The Boy with the Hidden Name Page 17

  “Three fays, a human, a goblin, a traveler, and a wizard walk into the court of the Hidden Folk,” proclaims the man who is evidently the king. He sounds delighted, like he’s telling his favorite joke. Maybe the Urisks are just an elaborate joke. A girl walks into a forest…

  “And him,” responds his queen, pointing to Safford.

  “And him,” agrees the king. “Three fays, a human, a goblin, a traveler, a wizard, and him walk into the court of the Hidden Folk.”

  They have been staring at all of us, studying us closely, and we are too astonished to say anything.

  Then the king abruptly turns to Ben. “Speak to us, traveler,” he commands. “Tell us the words of your prophecy, and beware, for you are in the court of the Hidden Folk, those who assist at will and at whim.”

  Ben hesitates. I don’t know what he thought the Hidden Folk would be like, but I can see that this isn’t it.

  So I’m the one who speaks. “We’re the fays of the seasons,” I tell the king. “We’re prophesied to save the Otherworld. But we need to find the other fay to do it, and we think he or she might be here.”

  “The fays of the seasons,” answers the king musingly. “And a traveler.”

  “The box, my love,” the queen tells him gently.

  “Oh! Yes! The box! Ingolfur Arnarson left the box specifically for Benedict Le Fay. Would that be you, traveler?”

  Ben, startled, nods.

  And the king beams. “Oh, excellent. What has taken all of you so long?”

  ***

  There are thrones at the other end of the room, and the king and queen lead us over to them. They don’t offer any seats to us as they settle themselves.

  “Erlking of Goblinopolis,” the king says to him.

  “Your Majesty,” the Erlking responds politely with a small bow.

  “The crowns are quite lovely. My wife adores them. Thank you.”

  The queen beams at the Erlking and blows him a kiss flirtatiously. I wonder if the Erlking has his special seduction power set on high. And I’m annoyed, because the clock is ticking. We don’t have time for flirting.

  “Good,” the Erlking replies. “I am pleased.”

  I want to lean over and ask him what time it is, just to remind him that we’re on a schedule, but before I can, the king says, “As for the rest of you, none of you have gained proper entrance to the court of the Hidden Folk. We grant you this hospitality at will and at whim.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Will says respectfully.

  “You, sir,” the king says to him sharply. “Through the looking glass, you do not exist.”

  “So I have been told,” Will responds.

  I notice Ben look at Will with his eyes narrowed, and I wonder what the phrase means.

  “Faerie Le Fay,” announces the king. He has a goblet in his hand now, gold and heavily bejeweled, like everything else in this place. I have no idea where it came from. “You have come for the box.”

  “Well,” says Ben. “I thought we were coming for a fay.”

  “We have no fay here. Only the box. Do you know how long the box has been sealed? Waiting for the touch of Benedict Le Fay?”

  “I do not,” Ben confesses.

  “Neither do we.” The king sips from his goblet and considers. “But it’s been a long time.”

  “Or no time at all,” contributes Will.

  “Spoken like a wizard.” The king smiles at him.

  “Where is the box?” I say, tired of this pointless conversation.

  “In the museum, of course,” answers the king.

  I can’t wait to have conversations that don’t constantly make me feel like an idiot. “What museum?”

  “‘What museum?’ she asks,” scoffs the king. “‘What museum.’ What a mopple you have made of things, if you have to ask me what museum. Don’t you know where you are? You’re in Iceland. What other museum would it be in, but the Museum of Iceland?”

  Ben contributes, “But…I have never heard of the Otherworld having museums.”

  “Don’t be daft, faerie,” snaps the king. “We had to keep the box safe, didn’t we? How would we ever have accomplished that in the Otherworld? Seelies listening at every corner and rattling every box, for that matter. And naming travelers with a quickness. How, I ask you, could such a thing be safe in the Otherworld, as a box meant for a traveler?”

  “It’s a human museum,” Ben realizes.

  “Of course it’s a human museum. Have you ever heard of any other type? Dear me, what a mopple. Are you sure you’re Benedict Le Fay? I had the notion he was going to be clever, was Benedict Le Fay. Perhaps you’d better verify your identity. Perhaps a middle name or two.”

  “Ingolfur Arnarson left the box for me, with middle names as collateral?” Ben drawls.

  “And what if he did?”

  “Your Majesty,” Ben responds calmly. “I am the best traveler in the Otherworld.”

  “So I have heard. If that is the case, Benedict Le Fay, by all means, collect your box, sir.” The king makes an expansive motion with his hand.

  ***

  I wake with a gasp, lying on cold, dewy grass growing in a scraggly manner amid waves of rolling black rock.

  Ben stands up beside me and brushes himself off, nose crinkled with distaste.

  “I just had the strangest dream,” Kelsey gasps.

  “I think we all did,” I reply grimly and sit up.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” says Trow. He has already stood up and is surveying the ocean of black rock stretching around us for as far as can be seen. He turns and helps Merrow up and says, “What do you propose we do now?”

  “Well, obviously we have to go to the Museum of Iceland, like the king said,” Merrow replies.

  “And where is that?” I ask. I know I shouldn’t sound sour—Merrow’s just trying to help—but I hate how confidently know-it-all she seems to be. I want to be confidently know-it-all like that, and instead I never know what I’m going to do from moment to moment.

  “Come along,” Ben says. “I’ll get us there.”

  Merrow looks at him. “You know where it is? A second ago, you’d never even heard of the place.”

  “I’m the best traveler in the Otherworld,” Ben tells her, and we all join hands.

  The Erlking says, “I’ll meet you there.”

  And then we are standing in front of an unassuming and modern building that is helpfully labeled the National Museum of Iceland. The Erlking is lounging against the wall by the door, and I wonder once again how he seems to manage to get everywhere before we do.

  “What time is it?” I ask him.

  “11:52,” he tells me. “And I think we should really stop checking. There is nothing we can do about it.”

  Ben walks through the front door of the museum, which slides open accommodatingly, and we follow him and stand in the lobby, which is a high atrium with windows. Ben turns in a circle in the middle of it, looking up.

  “So we’re going to steal an artifact from a museum?” says Kelsey.

  “Looks that way,” responds Trow.

  “Then shouldn’t we wait until it closes?” she suggests.

  “Why?” Ben counters absently.

  “I don’t know.” Kelsey looks at Merrow. “Does the prophecy say we’re going to be successful stealing this?”

  Merrow frowns briefly, saying, “That’s not how prophecies work. I wish it were. I didn’t even know we had to get something here.

  Ben sets off up the escalator in front of us, walking with swift purpose. No one stops us or asks for any tickets or anything. We follow Ben through the galleries. He is moving quickly, wending through them without hesitation, until he abruptly stops. It is as if he knew all along where the thing was.

  “Here we are,” he says. He is looking dow
n at a small wooden box, only about the size of a brick, trapped under glass and clasped with an old iron lock. There is nothing overly remarkable about this box, other than the fact that it looks to be old.

  Curious, I lean over Ben, reading the description of the box.

  “It says here that only a knowledgeable man named Benedikt could open this box,” I note and look at it. “Have you opened it before?”

  He doesn’t look away from the box. His eyes are an extremely pale blue, like a sun-bleached sky. He shakes his head.

  “Then why does it say that?”

  “Because Ingolfur Arnarson left it for me. It’s a message for me.”

  “A message in a caption by a museum exhibit?”

  “Can you think of a better place to put a message to someone?”

  “Maybe in a letter,” answers Kelsey pragmatically, reading the caption over my shoulder. “It says here that the man named Benedikt was a man of many skills. Is that true?”

  “Inconclusive,” I say.

  That gets Ben to look away from the box, his nose crinkled in annoyance. I smile sweetly at him.

  “Well,” says Merrow. “I guess you should go ahead and open it. Maybe the whereabouts of the other fay are inside.”

  Ben lifts up the glass that had been protecting the wooden box. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to lift up that glass, but he does it effortlessly, and nothing happens in response, no alarms or anything like that.

  He touches the box, hands grasping either side of it.

  And then he frowns.

  “We have to go,” Will says.

  “Something’s wrong,” Ben replies, not taking his eyes off the box. “There’s something wrong with the box.”

  “We’ll figure it out later. Take it and let’s get out of here.” Will’s voice is low and urgent, and I look at him in surprise.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “It’s not opening.” Ben turns the box over, still frowning at it, clearly trying to make it function properly.

  “I’m telling you,” Will says, “we’ll deal with it later. Right now—”

  Will cuts himself off. I look up and all around, and see nothing out of place, but I can’t help feeling panic. And it’s contagious. I can feel everyone else draw closer to each other too.

  “What?” Kelsey says, sounding a bit frantic. “What is it?”

  “Run.” Ben grabs my hand, tucking the box against his body. And he takes off at a sprint, dragging me behind him just as I finally hear it: the chiming of bells.

  CHAPTER 20

  Panic makes us sloppy. Merrow half slides down the staircase we are descending, which almost starts a chain reaction of all of us sliding. Ben’s hand is firm in mine and he doesn’t let go, keeping me upright and moving. He is running like he has a goal in mind, although I don’t know what the goal could be.

  The chiming grows louder. The ground starts vibrating beneath our feet. For a brief, wild moment, I wonder why we’re even running. If the Seelies are this close, then they’ll catch us easily; they’re so very fast. I look over my shoulder, but they don’t seem to be behind us. They seem, rather, to be all around us, a terrifyingly invisible presence that is going to swoop over us at any moment.

  We’ve reached the ground floor, the lobby with its wall of windows. Ben’s pace does not slow. He rockets toward the glass in front of us. I register our pale reflections superimposed over the gray world outside, quickly getting larger and larger as we get closer and closer, and I am sure the look on my face is alarm. Just as I am about to ask him what he could possibly be doing, he smashes head-on into the glass. It splinters all around him, almost in slow motion, slivers cracking and then falling, drifting down like petals from a flower. I duck instinctively, trying to shelter my head from the onslaught of glass, but there is…nothing.

  I lift my head and realize that we are in a tunnel, underground, much like the one we walked through to get to the court of the Hidden Folk. The bells have stopped chiming, and Ben stops running, drawing to a halt. We all stop around him, gulping down breaths.

  “What was that?” Kelsey asks.

  “The front door,” Ben responds. He still has the box tucked against his side and is looking up and down the tunnel intently.

  “Oh,” says Kelsey. “Of course.”

  “What was that?” Merrow demands.

  “Seelies,” Will answers grimly. “That’s what we’re saving the world from.”

  “Where are we?” I ask Ben.

  “I don’t know.” Ben sounds slightly panicked. He drops my hand and takes a few steps in one direction then the other. “I don’t know,” he repeats, and his panic is more than slight now.

  “How can you not know?” the Erlking snaps at Ben. “You’re a—”

  “I know,” Ben cuts him off angrily. “Shh. Let me listen.” He stares intently to his left and then his right. “It’s an enchantment,” he announces finally, shaking his head. “They’re blocking me. The Hidden Folk or the Seelies or somebody. I don’t know where we are.”

  “What should we do?” ventures Merrow.

  “You’re the one who told us to come here, and this is a trap,” Ben shouts at her. “This was always a trap! You led us here and I can’t get us out!”

  “Hey,” Trow says, his voice hard. “That is not necessary—”

  “We needed to get whatever that is!” Merrow shouts back, gesturing at it.

  “It’s a box,” Ben says. “It’s nothing. I can’t even open it! It’s broken! And now we’re trapped here. Is that what you wanted all along?”

  “Of course it wasn’t what I—”

  “This isn’t helping.” I stand in between the two of them. “Please. We’ll figure this out.” I look at Ben. “We’ve been in worse spots, you and I.”

  “What does the precious prophecy say?” Ben snarls at Merrow before taking a step away from her in impatience.

  “We have to get to Thingvellir,” Will interjects calmly. “That’s the way to get out of Iceland, remember?” He tosses something up into the air. A tarnished brass arrow. It floats over our heads. “Thingvellir,” he calls up to it, enunciating carefully.

  After a second, the arrow swings around, pointing to our right down the hallway.

  Ben looks at Will in relieved astonishment. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he says.

  Will looks at him. “You’ve always thought you were the only one with tricks up your sleeves.”

  “I could kiss you right now,” the Erlking says.

  “Maybe later,” Will replies. “Let’s go.” He walks resolutely down the tunnel in the direction the arrow indicated to us, and we all follow him.

  I think of the chiming bells that sounded right on top of us in the museum. The tunnels are eerily silent by comparison. “What time is it?” I ask. “Is it twelve o’clock?”

  “Don’t worry about the time,” the Erlking responds shortly, and then, after a second, he says almost apologetically, “but it’s not quite twelve o’clock. We haven’t quite lost.”

  “Yet,” I can’t help but mutter darkly.

  “Can I ask a question?” Trow requests with the air of not really caring what the answer is.

  “No,” says Ben.

  Trow ignores him. “They’ll know we have to get to this place to get out of here, right? So shouldn’t we have a plan?”

  “How is it you’re a fay?” Ben mutters. “How are all these fays so obsessed with planning?”

  “They’re all only half faerie, Benedict,” Will tells him. “That’s kind of the point. And we don’t have a choice,” Will says to Trow. “There’s only one way out. And we have to get out.”

  “So this was a trap,” Trow says.

  “We needed whatever was here. The box,” Merrow insists but with only a shadow of her former bravado
, and her face is very pale. I feel a bit bad for her. “We had to come and get it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Will says breezily. “I am not a faerie, and I knew what we were getting into, so I have a plan.”

  Ben looks at him in evident surprise. I’m surprised too. This is the first I’m hearing of a plan more detailed than “go to Iceland.”

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  “We have to get to Thingvellir.”

  “That’s not a plan,” I point out, annoyed. “That’s just a destination.”

  “What’s that noise?” asks Kelsey suddenly.

  I’ve been distracted by everything that had been going on, but I hear it now that Kelsey points it out. It’s a dull, thundering roar, like a great rush of air somewhere in the distance. Ben draws to a halt, and we all follow his lead, listening.

  “Is it…what is it?” asks Safford.

  “It’s a waterfall,” the Erlking says. “You’ve taken us to Gullfoss.”

  “I don’t think so,” Will responds slowly. He resumes walking, taking the lead.

  Ben, clearly dreading the prospect of a waterfall up ahead, drops behind him.

  We walk forward more cautiously now. The air around us is pounding, reverberating with the force of whatever’s ahead. The tunnel begins to lighten, murky daylight filtering in from an opening before us. We are all silent as we walk through and emerge before a sheet of water.

  It’s not a waterfall. Or at least not the kind of waterfall that exists on Earth. In front of us is craggy, rocky land, uneven and scrabbly, which drops off into an abrupt cliff. And just beyond the cliff, a ribbon of water hovers in the air, a waterfall tumbling down from another world into this one. It stretches along the cliff in front of us, as far as we can see to the left and the right, dense and thick and silver. It looks as if we have reached the end of the world, like there is nothing to do but turn around and go back.

  The noise of the gushing water is so loud that it is impossible to have a conversation without shouting. Ben is hanging back, still in the shelter of the tunnel, looking grimly at the water in front of us, and I stand next to him and stare at it as well. Everyone else is standing out by the edge of the cliff, clearly trying to come up with the next step we should take.