The Boy with the Hidden Name (5 page)

Seelie Court.

“
Run!
” Will commands, and I don’t need to be told twice, but I can’t tell where they’re coming from.

“Which way?” I ask, vaguely panicked, turning around,

trying to figure it out. It sounds like they’re coming from all

directions, like they are all around me, the chimes bouncing

off the walls and echoing through my brain.

“Away from the train,” Kelsey says, and it makes sense.

They would be heading toward the train, right?

We tear down the tunnel, but I think this is fruitless. Seelies

can move fast, faster than we can run. A small trickle of dirt

hits me square on the nose. I brush it away, but then another

trickle of dirt hits me, and then a pebble.

“Oh my God,” Kelsey says, at the same moment I’m real-

izing it. “They’re going to make the tunnel cave in.”

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“
Run!
” Will urges us again, and we keep running, although I don’t know what the point of it is, and then, suddenly, in

the space we just vacated, comes a great crashing sound, and

the tunnel vibrates with the reverberation and dust kicks up

all around us. Will has drawn to a halt, and I draw up beside

him, coughing, and look back where we’d come from.

The entire ceiling of the tunnel appears to have caved in.

We are facing a huge wall of debris.

“We barely made that.” I wheeze.

A voice off to our left says, “You’re much safer on this

side. Which was the point. We would never have actually

buried
you.”

A man steps forward as he speaks. He is dressed all in

black: black pants, black button- down shirt, black shoes. He

looks a little bit like a funeral director, to be quite honest.

An unexpectedly cute one, with gleaming dark hair and a

quick smile that he sends in our direction. I guess he thinks

that his comment about not burying us was reassuring. He

sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks from his heels to his

toes and back again.

“We need to see the Erlking,” Will tells him.

The man’s amusement seems to grow. “Yes, he thought

you might be paying us a visit.” He takes a few more steps

forward, standing nose to nose with Will now. He smiles.

It is not a very friendly smile, even if it must be admit-

ted that it’s an attractive one. “He looks forward to hearing

your explanation.”

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He makes it sound like, actually, this is not a good thing

at all.

Will smiles back. Also not a very friendly smile. “I look

forward to providing it.”

The man, smile cemented on his face, turns on his heel and

walks away, looking over his shoulder at us. “This way,” he

says sweetly and winks for good measure.

“You heard him,” Will says to us and starts following him.

“Who is he?” I ask, keeping my eyes on him, because he

could easily fade into the darkness of the tunnel, dressed all

in black as he is.

“What do you mean, who is he?” Will looks at me in sur-

prise. “He’s a goblin.”

“
He’s
a goblin?”

“What did you think he was?”

“I thought goblins were…” I trail off.

“I told you: most of the time they look just like us. All these

preconceived notions. Really, humans understand very little

about the Otherworld. We’re natural tricksters; we’re sending

false information out into your world all the time.”

“Let me get this straight,” interjects Kelsey. “Goblins are

really…hot guys?”

Will rolls his eyes. “So simplistic.” He pauses. “Some of

them are female.”

The tunnel has opened up abruptly, and we are stand-

ing on an overlook that looks out over a vast and glimmer-

ing city. It isn’t a modern city— there are no skyscrapers

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or anything like that— but it’s clearly a sizeable settlement,

with sleek and gleaming structures. Even the roads below

us seem to catch the light. The ceiling drips with what look

like stars but can’t possibly be, because we are still under-

ground. The light is dim and artificial, coming from count-

less numbers of torches scattered everywhere we can see,

hovering over our heads and planted into the wall. And

it is loud, loud with the sound of lives being lived. There

are people calling to each other and laughing, as well as an

insistent tapping noise.

I hear Kelsey gasp, and she and Safford and I stand there,

staring out over this.

“What…” I begin, but I don’t even know what question I

want to ask.

“Come along,” Will calls impatiently, and I tear my gaze

away. There is a set of stairs leading down into the city proper, and Will is already halfway down them.

I run to catch up with him, because now I am overflow-

ing with questions and I want him to answer them. The

first thing I say isn’t a question at all. “We’re in a subway

tunnel, Will.”

“No, you’re not. You’re in Goblinopolis.” He turns away

from me and resumes walking down the staircase.

“Goblinopolis?” I repeat in disbelief.

“Their name, not mine,” Will assures me.

“It’s a city,” Kelsey exclaims, and I hear her running to

catch up to us. “It’s an entire
city
.”

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“Yes, I know.”

“Are we still under Boston? How can we still be under

Boston? How can there be a city under Boston?”

Will sighs and turns and looks at both of us. “Don’t you

think, by this point, that it’s time for the two of you to stop

being so surprised by everything that happens? Now keep

up. We don’t want to lose our escort.” He starts walking back

down the stairs.

“There’s a goblin city in the subway tunnels under Boston,”

remarks Kelsey, “and he thinks that’s totally normal.” She

looks at Safford. “Do
you
think this is normal?”

“No,” he admits. “Faeries don’t normally associate

with goblins.”

“Why not?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Tradition, I suppose. They live underground,

and we live aboveground. Why should we associate? And

there’s the fact that travelers and goblins don’t get along, so I think that we just fell into the habit of…not getting along.”

Safford frowns briefly. “Actually, now that I think about it,

most Otherworld creatures have just fallen into the habit

of not getting along, after the Seelies came to power. It was

easier not to trust anybody at all than to trust someone and

be named for your trouble.”

It sounds awful, and Safford looks sad. Kelsey takes his

hand and squeezes it a bit. Safford looks at her gratefully. I

look away so as not to ruin their moment.

Will, predictably, ruins the moment. “Really,” he calls up

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to us, “if you get lost in Goblinopolis, I’m not stopping to

look for you.”

I know it is a hollow threat, but we pick up the pace

anyway, half skipping down the staircase. At the bottom of

it, our guide is waiting. His smile is still plastered in place, but he looks tense and annoyed nonetheless.

“This way, if you please,” he says and leads us through

the streets.

I cannot quite figure out what the roads are paved with,

and I spend a lot of time trying to, scuffing my shoes over it.

Could it be…tin? That is the best I can come up with. There

are no cars, but goblins are walking all around us, going

about their business. They spare a few curious glances for us,

but mostly they are busy with what they are doing, darting in

and out of shops and hailing friends. The buildings look as if

they are made of silver. Some are highly polished and reflect

everything, while others have grown tarnished. It is impos-

sible to drink everything in.

“Please close your mouths,” Will says to us. “You look

like tourists.”

The streets branch off of each other in a dizzying array. We

could be in Boston, except we are
underground
. I am quickly lost, but I’m really unable to pay much attention, since this

whole thing is so absurd. The goblins look just like regular

people, only all of them are extremely
pretty
, to a ridiculous extent. It’s like walking through a city populated with celebrities. They’re all well- dressed and well- coiffed, and I wonder 39

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if it’s some sort of rule, this attractiveness. Maybe they kill the ugly babies; that would seem like an appropriately goblin- y

thing to do. It’s true that Brody was pretty hot, at first, but

then he turned into a monster, and I don’t quite understand

why none of them look like the monster Brody turned into.

We come to a square with a park in the middle. It looks just

like a regular square, only prettier, like everything else down

here. The grass is an expanse of smooth and inviting velvet,

and members of the populace are sprawled on it, a few of

them with rats that appear to be pets.

“But…how are they growing grass?” asks Kelsey.

Will sighs heavily. “It’s
enchanted
.”

We walk through the park and come at length to a river that

appears to be trickling through the city. On the other side of

the river, nestled in its own velvet lawns and surrounded by

a golden fence, is a gleaming copper palace. It is not tall, not a fairy- tale castle with spires or anything like that. It sits low to the ground, hugging the gardens around it, and it is perfectly symmetrical, with rows of Palladian windows winking

at us in the torchlight. And every once in a while, one of the

windowpanes is lavender.

“Lavender panes,” I say, because it is the only thing I can

think to react to.

“Who do you think figured out how to make the glass fade

to purple?” Will asks me, and the answer, I assume, is
goblins
.

There is a wide footbridge over the river, delicate and pretty,

with the same golden fence as surrounds the palace lacing

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over it. We follow our escort across the bridge and up to the

huge golden gates. There is a guard at attention, dressed in a

black uniform with a bit of gold braid along the shoulders of

the jacket. He looks at us warily as we approach and says to

our escort, “What do we have here, Folletto?”

“Picked them up on patrol,” our escort replies.

The guard looks at him. “And you brought them
here
?”

“Well, you know who they are, don’t you?”

The guard whistles piercingly, and a little boy in the same

black uniform comes running up from a little seat by the

bridge that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Go and tell His Majesty that Will Blaxton and the fay are

here to see him,” the guard tells him. “With…others.” The

little boy slips nimbly between the rungs of the fence and

races up to the palace.

The guard looks at us with renewed interest. “
Really?
” he says, as if he had been expecting something totally different.

I look at Will.

Will looks bored. He yawns.

We stand there in silence. Safford fidgets a little bit. I twist the ties of my hood around my finger. And then the little boy

comes running out. He slips through the fence again and

looks at the group of us.

“Which of you is Mr. Blaxton?” he asks.

“Me,” answers Will.

The little boy bows to him and, when he straightens,

says, “His Majesty apologizes for keeping you waiting, sir.”

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Then the little boy snaps his fingers, and the golden gate

swings open.

“Excellent,” Will says. “I shall tell him not to mention it.”

He winks at the guard as we file through the gate.

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w e are in the court of the Erlking. Whatever that

means.

The palace is gorgeous, but I would have expected nothing

less. The gardens were beautiful, and the doors opened for us

onto a lovely room full of marble and gilding, with a painted

ceiling high above us and many sets of French doors opening

onto a terrace along which fountains have been positioned,

the water catching torchlight everywhere. There is a harp in

the corner that seems to be playing itself, not so much a tune

as a few notes plinking once in a while. Safford has gone to one of the doorways and is regarding the terrace, but I stand in the middle of the room with Kelsey, uncertain whether we should

really be moving. You never know when you might cross a

boundary in the Otherworld. It’s exhausting, like trying to

determine tipping customs in Europe, only worse, of course.