The Water and the Wild by Katie Elise Ormsbee Read Free Book Online Page A

horribly out of place; its branches were stuffed and spiraled inside a small closet.
    Lottie turned to Adelaide.
    â€œHow did you stuff my apple tree in
there
?”
    Adelaide gave Lottie the same look she’d been giving her all this time, as though Lottie were dense. “That’s not
your
apple tree. It’s ours. Obviously. It’s in
our
closet.”
    â€œWho keeps a tree in their closet?”
    â€œWho keeps atrocious periwinkle coats in
theirs
?”
    Adelaide didn’t catch the scowl that Lottie gave her. She was too busy pulling the lavender finch named Lila from her pocket. The tiny creature gave a high, blithe
twipper!
and fluttered to a perch in one of the foyer’s great fir trees. Then Adelaide smiled smugly at Lottie.
    â€œWelcome,” she announced, “to Iris Gate, home of the Wilfers.”
    Only now did Lottie really look at Adelaide. The girl turned out to be quite a lot taller than Lottie was. Long, straight, acorn-colored hair framed her radish-shaped face. She had high and full cheeks, and when her front teeth slipped out from her smile, Lottie noticed that one of them was chipped.
    Adelaide tugged Lottie across the great foyer to a velvet settee outside a set of wooden doors.
    â€œI’ll be back,” Adelaide said, opening one of the doors. “I need to let someone know you’re here.”
    â€œYour dad, right?” said Lottie. “The one who can cure Eliot.”
    But Adelaide had already slipped out of the foyer.
    Lottie sat on the settee, chin propped on her knees.To her right loomed a spiraling marble staircase and to her left a wall of floor-length doors made entirely of glass. One of the doors was wide open to the night beyond, and that, Lottie guessed, was the source of the nice garden scent in the room. Just ahead of Lottie was the stone archway, which looked unsettlingly like a great big gaping mouth, opened wide to devour the rest of the room, herself included. She shivered and hoped that Adelaide would hurry up.
    When Lottie leaned back, she discovered that a row of portraits hung on the wall, circling her with a host of somber, oil-painted faces. When she set eyes on the picture just above her, Lottie jumped out of her seat. A portly man with finely combed whiskers and unforgiving black eyes glowered down at her. He gave Lottie a distinct impression of black licorice. Underneath his pair of grotesque buckled shoes read the name
Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer
. Lottie cracked a smile. With a name like that, the painted man was not half so frightening. Lottie made an equally ferocious face up at Mr. Quincy Francis Eugene Wilfer to see what he would do about it.
    â€œIt’s a nice collection, isn’t it?”
    Lottie whirled around, a snarling expression still stuck on her face. A boy stood before her wearing the most curious of expressions himself. He looked somewhat shy and somewhat sly, and he had bright, blazing blue eyes. One of the boy’s arms was bandaged up from wrist to elbow, and that curious face of his was badly bruised along the right cheekbone. His voice was familiar, though clearer now than the last time Lottie had heard it. She sank back onto the settee, blushing. This was the injured boy from the break room of the Flying Squirrel. Lottie was sure of it.
    â€œYou’re Adelaide’s brother,” Lottie guessed. “You’ve got the same eyes.”
    But the moment she said it, Lottie realized that she had been wrong. The boy’s eyes weren’t blue at all. They were—yellow? Yes! A dirty yellow, the color of honey mustard.
    â€œYour eyes,” Lottie began. “Weren’t they just—”
    But the boy interrupted.
    â€œI’m Oliver,” he said. “Oliver Wilfer.”
    â€œHow d’you do?” said Lottie, offering her hand to him.
    Rather than take it, Oliver squinted, and Lottie was sure of it this time: the boy’s eyes were
changing colors
. Nowthey were