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

medicines?”
    â€œThat?” said Mr. Wilfer. “It does, in fact, tell me how to make
one
medicine. I have hundreds of notebooks like these.”
    Mr. Wilfer opened the book and pushed it across the table. Lottie wiggled to the edge of her saggy chair to get a better view. It was neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia.
    â€œIt’s a—
scrapbook
?”
    Lottie scrunched her nose in distaste. The only people she knew who made and kept scrapbooks were Mrs. Yates and the sneer-lipped ladies who came over for tea.
    â€œA
note
book,” Mr. Wilfer corrected her.
    The pages of the book were ragged and uneven with pasted pictures of plant diagrams, an article on cloud condensation, and what looked like a recipe torn from a cookbook. Around the pasted scraps, every spare sliver of paper was covered with thin-edged words and symbols. It looked like two pages full of nonsense. Lottie turned the page. Two
more
pages full of nonsense. Only these two held a clump of dried flowers and twigs, a poem, and a checked-off checklist.
    Lottie looked up. “What is all of this?”
    â€œThis,” said Mr. Wilfer, “is my best guess for how to concoct a cure for foot blisters. Medicines take years ofinquiry and research. Long nights of experimentation, decades of case studies and careful observation—all to compile what you see in a book like this. My notebook for the Otherwise Incurable is nearly twice as thick.”
    â€œYou mean, this is how you’re going to save Eliot? With dried flowers and photographs?” Lottie looked at the book with more scrutiny. “And recipes for lemon chess squares?”
    She chewed her lip anxiously. What had she gotten herself into? Mr. Wilfer wasn’t a real doctor at all. He thought he could heal Eliot with nothing more than a giant, nonsensical scrapbook!
    â€œMedicines aren’t made like that,” she said at last. “Medicines are made from precise measurements and chemical reactions. It’s a very scientific business.”
    â€œIs that how they do it where you come from, Lottie?” said Mr. Wilfer. He didn’t look offended, only curious.
    â€œYes. Everyone knows that’s what medicines are. Especially doctors.”
    â€œAh,” said Mr. Wilfer. “But what about your healers?”
    Lottie wavered. “We don’t have those. Not like you. Not that I know of, anyway.”
    Mr. Wilfer looked genuinely surprised. “None? No healers at all in New Kemble?”
    â€œNo healers
anywhere,
” said Lottie. “Not even on the mainland.”
    Mr. Wilfer spent a full, silence-stuffed minute pondering this information.
    â€œWell,” he said, “that is sad but believable news. Healers are a rare enough breed here. Only ten of us in all of Albion Isle. Healers are doctors, yes, but we are not so backward as to discount the great uses of intuition, of the art of the soul, of
magic
.”
    Lottie gulped. “You mean . . . you’re a magician?”
    â€œOh, no, that’s quite a different thing. There are no easy recipes or chemical formulas or magic spell books on hand here. Each one of my cures I extract from experience, from music, from poetry, from the wilds of this world, from—ah! I can tell from that face that you don’t believe a word I’m saying.”
    Lottie was thinking of her green apple tree. She was thinking of her copper box. Magic had been so tidy back home. Each year, she had closed up her wishes in a box and every following year she’d received her reply. Magic stayed in the box. But Mr. Wilfer was talking like magic was—well, was
at large
.
    â€œMr. Wilfer,” Lottie said at last. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I really don’t. But where I come from, you don’t get rid of the flu by . . . scrapbooking.”
    â€œYou would like proof,” said Mr. Wilfer.
    Lottie thought about this. “Do you have