The Boy with the Hidden Name (30 page)

body is a protesting bruise, and then I whirl on her. “Where

is my father?” I demand between my teeth.

She anti- smiles at me. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes,” I retort. “I would.”

She leans down, puts her face very close to mine, and

whispers smoothly, “Would you? Would you like to see

your father?”

I answer before I can think. “Yes,” I say furiously.

A sharp pain runs through me, and I convulse with it. I

have the strangest sensation, as if my blood is spilling out

of my fingers and onto the floor, although my hands look

perfectly normal. There is just
pain
, spreading through my center, spreading through the
world
.

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I look from my hands to my mother, who is watching me

with detached satisfaction. “What are you doing?” I gasp out.

“What are you doing to me?”

“Selkie!”

I hear Ben shout my name, and I even turn in his direction.

He is dashing toward me, Kelsey behind him, but they seem

far away.

“Selkie!” Kelsey screams, launching herself toward me.

“Grab my hand!”

Why
does
she
want
me
to
grab
her
hand?
I wonder.
Where
does
she
think
I’m going? Why doesn’t she just lean over and get
me, I’m right there—

— And then I’m not.

I am in a huge, light room overlooking a vast ocean.

With my mother.

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T he room is gorgeous, hewn out of a bright white stone,

and, except for me and my mother, completely empty.

Archways run across the opposite end of it, open to the air,

and warm, delicious breezes drift through. My mother anti-

smiles at me and then walks confidently away, over to the

archways, and then she turns to the left.

“Where are we?” I shout at her. “Where is everyone?

Where’s
Dad
?”

“Come along, Selkie,” her voice drifts back to me. I wince

in reaction and then hurry up to follow her.

We walk beside the archways. The view beyond them is an

expanse of deep blue sea stretching out to meet a paler blue

sky. It’s gorgeous, frankly. The castle appears to be perched

on a cliff right at the edge of the island.

“Here you are.” My mother opens a door that appears

in front of us onto a large, airy bathroom, tiled over com-

pletely in colorful mosaics in shades of rose and gold and

turquoise. There is a huge tub that seems to have been made

out of a seashell, and a matching seashell sink and sea-

shell toilet. And there is a bright blue Seelie dress hanging

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by the window opening in the wall, edged with tiny,

jingling bells.

“It matches your eyes,” my mother tells me.

“Where is my father?” I ask, voice steely.

“All in good time.”

“No,” I insist. “Not in good time. Now. I don’t have time

for this.”

“Oh, you delightful little creature.” She looks down at

me from her full height and tsks. “You have nothing
but

time. All the time in the Otherworld and the Thisworld.

Because of the time you’re keeping. You think you need

to get back home to fight your little battle.” And then she

laughs. “Don’t worry. No matter how much time you spend

here, we will still be able to bring you back to Boston in

time to see it fall, to see it topple back into the sea it was

stolen from in the first place.” And then she closes the door

behind me.

I stare after her. Because I’m pretty sure that where I am is

Avalon.
A
fay
on
Avalon
, Ben’s mother had said. The warring prophecy. I am helping the wrong prophecy win. I have to

get away from here.

Somehow.

I tear out of the bathroom with no clear idea where I’m

going, which is as faerie of me as I’ve ever been, to have not

even a shadow of a plan.

My mother is standing at one of the archways, talking to

someone else. She turns toward me immediately.

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“Ah. Selkie,” she says, and I bite my tongue with the hiss of

pain that comes with it. “You didn’t change.”

I have nothing to say to that. I look around, trying to find

some way out, but I have no idea where I could run where I

wouldn’t be caught immediately.

“No matter,” says my mother. “I did not expect you to be

satisfactory, even now. Come here, my dear.”

I do so, because now I recognize the faerie at her side.

“You know our darling Benedict’s mother, don’t you?”

Ben’s mother smiles at me. “It’s so nice to see you again,

Selkie.”

“Likewise,” I lie and smile sweetly.
I’m half Seelie
, I think.
I
can
play
this
game
too.

“It seems you’ve injured your arm,” says Ben’s mother, and

just like that, it stops hurting me.

I look down at it, move it experimentally. It’s as good as new.

I refuse to thank her for that. I look at my mother instead.

“Where’s Dad? What have you done to him?”

She blinks at me and puts a dramatic hand to her throat, as

if taken aback at my accusation. “Why, I’ve done nothing at

all to him! He is going to join us for dinner.”

“Now that you mention it,” remarks Ben’s mother, “isn’t it

time for dinner?”

“Depending on the time, indeed.” My mother waves her

hand, and it sounds as if she’s ringing a tiny dinner bell.

A table appears by one of the archways, laid out with a

bright white tablecloth and gleaming china, silver, and crystal.

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I take my seat slowly. My muscles are literally jumping to

get away instead, but I need to play this game until I can figure out a way to get out, to save the right prophecy. My mother

walks away to the right, into a hallway that swallows her into

darkness. I wonder if this is my chance to make a break for it,

but Ben’s mother looks hard at me and I think not.

The room pulses with the energy of named faeries— I can

feel it in my bones. They whisper around me, crying out for

help. I think of all of these voices begging me for help, and I

don’t know what to do, what I
can
do. I am failing right now at saving my own
father
, never mind the rest of the faeries who are counting on me.

Ben’s mother sits next to me and studies me. “I must say, I

am
very
surprised to see you looking so…well.”

I think of the cursed coat that should have killed me. “You

shouldn’t be. He’s stronger than you. You know it, and he

knows it. If I were you, I’d be worried.”

Ben’s mother doesn’t look worried. She just lifts her eye-

brows. “Bold words from a young fay trapped on the Isle

of Avalon.”

“I’ve been trapped before. Haven’t you heard? I escaped

from Tir na nOg.”

“You did that with Benedict. Benedict can’t get to you here.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because we’re on an island, Selkie.”

She does not say my name with intent. She doesn’t have to.

She has said the one, simple fact that finally begins to make

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me worried. We’re on an island. I look out at the ocean, at the

expanse of limitless water, and nerves knot in my stomach.

But I didn’t have to swim to get here. Maybe Ben won’t

have to swim to get here. Or maybe someone else will get here

to me. Merrow was good with prophecies. Maybe she’ll see

something that will tell her where I am, and they will come

and save me, the way they all came and saved me before.

Except that they are in the middle of fighting a losing battle

that I’ve abandoned them in.

A tiny voice inside me says,
Why
would
they
even
want
to
save
you
now?

“Here she is!” exclaims my mother gaily.

I immediately leap out of my seat, turning to face her.

My father is standing with her, looking lost and confused,

which is just how my father so frequently looks. It is my

father
, and I run to him, flinging myself onto him, and I realize that I am crying as I bury my face in his shoulder. He

smells like my father. He feels like my father. He is
alive
. I cry with relief.

He lifts his arms and closes me into a hug. “There, there,”

he soothes me and lays his cheek on my head. “There, there.”

“It’s me,” I weep against him. “It’s Selkie.”

“I know who it is.” He sounds offended.

I laugh at his offense. He sounds like normal. This is such

an unexpectedly wonderful thing to have happened, and my

crying shifts suddenly, away from relief, back toward despair.

I want to have a happy ending. I want us to go back to Boston.

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I want Ben to be back on the Common. I want to lie in the

sunlight and drink lemonade. I want it so much I ache for it.

I
am
never
going
to
get
it
, I think.

“There, there,” my father says again. “It will be okay, Selkie.

It’s all true. Didn’t I tell you? It’s all true.”

I try to catch my breath, to stop my tears. Now, alone with

my father depending on me to get us out of this, is not the

time for me to fall to pieces. “What’s all true?” I ask and lift my head to look at him.

“
Everything
,” he says.

“Yes,” I agree, because it makes sense to me. “Yes. It is.”

“Now.” My mother claps behind us. “Touching reunion

concluded, it is time for us to eat.”

I walk with my father over to the table and we sit down

together. The food is Seelie food, fluffy mashed potatoes

that taste like fresh strawberries and heaps of turkey that

taste like milk. I pick at it, pushing it around on my plate,

and debate how to escape. Water doesn’t bother me. Could

I
swim away? Could I make it with my father? I can’t
leave
him here.

“Don’t you want to know the story?” my mother asks

eventually.

“The story of what?”

“The story of
you
.”

“I know my story.”

“No, you don’t. You know part of your story. You know

bits and pieces of your story. But the whole thing. Your story

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is the most important thing. Stories
are
the most important things, you know. The stories we tell. The words we use. Selkie

Stewart. The fay of the autumnal equinox. So much
prophecy

around you. Your name shows up in the very oldest of the

books about Boston. Did you never wonder about that?”

I think back to before I ever knew any of this. Flipping

through an ancient book Will had given me from the Salem

Which Museum.

My mother doesn’t wait for a response. “For so long, Selkie

Stewart. For so long, we have been waiting. You included,

although you don’t remember it. Will was very good, very

clever. You leaked through to some records, but in many— in

most— you never existed. Impossible to find. Hidden from

view. Protected by the very strongest enchantments he could

find. Present company excluded.” My mother indicates

Ben’s mother.

Ben’s mother inclines her head and sips her wine. “Of

course.”

“But we have been planning this. I know what you’re think-

ing: how very shocking, for the Seelies to
plan
. I must admit, it was very difficult to get the other Seelies to go along with

it, and they do keep forgetting and losing their way every so

often. But Ben’s mother is so very good at it. Planning comes

naturally to her.”

I look at Ben’s mother, who anti- smiles at me.

“And so,” continues my mother, “we have been planning.

How to get to
you
. You all have your weak points, each of you 271

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fays, because you are none of you fully faerie, and therefore

you are none of you entirely strong. Because all of you
love
.

It is the great vulnerability, you know. All of this
affection
.

So it could have been any of you, any of you fays that we

went after, but in the end, it was you who had to be the fay

chosen to come here to Avalon to seal the reign of the Seelies

forever. At first, we thought that the great weakness would be

through Benedict. Your feelings for Benedict are so adorable,

so quaint. But that turned out not entirely as prophesied.”

My mother sends a dark look to Ben’s mother.