Girl Who Read the Stars Read online

  “Everyone’s trying to get out of the city before it falls,” Will remarks, walking through the gates on the heels of a commuter. “As if that’s going to do any good.”

  “Wait,” I say, confused. “Aren’t these…humans?” I hope no one is eavesdropping.

  “Well, yes. But an odd, sudden storm just rolled in and church bells are falling out of towers,” Will points out. “It doesn’t matter what you are—you’re getting away from here.”

  “The Red Line trains will be running, right?” Aunt True asks. “The human ones?”

  “They should be. The human trains will run longer than our trains will,” Will responds. “The goblins will fall back, but the trains will run as well as they can for as long as they can.”

  We go down to the Red Line platforms, reaching the platform in the middle, which is so packed you can barely move. Will walks without apology, pushing through the crowd. I try to keep him in my sight and make sure everyone else is still with us too.

  We come out, finally, on the far side, near the fire exit stairway.

  A train sounds its horn, rolling up to the station toward us on my left. At the same time, another train comes roaring in from the tunnel on my right, going in the opposite direction.

  The bells chime then. An awful jingle-jangling sound that makes me feel queasy. My hands clench into fists automatically, and I back away from the fire exit stairway, where the sound seems to be coming from.

  The trains to our left and our right have their doors open.

  “Selkie,” Will says slowly. He stands still, his eyes on the fire exit stairway, watching, waiting, tense. “The goblins live in the subway tunnels. Get into a tunnel, ask for the Erlking, and use my name.”

  “Wait, what?” I say, looking at him, confused. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Get on the train,” he tells me.

  I glance behind me. My aunts have already gotten on the train, although Aunt Virtue is standing with her hand on the door to keep it open. I look back at Will.

  “Selkie,” Kelsey says to me, and I look at her.

  She is staring up at the fire exit stairway. Where a faerie has appeared, glowing palely in the dim T station.

  The faerie is a Seelie. For a moment, looking up, I think it might be my mother. It isn’t, but it could be; that’s how strongly the Seelies resemble each other. Although I didn’t think that when I was in Tir na nOg. Did they all look alike then? Or is it just that they all look alike now?

  In my moment of confusion, all hell breaks loose. It feels like an earthquake shakes the station, the cement trembling under our feet, fine vibrations that increase to tremors. The regular commuters all look around in confusion that quickly tips over into fear then rises to a crescendo of panic.

  And then the floor literally begins rolling underneath us.

  “Go!” Will shouts, and I dart toward the waiting T, except that the pavement cracks right in front of me, rising in an impossibly high jagged cliff.

  I try to scramble up over it, and I’m almost to the top when I hear someone say my name. It must be the Seelie, saying it with intent, because I cry out with the pain of it, and someone yanks hard on the hood of my sweatshirt, pulling me back through the crowd of people, and I scream in panic and wheel around to claw at whoever’s holding me.

  I collide with the being that grabbed me. Who turns out to be Will. He tumbles backward and into the open T door across the platform from where my aunts are. He manages to get hold of me and pull me in after him, and then the doors slide closed. The lights of the T flicker off and then back on.

  And then Kelsey says, “Where the hell are we?”

  CHAPTER 4

  The train looks like the living room of some kind of fancy hunting lodge, with comfy chairs positioned in cozy little reading nooks around an enormous central fireplace. I am with Will and Kelsey and Safford. My aunts, who were the first people on the other T, the T we were all supposed to get on, were stuck there when the platform cracked between us.

  “My aunts,” I say, and reach for the closed doors, although I don’t know what I’m going to do. How do you open subway car doors once they’ve closed?

  And then the subway swings into motion, taking us away from the station. Away from the Seelie and the weird earthquake, but away from my aunts too.

  I whirl back to Will. “No. Will. Take me back. I have to go back. I have to get them.”

  Will is massaging his face where I collided with him. “We can’t go back.”

  “We have to go back, Will!” I scream at him. “We can’t just leave them! There was a Seelie!”

  “They’re on their own subway train. They’ll be on their way now. And anyway, you’re what the Seelies want, and you’re here. That makes your aunts safer than they would be with you.”

  “Will—” I start, and then truly register the surroundings of the train around us. “Wait a second. Where are we? What happened? We’re not even in Boston anymore.”

  “We are. We’re just on an Otherworld train.”

  “The Otherworld trains go to the Seelie Court! They’re evil!”

  Will shakes his head. “Only the Green Line is evil. The Red Line should take us to the Erlking.”

  “It can’t,” I tell him. “It can’t take us anywhere without my aunts and my father. We have to go back. This train has to stop, right now.”

  And then it does.

  It screeches to a violent halt. The chairs skid forward, crashing against the wall. We all lose our balance, tumbling to the floor. The awful squealing of the wheels against the track ends, and the silence that descends is deafening.

  After a moment, I say hesitantly, “Did I do that with the power of my mind?”

  “No,” Will bites out as he gets back to his feet. “You didn’t. I told you the Seelies were after you, didn’t I? We have to get off this train.” Will is studying the doors.

  “In the middle of a tunnel?” Kelsey asks.

  “And go back for my aunts?” I say.

  “No,” Will snaps. “We can’t go back for your aunts. Don’t you get it? We’re being hunted. The Seelies stopped this train. So we have to get out into the tunnels.”

  “And what are we going to do once we’re there?” I demand hotly. “We have to go somewhere, we might as well go—”

  “We’ll go to the goblins.” Will cuts me off brusquely and tries ineffectively to pry the doors open. “This is all so much easier to do when you’ve got a traveler with you,” he comments, and then, “Don’t tell Benedict I said that.”

  “Aren’t you a wizard?” I ask. “Just magic it open.”

  “Sorry, I was busy learning important spells like disguising silver boughs to smuggle into prison for you and casting a protective enchantment over an entire city. I didn’t bother to memorize the spell for opening subway train doors.”

  “You don’t know the spell to open things?” I say in disbelief.

  And then the doors slide open.

  I look at Will, who looks back at me, and then we both turn our heads.

  Safford is replacing the emergency door release handle. “What?” he says at our looks. “Didn’t you want to open the door?”

  “Magic trains have emergency door release handles,” says Kelsey.

  “Safety first,” says Will, and then, “Thanks, Safford.” He leaps out the open doorway into the dark tunnel beyond then turns back to the rest of us. “Come on.”

  There is a moment when I stand at the edge, hesitating. I look at Kelsey and Safford, who are depending on me to keep them safe. I think of my aunts and my father. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be keeping all of these people safe. And I haven’t even started to think about Ben, who is somewhere dangerous, undoubtedly getting himself into yet another situation where he will need my rescue.

  I don’t know what to do, but I be
lieve that we are sitting ducks on this train. Better to keep moving.

  I jump down after him.

  Kelsey and Safford follow.

  Will starts walking, and we trail behind him, for lack of anything better to do, I guess.

  “Tell me how being in the subway tunnel is going to help us get to the goblins.”

  “Well, the goblins live in the subway tunnels. We were going to get there the civilized way, on the train, but this will work just as well.”

  “The goblins,” Kelsey repeats in a processing tone of voice, as if she is taking careful notes for when she writes up her memoir of this experience, “live in the subway tunnels.”

  “Yes,” Will answers crisply, as if Kelsey should have figured out much earlier in her life that goblins lived in the Boston subway. “Did you never wonder why your subway system is so excruciatingly incapable of functioning correctly?”

  “I wondered that all the time,” retorts Kelsey. “I never thought it was because of goblins.”

  “They sabotage the tracks,” Will explains.

  “Do they hate us?” I ask.

  “No, they’re just mischievous and frequently bored,” Will replies.

  “Can’t they get hobbies?” grumbles Kelsey, and I don’t blame her, because the malfunctioning subway is annoying.

  “Brody didn’t live in the subway tunnels,” I say.

  “How do you know where Brody lives?” counters Will, and he has a point.

  “So the goblins will help us get to Ben,” I begin.

  “And we can use them to check up on your aunts and your father. The goblins have the run of Boston,” Will says.

  “The goblins,” says Kelsey, in that same thoughtful tone of voice, “have the run of Boston.”

  Will rolls his eyes as if Kelsey has just revealed she doesn’t know the alphabet.

  The tunnel is very quiet. I expect there to be the rumble of subway trains from other places, but there is nothing but silence all around us. I listen harder, for the chiming of bells, for Seelies to rush up on us. I imagine, as I listen harder, that what I can hear is scuffling.

  “Are there rats in the tunnels?” I ask suddenly.

  “Of course there are,” Will answers. “What kind of ridiculous question is that?”

  I draw to a stop. “Ben told me there weren’t any rats in the tunnels.”

  “Then he lied,” Will answers, sounding unconcerned. “He’s a faerie, Selkie, it’s what he does. Anyway, what do you have against rats?”

  I start moving again, but going very slowly, disgruntled over the revelation of Ben’s lie. “That’s right, you love rats,” I recall.

  “You love rats?” says Kelsey.

  “I love all creatures,” Will announces primly.

  “All of a sudden you’re Doctor Dolittle?” remarks Kelsey.

  “This is the most inane conversation,” Will complains. And then, suddenly, “Shh.” He stops walking, holding his hand up. He stands there for a second, listening.

  “Do you hear anything?” Kelsey breathes behind me.

  “No,” I whisper back.

  But it is clear that Will hears something. He turns in a circle, looking all around us through the dimly lit gloom of the tunnel.

  And then I hear it too: bells. The chiming jingle bells of the Seelie Court.

  “Run!” Will commands, and I don’t need to be told twice, but I can’t tell where they’re coming from.

  “Which way?” I ask, vaguely panicked, turning around, trying to figure it out. It sounds like they’re coming from all directions, like they are all around me, the chimes bouncing off the walls and echoing through my brain.

  “Away from the train,” Kelsey says, and it makes sense. They would be heading toward the train, right?

  We tear down the tunnel, but I think this is fruitless. Seelies can move fast, faster than we can run. A small trickle of dirt hits me square on the nose. I brush it away, but then another trickle of dirt hits me, and then a pebble.

  “Oh my God,” Kelsey says, at the same moment I’m realizing it. “They’re going to make the tunnel cave in.”

  “Run!” Will urges us again, and we keep running, although I don’t know what the point of it is, and then, suddenly, in the space we just vacated, comes a great crashing sound, and the tunnel vibrates with the reverberation and dust kicks up all around us. Will has drawn to a halt, and I draw up beside him, coughing, and look back where we’ve come from.

  The entire ceiling of the tunnel appears to have caved in. We are facing a huge wall of debris.

  “We barely made that.” I wheeze.

  A voice off to our left says, “You’re much safer on this side. Which was the point. We would never have actually buried you.”

  A man steps forward as he speaks. He is dressed all in black: black pants, black button-down shirt, black shoes. He looks a little bit like a funeral director, to be quite honest. An unexpectedly cute one, with gleaming dark hair and a quick smile that he sends in our direction. I guess he thinks that his comment about not burying us was reassuring. He sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks from his heels to his toes and back again.

  “We need to see the Erlking,” Will tells him.

  The man’s amusement seems to grow. “Yes, he thought you might be paying us a visit.” He takes a few more steps forward, standing nose to nose with Will now. He smiles. It is not a very friendly smile, even if it must be admitted that it’s an attractive one. “He looks forward to hearing your explanation.”

  He makes it sound like, actually, this is not a good thing at all.

  Will smiles back. Also not a very friendly smile. “I look forward to providing it.”

  The man, smile cemented on his face, turns on his heel and walks away, looking over his shoulder at us. “This way,” he says sweetly and winks for good measure.

  “You heard him,” Will says to us and starts following him.

  “Who is he?” I ask, keeping my eyes on him, because he could easily fade into the darkness of the tunnel, dressed all in black as he is.

  “What do you mean, who is he?” Will looks at me in surprise. “He’s a goblin.”

  “He’s a goblin?”

  “What did you think he was?”

  “I thought goblins were…” I trail off.

  “I told you: most of the time they look just like us. All these preconceived notions. Really, humans understand very little about the Otherworld. We’re natural tricksters; we’re sending false information out into your world all the time.”

  “Let me get this straight,” interjects Kelsey. “Goblins are really…hot guys?”

  Will rolls his eyes. “So simplistic.” He pauses. “Some of them are female.”

  The tunnel has opened up abruptly, and we are standing on an overlook that looks out over a vast and glimmering city. It isn’t a modern city—there are no skyscrapers or anything like that—but it’s clearly a sizeable settlement, with sleek and gleaming structures. Even the roads below us seem to catch the light. The ceiling drips with what look like stars but can’t possibly be, because we are still underground. The light is dim and artificial, coming from countless numbers of torches scattered everywhere we can see, hovering over our heads and planted into the wall. And it is loud, loud with the sound of lives being lived. There are people calling to each other and laughing, as well as an insistent tapping noise.

  I hear Kelsey gasp, and she and Safford and I stand there, staring out over this.

  “What…” I begin, but I don’t even know what question I want to ask.

  “Come along,” Will calls impatiently, and I tear my gaze away. There is a set of stairs leading down into the city proper, and Will is already halfway down them.

  I run to catch up with him, because now I am overflowing with questions and I want him to answer them. The first
thing I say isn’t a question at all. “We’re in a subway tunnel, Will.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re in Goblinopolis.” He turns away from me and resumes walking down the staircase.

  “Goblinopolis?” I repeat in disbelief.

  “Their name, not mine,” Will assures me.

  “It’s a city,” Kelsey exclaims, and I hear her running to catch up to us. “It’s an entire city.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Are we still under Boston? How can we still be under Boston? How can there be a city under Boston?”

  Will sighs and turns and looks at both of us. “Don’t you think, by this point, that it’s time for the two of you to stop being so surprised by everything that happens? Now keep up. We don’t want to lose our escort.” He starts walking back down the stairs.

  “There’s a goblin city in the subway tunnels under Boston,” remarks Kelsey, “and he thinks that’s totally normal.” She looks at Safford. “Do you think this is normal?”

  “No,” he admits. “Faeries don’t normally associate with goblins.”

  “Why not?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. Tradition, I suppose. They live underground, and we live aboveground. Why should we associate? And there’s the fact that travelers and goblins don’t get along, so I think that we just fell into the habit of…not getting along.” Safford frowns briefly. “Actually, now that I think about it, most Otherworld creatures have just fallen into the habit of not getting along, after the Seelies came to power. It was easier not to trust anybody at all than to trust someone and be named for your trouble.”

  It sounds awful, and Safford looks sad. Kelsey takes his hand and squeezes it a bit. Safford looks at her gratefully. I look away so as not to ruin their moment.

  Will, predictably, ruins the moment. “Really,” he calls up to us, “if you get lost in Goblinopolis, I’m not stopping to look for you.”

  I know it is a hollow threat, but we pick up the pace anyway, half skipping down the staircase. At the bottom of it, our guide is waiting. His smile is still plastered in place, but he looks tense and annoyed nonetheless.