Girl Who Never Was Read online

  My mother lunges at me. She is contorted with fury, shaking with it, the gold circle on her tipped at a seasick angle, her hair flying out around her head, and I shrink back from her automatically.

  “Who did you send a message to?” she bellows at me.

  “W-what?” I stammer, scrambling away from her.

  “You sent a message!” I can feel all of the members of the Seelie Court staring at the two of us but with only a mild sort of interest, as if they are finally relieved to have a diversion. “A bat from the Boston Sewing Circle managed to escape the Seelie Court with a message! I know it was you! Who did you send it to? What did it say?” She reaches forward to grab me, and I recoil, and she hits a barrier.

  At least, that’s what it looks like. Like there’s an invisible wall between her and me, and she cannot reach me behind it. Her eyes widen in shock. She claws at the invisible wall, letting out another scream of frustrated fury.

  Ben’s enchantment, I realize. Still holding.

  We stare at each other, and I smile for the first time in a very long time. The light in the room fades. Pandemonium breaks out. The Seelies start stampeding over each other, shrieking in obvious terror. My mother stares up at the sky, face even whiter than usual. I look up as well, but all I see is a fluffy white cloud, drifting in front of the sun, bathing us in momentary shade.

  My mother whirls from me, dashing away.

  Fear is a sudden, cold, hard knot in my stomach. Where is she going? I stumble forward, grabbing at my mother, reaching for anything, just one of the tiny bells on the hem of her dress, just to catch her and slow her, but she is, of course, far too quick. I am running full-speed and can barely keep her in my sight, and I need to keep her in my sight. I am aware if I lose her, I will never be able to find her in the enchanted labyrinth of hallways and then I won’t know what she is doing. “Stop!” I shout, breathless. I do not expect her to listen to me, but I cannot just do nothing.

  I run into the cell just as my mother draws to a halt in front of Ben. Ben is standing up and facing her, and I think that he must have sensed something is going on. He looks wary but also a bit befuddled. Then my mother raises her hand and shouts, “Benedict Will o’ the Wisp Celador Le Fay!”

  It seems that it happens in slow motion. Ben’s eyes widen in obvious shock, and he wheels backward, losing his balance entirely. For a moment, I think he is going to tip into the moat, but I react without knowing I am going to. I am still running hard enough to make the leap over the moat easily, and my fist closes into the layers he is wearing and tugs him back just before he falls.

  He meets my eyes for a split second, and he looks thoroughly stunned. I am not even sure he recognizes me. He tips forward and staggers, and he is too heavy for me to hold up, and he falls to his hands and knees, and he is coughing violently, choking, and I stand frozen, staring down at him at my feet, too cold and horrified, and anyway, what else can I do? She has just named him, and I am going to watch him dissolve, drift into madness, right here in front of me.

  And then the most amazing thing happens. Ben stops coughing. He takes one wheezing breath and then another deeper one. I look from him to my mother, confused and uncertain. Is something else supposed to happen?

  My mother stares at him. “You have a hidden name,” she whispers. And then she shouts it. “You have a hidden name!”

  Ben lifts his head up. He is breathing heavily, but he is clearly recovering. It shows in his eyes, which are very bright, gleaming, a clear, crystal blue. And he smiles at my mother, a smile that is more like a smirk, a smile that is full of victory and smugness and pride. “She was the best enchantress in the Otherworld,” he says. “Did you really think she wouldn’t find a way to protect her only child?”

  My mother’s eyes darken, flash with fury, like an entire thunderstorm is going on in her head. “Tell me what it is!” she screams at Ben.

  “That doesn’t seem likely to happen,” remarks Ben, “does it?”

  With another exclamation of rage, she flings her arm through the air, and I am knocked off-balance by an enormous wave of water that sweeps onto the stone where I am standing. I catch myself before I tumble, but Ben crumples, gasping for breath, and I realize instantly that it is far too much water for him after all of those names.

  “Stop it,” I shout at my mother, kneeling in front of him to try to absorb most of the second wave rising up over us, trying futilely to keep it from breaking over him.

  “Selkie,” he gasps. “I can’t…I can’t…” His eyes are on my sweatshirt, and I realize instantly what he’s trying to tell me.

  The waves stop. In fact, the water in the moat stops moving at all. The only sound in the room is Ben’s terrible, tearing breathing.

  I look from Ben to my mother. Her eyes are riveted on my sweatshirt. She can see it. His enchantment is broken.

  She smiles. “Benedict,” she croons at him, and he actually groans out loud in reaction. “I’ve been going too easy on you. I thought you were fading rather quickly. Your mother lasted much longer. What a pretty little enchantment. It’s a pity you don’t use your power for good, it really is. Ah, well. Benedict Will o’ the Wisp Celador Le Fay, you were the last of a once great and noble line.”

  Ben does not respond. He is curled onto his side, shuddering with every breath he takes. She waves a hand, and it begins pouring onto us. Ben curls into a tighter ball. I kneel next to him, not sure what to do, not sure when help will arrive, not sure if anyone ever got my message, if anyone is even coming.

  “Leave him,” says my mother. “And come with me. Face me without an enchantment. He cannot help you now.”

  I know he can’t. And I know it’s up to me. I need to think of something.

  I leap over the moat, and for the first time, I realize that I’m crying.

  “Come along,” says my mother, her hand encircling my wrist, pulling me along.

  “Can’t you make it less cold in there for him?” I beg through my tears. “Can’t you make it warmer for him? He hates being cold; he hates it so much, please.” It is not difficult to pretend to be hysterical—I think that I pretty much am. But I am hoping beyond hope that my mother will take the bait here. It is the best I can do, get her to think that maybe snow would be worse for Ben than rain. I have no idea if Ben can recover from an almost-full naming and a thorough soaking, but I’ve got to give him a fighting chance, and getting rid of the rain is the only thing I can think of.

  “As if you are in a position to make requests!” scoffs my mother, flinging me into my room. We got here very quickly. Apparently, the drama of a long route to and fro no longer suits my mother. “Do you really think that Boston will be closed to us forever? Do you think, now that we have you here, with your power leaking into the air, that we will not be able to penetrate through their defenses? We’ll get through, and we will get your precious aunts and your precious father, and we will destroy all of them. Everyone you love, everyone you remember. And that will teach you the danger of remembering.” The door slams shut behind her.

  I turn, unsure what I am going to do, just wanting to pace. But I cannot move. I take a step and then can move no farther. Something is preventing me from getting to the rest of the room. She’s imprisoned me.

  I sit in the tiny amount of space I have been allowed, and I refuse to cry.

  ***

  I hate it in the Otherworld. That is what I decide after a lot of sitting on the floor feeling sorry for myself. If I had been kidnapped in real life, regular life, normal life, Boston life, I would at least have had some vague ideas of what to do. I could try to get to a phone to call 911, or I could scream and shout and surely someone walking by would hear me. I know to walk with my house key clutched like a weapon between my fingers, and that if you are locked in the trunk of a car, you should try to kick out the taillight.

  But I have no idea what to do when you are trapped
by invisible faerie walls in a faerie prison in the Otherworld, where the odds of someone on your side finding you in this enchanted labyrinth of a place seem impossibly small, where you do not even know if screaming will be of any help. And when everyone you’ve never met is somehow also depending on you. Nothing I’ve lived while trapped in Ben’s enchantment has prepared me for this. And, I am well aware, I don’t just have to get myself out of here, but Ben as well, and I have no idea what condition Ben will be in once I find my way back to him. I am not even entirely sure there will be a Ben any longer, but I try not to let myself dwell on that. I find myself wishing for Gussie to come and find me, but I don’t know what Gussie is really capable of doing. If Gussie could help, wouldn’t she have escaped long ago, the way she’d said? And Gussie said the prophecy was mine, my choices. For reasons that I don’t understand, I am the most important person here, and I have to make the decisions; I have to get Ben and me out of Tir na nOg and find a way to save everyone. I try to think about productive things, to systematically go over everything I know about faeries. I need to dissolve this enchantment around me, but I only know how to dissolve an enchantment using my unusually good naming power, and I don’t know my mother’s name—

  I lift up my head abruptly from where I’d been leaning against the knees I have clutched to my chest. It is not very bright in the room. Clouds are still rolling in. The sunlight is spotty at best.

  I asked her what I should call her, and she said Mother. It isn’t a name, but it’s what she told me to call her. Maybe, in doing so, it’s become her name to me. I am me, and she is my mother. That is who she is to me. And maybe that’s enough.

  It’s worth a try. I’m unusually good at naming; this is what I can do. “Mother,” I whisper. Is it a trick of the scuttling clouds, or does the air shimmer around me?

  I scramble to my feet, concentrating. “Mother,” I say again, more loudly this time, making sure that I fill it with all my fury and frustration, with all my vengeance for Ben and for the seventeen years of my life I’ve spent without a mother, for the rest of my life that I have to spend without my mother, for my father who sacrificed his sanity, for all of Boston, huddled into defensive preservations of its history because of its terror of my mother and her people. Yes, that is definitely a shimmer, a contraction of the air, like it is struggling against something. I fling out my arm, the way my mother had when she had tried to name Ben, and I gather all of my angry intent. I make it the very opposite of the way I’d said Ben’s name the night before. I shout firmly, “Mother!”

  There is a sound like the splintering of glass, and then the air all around me seems to crash to the floor. I take one step, then two, and then I fling open my door. I have no real idea what I am going to do. I just know that I need, somehow, to get to Ben and get us out. Eventually, I hope, Will or my aunts will show up with a church bell, and when they do, Ben and I are going to be waiting right on the very edge of the cliff to hop onto Safford’s hot air balloon. I don’t know how I will accomplish this. I am just determined that I will.

  I am Selkie Stewart of Boston.

  CHAPTER 24

  I keep shouting Mother as I march firmly down the hallway, keeping my anger wrapped tightly around me. The walls around me flicker, passages appearing and disappearing, and I realize that I am managing to break the enchantment that keeps the routes confused. Not entirely, but enough that I can mostly feel my way. I take only a few wrong turns before finding Ben.

  I know that my mother must know by now that I’ve been able to break through some of her enchantments, and I know that I don’t have much time, and I still don’t have a plan. Maybe I can get Ben in good enough shape to put up an enchantment that will obscure us. It is the only idea I have. I wish I knew how to put up enchantments, rather than just dissolve them.

  Ben’s cell is freezing, and I am relieved. My little trick worked. The moat of water is frozen mid-tempest, the ice uneven, but I slip and slide my way across it, and it feels extremely solid. Ben is still curled in a tight ball, fixed into the film of ice that had once been the puddle he had been laying in. He is covered in a layer of snow that isn’t melting, which is extremely alarming.

  “Ben,” I say, shaking him a bit. My teeth are already chattering in the frigid temperatures. “Ben.” I try to infuse it with so much love that my voice actually trembles, but I wonder if the love is being drowned out by my terror. I force my hand into his. His hand is freezing, but mine may be even more freezing. Exactly how cold did she make it in there?

  He opens his eyes blearily. They are a dull, mossy green. “Selkie,” he says thickly. “You stopped the rain. I love you.”

  It is a testament to how panicked I feel that I don’t even pause to register that. “You’re just saying that,” I tell him. “We have to go now.”

  “What? Go where?”

  It’s a good question, and I can’t really answer it. “Anywhere that’s not here.”

  “For an ogre, you’re very bad at plans, you know that?”

  “The moat is frozen. We can walk across it, and maybe you can come up with some way to hide us—”

  Ben starts laughing, but it is horrible laughter, something closer to a coughing fit, really. “Oh, Selkie,” he says around it. “I’m not sure I can even walk right now, never mind get an enchantment under way. If you think you’ve got an escape window, you should take it.”

  I stare at him. “Not without you.”

  “I’ll be fine—”

  “The entire point of coming here was to get you, Ben. I’m not leaving here without you.”

  “Selkie—” he begins.

  “No, Ben. We promised. Say my name. Keep saying it. You’ll get better.”

  “That is not going to work this time—”

  “Shut up,” I snap. I am so furious at him that I am crying. “I can’t save you unless you help me. I am unusually powerful at naming, Will told me, so say it.”

  Ben is silent for a second. “Selkie Stewart,” he says dully. “Selkie Stewart.”

  Even I can tell that it is having almost no effect. “Benedict,” I say, wondering if the fullness of his name will help. “Benedict, Benedict, Benedict.” I don’t think, just lean forward to drop a desperate kiss in his hair to try to underline the love in my voice. “Benedict Le Fay.”

  “Stop it,” he says thickly. “You’re all over the place right now. It’s hurting.”

  And now I’ve made things worse. “Sorry,” I choke out, straightening. I seize in desperation upon the only idea I can come up with. “What if I give you my whole name?”

  “Don’t you dare,” he says.

  “Will it dissolve me?”

  He hesitates. “No, but—”

  “Then you’re going to use it, do you understand me?” I command him fiercely.

  “You shouldn’t give your whole name, not to anyone, there’s too much power—”

  “I trust you,” I tell him firmly.

  He looks at me for a second. “You really shouldn’t,” he says finally. “You should never trust a faerie.”

  “I trust you,” I insist. “Anyway, I know your name. You should know mine; then we’ll be even.”

  “How many middle names do you have?”

  “Two,” I answer.

  He nods briefly. “Fine. Give me one of them. You don’t know my whole name,” he cuts off my argument before I can begin. “And no offense, Selkie, but I’m not about to give it to you. So give me one of your middle names.”

  “Will it be enough?”

  “Yes.”

  I pause. I do trust Ben, I do, but I have been infected by the thinking of faeries now. To give away my name seems like an unimaginably huge thing. I am literally handing him a large chunk of my life, trusting him to keep it safe. It is, somehow, more intimate and life changing and terrifying than anything I could possibly do with a normal human boy.
I know it was my own suggestion, but I still take a moment before I lean over slowly, taking a deep breath, and press my lips to his ear and whisper it to him, and he whispers it back.

  It is the first time that I have ever felt something when Ben’s said my name. It feels a little like I just had a sneezing fit, emerging from it a tiny bit off-balance, in need of a good, deep breath. Ben sighs. And then, after a heartbeat, he sits up. He looks so alarmingly like his old self that I almost wonder if he’d been faking the whole thing.

  “Excellent,” he says, clearly delighted. “You are unusually good at naming. Now.” He climbs to his feet and helps me up. “I’m assuming we have to get out of here before anyone discovers us, right?”

  I blink at him in astonishment.

  “Okay,” he decides when I stay silent. “I’ll figure it out. We can use that door over there.” He skids his way across the moat, heading toward what looks like solid wall.

  I collect myself, following him across the ice. “Ben, there’s no door over there.”

  “Yes, there is. I noticed it when they first stuck me in here.” He has his hands out, blindly feeling along the wall. “Can’t keep a traveler away from a door. It was somewhere over here. They enchanted it away, it’s—” He pitches suddenly through the wall, disappearing.

  Wide-eyed, I run over to that spot, but I can’t figure out how he got through. I try to do what he had been doing, feeling my way along the wall, shouting for him in the hope that he will hear me. There’s a door there—there has to be—if I could just figure out the key to getting through it—

  “What have you done with him?” my mother demands, skidding into the room with a small coterie of unidentifiable, copper-armored animals accompanying her.

  I whirl to face her and back my way against the wall.

  “Did he get through the door?” she continues, stalking slowly toward me, the animals behind her snuffling and growling, their armor clanging dully as they shift into what is undoubtedly attack position.