The Boy with the Hidden Name (28 page)

The next thing I know, we’re all crowded in a dark, cold,

damp cement room.

“Where are we?” Kelsey asks.

“Where did I say we were going?” responds Ben. “It’s

Boston.”

“It’s not Beacon Hill,” I point out. In fact, I have no idea

where we are.

“I wasn’t aiming for Beacon Hill,” Ben replies darkly. He is

regarding a chained door in front of us.
Warning
, reads a sign on the door.
Alarm
will
sound.

“That’s a fire exit door,” Kelsey tells him.

“I know.”

“An alarm’s going to go off.”

“Let it,” he says, sounding satisfied at the prospect. “I want

every bell in Boston ringing.” Ben flings out his arm, an

appropriately dramatic gesture, and the door flies open in

front of us.

Bells begin to clang, loud and insistent, but they are

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high- pitched enough that they don’t have any effect on me.

We are standing at the top of a staircase, and Ben descends it.

I follow close behind him, and when we reach the bottom, I

realize that we’re at the end of the Red Line platform in Park

Street, where the fire exit staircase is located. Chaos is reigning. People are hastily trying to get off the platform, assum-

ing there’s some kind of emergency.

Ben leads us through the melee of the station until we

get aboveground.

“Was that really necessary?” I ask him.

“I told you I wasn’t keeping a low profile,” he replies, not

pausing as he strides through the Common toward my house.

“We’re here. I want them to come and get us.”

“Is that a good idea?” I ask. “To taunt them?”

“Yes, actually,” Safford replies from behind us. “They’re not

terribly rational beings, and they’ll be even less so incensed

like this.”

“And it’s almost twelve o’clock anyway,” Ben says and ges-

tures to the clock on the bell tower of Park Street Church.

Ominously, it reads 11:59.

The half light seems a bit brighter than it has been before.

The lavender windowpanes at my house are picking up the

brightening rays. And the air seems thinner, much easier

to breathe.

Kelsey says, “It’s almost like the sun is trying to come out.

Are we fighting back?”

“No, they’re just getting closer,” Ben says grimly. “This is

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enchanted air. Can’t you feel it? They’ll strangle us slowly, the way they do in Tir na nOg.”

I remember how I didn’t even know I wasn’t breath-

ing right in Tir na nOg until the moment we cleared the

prison walls and Ben told me to take a deep breath. He’s

right that the air in Boston feels startlingly similar to that

right now.

My aunts must have sensed our return, because they open

the door for us as soon as we cross Beacon Street, and they

fall upon me in tight hugs.

“Did you find the other fay?”

“No.” Ben looks disdainfully at the box, which Safford has

been carting around. “We got
that
.”

Aunt True has been looking around and says suddenly,

“But where’s Will?”

There is a moment of silence. I remember it then, that

my aunt and Will had a history from long ago. I look at

her and say gently, “Aunt True…” I don’t know what to

say next.

Aunt True, her eyes wide with horror, shrinks away from

me, stumbling. “No,” she whispers. “No. It can’t be.”

“He did it to take us off the map,” Ben says solemnly.

“It was— ”

“Noble,” Aunt Virtue finishes, putting an arm around

Aunt True to comfort her. “He saved our Selkie for us. You

see? As he always promised us he would. He kept his prom-

ise in the end.”

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“How can there…how can there be a Boston without Will?

He was here before us. I thought he would be here after us.”

Aunt True looks stricken.

“Something tells me it won’t be the last thing to change

about Boston before this is all over,” says Ben grimly, going

to look out the window.

Not
helping
, I think at him furiously and join Aunt Virtue in hugging Aunt True, who is weeping softly.

“First Etherington,” she is saying, “and now Will…”

“Dad’s not dead,” I insist. I feel everyone look at me, but

it’s Ben I look back at in challenge. “He’s not!”

“Have you heard any news?” Ben asks after a moment

of silence.

“Just the clock ticking,” Aunt Virtue answers, still comfort-

ing Aunt True with one arm around her shoulder while with

the other arm, she gestures at the grandfather clock on the

landing. I glance at it. 11:59, just like the Park Street Church clock. “The bells have already begun chiming. We have heard

reports. In Lexington and Concord, the church bells have

fallen from the towers. Every non- Seelie enchantment in this

world is dying.”

“What are we going to do next?” Aunt True sniffles.

Ben looks at Merrow. “What does the prophecy say?”

“It doesn’t say anything,” Merrow says, sounding miser-

able. “It said to go to Iceland. I thought that would help.”

We all look at the box, still stubbornly closed.

“Maybe we got the wrong thing,” says Safford.

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“Maybe we need all four of us to open it,” I say. “And we’ve

only got three.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“I guess I’ll go outside and start asking people for their

birthdays,” I decide.

And then there’s a knock on the door.

We look at it, and then I swallow and move forward and

peer through the window on the side of the door. As if the

Seelies, if they showed up, were going to
knock
. The Erlking.

I open the door for him.

He steps in and says, “Benedict,” and then pauses.

Ben looks at him questioningly.

“Can you…” The Erlking pauses again. Whatever he’s

about to say, it’s paining him to say it. “Can you hide names?”

“No,” Ben replies, a bit sourly. “My mother could, but I

don’t know how.”

“Ah,” says the Erlking and nods.

“I could obscure them,” Ben offers. “Maybe. For a bit.”

There is a moment of stilted silence. I look between the two

of them. “That would be helpful. If you could. If we could

dilute the power of the Seelies’ words, just for a little while.

Otherwise it’s going to be a slaughter.”

“I can do it,” says Ben. “Although I need to know the names

to cast the enchantment. And it would only be temporary. It

would be like wrapping the name up in a bow. They’d need

to rip through the ribbon before they could do the naming,

but they’d do it.”

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“Any time you can give us at all,” the Erlking insists. He

pauses and then says, “It’s Kainen.”

I’m surprised. I look at Ben, who also looks surprised,

but he nods and says, “Right. Done. What about the rest of

your army?”

“Could you come?”

Ben looks at all of us.

“Go,” I tell him. “All I’m going to do is ask people on

the street.”

x

We have one minute left, but luckily the length of a minute

depends on the time you’re keeping, so I am able to stand

outside with Kelsey and Merrow and Trow and Safford and

canvass up and down the street, asking people’s birthdays.

My aunts stay in the house, “fortifying,” although I don’t

especially know what that means. I wonder if they are offer-

ing to help out the gnomes they’ve been fighting with my

whole life, if perhaps having a greater enemy in common

will help finally forge an alliance.

I hope they’re having success “fortifying,” because we

get nowhere.

Kelsey and I end up pausing together. I look out over

Boston Common and think how this is so weird: it could be

any other day, except it’s
not
.

“How’s your ankle?” I ask.

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“Good as new, actually. That was some amazing magic.”

“I wish I had magic that useful,” I say. I wonder if he’ll be

able to heal some of our casualties in the battle. What sort

of casualties will they be? Will there be blood? Will there

be weapons?

“You’ve got pretty useful magic. Well, it seems that way to

me anyway.” Kelsey pauses. “Wait, what’s your magic again?”

She is saying it to tease me. I pretend to laugh on her behalf

and say, “Stop it. I can name people.”

“Well, that’s apparently terrifying if you’re an Otherworld

creature, right?”

“Apparently. I don’t know what good it’s going to do

me though. I don’t know any of the Seelie names. I don’t

know what I’m going to do.” I pause. “I guess I can heal

a bit by giving people my name, but I don’t know how

much good that will do. Have you gotten in touch with

your mother?”

Kelsey shakes her head. “Not picking up. I left her

another message.”

I think of my father and wonder. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“None of us are okay, right? What happens if the Seelies

win here?”

“I have no idea,” I admit.

“Will it be the end of the world? Or just the end of Boston?

Or will Boston even notice that all of its supernatural inhab-

itants are suddenly going to disappear? I mean, are you going

to disappear? I would have noticed if you disappeared.”

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“Not if they make you forget I ever existed,” I point out

and try to sound frank and matter- of- fact about all of this.

“Hi,” Merrow says, pausing by us. “No luck?”

Kelsey and I shake our heads.

Then I say, because this person has dropped into our lives

out of nowhere and we’re somehow connected and we might

all be dead in a few minutes or hours or days, depending on

the time you’re keeping, and I don’t know anything about

her, “Do you live here?”

She shakes her head. “Rhode Island. Me and Trow.”

“Oh, right,” I realize. “Roger Williams makes sense then.

When did you find out you were a fay?”

“Yesterday. Or decades ago. It’s weird. It’s like I can’t tell.”

“I know exactly how you feel.”

Merrow looks at me and gives me a hesitant smile. “What’s

your magic?” she asks.

“Naming.”

“Be happy it’s not telling the future. I feel like none of it

is ever anything good. I’d like to have a vision of something

good, you know? Like me in my wedding dress or some-

thing. But no. I get to have a vision of some random thing in

Iceland. And then, after that, nothing.”

“Nothing?” I ask.

Merrow looks at me.

“Does that mean we lose?” asks Kelsey after a moment.

Merrow doesn’t answer.

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B en looks tired when he comes back from casting

enchantments over the army and meets us on the street.

We’ve scattered again, back to asking for birthdays.

I just shake my head at him. He walks up the front steps,

pokes his head in the front door, then comes out and sits on

the stoop.

“Still 11:59,” he says in answer to my querying glance.

“Will it just stay like that forever?” I ask, frustrated.

Ben sighs and leans back on his elbows. “They’re toying

with us. They love to toy.”

I look down the street, waiting for a pedestrian that Merrow,

Trow, Kelsey, and Safford haven’t cornered yet. “How did the

army thing go?” I ask awkwardly.

“Fine,” he says, which I think is a silly answer considering

our topic of conversation, but then I guess my question was

a silly question to start with.

It’s getting brighter out. I could almost use sunglasses. I

wonder if anyone is commenting on the weird weather. Then

again, Boston is prone to weird weather.

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I look back at Ben. His eyes are closed. “We need the other

fay, don’t we? To even have a chance.”

Ben doesn’t answer. He takes a deep breath.

“You’re tired,” I say.

“A lot of energy expended just now. And the air is thin. I’ll

be fine. Just getting my bearings.”

I look at him and think of how I’ve helped to recharge him

before, so I go and sit next to him and slide my hand into his.

He opens his eyes in surprise, and there is a moment when

we look directly at each other. I am waiting for him to ask

me a question, and I don’t know what the question is going

to be or how I’m going to answer it. But then he just closes

his eyes again.

“You can say my name if you want,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Not just yet. We’ll save it for some-

thing bigger. I don’t want to dilute it. I wish Will were here,