The Boy with the Hidden Name Read online

  I dimly hear Ben say something next to me.

  I turn to look at him. “What?” I shout.

  “We’re trapped!” he shouts back to me.

  I shake my head, mostly because I want to come up with something that will deny what looks to me like the inevitable conclusion that we’re trapped. Will had a plan. Didn’t he say that he had a plan? But Will is just staring at the waterfall like the rest of us.

  And then we hear the bells begin to chime, somehow louder than the water in front of us. Everyone out by the cliff looks to their left, and I look that way as well, edging closer to Ben without even realizing I’m doing it, until my hand curls into his.

  Confusion has erupted out by the edge of the cliff. Everyone is making a mad dash back to the safety of the tunnel, but Seelies have begun swooping into existence off to our left. They shine brightly in the gloom of the landscape, looking cold and triumphant, and my stomach sinks in horror. I am not sure what they will do, but I know it will not be pleasant.

  Trow is the first to gain the safety of the cave where Ben and I are standing, tugging Merrow in right after him. Kelsey stumbles just in front of Safford, tumbling to the ground. I utter a little cry, but Safford helps her up. The Erlking guards their escape, sword out as they run for the caves. I watch the Seelies gather, somehow growing taller and brighter, swooping toward them, and I feel Ben’s hand tighten on mine, tugging me back before I even realize I was trying to go to them.

  And then the Seelies collide midair with something invisible and fall to the ground. Will dashes by the Erlking, glancing behind himself at the contained Seelies. There, I think. That must have been Will’s plan. I have every confidence Will can block the Seelies and keep us safe.

  I turn away from the Seelies, viciously banging on the invisible wall, their faces contorted with murderous fury. Kelsey is limping, supported by Safford as they make their way to the cave, straggling behind Will, the Erlking bringing up the rear. I rush over to them even as Will sweeps his hand impatiently, a gesture that apparently has the effect of muffling the sound of the water so that we can hear.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Kelsey anxiously.

  “My ankle,” she says, wincing as Safford helps her to the ground. “I think I twisted it.”

  I look at her ankle, clearly already beginning to swell.

  “How long will it hold them?” I hear the Erlking ask from behind me.

  “Not long enough,” Will responds. “We have to put the plan in motion.”

  The Erlking says, “I’m still not sure that I—”

  “It’s nonnegotiable,” Will snaps at him.

  Something in me pricks in alarm, and I manage to turn from fussing over Kelsey to look at Will. I want to ask him exactly what this plan entails, but just then, Ben throws the box violently to the ground, startling all of us.

  “What the devil are you doing?” Will asks him in alarm.

  “I’m trying to break it open,” he responds, frowning at it when it remains intact. “We need to get into this box. How else are we going to get out of this?”

  “Stop it,” Will snaps. “Are you mad? You need whatever’s in that box intact, not smashed to smithereens.”

  “Do you have an idea, Will?” Ben shouts at him. “Because I would love to hear it. Your ingenious plan is only going to hold them for so long, and in the meantime, I need to get us out of here, and I can’t jump us from here, and one of us can’t run.” He sweeps an arm out toward Kelsey.

  Kelsey looks from Ben to me. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice small.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say to her. “Do not apologize. It’s my fault you’re here in the first place, and I have a key.” I say it in a rush as I suddenly remember. How had I not remembered before this?

  “What?” Ben says blankly.

  I rush from Kelsey to the box, fish the key out of my pocket, stick it into the lock…and nothing happens. I can’t turn it. I rattle it around in frustration. How can it not work? Everything I pick up always ends up working. How can the prophecy be failing me now?

  “I think Trow can help with the running at least,” says Merrow as I continue fiddling with the lock. “With the ankle. He’s…a caretaker.”

  I have no idea what she means by that, and I’m still too distracted by the key conundrum to care. Ben has dropped to his knees next to me, trying to help but really just interfering. Before anything else can happen, Will says, “I can take you off the map.”

  I don’t know what that means, but it gives Ben pause. He regards Will for a moment, and then he shakes his head. “No, you can’t.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “You can’t take all of us off the map when there are Seelies just outside. Stop talking nonsense. It would kill you,” Ben bites out and bats my hand away to try jerking at the key again.

  “Benedict Le Fay,” Will says, but he hasn’t named him, hasn’t said it with intent, because Ben doesn’t even glance up at him, wiggling the lock back and forth in an attempt to loosen it instead.

  “What?” he responds absently.

  “I’m sorry,” Will says.

  “For what? This isn’t your fault. Well, not entirely at least.”

  “For this,” Will says, and then he turns and runs.

  There is a moment of stunned reaction time, and then Ben leaps to his feet.

  “Wait,” Ben calls. “Will! Don’t—”

  The Erlking lunges at Ben suddenly, grabbing his arm. Kelsey gives a shriek of surprise. I am frozen, uncertain what I should be doing, if I should aid the Erlking or attack him. I can feel my hesitancy mirrored in Safford and Merrow and Trow, all of us staring, unsure.

  “What is happening?” I demand, thinking of what Ben just said, of how Will couldn’t do what he was going to do, how it would kill him. “What is he going to do?”

  Ben is squirming in an attempt to throw the Erlking’s hand off of him. “Let go of me,” he pleads. “Let go of me.”

  “I can’t.” The Erlking doesn’t sound unkind. He sounds, in fact, gentle, despite the fact that I can see his grip on Ben is iron. “I promised him I wouldn’t let you follow him.”

  “Why would you make that promise?” Ben demands of him, sounding horrified, and then he switches to fury. “If you don’t let me go this instant, Erlking of Goblinopolis, I’ll—”

  There is a noise like a thunderclap, and all of us jump. Then there is a furious, blinding flash of light. My eyes close involuntarily against the force of it, and when it fades away, the tunnel is completely silent except for Ben’s heaving breaths.

  I open my eyes. Ben is staring toward the opening of the tunnel. The Erlking has let go of him, but he’s not moving. The silence is total. The sheet of water has disappeared. There are no Seelie bells chiming.

  “What happened?” Merrow whispers. It seems like anything more than a whisper would be rude.

  The Erlking answers in a low voice. “He took us off the map.”

  “What does that mean?” Kelsey asks. Her voice is also quiet.

  Ben turns toward the Erlking abruptly. He is coiled with fury. “He asked you to stop me.”

  “Benedict—” the Erlking begins, hands raised in placation.

  “He was planning this!” Ben is shouting, and his voice echoes off the cavern around us.

  “He said he had a plan,” the Erlking begins in answer.

  “That? That? He called that a plan?” Ben demands. “He never said that was his plan!”

  “You wouldn’t have let him do it,” the Erlking says.

  “Of course I wouldn’t have let him do it! What are we going to do now?”

  The Erlking reaches underneath his cloak and produces a scroll of paper sealed in old-fashioned wax that he hands across to Ben.

  Ben takes the scroll but he doesn’t look at it. He stares at the Erlking for
a very long moment, and then he turns and marches out of the tunnel.

  I have an inkling of what’s happening, but I don’t want to be right. I want to be very, very wrong. “What’s going on?” I ask the Erlking angrily. “Where’s Will?”

  The Erlking hesitates and then says, “Do you know how a wizard harnesses a great deal of magic, all in one place, all in one time?”

  “No,” I retort. And then, just like that, I realize that that’s not true. I do know what a wizard has to do to do that. I watched Gussie do it when we were escaping Tir na nOg.

  “He does it,” the Erlking continues slowly, even though I now know exactly what’s coming, “by sacrificing himself.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Ben is sitting on the edge of the cliff. Next to him the scroll of paper, its wax seal broken, flutters slightly in the breeze. Ben stares across the chasm to the land on the other side, and he does not give any indication of knowing that I’m there.

  I don’t want to sit on the edge of the cliff, so I sit a little bit behind him and try to think of what to say. I look at the scroll of paper. I can just make out the first word on it, written in an old-fashioned, curly-cue handwriting. The word is Benedict, followed by a dash. It’s a letter, I think.

  “Do you know how I got involved in all of this?” Ben asks abruptly.

  It saves me the effort of coming up with something to say to him. “How?” I respond and watch him as he speaks, never taking his eyes off the horizon he’s looking at.

  “It involved water,” he says, his tone flat and dry. “It was the only way he could get me to stay still long enough to listen to him. So I listened to him. How he got me to trust him is another matter entirely. And I really should have known better. All this time, I’ve been trying to teach you not to be so trusting, and I’m the one all along who should have been taking the lessons.”

  Silence falls, and I try to come up with something to fill it. “Ben—”

  “Did you know about this?” he demands, turning swiftly to look at me.

  I shake my head and swallow and say, “Is he really dead?” I need someone to say it, bluntly, so I can process it.

  His eyes are the darkest gray I’ve ever seen them and as unreadable as they usually are. “That’s a very human term for it. But yes, a roughly accurate one.”

  I think of the first time I met Will, at the Salem Which Museum, and I think of how he had become, somehow, the ally I trust the most. Ben I’m in love with, and that can’t be helped, but Will made me feel safe, like no matter how volatile Ben and our relationship might be, I would have Will, and this whole prophecy would turn out okay, because there was Will. Will who knew more than me, who was a link to my aunts and the past of Boston, who knew more than any of us, it seemed, about what Boston had been designed to do. The absence of him is a cold hollow of dread inside of me, and I realize it must be thousands of times worse for Ben. Ben, I think, might not realize it, but Will was his friend.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, blinking my tears away to focus on Ben.

  “For what? You didn’t know this was going to happen.”

  “No, I’m sorry you lost him.”

  He looks away, back out to the horizon. “So am I,” he sighs. “I don’t really want to be in charge of this whole thing.”

  I pause. “I’m sorry you lost him because you liked him.”

  Ben doesn’t respond for a moment. He squints at the horizon and wrinkles his nose. “That,” he proclaims eventually, “is another very human thing to say.”

  And, I think, another roughly accurate one. I stand slowly and take a cautious step on the rocky, uneven ground, until I am standing next to him on the cliff. He looks up at me, watching as I take a deep breath and sit next to him, my legs dangling over the side into space. The height is dizzying, and I try not to think of it.

  “I don’t know what do next,” Ben says. “I’m hoping you do.”

  I take a deep breath. “We should get back to Boston. And we should fight. I’ll ask random people on the street for their birthdays again. That seemed to work last time.”

  Ben shakes his head and huffs out an amused sound that isn’t quite a chuckle. He looks around and says, “Well, we’re at Thingvellir. The only place in Iceland where I can jump us. And Will’s brought us here and bought us the time, so we’d better use it. Let’s get going.”

  He takes a deep breath then stands easily, offering me his hand to help me up. I brush the dust off of me and turn toward the cave, but Ben doesn’t move away from the edge of the cliff, and I turn back curiously.

  He stands where he is, looking out into the immeasurable distance, and he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts out into the countryside, his voice bouncing off rock and seemingly the sky itself, reverberating all around us. “I give you William Blaxton,” he shouts, “known as Blackstone, wizard and founder of the realm known as Parsymeon and eventually as Boston. Here shall the force of his magic be felt forevermore. So be it.” He sweeps his hands down sharply with the last proclamation, and a sudden gale sends me staggering a few steps in his direction. Leaves and twigs and even small pebbles swirl around us, and across from us, with a loud dramatic crack, a crevice appears in the cliff, from which water bubbles in a steady, trickling waterfall. The gale dies down, and we watch the flow of the water over the cliff opposite us.

  Ben nods, and he looks at me and smiles. He seems much better. His eyes are a clear, pale blue. “That was old magic,” he tells me. “Old wizard magic. Not my style at all. I’ve never even tried that before. Will, I think, would be very pleased with the result.”

  Because Ben looks so happy with it, I agree with him. “I think he would be too.”

  And I think, Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die. Nowhere did anyone ever mention the loss we’ve actually suffered. I wonder if it’s true, what everyone has been telling me, that my mother was lying. And even if she wasn’t, Will just sacrificed himself instead, to save Ben. It doesn’t seem to me outside the realm of possibility.

  We walk to the cave, Ben’s steps firm and purposeful.

  When we enter, everyone stops talking and looks at us expectantly.

  “We’re at Thingvellir,” Ben announces. “We can go.”

  “Back to Boston?” says Safford.

  “Yes. We’re going to drive the Seelies out of Parsymeon once and for all, and out of the Otherworld as well. I hear that it’s almost twelve o’clock.”

  CHAPTER 22

  A moment of silence follows Ben’s announcement.

  Kelsey is the one who breaks it, saying, “I’m going to need a bit of help.” She gestures to her ankle.

  Ben frowns at it.

  “Can you fix it?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “Not my kind of magic, unfortunately.”

  “Right,” says Merrow. “But it is Trow’s.”

  Ben looks at him in surprise. “Are you a caretaker?”

  Trow looks uncertain. “That’s what they say, but I…Look, I’m not magic.”

  “You’re a fay,” Ben says. “You must be magic.”

  “Right, but…I don’t know. What they seem to tell me is magic is just something that kind of…happens. I don’t feel like I’m doing magic.”

  I think of my naming magic, and how I never really had to know what to do—I just did it. “It just comes to you,” I say at the same time as Merrow says the exact same thing. We look at each other for a moment of pleased solidarity.

  Merrow turns to Trow. “At least try,” she says.

  “Um,” says Kelsey nervously. “Don’t you think that I should have a say? I mean, no offense, but you don’t know what you’re doing. What happens if you do it wrong?”

  “I have no idea,” says Trow.

  “Comforting,” says Kelsey after a beat.

  “Look,” sighs Ben, “I don’t mean to b
e practical here, because it’s not really my forte, but Will’s sacrifice is only going to help for so long, and then we’ll be back on the map and the Seelies will find us in a pig’s whisper. If you’re going to do it, do it now.”

  Kelsey licks her lips. Her breaths are labored and her face is white with pain. “Do it,” she commands. “Before I change my mind.”

  “Just kind of let it happen,” Merrow tells Trow and squeezes his hand comfortingly. “Like you did when I burned my hand in Roger Williams’s kitchen.”

  No, seriously, I think. What are our lives?

  Trow kind of looks very hard at Kelsey.

  Kelsey gasps, and for a moment I’m worried that Trow has actually made everything much worse, but then Kelsey says in surprise, “Oh,” and she doesn’t sound like she’s in any pain at all. Her ankle, in fact, looks back to normal. She moves it around experimentally.

  Then she looks at Trow in shock. “That was amazing.”

  I am looking at him in shock too. “That was fantastic!” His talent seems a lot better than my naming nonsense at the moment.

  “Yes, yes, it’s caretaker magic,” grumbles Ben. “It’s pretty standard in the Otherworld.”

  “Not unique and showy,” says the Erlking, deadpan, “the way a traveler is.”

  Ben glowers and says, “We’ll meet you back in Boston? We’re going to need your army.”

  “It has been at your disposal.” The Erlking bows low with a dramatic sweep of his cape. “I’ll meet you in Boston. I take it you won’t be obscuring yourself?”

  “I do not intend on keeping a low profile,” Ben says. “Hold hands, everyone. Stay together. Next stop Boston.”

  The next thing I know, we’re all crowded in a dark, cold, damp cement room.

  “Where are we?” Kelsey asks.

  “Where did I say we were going?” responds Ben. “It’s Boston.”

  “It’s not Beacon Hill,” I point out. In fact, I have no idea where we are.

  “I wasn’t aiming for Beacon Hill,” Ben replies darkly. He is regarding a chained door in front of us. Warning, reads a sign on the door. Alarm will sound.