Girl Who Read the Stars Read online

  Will takes the food out of my hands and pins some bread onto a fork he’s conjured, stretching it out toward the fire to toast it.

  “Why can’t you just conjure food?” asks Kelsey.

  “Because that would be like conjuring oxygen,” Will replies as if that’s some kind of answer. “Can’t be done.”

  Kelsey shrugs at me and sits close to the fire. I follow suit.

  “Are you sore, Kelsey?” Safford asks her anxiously.

  “I’m fine.” She smiles at him.

  The Erlking is apparently done with the horses. He comes over to the fire. “You should heat the meat. It’ll take the spell away,” he tells Will.

  “Oh, I was wondering about that,” Will says and conjures another fork that he hands across to me.

  I put a piece of meat on it. It is thick and leathery. “What spell?” I ask.

  “It’s been glamoured to be dried,” Will explains. “It isn’t really; it’s perfectly fresh, should be delicious.”

  The meat is delicious, pressed with a slice of cheese between pieces of toast.

  The Erlking passes around the oranges, and everyone struggles with them, but I pull the butter knife I’d taken out of my pocket and slice into it cleanly, pulling out the wedges and sharing them with Kelsey.

  “Where did you get that?” Will asks.

  “I borrowed it,” I say.

  The Erlking lifts his eyebrows at me but says nothing.

  When we are done eating, the Erlking announces, “We should all get some rest.”

  “Rest?” I say. “But…”

  The Erlking holds out his pocket watch. “11:12,” he says. “Holding steady. We can rest.”

  “But what if they suddenly pick up the pace?” I ask anxiously.

  “My pocket watch will chime at the quarter hour; it will wake us up. We should get some rest.”

  “Big day tomorrow,” remarks Will hollowly.

  “Do you know if my family got to Goblinopolis safely?” I ask the Erlking.

  He looks at me blankly. “How would I know that?”

  “They have musical instruments with emotions, but they don’t have cell phones,” Kelsey mumbles.

  Will waves his hand and conjures us blankets. “Would you rather have cell phones or newly conjured blankets?” he asks.

  I think of all the people I want to talk with right now. “Cell phones,” I say. “Why can’t I conjure up a cell phone? Why can’t I conjure up anything?”

  Will looks surprised. “You’re not a wizard.”

  “Right, but I’m a faerie and I’m an ogre and I can’t do anything.”

  “You’re good at naming.” Will sounds bewildered.

  “Which is horrible, by the way.” Using someone’s name to hurt them—kill them. My one and only superpower.

  “The Seelies used good naming power to conquer the entire Otherworld. I wouldn’t dismiss it so easily, if I were you,” says the Erlking.

  “Okay, yes, but still. I want to enchant meat so it looks dried but it’s really fresh. I want to be able to light up an entire cave. I want to be able to do something.”

  “First of all, you might never be able to do those things. It’s like saying to me that you want to be a concert pianist and a ballerina and an acclaimed painter. You can’t be everything. Second of all, they all take practice. Nobody gets to be a pianist or a ballerina or a painter overnight. You’re a faerie, and you’re naturally good at naming, which is actually a very, very special thing to be. The rest of it will take time. Remember, it took you time to learn how to walk. You’re not going to learn how to be a faerie in the space of a couple of hours.”

  I know what he’s saying makes sense, but I’m resentful. I have a prophecy to fulfill, and I’m tired of feeling terrified for my life all the time. I wish I felt like I could do something to make myself feel better.

  And then the Erlking says, “You’re you. You’re exactly what we’ve been waiting for. Half faerie and half ogre and you. What could be better than that?”

  “And you’ve already done things that nobody has ever done before in the history of the Otherworld,” adds Will. “How can you be complaining that you don’t have special powers when you escaped from Tir na nOg?”

  “That…” I can feel Safford and Kelsey both looking at me, and I wish that I hadn’t started this topic of conversation. “That was Ben. And luck.”

  “It was you,” Kelsey says. “Maybe it was a bit of all of us, but that’s how the world works, even the Otherworld. Stronger together than apart.”

  “A bit trite,” says Will, “but if it makes you feel better, sure.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” huffs Kelsey.

  The Erlking says, “It is time for everyone to go to sleep.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Everyone else seems to fall asleep immediately, but I am not tired, since I took that long nap during the journey. I lie awake, watching the magical fire crackle and trying to keep my breaths deep and even. Because I am awake, I know when the Erlking leaves, creeping stealthily away from the circle of the fire. I sit bolt upright, straining to see past the firelight, to figure out where he went, but he is dressed in black, and he fades into the shadows all around us.

  I sit by the firelight while everyone else sleeps, waiting for him to return.

  When he does, I don’t even hear his approach until he speaks. “You’re awake,” he says, his voice low, and then he settles onto the ground beside me.

  “Where did you go?” I ask, keeping my voice low as well.

  “Reconnaissance. Ear to the ground kind of thing. The Unseelie Court doesn’t stay in one place, you know, but they seem to know we’re coming. They’re staying quite still right now.”

  The firelight flickers over his face, and I study his profile. It’s a handsome profile, but it’s creased with worry.

  “How will you get us into the Unseelie Court?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t look at me when he answers a moment later. “A long time ago, the goblins were dying out. We were held prisoner by the Seelie Court, trapped in mines where humans had invaded, losing our battles for our homes. Will had started Parsymeon—now called Boston—and I wanted to come here, with as many goblins as I could. A new world, an undiscovered world, a world where we could build our defenses and become entrenched and thrive. But none of us could come to Parsymeon without the permission of the Seelie Court. We were enchanted into place, always mining to bring them jewels, to craft their coronets and forge their bells. No one can do it as well as a goblin, you know. Everyone else lacks the delicacy.”

  He pauses for a long time. I hold my breath, waiting for the rest of the story.

  “In those days,” he continues, “I was young, and I was daring. I would save my people, I thought. It is how youth is. You are foolish and headstrong and think you can do everything.” He sighs heavily.

  “You’re a king,” I point out to him, feeling he is in need of comforting. “You were just doing what you had to do to save your people.”

  “Oh,” he replies. “I wasn’t a king then. I was just a boy. I was a boy with a plan, to use my one great talent to save my people.”

  “And what was your talent?” I ask, transfixed now.

  He looks at me for the first time, and he sends me a smile that is simply breathtaking in its suggestiveness. “Seduction,” he answers silkily.

  I swallow thickly. “Oh,” I croak.

  He looks back into the fire, breaking the spell. “All goblins are natural seducers, of course, but I was the best seducer in generations. Or I had that reputation in those days. The Seelie Court doesn’t pay attention to the reputations of goblins. Why would they? So I got myself chosen to be the goblin that delivered the latest shipment of treasure, and then it was easy. They are surprisingly susceptible to seduction, Seelies.” He falls silent.
/>   “And then?” I prompt.

  “And then I stole the talisman. Broke the enchantment.”

  “What’s a talisman?”

  “The physical embodiment of an enchantment. All truly strong enchantments have one.”

  I look down at my sweatshirt.

  “Once you have stolen the talisman of an enchantment from the person or people to whom it is entrusted, the enchantment ceases to work properly. It begins to crumble. And that’s what happened. I stole the talisman, and we goblins emerged from the mines where we’d been imprisoned, and we came here, to Parsymeon, which has been a dream of a place. We’ve been very happy here.” He looks almost wistful now.

  “And is that how you became king?” I ask him.

  “Yes. The goblins hadn’t had an Erlking for generations. While the Seelies had ruled us, we’d fallen into disarray. Upon being made free and independent again, we reinstituted the Erlking, and I was voted into the position.”

  “That was after you came to Parsymeon?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s why Will calls you by your name?”

  The Erlking shrugs. “It isn’t quite my name, although it is close enough.” He leans back on his elbows, looking into the fire. “He knew me before I had a title. There aren’t many beings around anymore who remember me from that time.”

  “Do you like it? Being king?”

  He looks at me. “I thought you wanted to know how I was going to get you into the Unseelie Court,” he remarks wryly.

  “Oh!” I remember. “I do.”

  “The Seelie I seduced, she was flung from the Seelie Court. Do you know what happens to faeries who are exiled from the Seelie Court?”

  “They don’t get named?”

  “Not right away. Seelies like to play with their prey first. Haven’t you noticed?”

  I had noticed that actually. I shudder and look into the fire.

  “So if you’re an exiled Seelie trying to avoid the inevitable naming to come, you go to the Unseelie Court.”

  I stare at him. “You’re going to get us into the Unseelie Court by using an ex-girlfriend?”

  He looks grimly at the fire. “Not pleasant, I know. Will’s lucky I like him. And that, well, I don’t really have a choice if I’m going to save my home. The clock is ticking.” He takes out his pocket watch, glances at it, and then shows it to me. 11:13.

  “But doesn’t she hate you?”

  “Hate me?” he echoes blankly, looking at me in bewilderment. “Why would she hate me?”

  “Because you stole the talisman from her and got her exiled from the Seelie Court,” I remind him.

  He shrugs. “Oh, that. You fail to comprehend: I am very, very good at seduction.”

  We fall silent for a moment. I lean my chin against my knees and stare into the fire. And then I venture, “I…met one of your people. Once.”

  “Oh,” the Erlking says. “Yes. Brody. Sorry about that. He was just supposed to provide us with a progress report. I was worried that we were running out of time, that we weren’t ready for this. But I suppose we would never have been ready, no matter how long it took.”

  “I…” I take a deep breath and plunge forward. “Did I kill him?”

  The Erlking looks at me, startled. “Kill him? What? No.”

  My relief is tempered by the Erlking starting to laugh. He tries to keep himself quiet, laughing into his cape, but he is clearly highly amused.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Thinking you could have killed a goblin just like that. No. We can be named like any other supernatural creature, but we are much harder to kill by conventional methods.”

  “I knew his name.”

  “Brody isn’t his name. We wouldn’t give you the correct name, the way Benedict didn’t give you his.”

  I think of Ben, who has always been Ben, because he held back the power of his name from me. “Yeah, well, never trust a faerie, right?” I say, wishing I could hold back the bitterness.

  “Never trust a Le Fay,” the Erlking corrects me. “You know that he might be at the Unseelie Court. You know that he also might not be at the Unseelie Court.”

  “I don’t care either way,” I say with a bravado that I’m not sure I feel.

  The Erlking rolls onto his side to face me. “It is a very dangerous thing, you know, to have lost your heart to Benedict Le Fay. He is an expert in enchantments. You can never know that anything about him is real.”

  “The way you are an expert in seduction?” I can’t resist saying.

  “Touché,” the Erlking laughs, and then, “You are quite remarkably fearless.”

  I’m really not. I’m afraid all the time. I say instead, “I’m not in love with Ben. I’m not falling for his enchantment this time. I know way too much about him. And we’ve been through too much. I’m kind of sick of saving his life.”

  The Erlking smiles. “Oh, the delicious things I would do with an indebted Le Fay. Call in your favors carefully, fay of the autumnal equinox.”

  “I’m not calling them in at all. I don’t want anything to do with him. I’m going to fulfill this prophecy, with or without him. This isn’t about him.” But even as I say it, I hear my mother’s voice in my head. Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die. This isn’t about him. But it’s not entirely not about him either.

  “When Will came to me, when he asked if I would consent to your being hidden at Parsymeon, if I would help him to protect you…I made my choice then. Not the most popular choice I’ve made as Erlking—prophecies are tricky things, and you can never be sure if you are bringing about your downfall or your victory—but it was the choice I made. Sometimes you have to gamble with the birds. Will saved us, offered us shelter, at a time when we needed it. How could I deny him the ability to do the same for you? And then it came complete with a traveler invasion. Travelers are hugely troublesome beings; always getting into trouble, you can’t keep them out. They were constantly stealing jewels from our mines, and there was no way to stop them. Until we evolved, of course.”

  The Erlking rolls onto his back. “Anyway, sometimes I think I should have objected to Benedict’s presence. But his enchantment was useful, necessary. None of the rest of us are as skilled at hiding things. We needed him. We might need him still. All the same…” The Erlking glances over at me. “I’d be careful of him, were I you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  We are woken by the Erlking’s pocket watch chiming at us.

  The Erlking looks at it and confirms. “11:15.”

  “We should get going,” says Will.

  The Erlking doesn’t reply but just walks over to the horses.

  “Here,” says Will, handing us some pieces of dried fruit.

  “If you heat it up, does it become fresh fruit?” Kelsey asks him.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Will replies, as if her question made no sense at all.

  Kelsey sighs.

  “Let’s go,” says the Erlking, swinging himself gracefully into his saddle.

  “How long until we get to the Unseelie Court?” I ask, clambering gracelessly onto the horse behind him.

  He winces as I tug accidentally on his cloak, tightening it around his throat, and reaches up to adjust it and give himself some air. He doesn’t say anything, just urges the horse onward.

  I cannot tell if I feel like I understand him more or less after the conversation last night. I find the Erlking a strange mixture that I can’t quite read. Will appears to trust him implicitly, but I’m not to that point yet.

  The day is just like the previous day, darkness all around and unceasing forward movement, and finally I ask again, “How long until we get to the Unseelie Court?”

  “We’re there,” he answers me curtly.

  I blink at his back, which I can only locate in the darkness beca
use I know it is right in front of me. “What? When did we get here?”

  “A while ago.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “What was there to say?”

  “‘We’re entering the Unseelie Court.’ That’s what there was to say.”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “It looks the same as everything else.”

  “That’s why I didn’t think it was important. Shh.”

  I am offended. “Don’t ‘shh’ me—”

  “Shh,” he says again more firmly and draws his horse to a halt. “Will,” he calls. “What is that?”

  “Nothing good,” I hear Will’s voice answer from the darkness behind us.

  “What does that mean, ‘nothing good’?” I ask. “What can you hear?” I am straining very hard to hear something, anything, but all it sounds like is silence to me. Maybe, very far away, the sound of water dripping.

  “I think it’s a dragon,” comes Will’s voice, hushed, as if the dragon might hear us talking about it.

  We are all very silent. But no matter how quiet we are, I cannot hear anything.

  I am about to say that when, very suddenly, a stream of fire licks its way toward us, accompanied by a loud roar, flames curling through the darkness. The horse rears under us, and I grab at fistfuls of the Erlking’s cloak to keep from falling off. The flames subside, the darkness darker now and heat still lingering in the air. The creature is no longer roaring, but the echo of it is ringing in my ears. The Erlking is trying to soothe the horse, which is now prancing sideways.

  “I thought you were going to be able to use your wiles with your ex-girlfriend,” I remark sarcastically.

  “I said I could use my wiles to get us in. I never said she wouldn’t kill us once we were here,” he retorts and then twists to call over his shoulder, “Everyone okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Kelsey responds, sounding a bit shaken.

  Will, by way of answer, sends a light orb shooting out in front of us, illuminating the landscape.

  We’re in the middle of a cavern, stalactites dripping from a ceiling high above our heads, through which Will’s orb is bobbing and weaving. Directly in front of us, the ground disappears into a yawning ravine several hundred feet across. There is a bridge suspended across it, floating magically, and there, on the other side, is a squat, heavy, black castle.