The Girl Who Never Was (8 page)

'Plus, it's an ogre house,'says Will. 'Benedict feels ogre magic like a scratchy wool sweater. The layers are protection.'Will looks at me confidentially. 'Water is Benedict's special affliction, especially if it's flowing. He doesn't work right if he's wet.'

This would all be very fascinating to me, except''Ogre house?'I echo and look at my aunts.

'How is it they have told you absolutely nothing?'Will demands in disbelief.

'It wasn't time,'Aunt True says.

'It was time. She told Benedict her birth date.'

'I agree with them,'Ben interjects. 'It wasn't time. We weren't ready.'

'It was time, Benedict.'Will turns his frown from him to me. 'This is not a good idea,'he announces.

'What isn't?'Aunt True asks.

'Benedict has a soft spot for her,'Will flings out, sounding disgusted. 'The two of you having a soft spot for her''Will waggles his fingers at my aunts''that we expected. But Benedict wasn't supposed to get emotionally attached.'He drawls it mockingly.

I look at Ben, complete with a ridiculous little flutter in my heart.

Ben is scowling at Will. 'I disagree with you about the issue of timing. We needed more time than this. You know we did.'

'You needed more time; you weren't ready because of how you feel about her. But it was never for us to dictate the timing of things. It was for her.'He indicates me. 'She told you the date of her birth, Benedict. That was the omen.'

'I've had enough,'I interrupt abruptly, and everyone looks at me in surprise, as if they had forgotten that I was there and that I'm angry. 'I want someone to explain to me what is

going on here, and I want that explanation now. You tell me the story, or I let my mother find me and I hear it from her. Your choice.'

There is a moment of silence.

'We might as well get settled,'says Will wearily, taking another cookie. 'We'll be here for a while. Now, my dear.'He looks at me kindly. 'What do you know about your birth?'

One day my father walked into his Back Bay apartment to find a blond woman asleep on his couch,'I say to Will. 'Yes.'Will looks delighted by this story. 'True enough.'

He looks at my aunts. 'What a lovely, clever way to put it.''Who is she?''Who?''The blond woman asleep on the couch.''Your mother.''I know that,'I say impatiently. 'But who is my mother?'Will looks about to answer but Aunt True interjects, 'Let

us tell her.'She looks at me and takes a deep breath. 'Your

mother is a bean sh'th of the Seelie Court.''I don't know what that means,'I say. 'She's a faerie,'says Aunt Virtue. 'Not just a faerie,'says Will, 'one of the most powerful

ones. The Seelie Court rules the Otherworld.''My mother is a faerie?''Yes,'says Aunt True. 'A faerie queen,'corrects Will.

I stare at him for a moment. Then I say skeptically, 'You're telling me I'm a faerie princess?'

Ben chuckles'such a normal sound out of him that I am momentarily startled. I look at Ben, and he grins at me.

'Yes,'he says, 'he's telling you you're a faerie princess.'

'Faye Blaxton is a faerie queen?'I clarify.

'That's not her name,'says Will.

'What's her name?'I ask.

'Oh, no one knows.'Will shakes his head. 'No one will ever know. That is one of the most precious secrets, the names of the faeries in the Seelie Court. Names are powerful things.'

'I know your names,'I point out. I remember Ben, complaining about the way I was using his name.

'You know what I have told you to be my name, which is not quite the same thing,'says Will. 'As for Benedict, he has the misfortune not to be faerie royalty. Names of mere plebeian faeries are required to be revealed under faerie law. Must keep the population in line, you know.'

'How does that keep the population in line?'

'Say a faerie's name the right way, you can dissolve his or her enchantments, weaken him or her.'

I look at Ben. 'That's what happened when I said your name.'

Ben nods.

'What was this enchantment?'I demand.

'To keep you safe,'says Aunt True.

'Safe from what? Why do I need to be kept alive? I don't get it. Why am I in danger of dying?'

'Not dying,'Aunt True says somberly, anxiously. 'Being killed.'

'Being killed by who?'

Aunt True and Aunt Virtue wring their hands together fretfully.

Will explains, 'The members of the Seelie Court do not have children. There was a prophecy, so many years ago that nobody can even estimate the age of this prophecy any longer''

'Or just the other day,'interjects Ben.

'Don't be confusing,'complains Will.

Ben shrugs.

'A prophecy,'Will continues firmly, 'that there would be four fays born of the seasons and, according to the Seelie Court, that these four fays would be the reason that the Unseelie Court would rise and take power in the Otherworld.'

'What's the Unseelie Court?'I ask.

'They're our greater of two evils,'answers Ben grimly.

'Exactly. The Seelie Court may have its issues, but the Unseelie Court, well, no one wants them in power. Anyway, the four fays born of the seasons would be Seelies themselves. No other fays would have nearly enough power. So there was a prohibition on the Seelies creating children.'

'But''I begin.

'But here you are,'Will agrees. 'Your mother fell from the Otherworld. She was pushed. To this day, no one has ever caught the perpetrator, and the assumption is that it was someone from the Unseelie Court. She fell and your

father found her, and he nursed her back to health'it is a long distance to fall. Your mother was in his debt, a dangerous place for a Seelie to be. She was desperate to be out of it. She asked him to name his payment.'Will pauses. 'And he named a child.'

I am silent for a second. 'Why would he do that?'

Will looks at my aunts, and I follow his lead.

Aunt True and Aunt Virtue exchange a look, and then Aunt Virtue starts speaking. 'We are ogres, child. The last of the ogres'your father, True, me. We came here with Will years ago, here to this place. Safety from the Seelie Court, for all the creatures of the Otherworld who weren't faeries'it was Will's idea. The Seelie Court was always biased a bit in favor of their own kind.'

'Yes, their cruelty toward faeries is slightly milder,'agrees Will drily.

'So Will founded Parsymeon, an Otherworld place locked into the Thisworld for all the non-faeries to stand together, to weave our own protective enchantments, and together, all of us, we could keep faeries out.'

'Parsymeon?'I say.

'Boston,'says Ben. 'Will insists on calling it Parsymeon, but it's Boston, centuries ago, before the Boston you knew. This is Will Blaxton, who founded Boston by planting apple trees on Beacon Hill, apple trees born of the apples of the Isle of Apples.'

I stare at Will. 'Boston was founded by a wizard?'

'Yes, as a home for supernatural creatures.'Will sounds annoyed that I sound so dubious. 'A new world'why should it only house Puritans? I named the place Parsymeon. But then the Puritans were dying in their stupid little settlement, and I felt bad, and I invited them here, and they renamed it Boston and they ruined the whole place.'

'Blaxton,'I realize. I look at Ben. 'You called him Will Blaxton.'

'It's where your mother's last name came from, yes,'he confirms. 'Surely you've realized by now where the Faye comes from. It isn't her name. It was simply the best we could do with the records.'

'Faye like your last name?'I say to Ben.

'Yes,'Will answers on Ben's behalf. 'But it really just means faerie. Benedict's family happens to be a very old one.'

'But not a royal one.'Ben smiles tightly. 'We have a bad habit of falling out of favor, we Le Fays.'

'Anyway, Parsymeon is still supernatural today,'continues Will, who is beaming like a proud father about this. 'It has the highest concentration of supernatural beings anywhere in the Thisworld.'

'But only two faeries,'murmurs Ben.

'Well, wasn't that the point?'says Will. 'Keep the Seelies out, keep all faeries out?'

'How did you get in?'I ask Ben.

'Special permission from the Witch and Ward Society,'he replies. 'I had to apply and everything. But you were to be

kept safe, and they needed a faerie to do that, much as they hated to admit it.'

I look at my aunts, connecting the dots. 'Because you don't like faeries,'I conclude.

'Faeries are flighty and capricious,'says Aunt Virtue staunchly, 'and you are not one. Not entirely. There is ogre in you.'

'Ogre,'I echo. 'So I'm'half and half.'

'Exactly,'agrees Aunt Virtue.

Aunt True says, 'We'd wanted a baby so very desperately for so very long. Centuries.'

'Or minutes,'murmurs Ben.

My aunt ignores him. 'But how were we to get one without faerie magic? So your father asked your mother for a baby.'

'I warned him not to,'Will says. 'I knew the prophecy. I knew the danger you would be in from the very beginning. And I knew there would be a price'the Seelies always extract a price. But Etherington would not be dissuaded.'

'And your mother brought us a baby.'Aunt Virtue smiles at me, her expression so soft and full of affection. 'You. A beautiful little changeling, half-faerie, half-ogre.'

'Which made you''Aunt True's voice is hard''only half ours.'

'My mother named me,'I realize.

'Of course she did,'Will says. 'Power over you.'

'Is it a problem that everyone knows my name?'

'No one knows your whole name,'Aunt True tells me.

'Your middle names are secret,'Aunt Virtue adds.

'You should keep them that way,'says Aunt True.

'Why?'

'In order to completely dissolve a faerie's powers,'explains Will, 'you would need to know all of the faerie's middle names. Faeries frequently have three or four middle names, to make them harder to dilute. Of course, give a faerie too many names, and they can't work under the weight of their burden, and you have the same effect as their name being known.'

'I have a cousin with 302 middle names,'muses Ben. 'She's quite useless.'

'So, know a faerie's whole name, dissolve all his powers. Know just a couple of his names''I look at Ben.

'It weakens us. But it doesn't destroy us completely.'

'That's why you couldn't hold the enchantment around me together anymore.'

'Right. It was broken. And why I had such a difficult time jumping. I was wet and diluted.'

'But,'interjects Will softly, and he is staring at me, delight in his face, 'not dissolved.'He turns his look to Ben now. 'Oh, it's very pretty work, Benedict. I would never have known it was there if we hadn't been discussing your enchantments.'

'What?'I ask. I look from Ben to Will to my aunts in confusion.

Will is still smiling at Ben, looking a cross between proud and amused. 'How much energy is that taking you, to keep

that up? No wonder you're letting the Seelies get closer to you

than usual and fretting about the moisture in the air.'Ben looks embarrassed. 'It's not a big deal,'he grumbles. 'What? 'I demand. 'Benedict's still got you enchanted. It's a minor enchant

ment, but it's very well done, virtually undetectable'''The protective charm,'I realize. 'Yes,'says Will, eyes narrowed speculatively at Ben. 'And

what a very pretty thing it is too.'There is a moment of uncomfortable silence. I venture finally, 'If faeries aren't allowed into Boston, how

did my mother manage to get here?'

'Ah,'says Will. 'That is a question we have never been able to answer. She was pushed through to Thisworld, but we don't really know how.'

'And Ben got here because of the Witch and Ward Society. What's that?'

Will rolls his eyes. 'Let's not talk about them. That's the problem with Boston these days'so much bureaucracy, so many societies and sewing circles, it's ridiculous.'

'Will hates the Witch and Ward Society,'says Ben, 'but

I've always found them quite reasonable to deal with.''Well, they didn't steal your book, did they?'grumbles Will. 'I'd rather deal with them than the Sewing Circle,'

remarks Ben. Will makes a noise of abject disgust. 'Who's that?'I ask.

'The Sewing Circle is the link between Boston and the Otherworld. The Witch and Ward, if they could, would close all borders entirely. The Sewing Circle insists on keeping Park Street open.'

'The Witch and Ward has never understood that Boston's power is in balance,'says Will. 'Half-Thisworld, half- Otherworld. It must stay locked into overlapping to keep its power. Unlock the worlds, and the supernatural powers would cease to be augmented by the presence of the humans and the Seelies would be able to get in. Safety from exposure'I've never understood what's so tricky about that for them.'

'Safety for everyone except faeries,'remarks Ben. 'Faeries you locked into the Otherworld, good riddance to them.'

'Faeries caused the disturbance in the Otherworld in the first place,'Will tells him.

'A few faeries. Was it our fault the Seelie Court happened to be composed of faeries?'

'How did you get involved?'I ask Ben.

'He found you,'Aunt True answers, looking displeased. 'Even here.'

'Well, it's my job: locate faeries trapped in the Thisworld. It happens, you know. And I'm unusually good at Thisworld magic, so it falls to me to do it. So I snuck into Boston''

'He jumped,'says Aunt True, glaring. 'Which strictly speaking isn't allowed. This is why the goblins tried to get rid of all the travelers.'

Ben flickers a glare of displeasure at her but otherwise ignores her. 'I jumped in, and there you were. And I knew what you were and I knew about the prophecy, so I knew you had to be protected.

'Ogre magic can only do so much to hide a faerie. Faerie blood is powerful. It calls to other faeries. As I explained to your aunts, if they wanted to hide you, they needed a faerie to cast the enchantment over you.'

'You,'I conclude.

'Yes.'

'We didn't want to have to trust a faerie,'says Aunt True.

'Never trust a faerie,'adds Aunt Virtue.

'But we didn't have a choice, and of course, Will said Benedict was on our side.'