained
stiff in his mother's arms and, when finally released, did nothing more than redden and lower his head.

“Would you just look at her?” Adelaide whispered, leaning toward Lottie in hushed awe. “They say that even the ladies of the Southerly Court take their fashion cues from Silvia Dulcet.”

Lottie, who had been preoccupied with the fake pucker of Silvia's lips, had not yet given consideration to her gown. But Adelaide was right: Silvia really was prettily dressed. Thick, silver-colored silk spilled off the Seamstress' shoulders. A belt of braided flower stems hung loose across her narrow waist, and long, glassy stones slipped like tears down the gown's floating train. Lottie would never have dared to wear something so grand even to a Kemble School dance, but it suited the Seamstress extraordinarily well.

When she was done with Fife, Silvia became aware of his companions and asked, mouth pleasantly puckered, to be introduced. Fife sulkily obeyed. Silvia beamed at Oliver and Adelaide as Fife introduced them. Oliver looked curious and Adelaide positively terrified to make the Seamstress' acquaintance.

Then Fife motioned to Lottie, and Silvia's expression changed. A frown disfigured her pretty lips. When Lottie
dipped into a curtsy, following Adelaide's example before her, she saw Silvia put her finger to her nose, as if she had just been given a difficult math problem to solve.

“So,” said Silvia, “all of those absurd rumors are true. A Fiske child does exist.”

Adelaide gave a small cry. Oliver, too, looked startled. Fife just slapped his hand over his face. So much for keeping her identity a secret.

Silvia glided closer to Lottie, her head tilted. She reached out a thin, spindly-fingered hand toward Lottie's cheek and stroked it. Her touch felt like a trickle of cold rain.

“How do you know about me?” Lottie asked.

Silvia lifted Lottie's chin with her thumb.

“Why,” she said in a soft, lazy drawl, “one can see it in your face. Such a striking resemblance. So much of her in you.”

“You knew my mom?” Lottie asked with some difficulty.

Silvia smiled. “I was acquainted with the House of Fiske in my time. Normally, I care very little for such things that intrigue common sprites and”—she wrinkled her carefully upturned nose—“
humans
. Still, I do keep up with the times. It is my privilege. It is my duty.”