Girl Who Never Was

by Skylar Dorset

  And I do feel like he means it. Will and I may have had our differences, but I’m glad that he came here to tell me this before I set off. I feel like I really needed to hear it. “Thanks,” I say.

  “You are a Stewart of Beacon Hill,” Will tells me. “Remember that: you are not one of them. They’ll try to make you forget who you are; they will try to erase your past and your future: do not let them.”

  I nod because Will’s right. What else can I do? I can only remember who I am: Selkie Stewart of Beacon Hill, daughter of Etherington and niece of True and Virtue, and I am only half of anything and maybe that’s the point.

  “Words are important,” Will says gravely. “The most important things there are. Remember that. Don’t let them make you forget that.”

  He says that words are important, but all I can do in response is nod mutely. And then he nods mutely back and takes a step away, as if he doesn’t want to accidentally trip onto the train with me or something. I glance at Kelsey, who gives me a little wave, and then I make myself move forward. I mount the steps into the car and sit on one of the seats. The doors close, bells chiming, and the train jerks into motion.

  I am on my way to save Ben. I am also about to meet my mother.

  CHAPTER 16

  The train squeals along, and it seems like I am just on a conventional T in a conventional tunnel, except that we never hit Boylston. The train goes and goes, and I watch the tunnel pass by my window. I have my hands pulled back, hidden in the sleeves of my enchanted sweatshirt. In my pocket are tattered pages from old books, a piece of glass wrapped in a tissue, a button from the Salem Which Museum, and a threaded needle. I have no idea what I intend to do with these items, but they are all I have brought in terms of weapons, and I don’t even know if they are weapons. I have these and the power of my name. Words: the most important things, according to Will. I don’t even know what that means.

  Maybe I won’t need any weapons. Maybe there won’t be any fight. Maybe my mother will be wonderful; maybe she’ll hug me and tell me how much she’s missed me. And then I’ll say, Can’t we all just get along, all of us, the faeries and the Seelies and the ogres in Boston? And my mother will say, Of course, this has all just been a huge misunderstanding. And I’ll have a regular family. And Ben.

  While I am indulging in this fantasy, the train suddenly bursts out into sunlight. One minute there is a tunnel, and the next minute there is sky. Just sky. Lots and lots of sky. And there, in the distance, dimly, some land that I cannot really perceive. It’s like looking too hard at it makes it dissolve into blurs.

  The train stops. Its doors open, chiming at me. I swallow thickly and exit, carefully stepping out on the narrow strip of land that lies between the train and the sky. It is a canyon, I can see now—a vast chasm of red rock, stretching to my right and to my left and below me, as if it is the only thing that exists.

  “Are you crossing Mag Mell?” asks a voice behind me.

  I whirl around, startled. The train has soundlessly disappeared, and there is a little girl watching me from a few feet away. She is an extremely beautiful little girl, her black hair pin straight and pulled back with a large pink bow. She is dressed in the sort of frilly pink lace dress that can only be described as a princess dress. And she is eating an enormous lollipop.

  “What’s Mag Mell?” I ask.

  She nods in a vague way that seems to indicate the canyon and takes a slurp of her lollipop and says, “So? Are you crossing it?”

  “I’m trying to get to Tir na nOg,” I tell her.

  She looks at me like I’m stupid. “That’s the only reason you’d cross Mag Mell,” she informs me.

  “Oh,” I say awkwardly, because I feel stupid. How did I ever think that I would come here and save Ben and that this would all somehow work?

  She studies me for a second, and I wonder what she’s thinking, if she’s thinking, Who is this complete idiot who has shown up here and wants to get into a prison?

  What she says is, “Seventeen fusel.”

  “Seventeen what?” I echo.

  “Seventeen fusel,” she repeats impatiently. “For the train fare.”

  “I…But I paid at Park Street,” I inform her, because I can think of nothing else to say.

  “Well, that was stupid of you, wasn’t it? Paying before it takes you anywhere? How’d you know the train’d go anywhere at all?”

  I think about that for a moment. “Good point, actually.”

  “So. Seventeen fusel.” Slurp.

  “I don’t know what a fusel is,” I admit.

  Her eyes narrow. And one foot, encased in a pink Mary Jane topped with an absurdly huge bow, begins tapping against the wildflower-strewn grass underneath it. “Well,” she says. “You are stupid and useless.” And she turns on her heel and stomps off, bows flouncing.

  I watch her go, thinking that I’m off to a great start here in the Otherworld. And then I turn my attention to the vast canyon that I’m somehow supposed to be crossing. I bet Ben could just jump us across it, but I have no idea if I can do that sort of thing and how to go about it if I could. I stand there with my hands in the pocket of my sweatshirt, fingering my feeble weapons and trying to determine if one of them could come in handy. Maybe if I threw one of them into the canyon, it would turn out to be magical and a bridge would suddenly form?

  And then I realize that there is something drifting across the canyon toward me. A hot air balloon, gaily colored and whimsical looking, trailing fluttering flags after it. I watch it as it gets bigger and bigger and then drifts to a landing right next to me—and then keeps skidding across the grass, thudding up great chunks of turf, and I find that my heart is in my throat because I’m convinced it’s going to go tumbling right over the edge and I have no idea if it will be able to regain flight once that happens, until it finally comes to a swaying stop and a head peers over the top of the basket.

  It’s a boy, roughly my age, with a shock of untidy red-orange hair that he has squashed underneath a newsboy cap. His face is heavily freckled, his eyes are wide and green, and he looks at me and says sadly, “I wish I could tell you to run, but you wouldn’t get anywhere anyhow.”

  I ignore this uplifting remark, refusing to let myself be afraid. “Can you take me across…” I wave my arm toward the empty space of the air occupying the canyon. “That, to the prison?”

  “Of course I can,” he replies. “That’s my job.”

  “Oh,” I say and walk over to the basket. It’s tall, and I can tell it’s going to be awkward to get in. I reach for the top of the basket, and he reaches over to grab at me, and somehow together we get me over the top and into the basket with only a minimum of inappropriate groping, until we fall in a heap at the bottom of the basket.

  “You’re quite graceful, aren’t you?” he says good-naturedly.

  I try to ignore him, but I’m sure I blush as I roll off of him. He sits at the bottom of the basket and looks at me as I stand, leaning against the side. I can see now that he’s dressed in white pants with pink pinstripes and a loud, electric blue, Hawaiian-print shirt. He must really like color.

  He just sits there staring at me for so long that I grow uncomfortable. “Shouldn’t we…get going?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. They’ll make sure we get back there. I like to see how long I can stay here, just…breathing. It’s hard to breathe over there.” He looks around himself wistfully, looking so forlorn that I feel awful for him.

  “You don’t get to come over here often?” I guess.

  “Often enough, but it’s always just to pick people up and then ferry them back over, and that’s not…I mean, that’s never…” He shudders a bit. “Well.” He looks at me, suddenly smiling brightly. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly, a bit startled by the abrupt change in his demeanor. But then I don’t know what else to talk about. I�
��m going to go to Tir na nOg, find one of the prisoners, and escape doesn’t exactly seem like a good way to start a conversation.

  I must look blank, because he offers up a topic of conversation. “For instance, I have just discovered that I have lost a button.” He indicates his loud Hawaiian shirt, where there is indeed a button missing.

  “Oh.” I blink and realize, “A button.” I reach into my sweatshirt pocket and pull out the button I took from the Salem Which Museum. It, of course, matches the shirt perfectly.

  He takes it in delight. “Thank you!” And then, “I am Safford. And I am very pleased to meet you. You’re very useful!”

  Yes, in lots of different ways, apparently, I think sardonically. But there is another thing I’m curious about. “You just told me your name,” I note.

  “Yes. Well, I’m required to, aren’t I? Required to tell my name to the passengers I ferry across Mag Mell.”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  “What always happens in the Otherworld when you do something the Seelies don’t like?”

  “Not good things?” I guess.

  “One way of putting it,” agrees Safford. “You came here by Green Line train.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not many people crossing worlds these days. The borders are closed, you know.”

  He is looking at me very sharply, studying me, and I don’t want him to ask what’s so special about me; I don’t want to get into half-ogreness and fay-of-the-autumnal- equinox-ness.

  “Is it going to be a problem that I don’t have any…fusel?” I blurt out to keep Safford from asking anything more about my journey from the Thisworld. I wonder if any of the items in my kangaroo pocket can qualify as fusel.

  “Fusel?” he echoes blankly.

  “That little girl asked me for seventeen fusel.” I indicate vaguely where I’d had the conversation with the little girl, who is no longer in sight.

  “Oh,” says Safford. “Dark hair, lots of bows?”

  I nod.

  “She’s just an extortionist, that one. You can’t blame her though. Her parents were named when she was just a little girl. That left her and her little brother, who’s a tiny little thing, not much talent of his own. She’s devoted to him, and it’s up to her to keep food in their mouths.” Safford shrugs.

  Now I feel terrible about not having any fusel to give to the little girl. “What did her parents do?” I ask.

  “Oh, you know.” Safford makes a vague gesture. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

  “No, I mean to get named.”

  Safford looks at me. “You ask that as if there’s a reason for being named.”

  “There…Oh…” I trail off stupidly, absorbing that. I guess I had been thinking that there would be a reason for being named, like Ben was in danger of it because he had helped me. And I was in danger of it because I was me. But I guess there doesn’t have to be a reason; I guess it could just be something that…happens, like a car accident or a plane crash.

  “Like me,” Safford continues, “forced constantly to either ferry faeries across to their namings or to provide my name to faeries who won’t be named and can then use it against me. And what have I done? I have no idea. One day they just…came and got me and brought me here. I don’t know. I guess what I did was exist.” He looks so bitter, and so extremely sad, that I shudder.

  And at that moment, the hot air balloon lifts into the air and out over the canyon.

  “Lovely view, isn’t it?” says Safford dully.

  I look at the ground a dizzying distance below me and silently disagree with him—strongly. I’ve never thought of myself as being afraid of heights, but I guess now I know that I should never go skydiving. Nice to know these things; self-discovery is good.

  Feeling giddy and thinking maybe I’m on the verge of hysterics, I turn away from the lovely view and sink to the floor of the basket. “This is my first time in one of these,” I say, trying to explain my sudden weak insanity.

  “Really?” Safford looks shocked.

  The basket is rocking gently as we waft over the canyon, and I wish it would stop swaying. I can’t tell if the thing is actually making me motion sick or if finally the prospect of what I’m doing is making me nauseated. “We don’t really travel by these where I come from,” I tell him.

  “What’s it like, in that world?” He sounds genuinely curious.

  “I don’t know,” I say helplessly. I can’t think of how to describe home. I am coming up utterly devoid of words. “It doesn’t have many hot air balloons.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see it. I always wanted to be a traveler, bouncing between the worlds like that.”

  I think of Ben, my dizzy nausea receding suddenly. I should have thought of this so much earlier. “Did you ferry Ben across? Benedict Le Fay,” I clarify.

  “No, he didn’t come by Green Line train.” Safford’s eyes are hooded and dark, and the tone of his voice matches them.

  Bad topic, I think. Never mind. “Lovely day,” I say like an idiot.

  Safford looks at me and smiles sadly.

  I swallow thickly and think that this might be the last normal conversation I have for a while, so I should maybe make the most of it. “So you’ll take me right to Tir na nOg?”

  “Yes,” he responds. “When we land, we’ll be at the fortress where the Court receives its guests.”

  “And the prison?”

  “And the prison. And then, beyond that, is the Isle of Apples.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Oh, no one knows that. No one but the Seelies themselves.”

  “Well, it sounds like an island of apple orchards,” I suggest feebly.

  “Do you think so?” muses Safford. “Huh.”

  He does not look as if he is teasing me. I wonder if the words isle and apples mean something different in the Otherworld or if it’s just that nothing makes much sense here.

  The balloon lands gently on a patch of dead grass. In front of me, rising up to the sky, is an impossibly huge expanse of cliff face with regular windows carved into it. It is the least welcoming thing I have ever seen. And everything is utterly silent and lifeless. Nothing moves.

  Safford breaks the silence, making me jump. “Here we are,” he announces needlessly. “And now, your name, if you please.”

  I look at him, feeling vaguely panicked by the idea. I have already internalized the Otherworld idea that my name should be a precious secret.

  “It’s required,” he informs me, not unkindly.

  “Selkie,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Not enough.”

  “Selkie Stewart,” I respond.

  He smiles at me almost pityingly. “You can try to hide your full name. You’ll never succeed. They’ll pull it out of you. Anyway.” He clears his throat and raises his voice. “Selkie Stewart,” he shouts to the cliff face, and it echoes back at us, up and down the canyon.

  Nothing happens. I push my hands into my pocket and try not to shiver uncontrollably.

  “That’s it then. It was truly an honor to meet you.”

  I look at the cliff face for a moment longer.

  “You’ve got to get out of the basket now,” he prompts me. “There isn’t any going back, you know.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t even realized I was still in the basket. I scramble my way out of it, trying to look dignified while I do it.

  “See you,” Safford says to me. “Maybe. I hope.” He looks like he’s about to say more, then seems to change his mind with a brisk little shake of his head.

  The hot air balloon lifts up. I watch it dip and bob its way into the air over the canyon, and I wonder where it’s going, and then there is a noise behind me, bolts being thrown, locks being unlocked.

  I turn back to
the cliff face, realizing that the bottom of it contains a pair of enormous doors. They are carved directly into the rock, and they swing open to reveal an entourage of strangely shaped creatures: some are tall, some are short, some are round, some are long, some walk on two legs, and some walk on four legs, but they are all covered in so much gleaming copper armor that I cannot even begin to guess at what they might be under all of that. Each of them has small, chiming bells lining its armor—they chime with every step they take.

  Then the entourage parts, forming two lines. They all regard me, a few of them snuffling and snorting and some pawing the ground. I wonder what I am supposed to do and venture a step forward. Nobody makes a move to stop me, so I assume that this is permitted. I keep walking, gaining speed and confidence with each step. Nothing, so far, is happening. I realize at that moment that I expected Seelies to descend upon me immediately, furiously attempting to kill me. Or hug me. Or something, at least. Anything.

  The rock doors slam shut behind me, not even waiting for my entourage to follow me in. It is very dark with them closed, and I can feel some dust tumble from the ceiling at the force of their slamming. I wonder if this cliff face structure is safe. Of all the things to worry about, I am worried that an enchanted prison might collapse in on me.

  I move forward hesitantly, hands out in front of me so that I don’t bump into anything. It is terrifying not to be able to see. I could encounter anything. Anything could encounter me. I feel a panic rising within me, and I fight it down. It takes me six steps—I am counting, in case I need to find my way to the doors again quickly, although I doubt they will open for me—and then I cross a threshold I cannot see, and there is bright, fierce sunshine. I have never thought sunshine could be angry before, but this sunshine is.

  I am in something that could be either a garden or a great hall. The floor beneath my feet is marble, but lush plants seem to be sprouting from it. There are gilded walls, but there is no ceiling, instead just the furious sunshine, so bright that the sky is washed white with it and I can barely keep my eyes open. There are fountains, water splashing through them, catching the light, reflecting it in such a way that it is painful to look in their direction.