The Water and the Wild by Katie Elise Ormsbee Page B

what? In sprites?”
    â€œWell,” said Lottie, “I know that there’s
something
weird going on here, and Mr. Wilfer expects me to believe it’s magic.”
    â€œBut you don’t believe that?”
    Lottie thought for a good minute. How could she explain flying out a window? Or the silver-boughed tree? Or how she no longer had a cut upon her forehead? Those were things too big to keep in a copper box.
    â€œMaybe I do,” she said.
    Fife looked at her strangely. The very tip of his tongue protruded from his lips. “Do you mean to say that no one ever told you anything about Limn?”
    Lottie shook her head. No one told her much of anything back home. She was lucky if Mrs. Yates informed her that a boarder was coming to stay in Thirsby Square.
    â€œShould someone have told me?” Lottie asked.
    â€œWell, only just about every Southerly sprite since the beginning of time has gotten the history of Limn pounded into their little Southerly brains.”
    â€œYou’ve said that word before,” said Lottie. “Southerly. What’s that mean?”
    â€œSoutherly,” repeated Fife, licking his lower lip. “As in, the opposite of Northerly.”
    He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and held his right hand up, close to Lottie’s nose. Inked just below the knobby bone jutting from his wrist was a tattoo of a black diamond. Lottie’s eyes widened. She’d never met a boy with a tattoo before.
    â€œSee that?” Fife asked. “The black diamond. That’s the mark of the Northerly Court. All the Northerlies have got one.”
    â€œDo Southerlies have one, too?”
    â€œIt’s so lame,” Fife snorted. “They call it the white orb, but ‘orb’ is just a fancy name for ‘circle.’ Anyway, that’s the mark of the Southerly Court. It’s the mark that people like the Wilfers have got.”
    â€œWhy the difference?” asked Lottie.
    â€œBecause,” said Fife, leaning back against the windowpane, “the Northerlies live in the North and the Southerlies in the South. The two courts hate each other. It’s about something that happened a long time ago.”
    â€œBut,” said Lottie, “you don’t hate Oliver. You said that Oliver was your best friend, and he’s a Southerly.
And
you said that you weren’t even a sprite!”
    â€œReally,” said Fife, smiling. “Did I say all that?”
    Lottie didn’t have the chance to get upset with Fife. Someone else already was, and that someone had just flung open the doors of the library.
    â€œFIFE DULCET!”
    Adelaide stormed toward both of them, looking quite ready to set Fife’s floppy black hair on fire with her glare alone. Oliver was hurrying up behind her.
    â€œHow dare you!” Adelaide shrieked, close enough now to draw her hand back as though to smack Fife’s shoulder.
    Fife shot up and over Adelaide and landed on his feet next to Oliver.
    â€œSchool over so soon?” Fife asked conversationally.
    â€œI had Tutor dismissed the minute I heard you,” said Adelaide, whipping back around. “What do you mean by—”
    â€œBy breaking out your prisoner?” interrupted Fife. He lolled his head toward Lottie. “It’s not very nice to lock up your guests, Ada.”
    â€œLottie is not my prisoner!” snapped Adelaide, scowling in Lottie’s direction. “She’s just not trustworthy.”
    â€œAdelaide,” said Oliver, his eyes turning a startled lime color, “is that true? You locked Lottie up?”
    â€œI had a good reason to lock her up, and she knows perfectly well why,” huffed Adelaide, glaring at Lottie. “And I have just as good a reason for telling
him
”—she pointed at Fife as though he were a bug that she’d just found under her shoe—“to leave Iris Gate immediately.”
    â€œNo you haven’t,” said