“I…” I can’t quite remember what happened. “I was wearing the coat, and I was…” We’d been arguing. That’s what we’d been doing. We’d both been distracted. I don’t want to say that. I clear my throat and take another sip of water.
The sip of water is a good idea, because it gives Aunt Virtue the opportunity to turn to Will and spit out accusingly, “Don’t upset her. She’s still very weak.”
Will looks unperturbed at being yelled at. His eyes stay on me. “That assessment I agree with. You need to sleep.”
“I’ve been sleeping for days apparently,” I respond, but I don’t know why I’m arguing. I’m so tired now I feel like I could fall asleep immediately.
“That wasn’t useful sleep.” Will shakes his head.
“Can you enchant her?” Aunt True asks him.
“I don’t want to be enchanted,” I protest. I am tired of being enchanted. I want to be not enchanted, fully and utterly. I want the world to be a real place, a place that makes sense, a place that is true.
“It will help you get better,” Aunt True informs me anxiously. “Will can give you a deep, dreamless, healing sleep. You’ll feel so much better when you wake up.”
“Where’s Ben?” I ask. I don’t want to ask it but I feel like I have to. The story makes no sense to me—we were in Cottingley, weren’t we? Not Boston. Right?—and he is the only one who was there, the only one who can tell me.
“He’s sleeping,” Will responds, which I think is so strange. He was just sleeping in here.
Aunt Virtue snorts. “More like collapsed.”
Will doesn’t look at her as he replies. “He’s fine. Everyone’s just going to sleep this whole thing off, and it’ll all be behind us by tonight.”
“It is nighttime,” I point out, confused. “Isn’t it?”
“That’s just what it looks like when the sun has mostly gone out,” Will replies grimly and then moves over to my bedside. “Just let me,” he says. “You’ll feel so much better when you wake up again.”
***
I must have told Will yes, nodded, or something, because the next thing I know, I’m wide-awake, sitting straight up in the bed, and the room is empty again. That same hazy half-light is filtering through my window. And the room is not entirely empty, I realize. The Erlking is sitting in the chair by my bed that Ben had been in. He blends into the darkness around him, except for the sword swinging by his side, the jewels on its hilt gleaming dimly in the light.
“Ah,” he says to me. “You look much better.”
I am staring at his sword. “Why isn’t your talisman cursed?”
“Because Benedict’s mother is apparently extremely charming,” the Erlking replies sarcastically. “It wasn’t enough for her to work at cross-purposes against every prophecy the stars have written. She had to use a curse too.”
I shudder.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“No,” I answer truthfully. “I’m…” I shrug and adjust the pillow underneath me so I’m sitting up against the headboard. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Sleeping. It’s the middle of the night. We’ve been taking turns watching you.”
“Well,” I remark dryly. “You’re a much better watch than Ben.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he was sleeping on the job when I woke up before.”
“Oh. No, we weren’t taking turns then. We couldn’t. It had to be Benedict.”
“What do you mean?”
“Selkie.” The Erlking looks confused by me, but in a kind way. “You just survived a curse. A curse placed on you by what was previously believed to be the most talented enchantment faerie in the Otherworld. How do you think you did that?”
“I…I have no idea,” I admit.
“No. Neither do I,” agrees the Erlking. “But whatever Benedict did to get that curse off you was cleverer than anything I’ve seen before in a very long life full of clever things. I revise what I said to you before.”
“What’s that?”
“When I told you never to trust a Le Fay. You can apparently trust that Le Fay.”
The irony is not lost on me. “No, I can’t.”
“You’ve absolutely bewitched him. Your talent must be seduction as well. Why didn’t you tell me?” He is smiling at me, as if this is all teasing good fun.
I don’t want to talk about Ben anymore. “How did you get out of the Unseelie Court?”
“We took the corgis.”
“And?”
“And then we left the Unseelie Court.”
I stare at him. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Apparently, all the drama was centered around you. Will says this is a quality you have.”
“It’s not a quality I want to have,” I grumble.
The Erlking looks amused. “We have very little control over most of the qualities we have. Anyway, their control is diluting.”
“Whose control?”
“The Seelies and the Unseelies. We got out of the Unseelie Court because they couldn’t stop us anymore. They’re losing control. Things are happening all over, things that they don’t want to happen. The prophecy is already moving.”
“What time is it?” I ask anxiously. How much time have I wasted here?
The Erlking holds out his pocket watch. I can see it only dimly. 11:31.
“Past the half-hour mark,” I comment weakly.
“Indeed.” The Erlking replaces it. “So perhaps better that we get moving again as quickly as possible.”
“How did I get back here?” I ask.
“You’d have to ask Benedict,” the Erlking answers, “which means you need to wait for him to recover.”
“Recover from what?”
The Erlking looks a bit irritated with me. “Didn’t you hear me? He’s recovering from saving you.”
I don’t know what to say in response to that, so instead I say that I’m starving, which I am. We go to the kitchen.
I hunt through the cupboards. The Erlking sits at the kitchen table and watches me.
I glance over at him as I find some bread. Toast sounds like something I can handle eating. I stick two pieces of bread in the toaster, and Will walks into the kitchen.
“I thought I heard you up,” he says to me. He is fully dressed, brown corduroy pants and a dark green sweater. I remember how absentminded professor I thought he looked so long ago, when I first met him at the Salem Which Museum. I wonder how we got to this place from that place. The thing is, I know how we got here, and even I don’t believe it.
“She was hungry,” the Erlking tells him.
“Good. You’re looking much better.” He sits at the kitchen table.
“Your dreamless sleep thing really worked. Thanks.”
“I’m not the one you should be thanking. This was all Benedict. At least the one of us foolish enough not to notice a curse until it had already imprinted on you was also the one of us capable of saving you from it.”
I don’t want to think anymore about any of that. My toast pops up, and I grab it and put it on a plate and assemble butter and jam. Then I sit at the table and prepare my middle-of-the-night breakfast.
“We need to discuss what we’re going to do next,” says Will.
I know that we do. The clock is ticking. But I am tired, and I apparently almost died not long ago. I want to have my toast and then go back to bed and sleep for a thousand years. Or a few hours. Depending on what time you’re keeping.
I want all this never to have happened, really, and that’s something I know I can never have.
I ignore the fact that Will is talking about the prophecy’s next steps. “Where’s my father?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him.”
Will looks a bit shifty eyed. Which is not good. I slowly push my toast away. “Whe
re is he, Will?” I demand.
“Your aunts couldn’t get to him. The train stopped running.”
“They were on a human train,” I point out. “They were on the Red Line.”
“It shut down,” Will says. “They couldn’t go to your father’s.”
“So they could have taken a taxi.”
“Selkie. They couldn’t. We’re keeping the core of Boston together through an effort you can only guess at. It would have been too risky for your aunts to—”
I round on the Erlking. “You were supposed to protect them. Your people were supposed to go and get—”
“They couldn’t,” the Erlking cuts me off icily. “We have been restricted to Boston, and your father is outside of Boston. We can’t get there.”
“That’s you. What about me? Can I get there?”
“Selkie, you’re not going anywhere,” Will tells me, which as good as saying yes to me. “You have to remember the prophecy.”
“The prophecy isn’t very helpful, Will,” I snap. “My only remaining idea about how to find the other three fays is to just walk out the door and start asking people randomly.”
“We got Ben back—” Will begins.
I am frustrated enough to say, “And what? What good does he do us without the other fays? And in the meantime, my father is a sitting duck—”
“There’s going to be a battle, Selkie,” Will cuts me off sharply.
“What does that mean?” I ask, because my mind shies away from what it probably means, from the thought of there being an actual battle, with all that implies, as if everything we’ve been going through so far has been nothing, just the opening act.
“Just what you’d think,” Will says flatly.
“Will,” I begin and take a deep breath, trying to organize my thoughts. “We can’t have a battle.”
“We either have a battle or the Seelies win, and everything goes back to the way it was before Parsymeon, everyone living in secrecy, trying to stay out of the way because you never know when the Seelies might show up and destroy you without thought. Everything in the Otherworld just wants to live. We have to fight for them.”
“I don’t know how to fight,” I say. “I can’t fight in a battle. You’ve lost your mind.”
“Selkie, you’ve escaped from both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts,” Will reminds me impatiently. “There’s very little you can’t do. Haven’t you figured that out?”
“That wasn’t me,” I protest. “None of this has been me.”
“Then who has it been?”
“The prophecy. Or…I don’t know. I’m not actually…” I realize even as I say it that it sounds absurd. It’s true, in my head, in my perception of myself—I am not actually this person that I am. But it appears that I actually am this person. I am no longer the girl on Boston Common reading to Ben over freshly made lemonade. I am, apparently, the fay of the autumnal equinox. “But don’t we need the other three fays? How are we going to have a battle with just me? We can’t. Can we?”
There is a moment of silence. “The battle is coming whether we like it or not. Selkie, the sun is gone. And it’s 11:31.”
“11:32 now,” the Erlking inserts quietly. “We lost another minute.”
“11:32. Time is running out. At any moment, the clock could start ticking faster and faster. Finding the other three fays would be ideal, but there’s going to be a battle, whether we’re ready for it or not. And I’d rather we go down fighting if we’re going to be named either way. Wouldn’t you?”
“Can Ben find the other three fays? I know that his mother hid them, but you said he should be able to recognize Le Fay magic.”
Will is silent for a second, looking at me. Then he snaps, “Possibly. Maybe. If we’re lucky. Which I’m not sure I’m willing to count on anymore. And anyway, he can’t, can he?”
I blink in surprise. “Why not?”
“Because he’s sleeping,” Will spits out.
I don’t know what to make of that. “We can’t just…wake him up?”
“Selkie. You need to understand that you should be dead. You’re not, and we are all very grateful for that, but I don’t know how Benedict accomplished that, and I don’t want to know.” He seems furious, and I have no idea what to say in reaction. “He’s sleeping. When he wakes, we can ask him if he can help find the other fays, now that he knows his mother has hidden them. But I don’t know when that’s going to be, and it’s 11:32.”
“11:33,” the Erlking adds quietly.
Will swears and says, “You see? I think we need to get ready, don’t you?” Then he stands up, scraping his chair back, and marches out of the kitchen. Stomps, more like it.
I stare after him with no idea what just happened.
“You must forgive him,” the Erlking says to me, looking awkward. “He was…worried.”
“We’re all worried,” I say, disinclined to allow Will to be more worried than the rest of us.
“When Benedict arrived here with you…it was bad. They had an enormous disagreement.”
“Who did?” I ask, because I’m having a difficult time following this conversation. Maybe it’s because I’ve just recovered from what was apparently a severely life-threatening illness.
“Benedict and Will,” he answers.
“Over what? Over me?”
The Erlking looks at me, his navy blue eyes glittering hard. “You were very bad off. You were absolutely delirious. Will was furious with Benedict.”
“But why?” I’m bewildered by this. “Ben didn’t curse me.”
“He should have noticed, Selkie. It was inexcusable for him not to have noticed until it was too late. His delay could have killed you. It should have killed you.”
I know that I’ve been told this, but for the first time, it really seems to sink in, as if it was all too much for me to take in at first and only now can I start to comprehend it. I think maybe I’d assumed people were exaggerating, the way girls at school might say they were going to die upon finding out their mascara had clumped their eyelashes together. I feel myself turn cold, and the toast I’ve managed to eat sits uneasily in my stomach. “Will really thought I was going to die?” I say, unable to get my voice louder than a whisper.
The Erlking just looks at me until I have to drop my eyes and look away, because you can’t truly absorb the news that you almost died while staring at someone else. “Anyway,” the Erlking continues after a moment, as if we are having a perfectly normal conversation. “Benedict finally slammed shut your door and locked it, and then none of us could get in until…well, until you woke up.”
“How long was I out?” I ask fearfully.
“Three days. And in the meantime, we’ve moved ever closer to the twelve o’clock hour. And now we have to wait for Benedict to recover on top of everything.”
We are silent for a moment. I look out the window, where the light is still the color of a dawn without a sun. It reminds me of Ben’s eyes. I think of Ben sleeping, trying to recover from saving my life. I think of the prophecy.
“We’re not going to survive the battle, are we.” It’s not a question.
The Erlking answers me anyway. “Selkie. It’s a battle.”
CHAPTER 13
Ben is sleeping on the couch in the study. We almost never use the study because it belonged to my father. My aunts have always avoided it, and I have always followed their lead. But now that Ben is in there, I have no choice but to go in. I feel like I need to talk to him. Everything is such a blur in my head, and we’re barreling toward a battle. We don’t know where the other fays are, and my father is trapped outside of the city. It’s 11:33 now—possibly 11:34, for all I know—and Ben is prophesied to die, and I have to talk to him. I have just always had to talk to Ben when life gets overwhelming, and even after everything, apparently that hasn’t changed. Or maybe I just hav
e to wait until things calm down before I start to break my Ben habit.
Then again, are things ever going to calm down?
Ben is nothing but a heap on the couch, covered with a blanket and curled into a ball. I walk over and look down at him. He looks both more boyish and more dangerously attractive than I would like. He has the blankets tight around him, and he looks surprisingly tense, his lips pursed tightly together, his brow furrowed, as if his sleep is taking effort. Some of the things I would like to do to Ben are things I’d rather not admit, but I’d like to smooth the dark curls of his tumbled hair off of his pale forehead. I’d like to kiss his mouth until he forgets to frown and starts smiling. I’d like to unfurrow his brow with brushes of my lips and flutters of my eyelashes.
When I first fell in love with Ben, on Boston Common, he was playful and charming. He laughed and made me laugh. He brought me lemonade and sweatshirts, and asked me inconsequential questions. When I fell in love with Ben for the second time, in Tir na nOg, he was sick and vulnerable. He shivered and clung to me. I brought him blankets and the power of my name, and the questions we should have asked each other went mostly unsaid. When I fell in love with Ben for the third time, in Cottingley, when he kissed me in a fake ruin, he was focused and deliberate, seductive and seducing, and I really thought I knew him, after all of that.
I stand and listen to his breaths, breaths that belong to Ben.
It occurs to me that I may never know Ben. It occurs to me that I am never going to stop falling in love with him either. That he will show up in an endless number of new guises, new facets, new puzzles to solve in his personality, and I will fall in love with every single one of them. And what will stay constant about him will be his quicksilver, fickle nature. The faerie-ness of him. I will always be his, but I am not sure he will ever be entirely mine. I am not sure he is even capable of it. I am not sure I could even get him to understand what it is I want from him.
I should leave the room, I think. He’s fine. I’ve verified it for myself. Sleeping. Recovering from whatever it is he did to save my life. Something even Will doesn’t want to know about. I shudder.
The Boy with the Hidden Name: Otherworld Book Two Page 13
