The Girl Who Never Was (21 page)

'As if you are in a position to make requests!'scoffs my mother, flinging me into my room. We got here very quickly. Apparently, the drama of a long route to and fro no longer suits my mother. 'Do you really think that Boston will be closed to us forever? Do you think, now that we have you here, with your power leaking into the air, that we will not be able to penetrate through their defenses? We'll get through, and we will get your precious aunts and your precious father, and we will destroy all of them. Everyone you love, everyone you remember. And that will teach you the danger of remembering.'The door slams shut behind her.

I turn, unsure what I am going to do, just wanting to pace. But I cannot move. I take a step and then can move no farther. Something is preventing me from getting to the rest of the room. She's imprisoned me.

I sit in the tiny amount of space I have been allowed, and I refuse to cry.

x

I hate it in the Otherworld. That is what I decide after a lot of sitting on the floor feeling sorry for myself. If I had been kidnapped in real life, regular life, normal life, Boston life, I would at least have had some vague ideas of what to do. I could try to get to a phone to call 911, or I could scream and shout and surely someone walking by would hear me. I know to walk with my house key clutched like a weapon between my fingers, and that if you are locked in the trunk of a car, you should try to kick out the taillight.

But I have no idea what to do when you are trapped by invisible faerie walls in a faerie prison in the Otherworld, where the odds of someone on your side finding you in this enchanted labyrinth of a place seem impossibly small, where you do not even know if screaming will be of any help. And when everyone you've never met is somehow also depending on you. Nothing I've lived while trapped in Ben's enchantment has prepared me for this. And, I am well aware, I don't just have to get myself out of here, but Ben as well, and I have no idea what condition Ben will be in once I find my way back to him. I am not even entirely sure there will be a Ben any longer, but I try not to let myself dwell on that. I find myself wishing for Gussie to come and find me, but I don't know what Gussie is really capable of doing. If Gussie could help, wouldn't she have escaped long ago, the way she'd said? And Gussie said the prophecy was mine, my choices. For reasons that I don't understand, I am the most important person here, and I have to make the decisions; I have to get Ben

and me out of Tir na nOg and find a way to save everyone. I try to think about productive things, to systematically go over everything I know about faeries. I need to dissolve this enchantment around me, but I only know how to dissolve an enchantment using my unusually good naming power, and I don't know my mother's name'

I lift up my head abruptly from where I'd been leaning against the knees I have clutched to my chest. It is not very bright in the room. Clouds are still rolling in. The sunlight is spotty at best.

I asked her what I should call her, and she said Mother. It isn't a name, but it's what she told me to call her. Maybe, in doing so, it's become her name to me. I am me, and she is my mother. That is who she is to me. And maybe that's enough.

It's worth a try. I'm unusually good at naming; this is what I can do. 'Mother,'I whisper. Is it a trick of the scuttling clouds, or does the air shimmer around me?

I scramble to my feet, concentrating. 'Mother,'I say again, more loudly this time, making sure that I fill it with all my fury and frustration, with all my vengeance for Ben and for the seventeen years of my life I've spent without a mother, for the rest of my life that I have to spend without my mother, for my father who sacrificed his sanity, for all of Boston, huddled into defensive preservations of its history because of its terror of my mother and her people. Yes, that is definitely a shimmer, a contraction of the air, like it is struggling against something. I fling out my arm, the way my mother had

when she had tried to name Ben, and I gather all of my angry intent. I make it the very opposite of the way I'd said Ben's name the night before. I shout firmly, 'Mother!'

There is a sound like the splintering of glass, and then the air all around me seems to crash to the floor. I take one step, then two, and then I fling open my door. I have no real idea what I am going to do. I just know that I need, somehow, to get to Ben and get us out. Eventually, I hope, Will or my aunts will show up with a church bell, and when they do, Ben and I are going to be waiting right on the very edge of the cliff to hop onto Safford's hot air balloon. I don't know how I will accomplish this. I am just determined that I will.

I am Selkie Stewart of Boston.

 I keep shouting Mother as I march firmly down the hallway, keeping my anger wrapped tightly around me. The walls around me flicker, passages appearing and disappearing, and I realize that I am managing to break the enchantment that keeps the routes confused. Not entirely, but enough that I can mostly feel my way. I take only a few wrong turns before finding Ben.

I know that my mother must know by now that I've been able to break through some of her enchantments, and I know that I don't have much time, and I still don't have a plan. Maybe I can get Ben in good enough shape to put up an enchantment that will obscure us. It is the only idea I have. I wish I knew how to put up enchantments, rather than just dissolve them.

Ben's cell is freezing, and I am relieved. My little trick worked. The moat of water is frozen mid-tempest, the ice uneven, but I slip and slide my way across it, and it feels extremely solid. Ben is still curled in a tight ball, fixed into the film of ice that had once been the puddle he had been laying in. He is covered in a layer of snow that isn't melting, which is extremely alarming.

'Ben,'I say, shaking him a bit. My teeth are already chattering in the frigid temperatures. 'Ben.'I try to infuse it with so much love that my voice actually trembles, but I wonder if the love is being drowned out by my terror. I force my hand into his. His hand is freezing, but mine may be even more freezing. Exactly how cold did she make it in there?

He opens his eyes blearily. They are a dull, mossy green. 'Selkie,'he says thickly. 'You stopped the rain. I love you.'

It is a testament to how panicked I feel that I don't even pause to register that. 'You're just saying that,'I tell him. 'We have to go now.'

'What? Go where?'

It's a good question, and I can't really answer it. 'Anywhere that's not here.'

'For an ogre, you're very bad at plans, you know that?'

'The moat is frozen. We can walk across it, and maybe you can come up with some way to hide us''

Ben starts laughing, but it is horrible laughter, something closer to a coughing fit, really. 'Oh, Selkie,'he says around it. 'I'm not sure I can even walk right now, never mind get an enchantment under way. If you think you've got an escape window, you should take it.'

I stare at him. 'Not without you.'

'I'll be fine''

'The entire point of coming here was to get you, Ben. I'm not leaving here without you.'

'Selkie''he begins.

'No, Ben. We promised. Say my name. Keep saying it. You'll get better.'

'That is not going to work this time''

'Shut up,'I snap. I am so furious at him that I am crying. 'I can't save you unless you help me. I am unusually powerful at naming, Will told me, so say it.'

Ben is silent for a second. 'Selkie Stewart,'he says dully. 'Selkie Stewart.'

Even I can tell that it is having almost no effect. 'Benedict,'I say, wondering if the fullness of his name will help. 'Benedict, Benedict, Benedict.'I don't think, just lean forward to drop a desperate kiss in his hair to try to underline the love in my voice. 'Benedict Le Fay.'

'Stop it,'he says thickly. 'You're all over the place right now. It's hurting.'

And now I've made things worse. 'Sorry,'I choke out, straightening. I seize in desperation upon the only idea I can come up with. 'What if I give you my whole name?'

'Don't you dare,'he says.

'Will it dissolve me?'

He hesitates. 'No, but''

'Then you're going to use it, do you understand me?'I command him fiercely.

'You shouldn't give your whole name, not to anyone, there's too much power''

'I trust you,'I tell him firmly.

He looks at me for a second. 'You really shouldn't,'he says finally. 'You should never trust a faerie.'

'I trust you,'I insist. 'Anyway, I know your name. You should know mine; then we'll be even.'

'How many middle names do you have?'

'Two,'I answer.

He nods briefly. 'Fine. Give me one of them. You don't know my whole name,'he cuts off my argument before I can begin. 'And no offense, Selkie, but I'm not about to give it to you. So give me one of your middle names.'

'Will it be enough?'

'Yes.'

I pause. I do trust Ben, I do, but I have been infected by the thinking of faeries now. To give away my name seems like an unimaginably huge thing. I am literally handing him a large chunk of my life, trusting him to keep it safe. It is, somehow, more intimate and life changing and terrifying than anything I could possibly do with a normal human boy. I know it was my own suggestion, but I still take a moment before I lean over slowly, taking a deep breath, and press my lips to his ear and whisper it to him, and he whispers it back.

It is the first time that I have ever felt something when Ben's said my name. It feels a little like I just had a sneezing fit, emerging from it a tiny bit off-balance, in need of a good, deep breath. Ben sighs. And then, after a heartbeat, he sits up. He looks so alarmingly like his old self that I almost wonder if he'd been faking the whole thing.

'Excellent,'he says, clearly delighted. 'You are unusually good at naming. Now.'He climbs to his feet and helps me up. 'I'm assuming we have to get out of here before anyone discovers us, right?'

I blink at him in astonishment.

'Okay,'he decides when I stay silent. 'I'll figure it out. We can use that door over there.'He skids his way across the moat, heading toward what looks like solid wall.

I collect myself, following him across the ice. 'Ben, there's no door over there.'

'Yes, there is. I noticed it when they first stuck me in here.'He has his hands out, blindly feeling along the wall. 'Can't keep a traveler away from a door. It was somewhere over here. They enchanted it away, it's''He pitches suddenly through the wall, disappearing.

Wide-eyed, I run over to that spot, but I can't figure out how he got through. I try to do what he had been doing, feeling my way along the wall, shouting for him in the hope that he will hear me. There's a door there'there has to be'if I could just figure out the key to getting through it'

'What have you done with him?'my mother demands, skidding into the room with a small coterie of unidentifiable, copper-armored animals accompanying her.

I whirl to face her and back my way against the wall.

'Did he get through the door?'she continues, stalking slowly toward me, the animals behind her snuffling and

growling, their armor clanging dully as they shift into what is undoubtedly attack position.

I force a smile, trying to look more confident than I feel. 'Can't keep a traveler away from a door.'

Maybe I shouldn't have said that. My mother seems to expand with rage, but at least she is focused on me and not finding Ben. I don't think Ben could handle another naming right now.

I brace myself for whatever is about to happen, but what happens is that from somewhere in the distance comes the gentle and unmistakable toll of a church bell. My mother's eyes widen in reaction, but I am unprepared for the fact that I feel it shudder through me too. I realize my mistake at that moment: part of me is Seelie. The church bells will affect me too. But I barely have time to digest this before the wall behind me disintegrates and I tumble through, falling in an inelegant heap onto a hard marble floor.

I make an involuntary oof noise, the wind knocked out of me. And I am still trying to recover from that when a voice gasps at me, 'Selkie! I found you!'

I look up, wondering if I am ever going to reach the limits of my amazement, and ask curiously, as if it can't possibly be true, 'Kelsey?'

Will said the silver bough would lead me straight to you, but I didn't really believe him; he says a lot of stuff, and your aunts argue with basically everything he says, anyway.'

I can't make this sentence make sense because there's too much else that needs to make sense first. 'What are you doing here?'

'Saving you, of course,'she says.

'We'What''I feel like someone's hit me over the head and the world hasn't stopped vibrating yet. 'But where are my aunts? Where's Will?'

'Will had to stay with the hot air balloon. And your aunts were busy arguing over which one of them would come save you, so I just took the silver bough and kind of'ran.'She holds something up, and I notice it for the first time'what looks like a healthy branch of a beech tree, only forged entirely out of silver.

I blink at it. 'That's the silver bough I sent you?'

'Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? It was tiny when Fidelia brought us the package, but it's been growing ever since''

'Who's Fidelia?'

'Oh, the bat.'

'The bat has a name?'

'They all have names. Wait until I tell you everything that's happened since you left. It turns out the Boston Sewing Circle's not entirely evil; they're just mildly unpleasant'maybe slightly more than mildly. But it's mostly because Will broke the Threader's heart several centuries or minutes ago, depending on who's telling the story. And let me tell you, finding that out did not make your Aunt True happy. Apparently Will has quite the reputation. Anyway, once the Threader and your aunt bonded over hating Will, she was actually pretty helpful. The Threader was the only one who could figure out how to get through the Seelie enchantments to you. Apparently, the Threaders used to be in pretty constant contact with the Seelie Court, so the Threader managed to figure out how to slip through. But we don't have time for all this right now; we've got to go. Safford's waiting. And your aunts and Will are supposed to be holding the hot air balloon in place until we can get back. Once we're away from here, I'll fill you in on everything.'