The Girl Who Never Was (9 page)

'All faeries outside of the Seelie Court are on your side,'says Ben. 'Things are bad in the Otherworld. Faeries disappear all the time, named for no reason. Everyone exists in a state of terror, waiting''Ben actually shudders. 'All of you panicked when you shut us out of here.'

'No, it was the only way for us to be sure to keep the Seelies out,'retorts Aunt True. 'Make sure there was no faerie blood allowed here at all.'

'Well, there is faerie blood allowed here,'replies Ben and gestures at me. 'There she is.'

'She is an ogre,'Aunt Virtue proclaims grandly.

'Only half. She is only half-ogre. You cannot claim all of her.'

'Maybe no one should claim me at all,'I interrupt. 'Maybe I'm just me. Why has no one considered that ever, in my entire life? I'm more than just a pawn in some stupid prophecy. So let me get this straight: to keep me safe, all of you decided an enchantment should be placed over me?'

'Yes,'Aunt True says.

'And I wouldn't know who I was'what I was?'

'You couldn't,'Aunt Virtue says desperately. 'You couldn't know. We had to hide you from everything, even yourself, in order to hide you from them.'

'Did it never occur to you that maybe I didn't want to be enchanted?'

'It was for your own good,'Aunt True says.

'You don't understand,'says Aunt Virtue. 'Benedict was supposed to kill you. Immediately.'

'What?'I exclaim.

'Long-standing order,'replies Ben, not looking at me. 'Kill any changelings I might find born of the Seelie Court.'

'But you didn't.'

Ben gives me a look that can only be described as disbelieving. 'I don't kill babies, Selkie. That's a terrible thing to do. To take a baby's laugh out of the world is one of the most dangerous types of black magic that can be performed.'

'It's true,'says Will, 'but what's mostly true is that the Seelie Court severely overestimated Benedict's loyalty.'Will looks delighted by this.

Even Ben looks amused. 'This is a common mistake when

it comes to me,'he admits. 'You were prophesied to save the Otherworld. I wasn't about to kill you.'

'And we were desperate to keep you safe,'says Aunt True, begging me to understand.

'They never wanted you to break the enchantment,'says Will.

'That's why all of you tried to get me to stop asking questions,'I conclude. 'You never wanted me to find out who my mother is.'

'It didn't matter. Eventually you told Benedict your birth date. That was the first link in the chain. There was nothing anyone could do after that. Prophecies will not be denied.'

'As if prophecies function so cleanly,'retorts Ben bitterly. 'You know how prophecies work, overlapping and contradictory. There was nothing to say which prophecy was going to be the correct one.'

'You used to be quite keen on it being this prophecy,'says Will scathingly. 'Saving the Otherworld, that's what you were all about. Now, the fay of the autumnal equinox turns out to be her, and you've changed your mind.'

Ben crinkles his nose, looking displeased in the extreme.

I look at him, because there it is again, the implication that I am special to him, and I can't help it: I want to be special to him, even after everything.

There is a long silence.

I look at my aunts. 'What do you think, about this

prophecy that I'm going to bring about the reign of this evil Unseelie Court, then''

'That's just it,'Will cuts me off. 'You're not. I've studied the prophecies. You're going to bring about the downfall of both courts, Seelie and Unseelie. Peace will finally reign over the Otherworld.'

'So,'I summarize, 'I'm a faerie princess who's apparently going to orchestrate a coup d''tat.'

'Yes,'says Will brightly. 'Make sense?'

'No,'I say. 'Not really. Not at all. So the Seelies want to kill me?'

'The Seelies. The Unseelies,'Will responds cheerfully. 'Lots of people want to kill you.'

'You see?'says Aunt True to me desperately. 'You see why we had to do what we did? We had to keep you safe.'

I am silent for a long time, considering everything. This is all insane. I cannot believe I'm sitting in my kitchen, next to the boy I'm in love with (faerie), my aunts (ogres), and the owner of a museum in Salem (wizard). This has to be a dream, right? It must be a dream. I just can't understand how I ended up here, all because I wanted to know who my mother is.

'And what about my mother?'I ask.

Everyone exchanges a look.

It's Will who answers.

'She wants to kill you too.'

 I am silent, stunned in the wake of this, the biggest revelation of them all. My mother wants to kill me'my mother, who I have longed for my entire life. It is no longer just that she abandoned me, that I have been suffering from neglect. Neglect would be good, benign'not, you know, murderous. It is no longer just the confirmation of my great fear that my mother might not love me. My mother doesn't want me to be alive.

How can this be true? I look at my aunts, mournful and silent, and I wonder. Would they lie to me about this? About this? Just to keep me with them?

Will is talking, something about what we should do now, but I can't even be bothered to translate the words. How can I think about moving on from this?

The house is suddenly suffocating.

'I need to go for a walk,'I hear myself say.

'Outside?'asks Aunt Virtue fretfully.

'It's perfectly safe,'says Will.

'She isn't hidden anymore,'Aunt True points out. 'The faeries can find her.'

'But we're in Parsymeon,'says Will, 'the safest place she can be. Faeries can't get into Boston, remember? Well, nontraveler faeries, and so far as we know, there's only one of those, and he's right here already. And Seelies especially can't get in.'

'I'm going outside,'I reiterate, because I have to get out of here. I need to breathe. 'I need some air.'

I walk out into the foyer. The grandfather clock on the landing chimes six, and I pull open the front door and stand on the stoop. It is very late by now, and Beacon Street is as silent as it ever gets. Across the street looms the Common, normally my refuge when I need to think. But normally, I meet Ben there. Normally, it's being with Ben that I find so soothing. Normally, Ben seems to exist outside of all of the chaos of home and school. And now he doesn't. Now he seems to be the source of all of it. I lose all interest in taking a walk, in going to the Common, in moving. I sit heavily on the stoop. I want to talk to someone about this, but I have no one to talk to. I want to call Kelsey, but I'm not even sure if she still exists. I lean my forehead down to my knees and breathe.

I don't know how long I sit there before the door opens and closes, bringing with it briefly the sound of voices from inside the house. Ben sits down next to me. I don't look, but I know it is him.

'What if I didn't want you out here with me?'I ask, voice muffled by my knees.

'I wouldn't have been able to come out here,'he replies.

Smug, I think, but don't correct him, because it's true. I don't really want to be alone; alone is how I feel'like I'm the only half-ogre, half-faerie princess prophesied to bring about a coup d''tat in the whole wide world. Well, I probably am.

'They're arguing about the Sewing Circle. I had enough of that,'he continues.

I say nothing. I have nothing to say about sewing circles. I have nothing to say about any of this. My mind is so full, it's a blank.

There is a moment of silence.

'Are you very upset with me?'Ben asks finally, sounding hesitant.

'I have no idea,'I respond truthfully and then look at him for the first time. He looks like Ben, swaddled in layers, dark curls all unruly on his head. His unusual eyes are silver at the moment. Faerie eyes, I think. Are they faerie eyes? 'How old are you?'I can't help asking.

He shakes his head. 'We don't work that way. To some I'm ancient, to others very young. The same is true for you.'

I can't make this make sense for me. 'How old are you to me?'

'To you? To you I'm me.'

It sounds like a riddle. 'And what is that?'

He looks as if he's searching for the right word. 'Perfect, wouldn't you say?'he decides finally, pinning me with a platinum stare.

'My entire life was a fiction you created for me,'I point out helplessly. 'And then you kept me there.'

'You were protected,'says Ben. 'It wasn't a fiction; you were just protected. Did it feel like fiction? Did it not feel real?'

I can't answer that question. He must know how real it felt. If it hadn't felt real, I wouldn't feel like my heart was breaking at the moment, because I would have been in love with Ben the same way you might be in love with a famous actor. I wouldn't have been as desperately in love as I was.

'I didn't have a choice,'Ben says when I stay silent.

'If what everyone is saying is true, you did have a choice,'I point out.

'Do you think we're lying?'

'I don't know.'I pause. 'I think you're at least an expert in enchantment. I think, if you wanted to, you could get me to believe anything you like'even that I'm a faerie princess.'

'I can't force you to believe anything that you don't want to believe, ironically because I'm an expert in enchantment.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, the protective enchantment'no one can force you to do anything.'

'So you can't lie to me?'

'I can't lie to you, no. Well, not if you don't want me to.'

'Do you think I do stupid things sometimes?'

'Yes,'he says fervently.

I am uncertain if he would have lied to me there or not. But I guess it's the best I can do to test it.

I look at him for a long time. He studies me in return. I think of how, only hours earlier, he was just a boy on the

Common to me. Hours? Or was it lifetimes? Maybe this is what Ben means about faerie age being uncertain. Maybe time passes like this for faeries.

Thinking about everything we've been through this day (year? century?) reminds me. 'You died,'I say. 'When we got to the meadow.'

'Did you let go of my hand?'asks Ben, sounding unconcerned.

'I fell,'I defend myself.

'I wasn't dead,'he says. 'I was resting. Jumps drain energy, and I was wet and diluted. I didn't have a lot to spare. It's how we ended up there instead of Boston in the first place, easier for me to lock on to my home world. Boston is tricky under the best of circumstances, all those barriers against faeries. I would have been fine; the recovery was just quicker if I could steal some energy from you.'

'Some what?'

'Well, you, you're drenched in ability, but you don't know how to use it. In the meantime, I was wet and named, so I needed to borrow a bit of yours to get us enough charge to get out of Park Street.'

'So you stole power from me by holding my hand?'

Ben crinkles his nose. ''Power'makes it sound so''Stealing'makes it sound so''

'I didn't give you permission for that.'

'You didn't tell me not to though. That's the key to my enchantment over you right now. No one needs permission. They just need to avoid outright refusal.'

I frown. 'Tricky,'I accuse.

'Well.'He flashes a bit of a smile. 'Yes. I'm a faerie. And a good one.'

'My aunts don't like you.'

'No one really likes faeries except for faeries. I don't blame them entirely; faeries made it bad for ogres before there was Parsymeon. Your aunts want you to be all ogre. They wish your faerie blood would go away.'

'And what do you wish?'I can't help but ask.

He looks at me, his gaze unerring, so intent that I think, wildly, for a moment, that he's about to kiss me.

'I don't even know who you are,'I blurt out before Ben can even answer the question.

Ben looks at me for another long moment. 'I am Benedict Le Fay,'he tells me. 'I am the best traveler in the Otherworld. And I am and always have been entirely at your service.'

'Because I'm the'whatever you say, the fay of the autumnal equinox.'

'Because you turned out to be you.'

I swallow thickly. Half of me is so thrilled, I want to stand up and dance. The other half of me is terrified. The best traveler in the Otherworld is entirely at my service. I don't even know what that means. I eventually look away, clearing my throat, trying to find something less intense to talk about.

'People keep saying your name. Does it keep hurting you? Will calls you Benedict all the time, not even Ben.'

'Oh, you have to have intent,'says Ben. 'Just saying a name

isn't enough; you have to say the name with the proper'or improper, I suppose'intent.'

'But I didn't even know there was an enchantment when I said your name,'I point out, confused. 'I had no intent to dissolve the enchantment.'

'You were angry with me,'he explains, his eyes still on me, reflecting starlight. 'You intended to hurt me. Malicious intent, that's all it takes.'

There is a moment of silence between us. 'What happened to your mother?'I ask suddenly. I'm not sure why.

Ben looks away from me. 'I don't know,'he says, and I believe him.

'Your father mentioned her.'I don't want to bring up the exact quote, about how wrong Ben was.

'He does that. He brings her up whenever he's trying to get me back into his idea of good behavior. But we don't know what happened to her, either one of us. One day she just'disappeared. That's what my father says, anyway. I don't know.'

I study Ben's profile, which is tipped up in the direction of the moon and the stars. 'Do you believe him?'

'Who else do I have to believe?'he asks with a shrug.

'What will happen to you?'I say after a second. 'If my mother catches us.'

Ben is silent for a very long time. 'I don't know.'

'You have an idea?'

'There's a reason why our names must be known under faerie law. When a member of the Seelie Court uses your

whole name on you'I mean, other faeries can do it, and it

isn't pleasant, but when it's a Seelie''

'What happens?'

There is another long moment of silence. Ben clears his throat. 'Well, I have never seen it done, but probably the mortal term for the outcome is death.'