The Boy with the Hidden Name (21 page)

fierce, sudden fondness for this place that I have called home

all of my life. I have no desire to lose it, or to see it destroyed.

Honestly, I
love
it here.

I swallow back all the emotion, because it’s not going to do

me any good right now, and I cross Beacon Street and walk

onto the Common, heading toward Park Street. I glance over

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my shoulder every so often, convinced that someone is going

to step out of the house and shout at me to come back inside,

that this is a stupid thing for me to be doing. But I can’t help it: I know that people tried to get my father and failed, but

I
didn’t try, and I’ve been a little bit successful with rescues lately. (Even if the last rescue was apparently a really close

call, and even if I’ve always had help with my rescues; best to

ignore those little facts.) And anyway, my father is the only

parent I have who isn’t trying to kill me, and he literally went insane because he wanted me so much, demanded me against

all wisdom. How am I supposed to abandon him now?

I keep expecting something— anything— to happen. But

nothing does. I get on the Red Line at Park Street and I take

it all the way to end at Alewife and leave the confines of

Boston. The T doesn’t stall. Goblins don’t appear and neither

do Seelies. Everyone bustles past me as if I am completely

unremarkable. I wonder wildly if I should start asking them

questions:
Do
you
think
you
might
be
a
supernatural
creature?

When is your birthday? What is your name?
The idea makes me want to laugh hysterically. What is my
life
?

I am so keyed up by the time I reach the small, nondescript,

charming- looking building where my father has lived all my

life that I am practically jumping out of my skin at every

movement. But I’m almost there now, and all I have to do is

figure out how to get my father out and back into Boston…

I have not one inkling of a plan. I guess this is very faerie

of me.

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The nurse at the front desk is one I know, who has greeted

me for countless visits to my father. Her name is Deb and she

has two kids who are around my age and both play soccer in

the autumn.

But when I go up to the front desk and smile at her, she just

looks at me blankly in response. “Can I help you?” she says.

Fear begins to close around me, but I don’t let it. I fight off

the dark raggedness of its edges. “Is my father here?” I ask. I

force myself to keep smiling.

“Who is your father, dear?” she responds. She looks mildly

concerned, as if she thinks I might be the one who needs to

be institutionalized.

“Etherington Stewart,” I whisper. I clear my throat and

repeat his name more clearly.

She frowns. “I don’t think we have a patient here by that

name.” She taps on her keyboard and frowns some more at

the computer screen. “No. No one here by that name. Are

you sure you have the right place?” She looks up at me.

I look around at the vestibule I have stood in more times

than I would ever be able to remember, from when I was

a toddler taking my first steps to the day I had shown up

asking about the possibility of having immortal aunts and

was warned not to tell Benedict Le Fay my birth date. It is

almost worse than hearing that my father has died, to hear

that he seems to never have existed at all, that he is lost somewhere between this world and the Otherworld.

I move through the shock of the sorrow and coalesce into

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rage. Wherever my mother is, I hope she can feel that I will not rest until I make her tell me what she has done with my father.

“I’m not even sure this is the right
world
,” I tell Deb honestly with a bright and frigid smile. Then I turn and march

out into the human world. I walk to the T station, dodg-

ing all the other pedestrians automatically, my mind on the

Otherworld, on wherever my mother is, on how soon we can

assemble an army that will attack her.

I swipe my T pass and get on the train that pulls up as soon

as I enter. I sit and look out the window opposite me, at the

darkness of the tunnel as it whizzes by. We are through Porter

and almost to Harvard when the subway car begins to flicker.

At first, I don’t know what I’m seeing, and then I place it: the dance of flames in a fireplace out of the corner of my eye that

disappears when I turn my head; the sensation that I am sit-

ting in a cozy rocking chair, even though, when I look down,

it’s just the regular no- nonsense subway seat.

It’s the Otherworld, I realize. The Otherworld is bleeding

through. Or I’m somehow sliding into it. I don’t know which.

I stand up hurriedly. We are between Harvard and Central,

not yet at a stop, so I get some curious looks from people.

The truth is I have no idea what I’m going to do. Can I get it

to stop?
Should
I get it to stop?

I feel like I am driving in a car, trying to get reception on

a radio station just out of range. Sometimes it feels like I’m

standing fully in an Otherworld train, and then I blink and

the static of the human world T reasserts itself. The T squeals

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to a stop at Central, and normal, everyday people all around

me get on and get off, and I stand where I am, trying to keep

my balance as the world swerves all around me.

The human T pulls away from Central, but I am no longer

on it. I am now standing firmly on an Otherworld train, and

across from me is my mother. She looks furious.

Which is good, because so am I.

“Where’s Dad?” I demand.

“Where is Benedict Le Fay?” she demands. I don’t even

think she hears my question.

“What’s the matter?” I drawl. “Can’t you find him?”

She looks even more furious and waves her hand, which

sends the china tea set on the marble end table next to the

fireplace whirling through the air at me. It tumbles to the

ground just before reaching me, shattering with a terrific

noise that is nothing compared to the roar of frustration that

my mother lets out.

I look down at the ruined remains of the tea set. “Ah,” I

remark. “Ben’s enchantment. Of course. And you can’t do

anything about it, because you can’t find him, so you can’t

name him.” I look up at my mother and smile. “What did

you do with Dad? Where is he?”

My mother’s expression shifts from rage to satisfaction. She

sends me one of her anti- smiles. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes,” I snap. “Yes, I would. Give him back.”

My mother smirks some more and walks toward me. I

swallow and hold my ground, thinking about how she can
not

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touch me. I do
not
want her to touch me. She stops just in front of me. She does not try to touch me.

She says, “You can come and get him.”

“Come and get him where?”

“With me.” She lifts her hand, offering it, as if I am sup-

posed to reach out and take it. “You can come with me. I will

take you to your father.”

I stare at her hand. The thing is that I know she knows

where he is. And she probably won’t take me to him. And I

remember that there is a warring prophecy, one about a fay

going to Avalon and cementing the Seelie power forever, and

if I go with her…But she might bring me to my father. She

might
. And if she
might
, if there’s even the slightest chance that I can try to—

There is an explosion of white light. My mother whirls

away from me, her mouth a round
o
of surprise, and the train splinters around us, sliding away in a dizzying confusion. I

scramble for purchase, thrown off balance, and find myself

on the cold concrete floor of a subway station. I watch as

my mother, on the opposite side, across the tracks from me,

slams hard into the tile wall lining the station.

I sit, stunned, on the floor, trying to figure out what hap-

pened, until Ben steps in front of me. And then I realize what

happened:
Ben
happened.

“Hello,” he calls across to my mother, who is holding her

head in her hands. I’m guessing that she cracked it against the

tile wall. “There’s a rumor you’re looking for me.”

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My mother roars again, and Ben ducks, grabbing my hand

and pulling us out of the way. A gaping crater appears in the

place where we had just been standing.

“Get out of this station,” Ben gasps at me. “Do
not
take the T. Get in a cab and get yourself home and lock all the doors.”

“What? What will you be doing?”

He shoves me away, shaking his head as if that’s an

answer, and sends fire licking over the train tracks toward

my mother.

She dowses it with water, some of which she sends Ben’s

way, although he pushes it away with a burst of magic.

“Where are all of your friends, Benedict?” He winces at the

name and leaps away from the lightning strike she aims at

him. “No one to rush in to save you now? Just a girl who was

on the verge of betraying you? All of that effort to keep her

alive and safe, and she would have come with me, if you’d

been just a pig’s whisper later, Benedict Le Fay.”

Ben winces again, and he gathers some effort to do some-

thing. I can feel the charge of it in the air around us, but I’m no longer paying attention to them, because I am looking

around for a weapon, anything I can use, as ridiculous as it

might seem. Why can’t I do amazing things like fling tea sets

through the air and throw fire and make bursts of blinding,

explosive, destructive light? I don’t care what nonsense the

Erlking and Will said about the importance of being me—

being me is
useless
. I hate them for having me raised human so that I never developed any faerie powers.

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“Is that the best you can do?” I hear my mother taunt

Ben. “Really? Is this really what you will use to fulfill

your prophecy?”

Some scraps of litter, I think desperately, looking around on

the floor. That’s all I have. What am I going to do with that?

“Benedict,” I hear my mother say behind me. She pauses

for effect. “Will o’ the Wisp.”

Names
, I realize. I have
names
.

“Cel— ” she begins, but I don’t let her get it out.

I whirl toward her, intent flowing through me in a wave I

can feel. “
Mother
,” I say scathingly.

She gasps, and then Ben collides with me, knocking me

down. I feel the rush of air over us, and the wall behind

us explodes, showering us with pinpricks of concrete and

ceramic tile.

“I told you to
go
,” Ben snaps into my ear.

But I am not listening to him. I have fallen onto my side,

farther up the platform than I was, and I am staring at the art

installation that runs through the center of Kendall Station.

We are in Kendall, I realize, and those metallic tubes that look like elaborate decoration, I know what those are: they are

bells
. Not chiming bells. Deep, gonging, Seelie- hating bells.

“Ben,” I say, shoving at him, wriggling and squirming about.

“You have to go,” he insists.

“I’m going,” I lie breathlessly. “I’m going.” He releases me

and I stumble to my feet, throwing myself at the gear crank

on the wall that rings the bells.

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“How
dare
you name me!” my mother shrieks behind me.

I ignore her, grabbing the crank and pulling at it.

“Selkie,” she says, and I gasp with the pain of it, but I don’t

let go of the crank. I pull it harder.

Behind me, the bells start to ring. I hear my mother scream,

and I feel myself start to fall, dizziness spreading through me, the bells vibrating in my skull.

Someone pushes at me. Ben, I realize. Catching me as I fall.

Always catching me as I fall. I rest my cheek against the fleece he’s wearing.

“You’re a genius,” he tells me. “And now, I’m sorry for this,

but you’ve found me church bells. I’ve got to use them.”

He reaches past me, and he turns the crank. The bells

ring louder.

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i wake in a bed with the sensation of being watched.
This
, I think,
is
getting
old
. When I open my eyes, I am in my own bed, and I
am
being watched, by Ben, who is stretched out next to me, his eyes steady on me.