The Boy with the Hidden Name: Otherworld Book Two Page 19

  “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.

  “That’s a fire exit door,” Kelsey tells him.

  “I know.”

  “An alarm’s going to go off.”

  “Let it,” he says, sounding satisfied at the prospect. “I want every bell in Boston ringing.” Ben flings out his arm, an appropriately dramatic gesture, and the door flies open in front of us.

  Bells begin to clang, loud and insistent, but they are high-pitched enough that they don’t have any effect on me. We are standing at the top of a staircase, and Ben descends it. I follow close behind him, and when we reach the bottom, I realize that we’re at the end of the Red Line platform in Park Street, where the fire exit staircase is located. Chaos is reigning. People are hastily trying to get off the platform, assuming there’s some kind of emergency.

  Ben leads us through the melee of the station until we get aboveground.

  “Was that really necessary?” I ask him.

  “I told you I wasn’t keeping a low profile,” he replies, not pausing as he strides through the Common toward my house. “We’re here. I want them to come and get us.”

  “Is that a good idea?” I ask. “To taunt them?”

  “Yes, actually,” Safford replies from behind us. “They’re not terribly rational beings, and they’ll be even less so incensed like this.”

  “And it’s almost twelve o’clock anyway,” Ben says and gestures to the clock on the bell tower of Park Street Church. Ominously, it reads 11:59.

  The half-light seems a bit brighter than it had been before. The lavender windowpanes at my house are picking up the brightening rays. And the air seems thinner, much easier to breathe.

  Kelsey says, “It’s almost like the sun is trying to come out. Are we fighting back?”

  “No, they’re just getting closer,” Ben says grimly. “This is enchanted air. Can’t you feel it? They’ll strangle us slowly, the way they do in Tir na nOg.”

  I remember how I didn’t even know I wasn’t breathing right in Tir na nOg until the moment we cleared the prison walls and Ben told me to take a deep breath. He’s right that the air in Boston feels startlingly similar to that right now.

  My aunts must have sensed our return, because they open the door for us as soon as we cross Beacon Street, and they fall upon me in tight hugs.

  “Did you find the other fay?”

  “No.” Ben looks disdainfully at the box, which Safford has been carting around. “We got that.”

  Aunt True has been looking around and says suddenly, “But where’s Will?”

  There is a moment of silence. I remember it then, that my aunt and Will had a history from long ago. I look at her and say gently, “Aunt True…” I don’t know what to say next.

  Aunt True, her eyes wide with horror, shrinks away from me, stumbling. “No,” she whispers. “No. It can’t be.”

  “He did it to take us off the map,” Ben says solemnly. “It was—”

  “Noble,” Aunt Virtue finishes, putting an arm around Aunt True to comfort her. “He saved our Selkie for us. You see? As he always promised us he would. He kept his promise in the end.”

  “How can there…how can there be a Boston without Will? He was here before us. I thought he would be here after us.” Aunt True looks stricken.

  “Something tells me it won’t be the last thing to change about Boston before this is all over,” says Ben grimly, going to look out the window.

  Not helping, I think at him furiously and join Aunt Virtue in hugging Aunt True, who is weeping softly.

  “First Etherington,” she is saying, “and now Will…”

  “Dad’s not dead,” I insist. I feel everyone look at me, but it’s Ben I look back at in challenge. “He’s not!”

  “Have you heard any news?” Ben asks after a moment of silence.

  “Just the clock ticking,” Aunt Virtue answers, still comforting Aunt True with one arm around her shoulders while with the other arm, she gestures at the grandfather clock on the landing. I glance at it. 11:59, just like the Park Street Church clock. “The bells have already begun chiming. We have heard reports. Every non-Seelie enchantment in this world is dying.”

  “What are we going to do next?” Aunt True sniffles.

  Ben looks at Merrow. “What does the prophecy say?”

  “It doesn’t say anything,” Merrow says, sounding miserable. “It said to go to Iceland. I thought that would help.”

  We all look at the box, still stubbornly closed.

  “Maybe we got the wrong thing,” says Safford.

  “Maybe we need all four of us to open it,” I say. “And we’ve only got three.”

  There’s a moment of silence.

  “I guess I’ll go outside and start asking people for their birthdays,” I decide.

  And then there’s a knock on the door.

  We look at it, and then I swallow and move forward and peer through the window on the side of the door. As if the Seelies, if they showed up, were going to knock. The Erlking. I open the door for him.

  He steps in and says, “Benedict,” and then pauses.

  Ben looks at him questioningly.

  “Can you…” The Erlking pauses again. Whatever he’s about to say, it’s paining him to say it. “Can you hide names?”

  “No,” Ben replies, a bit sourly. “My mother could, but I don’t know how.”

  “Ah,” says the Erlking and nods.

  “I could obscure them,” Ben offers. “Maybe. For a bit.”

  There is a moment of stilted silence. I look between the two of them. “That would be helpful. If you could. If we could dilute the power of the Seelies’ words, just for a little while. Otherwise it’s going to be a slaughter.”

  “I can do it,” says Ben. “Although I need to know the names to cast the enchantment. And it would only be temporary. It would be like wrapping the name up in a bow. They’d need to rip through the ribbon before they could do the naming, but they’d do it.”

  “Any time you can give us at all,” the Erlking insists. He pauses and then says, “It’s Kainen.”

  I’m surprised. I look at Ben, who also looks surprised, but he nods and says, “Right. Done. What about the rest of your army?”

  “Could you come?”

  Ben looks at all of us.

  “Go,” I tell him. “All I’m going to do is ask people on the street.”

  ***

  We have one minute left, but luckily the length of a minute depends on the time you’re keeping, so I am able to stand outside with Kelsey and Merrow and Trow and Safford and canvass up and down the street, asking people’s birthdays. My aunts stay in the house, “fortifying,” although I don’t especially know what that means. I wonder if they are offering to help out the gnomes they’ve been fighting with my whole life, if perhaps having a greater enemy in common will help finally forge an alliance.

  I hope they’re having success “fortifying,” because we get nowhere.

  Kelsey and I end up pausing together. I look out over Boston Common and think how this is so weird: it could be any other day, except it’s not.

  “How’s your ankle?” I ask.

  “Good as new, actually. That was some amazing magic.”

  “I wish I had magic that useful,” I say. I wonder if he’ll be able to heal some of our casualties in the battle. What sort of casualties will they be? Will there be blood? Will there be weapons?

  “You’ve got pretty useful magic. Well, it seems that way to me anyway.” Kelsey pauses. “Wait, what’s your magic again?”

  She is saying it to tease me. I pretend to laugh for her sake and say, “Stop it. I can name people.”

  “Well, that’s apparently terrifying if you’r
e an Otherworld creature, right?”

  “Apparently. I don’t know what good it’s going to do me though. I don’t know any of the Seelie names. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I pause. “I guess I can heal a bit by giving people my name, but I don’t know how much good that will do. Have you gotten in touch with your mother?”

  Kelsey shakes her head. “Not picking up. I left her another message.”

  I think of my father and wonder. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “None of us are okay, right? What happens if the Seelies win here?”

  “I have no idea,” I admit.

  “Will it be the end of the world? Or just the end of Boston? Or will Boston even notice that all of its supernatural inhabitants are suddenly going to disappear? I mean, are you going to disappear? I would have noticed if you disappeared.”

  “Not if they make you forget I ever existed,” I point out and try to sound frank and matter-of-fact about all of this.

  “Hi,” Merrow says, pausing by us. “No luck?”

  Kelsey and I shake our heads.

  Then I say, because this person has dropped into our lives out of nowhere and we’re somehow connected and we might all be dead in a few minutes or hours or days, depending on the time you’re keeping, and I don’t know anything about her, “Do you live here?”

  She shakes her head. “Rhode Island. Me and Trow.”

  “Oh, right,” I realize. “Roger Williams makes sense then. When did you find out you were a fay?”

  “Yesterday. Or decades ago. It’s weird. It’s like I can’t tell.”

  “I know exactly how you feel.”

  Merrow looks at me and gives me a hesitant smile. “What’s your magic?” she asks.

  “Naming.”

  “Be happy it’s not telling the future. I feel like none of it is ever anything good. I’d like to have a vision of something good, you know? Like me in my wedding dress or something. But no. I get to have a vision of some random thing in Iceland. And then, after that, nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I ask.

  Merrow looks at me.

  “Does that mean we lose?” asks Kelsey after a moment.

  Merrow doesn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 23

  Ben looks tired when he comes back from casting enchantments over the army and meets us on the street. We’ve scattered again, back to asking for birthdays.

  I just shake my head at him. He walks up the front steps, pokes his head in the front door, then comes out and sits on the stoop.

  “Still 11:59,” he says in answer to my querying glance.

  “Will it just stay like that forever?” I ask, frustrated.

  Ben sighs and leans back on his elbows. “They’re toying with us. They love to toy.”

  I look down the street, waiting for a pedestrian that Merrow, Trow, Kelsey, and Safford haven’t cornered yet. “How did the army thing go?” I ask awkwardly.

  “Fine,” he says, which I think is a silly answer considering our topic of conversation, but then I guess my question was a silly question to start with.

  It’s getting brighter out. I could almost use sunglasses. I wonder if anyone is commenting on the weird weather. Then again, Boston is prone to weird weather.

  I look back at Ben. His eyes are closed. “We need the other fay, don’t we? To even have a chance.”

  Ben doesn’t answer. He takes a deep breath.

  “You’re tired,” I say.

  “A lot of energy expended just now. And the air is thin. I’ll be fine. Just getting my bearings.”

  I look at him and think of how I’ve helped to recharge him before, so I go and sit next to him and slide my hand into his. He opens his eyes in surprise, and there is a moment when we look directly at each other. I am waiting for him to ask me a question, and I don’t know what the question is going to be or how I’m going to answer it. But then he just closes his eyes again.

  “You can say my name if you want,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Not just yet. We’ll save it for something bigger. I don’t want to dilute it. I wish Will were here, just so I could have you name him.” Ben opens his eyes and looks at me. “I’m sorry, you know,” he says. His eyes are dark and heavy and sad. “For leaving you on the Common that day. I’m just…sorry. You’ve always taken me by such surprise, and I’ve always behaved so poorly in response.”

  I hold my breath, lick my lips, and say, “Ben.” Then I don’t know what else to say.

  “I really am so sorry, Selkie,” he says. “For everything.”

  “Don’t talk like it’s over,” I tell him, because I realize suddenly what he’s doing. “Don’t tell me good-bye.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” he says, his voice urgent. He sits up and lifts his free hand. He pushes my hair behind my ear and leaves his hand on my cheek in a caress, and I am furious that he would do this now.

  “We have to beat them. We have to win.”

  Ben shakes his head a little bit and closes his eyes.

  “Ben. Listen to me.” I lean over him a bit more, getting myself closer to him, as if with proximity I can convince him of what I’m saying, even though his eyes aren’t even open. “How can we fight? We don’t know their names, so we can’t name them, so tell me what else we can do.”

  “I don’t know,” Ben groans. “We don’t know the right words.”

  “What does that mean?” I demand.

  “There’s power. In words. If we could find the right ones, the right combination…That’s why the Seelies don’t write things down—they don’t want to capture the power in the words. If we could find the right words, the right story to tell, then maybe…But the fourth fay must be the key, because otherwise I’ve no idea what…” Ben opens his eyes, realizes for the first time exactly how close to him I am.

  “The right story to tell,” I echo him. “We need to rewrite the story.”

  “I guess,” he says, “that would be one way of putting it.”

  “It’s what Merrow said her mother said to do. Rewrite the story. It’s what you’re saying to do too. Find the right story.”

  “Words have power. You know that. But the right story involved four fays, and I don’t know what you’re going to do without them.”

  And then Park Street Church starts chiming the hour, the grandfather clock in the house echoing it.

  One, two, three, go the chimes, and Merrow, Trow, Safford, and Kelsey all leave off talking to the pedestrians and instinctively hurry back toward where Ben and I are sitting on the steps of the house.

  Four, five, six, go the chimes, and Ben draws his hand out of mine and stands warily. I follow suit.

  Seven, eight, nine, go the chimes, and we are all looking around us, waiting for something to happen.

  Ten, eleven, twelve.

  CHAPTER 24

  There is a sharp, resounding crack, and Seelies tumble headlong from the sky over the Common. On the sidewalk, people have stopped to look. The cars on Beacon Street have slowed to a crawl, as their drivers are clearly gaping at the supernatural hole that has opened up over their heads.

  “They need to keep moving,” Ben says. “Why don’t they keep moving?”

  “Because do you see that?” says Trow, pointing at the hole in the sky.

  “That’s exactly why they should keep moving. Humans.” Ben takes a step forward, as if to prosaically direct the traffic away from the Seelies, just as a howling noise starts up.

  “What’s that?” Kelsey asks.

  “Wind,” answers Ben, as if there can be nothing worse than that.

  It’s frequently windy in Boston, so I don’t know what to make of that.

  Ben shouts at everyone around us, “Run! Run for your lives!”

  The people on the sidewalk look at him in curious puzzlement.

&
nbsp; And then the wind slams into us. It’s so strong that, for a moment, I think an actual enormous hand has reached out and slapped me backward, up against the front door, holding me in place. But it’s just the wind, so forceful that I can barely breathe.

  It ends just as suddenly as it started, and I flop unceremoniously to the top step of the stoop without the wind there to hold me up. There is a moment of complete silence, because none of us had been able to get up enough breath to scream or utter any noise at all. And then noise rushes in—the people on the street screaming and shouting, children wailing.

  I stagger to my feet and take stock of everyone else. Breathless but basically okay. My head is buzzing a little bit from where I knocked it hard against the wall, but I can push through that.

  “Everyone okay?” asks Trow, looking around at us, and I have this thought about him being a natural caretaker.

  Ben has recovered. “Go!” he is shouting at the panicked people in the street. “Get out! Move!” And then he turns back to us and says hastily, “Get in the house. It’s safest there. Don’t move.” And then he leaps lightly down into the street, toward the Seelies assembling on the Common.

  Like hell I’m going in the house while he runs out into battle. Traffic has thronged around a car accident, and people are abandoning their cars. I don’t see the Seelies anymore, which is terrifying to me. Weren’t they just tumbling out of the sky? I can’t even hear any bells chiming. Did they just blow a wind and leave? It seems unlikely, but I don’t know what else to think.

  “Go, go, go!” Ben is shouting at people as he darts among the cars, opening doors and pulling people out of them.

  Everyone looks shocked, like they don’t know what to make of him, and I don’t blame them. But I understand what he’s trying to do. Wherever the Seelies are, they haven’t gone forever. They’re going to come back. All they’ve done so far is blow a little wind, but I am sure they can do much worse.

  So I run out into the street, following his lead, urging people along, off the street. “Where are we sending them to?” I shout to Ben.

  “What are you doing out here?” he snaps at me, and then he is off, trying to turn some cars around that have joined the melee.