The Water and the Wild by Ormsbee K.E

Author:Ormsbee, K.E. [Ormsbee, K.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mg fantasy
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2015-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

Lottie looked around. They were standing in a grove dense with yew trees. That is, the trees looked like yews, but of the most peculiar sort. Their branches did not sprawl out veinlike, as Lottie would expect any normal tree to do. Instead, they curled inward upon themselves in splintery spirals. Their bark and their leaves were pure white.

“We’re here,” Fife repeated, “in Wisp Territory. Honestly, Ada, don’t you know a wisp when you hear one?”

Adelaide turned raspberry red. “Of course I don’t. I’ve never been cavorting around with wisps!”

“I don’t see anything,” said Lottie. The wood looked just as empty now as it had been before they had run.

“They don’t reveal themselves unless provoked,” said Oliver, “or without a proper plea.”

“No fear there,” said Fife. “I’ve got us covered.”

Fife closed his eyes and held his arms out, palms upward. Then, just as he was opening his mouth, he seemed to remember something. His eyes fluttered back open.

“Lottie,” he said quietly, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to mention to anyone here that you’re a Fiske.”

Lottie nodded. She hadn’t been planning on it. Fife nodded back, then closed his eyes again and resumed his reverent posture.

“We lost, weary travelers,” Fife began in a flat voice like the one Lottie used to recite Latin verses at Kemble School, “implore the aid of the lights of the forest. In the name of the revered Lyre and Silvia Dulcet, patrons of this arbor, do we seek sanctuary. Hear us, oh will o’ the wisps. Et cetera, et cetera, blah, blergh, blooey.”

Fife drew his arms back in and opened his eyes. The yew trees swayed slowly, almost purposefully. One white branch swayed toward Lottie’s face. She shrank back, waving away a leaf that tickled her nose. Then, to Lottie’s amazement, the branch spoke.

“Lost?” asked a voice as low as a cello’s.

Lottie stumbled backward, eyes darting this way and that to find from what part of the branch the voice had come. Then she saw that the branch of the yew had not merely been swaying in the wind; it had been uncurling itself.

More silvery branches craned and stretched themselves out, all with a tremendous creaking sound. Then lights, small at first as Lottie’s fist, but soon pulsing to the size of crystal balls, appeared in the ghostly trees. They looked like lightbulbs, strung out above the wood like fresh dew would string along a spiderweb. Then the lights grew nearer, and Lottie saw that they really shone from large wooden, swinging globes and that the globes swung in the hands of people—people who had come floating out of the trees.

Though Lottie wasn’t sure if she could properly call them “people.” Their skin was a sickly white and so tissue-thin that Lottie could see the bulge of colorless veins weaving and webbing through their limbs. On each of their heads rested a thick sprawl of soft black hair that floated gently in the air, as though fanned out in water.

But the eyes! The eyes were strangest.

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