The Boy with the Hidden Name (22 page)

“How are you feeling?” he asks me.

“Okay,” I tell him, which is true. Tired, but okay.

“You found us bells.”

“I did.”

“I’m going to overlook the fact that you snuck out of the

house and focus on the fact that you found us bells.”

“Ben,” I say, frustrated. “You don’t understand. I had to— ”

“We’ll find your father. You can’t go off on your own. We’ll

find him
together
.”

“She has him somewhere, Ben, and it’s all my fault— ”

“It isn’t your fault. Stop that. And there is no place she

could hide him that we wouldn’t find him.” He ducks his

head down, forcing me to meet his eyes, pale as tears. “We are

Selkie Stewart and Benedict Le Fay. Try and stop us. Right?”

I wish I felt like he was right about that. “Until you decide

we’re not anymore,” I point out scathingly.

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He blinks, his eyes shuttering a little bit.

I want to shove him off the bed, but instead I settled for

rolling myself off the bed. “What time is it?” I say, but even

as I finish, the grandfather clock starts chiming. The three-

quarter hour.

I run to my bedroom door and pull it open, and I am

dimly aware that everyone else in the house has gathered in

the foyer, all of us looking at the grandfather clock on the

landing. Which is showing 11:45.

“Is that the right time?” I call.

It’s the Erlking who answers. “Yes.”

Great
, I think. And we’re no closer to getting anything done.

I go downstairs, and the air feels thick, like syrup I am pull-

ing myself through.

“Selkie!” Aunt Virtue thunders at me, drawing herself to

her full height (which isn’t very much). “How
dare
you dis-obey us and leave this house?”

“I had to find Dad,” I defend myself. “I
had
to.”

“Did you think we didn’t try hard enough to find him?”

Aunt Virtue continues. “Did you think we gave up on him so

easily? Do you really think that nothing can be accomplished

unless
you
do it personally?”

Said like that, she has a point. I feel like a risk- taking

idiot for having gone out there. “I just wanted to…” I trail

off, realizing that I really don’t have anything I can say to

make things better. There
is
no way to make things better.

“They took Dad,” I say. “They
took
him.” I can feel tears 188

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coming close, so I push them back. “We need a plan,” I

announce firmly.

“What a refreshingly unfaerie thing to say,” says the Erlking.

“We’ve been trying to come up with a plan and getting

nowhere,” says Will.

I only have one idea for a plan, so I say it. “I think I should

go outside and start asking people for their birthdays.”

Will blinks at me in astonishment. “That’s your plan?”

“Isn’t that the key? The birthdays? When I said my birth-

day, it started this whole thing in motion. Maybe it will work

for the others.”

“The birthday question isn’t the weak part of your plan,”

snaps Will. “Do you know how many people there are just in

Boston? Just on
Boston
Common
? You think you’re just going to randomly stumble over the right ones?”

“Ben’s mother said two things that she’s right about,” I begin.

“Ben’s mother who’s been trying to stop this prophecy from

the very beginning?” Will mocks, eyebrows lifted.

“Yes. If the prophecy’s going to be fulfilled, it’s got to start helping us out a little bit. And I’m good at finding and collecting just the right things that come in handy later.”

“This is the most ridiculous plan,” Will says dazedly. And

I know it is. It’s not a plan— it’s a
joke
— but it’s all I’ve got.

“All respect, Will,” remarks the Erlking frankly, “but we

haven’t come up with a better one.”

“A better one than
that
? I feel like trying to negotiate with the Seelies would be a better one than
that
.”

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“What time is it?” I ask the Erlking.

He looks at his watch. “11:46.”

“We’re wasting time,” I say, march over to the front door,

and tug it open. The air outside seems even murkier than

the air inside had been. I can’t tell if this is because my head is still fuzzy from the church bells at Kendall or because the

actual air has shifted into something more viscous.

Standing on the sidewalk at the base of our front steps is a

girl with pale blond hair with the tips dyed all colors of the

rainbow, braided in six different braids on top of her head.

And a boy with a thick patch of messy straw- colored hair and

a heavy smattering of freckles. The girl is in the process of

shaking salt and pepper over the sidewalk. The boy seems to

be sifting in some sugar as well. Boston has gone
crazy
, I think.

The boy and the girl look up at me, and just to prove to

Will how serious I am about my plan, I say, “What are

your birthdays?”

Astonishingly, the boy and girl exchange a look, and then

the girl says, “We’re the winter and the summer solstice.

Which one are you?”

I blink. And then I turn to Will. “My plan worked,” I

say smugly.

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T he girl and the boy come inside and the girl says, “I’m

Merrow and he’s Trow, and the moon was in its second

house and then Virgo was moving toward the horizon and

anyway, the stars said we had to come here.”

“The stars said?” Will echoes.

“Yeah. Exactly. And Virgo and the moon too, but mostly

the stars,” answers Merrow.

“I know she sounds crazy,” says Trow, “but she’s weirdly

persuasive, right?”

She is, actually. Merrow says everything with such convic-

tion that you can’t help but be carried along with her.

“So you’re fays too?” Kelsey clarifies.

“I think so? Fays of the seasons? That’s what Roger Williams

said anyway,” Merrow replies.

“Roger Williams?” asks Kelsey. “The founder of the state of

Rhode Island?”

“Yes, I know it sounds crazy— ” begins Merrow.

“Crazy is actually very difficult to sound to us,” drawls the

Erlking at her.

Merrow says, “Well, you’re dressed in a black velvet

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cape and wearing a huge sword, so I guess you’ve got

a point.”

I look at Will. “Do you know Roger Williams?”

Will looks offended. “Of course I know Roger Williams. I

just don’t…talk to Roger Williams.”

“If you had less messy breakups with people,” Ben tells him

scathingly, “we would have gotten this figured out so much

more quickly.”

“Maybe if
you
hadn’t taken a field trip to the Unseelie

Court,” Will retorts, “we would have gotten this figured out

so much more quickly.”

“It’s 11:47,” the Erlking says.

“We don’t have time for this,” I cut them off and turn to

Merrow and Trow. “I’m Selkie, and I’m the autumnal equi-

nox. I’m hoping you know where the other fay is.”

“The only guess I have on that is Iceland,” says Merrow.

“We have to go to Iceland.”

“Did the stars say that?” asks Kelsey.

“No, that was the honey and the ketchup, when we mixed

them together in the diner while we were waiting for the

train. The stars keep changing; even the constellations keep

changing. It’s getting harder to read them.”

I just stare at her, but Will says, as if to reassure me, “This

is how prophets talk. They’re all mad as hatters.”

Merrow draws herself up to her full height. Which isn’t

much. She’s much shorter than Trow and me. “Excuse me,”

she says, offended.

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“Iceland,” Will muses. “That makes some sense.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it’s closed to travelers.”

“Not quite,” Ben says. “We can get in but we can’t get out.”

“Like the room at the Boston Public Library,” I recall.

“Exactly.”

“Which is why your mother would have liked the place to

hide a fay. No one would have guessed,” says Will.

“You can get out at Thingvellir,” the Erlking says suddenly.

Ben looks at him.

The Erlking shrugs. “We goblins have always known the

traveler loopholes.”

“Yes,” Ben says. “I bet you have.” He looks back at Merrow.

“Iceland, you can understand, isn’t a place I’m keen to go. In

fact, it sounds like a trap to me.”

“All of a sudden you’re worried about traps?” I say, because

I can’t help it.

Ben frowns.

Merrow says, “This whole thing is messy right now. There are

prophecies upon prophecies. They fold in on each other and

contradict each other, and one says what the next doesn’t say,

while the next says what the next after that
can’t
say. You see?

The patterns in the salt don’t match the pepper, the patterns

in the honey don’t match the bees, the patterns in the sneezes

don’t match the coughs. And don’t even get me started on the

stars. Plus the air is thick here; the salt wasn’t falling properly, and the sugar was clumping. Is it always like this in Boston?”

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“That’s the Seelies getting closer, throwing off the chemis-

try of the sky,” says Will nonchalantly.

Kelsey and I exchange panicked looks.

“So what does it all mean?” I ask. I hope I don’t sound des-

perate and panicked, because I want to be coolly in control

the way Merrow seems to be, but I feel like I can’t help it.

Everything is a mess and my father is missing and a battle

is coming and the air is growing too thick to breathe and

the clock keeps ticking and Merrow’s just sitting here talking

about salt and pepper.

“I think that none of it is settled. None of it is prophesied.

And all of it is prophesied. It is all existing at once. The time is spiraling. It’s because we’re in the middle of it. You can’t

prophesy what you’re actually living. All I know is that the

next word I can read is Iceland. Actually.” She blinks at Ben.

“
You
have to get it.”

I look between her and Ben. “How do you know?”

“Can’t you tell from the dust motes?” she asks. “I wish I

had my tarot cards. I could do this so much more easily.”

“Well,” remarks Ben. “This seems like a genuinely terrible

idea, so I’m sure we’re going to do it, right?” He glances at Will.

“What else can we do?”

“If you’re going to Iceland, you’re going to need to talk to the Hidden Folk,” says the Erlking. “I know the Hidden Folk there.”

“You can take us to them?” Will asks.

“They keep to themselves, as you know. But they’ll speak to

the Erlking of the goblins of Goblinopolis.”

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“Why?” persists Will.

“Trade treaties, of course. They have a terrible weakness for

goblin silver. It
is
the best,” the Erlking allows.

“You have trade treaties with the Hidden Folk?” Ben clari-

fies. He sounds disbelieving.

“The world is getting smaller, Benedict,” remarks the

Erlking. “Even
this
world.”

I honestly don’t know which world he means by that.

“So you can get us to the Hidden Folk?” Merrow asks.

“I can,” the Erlking confirms.

“Awesome. Then we should leave immediately,” Merrow

announces. “Probably the three of us and you.” She points to

Ben. “And him.” She points to the Erlking.

I bristle, because Merrow seems a little bossy, and I’m

offended that she’s just drifted in here at the end and made it

seem like this is all so easy to do.

“And me,” says Will.

“I’m going too,” adds Safford.

Ben looks at him. “Safford,” he begins.

“I’m the expendable one of this group, aren’t I? Don’t you

need an expendable one?” He asks it dryly, but the truth is

that he has something of a point, which is terrible.

“I didn’t want you to be this involved,” Ben says. “You

weren’t supposed to be this involved.”

“I really never had a choice, Benedict,” says Safford. “I have

never had a choice, not since the Seelies named my parents

and flooded our world and cursed me to Mag Mell simply for

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sport
. Actually, that’s not true: I
had
a choice, and I’ve made it. So. I’m coming.”

“I’m coming too,” says Kelsey immediately.

I look at her. “Kelsey,” I begin.

“I’m coming, Selkie,” she tells me, giving me a look. “We’ve

come this far in saving the world. I’m not going to stop now.”

I look at my aunts, and then I look at Merrow and Trow.

Merrow beams at me. Clearly she thinks we are already fast