The Boy with the Hidden Name (19 page)

in his arms and started babbling about cursed coats,” Aunt

True continues.

“You’ve been sick for
days
, sweetheart.” Aunt Virtue reaches out and tenderly brushes my hair away from my face.

I feel, in that moment, very loved.

I look at Kelsey. “But where were you?”

She looks alarmed. “Getting back from the Unseelie

Court. Remember?”

I do, now that she mentions it. I feel like my memory is

awakening slowly. “Oh. Right. That’s right. Ben and I went

to get the coat. The coat that was cursed. Right.”

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“Only it took Benedict an extraordinarily long time to

figure out the coat was cursed,” comments Will. He is lean-

ing against the wall at the foot of my bed. He sounds and

looks casual, but I can tell he’s anything but.

“I…” I can’t quite remember what happened. “I was

wearing the coat, and I was…” We’d been arguing. That’s

what we’d been doing. We’d both been distracted. I don’t

want to say that. I clear my throat and take another sip

of water.

The sip of water is a good idea, because it gives Aunt Virtue

the opportunity to turn to Will and spit out accusingly,

“Don’t upset her. She’s still very weak.”

Will looks unperturbed at being yelled at. His eyes stay on

me. “That assessment I agree with. You need to sleep.”

“I’ve been sleeping for days apparently,” I respond, but I

don’t know why I’m arguing, I’m so tired now I feel like I

could fall asleep immediately.

“That wasn’t useful sleep.” Will shakes his head.

“Can you enchant her?” Aunt True asks him.

“I don’t want to be enchanted,” I protest. I am tired of being

enchanted. I want to be
not
enchanted, fully and utterly. I want the world to be a real place, a place that makes sense, a

place that is
true
.

“It will help you get better,” Aunt True informs me anx-

iously. “Will can give you a deep, dreamless, healing sleep.

You’ll feel so much better when you wake up.”

“Where’s Ben?” I ask. I don’t want to ask it but I feel like

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I have to. The story makes no sense to me— we were in

Cottingley, weren’t we? Not Boston. Right?— and he is the

only one who was there, the only one who can tell me.

“He’s sleeping,” Will responds, which I think is so strange.

He was just sleeping in here.

Aunt Virtue snorts. “More like collapsed.”

Will doesn’t look at her as he replies. “He’s fine. Everyone’s

just going to sleep this whole thing off, and it’ll all be behind us by tonight.”

“It
is
nighttime,” I point out, confused. “Isn’t it?”

“That’s just what it looks like when the sun has mostly gone

out,” Will replies grimly and then moves over to my bedside.

“Just let me,” he says. “You’ll feel so much better when you

wake up again.”

x

I must have told Will yes, nodded, or something, because the

next thing I know, I’m wide awake, sitting straight up in the

bed, and the room is empty again. That same hazy half- light

is filtering through my window. And the room is not entirely

empty, I realize. The Erlking is sitting in the chair by my bed

that Ben had been in. He blends into the darkness around

him, except for the sword swinging by his side, the jewels on

its hilt gleaming dimly in the light.

“Ah,” he says to me. “You look
much
better.”

I am staring at his sword. “Why isn’t your talisman cursed?”

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“Because Benedict’s mother is apparently
extremely
charming,” the Erlking replies sarcastically. “It wasn’t enough for

her to work at cross- purposes against every prophecy the stars

have written. She had to use a curse too.”

I shudder.

“Are you cold?” he asks.

“No,” I answer truthfully. “I’m…” I shrug and adjust the

pillow underneath me so I’m sitting up against the head-

board. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Sleeping. It’s the middle of the night. We’ve been taking

turns watching you.”

“Well,” I remark dryly. “You’re a much better watch

than Ben.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he was sleeping on the job when I woke up before.”

“Oh. No, we weren’t taking turns then. We couldn’t. It had

to be Benedict.”

“What do you mean?”

“Selkie.” The Erlking looks confused by me, but in a kind

way. “You just survived a curse. A curse placed on you by what

was previously believed to be the most talented enchantment

faerie in the Otherworld. How do you think you did that?”

“I…I have no idea,” I admit.

“No. Neither do I,” agrees the Erlking. “But whatever

Benedict did to get that curse off you was cleverer than any-

thing I’ve seen before in a very long life full of clever things.

I revise what I said to you before.”

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“What’s that?”

“When I told you never to trust a Le Fay. You can appar-

ently trust
that
Le Fay.”

The irony is not lost on me. “No, I can’t.”

“You’ve absolutely bewitched him. Your talent must be

seduction as well. Why didn’t you tell me?” He is smiling at

me, as if this is all teasing good fun.

I don’t want to talk about Ben anymore. “How did you get

out of the Unseelie Court?”

“We took the corgis.”

“And?”

“And then we left the Unseelie Court.”

I stare at him. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Apparently, all the drama was centered around

you. Will says this is a quality you have.”

“It’s not a quality I
want
to have,” I grumble.

The Erlking looks amused. “We have very little control over

most of the qualities we have. Anyway, their control is diluting.”

“Whose control?”

“The Seelies and the Unseelies. We got out of the Unseelie

Court because they couldn’t stop us anymore. They’re losing

control. Things are happening all over, things that they don’t

want to happen. The prophecy is already moving.”

“What time is it?” I ask anxiously. How much time have I

wasted here?

The Erlking holds out his pocket watch. I can see it only

dimly. 11:31.

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“Past the half- hour mark,” I comment weakly.

“Indeed.” The Erlking replaces it. “So perhaps better that

we get moving again as quickly as possible.”

“How did I get back here?” I ask.

“You’d have to ask Benedict,” the Erlking answers, “which

means you need to wait for him to recover.”

“Recover from what?”

The Erlking looks a bit irritated with me. “Didn’t you hear

me? He’s recovering from saving
you
.”

I don’t know what to say in response to that, so instead I

say that I’m starving, which I am. We go to the kitchen.

I hunt through the cupboards. The Erlking sits at the

kitchen table and watches me.

I glance over at him as I find some bread. Toast sounds like

something I can handle eating. I stick two pieces of bread in

the toaster, and Will walks into the kitchen.

“I thought I heard you up,” he says to me. He is fully

dressed, brown corduroy pants and a dark green sweater.

I remember how absent- minded professor I thought he

looked so long ago, when I first met him at the Salem

Which Museum. I wonder how we got to this place from

that place. The thing is, I
know
how we got here, and even I don’t believe it.

“She was hungry,” the Erlking tells him.

“Good. You’re looking much better.” He sits at the

kitchen table.

“Your dreamless sleep thing really worked. Thanks.”

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“I’m not the one you should be thanking. This was all

Benedict. At least the one of us foolish enough not to notice

a curse until it had already imprinted on you was also the one

of us capable of saving you from it.”

I don’t want to think any more about any of that. My toast

pops up, and I grab it and put it on a plate and assemble

butter and jam. Then I sit at the table and prepare my middle-

of- the- night breakfast.

“We need to discuss what we’re going to do next,” says Will.

I know that we do. The clock is ticking. But I am tired,

and I apparently almost died not long ago. I want to have my

toast and then go back to bed and sleep for a thousand years.

Or a few hours. Depending on what time you’re keeping.

I want all this never to have happened, really, and that’s

something I know I can never have.

I ignore the fact that Will is talking about the prophecy’s

next steps. “Where’s my father?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him.”

Will looks a bit shifty- eyed. Which is not good. I slowly

push my toast away. “Where is he, Will?” I demand.

“Your aunts couldn’t get to him. The train stopped running.”

“They were on a human train,” I point out. “They were on

the Red Line.”

“It shut down,” Will says. “They couldn’t go to your father’s.”

“So they could have taken a taxi.”

“Selkie. They
couldn’t
. We’re keeping the core of Boston together through an effort you can only guess at. It would

have been too risky for your aunts to— ”

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I round on the Erlking. “You were supposed to protect

them. Your people were supposed to go and get— ”

“They couldn’t,” the Erlking cuts me off icily. “We have

been restricted to Boston, and your father is outside of

Boston. We can’t get there.”

“That’s you. What about me? Can
I
get there?”

“Selkie, you’re not going anywhere,” Will tells me, which

as good as saying
yes
to me. “You have to remember the

prophecy.”

“The prophecy isn’t very helpful, Will,” I snap. “My only

remaining idea about how to find the other three fays is to

just walk out the door and start asking people randomly.”

“We got Ben back— ” Will begins.

I am frustrated enough to say, “And what? What good does

he do us without the other fays? And in the meantime, my

father is a sitting duck— ”

“There’s going to be a battle, Selkie,” Will cuts me off sharply.

“What does that mean?” I ask, because my mind shies away

of what it probably means, of the thought of there being an

actual
battle
, with all that implies, as if everything we’ve been going through so far has been nothing, just the opening act.

“Just what you’d think,” Will says flatly.

“Will,” I begin and take a deep breath, trying to organize

my thoughts. “We can’t have a
battle
.”

“We either have a battle or the Seelies win, and everything

goes back to the way it was before Parsymeon, everyone

living in secrecy, trying to stay out of the way because you

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never know when the Seelies might show up and destroy you

without thought. Everything in the Otherworld just wants to

live. We have to fight for them.”

“I don’t know how to
fight
,” I say. “I can’t fight in a
battle
.

You’ve lost your mind.”

“Selkie, you’ve escaped from both the Seelie and the

Unseelie Courts,” Will reminds me impatiently. “There’s very

little you
can’t
do. Haven’t you figured that out?”

“That wasn’t me,” I protest. “None of this has been
me
.”

“Then who has it been?”

“The prophecy. Or…I don’t know. I’m not actually…” I real-

ize even as I say it that it sounds absurd. It’s true, in my head, in my perception of myself— I am not actually this person that

I am. But it appears that I actually
am
this person. I am no longer the girl on Boston Common reading to Ben over freshly

made lemonade. I am, apparently, the fay of the autumnal

equinox. “But don’t we need the other three fays? How are we

going to have a battle with just
me
? We can’t. Can we?”

There is a moment of silence. “The battle is coming whether

we like it or not. Selkie, the
sun
is gone. And it’s 11:31.”

“11:32 now,” the Erlking inserts quietly. “We lost

another minute.”

“11:32. Time is running out. At any moment, the clock

could start ticking faster and faster. Finding the other three

fays would be ideal, but there’s going to be a battle, whether

we’re ready for it or not. And I’d rather we go down fighting,

if we’re going to be named either way. Wouldn’t you?”

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“Can Ben find the other three fays? I know that his mother