The Boy with the Hidden Name: Otherworld Book Two Read online

  I don’t. I have no idea. Ben did something, that’s all I know. Something that frightened Will. Something he wouldn’t tell me.

  My mother keeps her eyes on me. “Why don’t you tell her, Benedict?”

  Ben doesn’t tell me. Ben, with a gasp, slides to the floor. I take my eyes off of my mother’s to stare at him in horror.

  “Ah,” she says. “He’s not really in a state to tell you. I’ll tell you for him. He used the power of his hidden name to save you, Selkie. He can’t keep it hidden anymore.”

  My eyes flicker between my mother and Ben. His head is tipped against the stone of the bottom of the archway behind him. It’s true. I know that it’s true.

  “So,” says my mother. “Choose.”

  I stare at Ben, who is not looking back at me. I feel the weight of my father beside me. My mind whirls with the impossibility of the choice.

  Then Ben, with an effort that is tangible even from several paces away from him, which I am, lifts his head and looks at me. “This is what I am trying to tell you,” he says distinctly, forming the words carefully. “Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die.” He gives me a meaningful look.

  I’m actually angry with him. What use is that? Repeating the prophecy back at me? He thinks that’s helpful? He—the prophecy. It dawns on me suddenly, the way it must have dawned on Ben. It’s our prophecy, his death. It’s not my mother’s prophecy, not the prophecy of the fay staying on Avalon. It’s the prophecy where the four fays are victorious. If I let my mother name Ben, then maybe I can get our prophecy back on track. Maybe we can win, without sacrificing my father.

  But at the price of Ben.

  I stare at Ben, processing this. He seems to realize I’ve understood, because he nods almost imperceptibly and leans his head back against the wall behind him, closing his eyes. This isn’t better, I think at him furiously. I had never wanted that part of the prophecy to come true. I had wanted to change that part of the prophecy. And now I find that, all along, I was going to be the one who fulfilled it.

  But I recognize that I am powerless. If my mother is going to force me to make this choice, I want to make the one that will end up destroying her. And I know that Ben would want that too. And this way I can save my father, which I cannot do if I just walk away from Avalon myself. Otherwise, I will end up killing both of them.

  I gather myself, the power of the fury within me, and look at my mother. “Name Ben,” I say firmly. “Do it.”

  My mother considers me for a moment. “I genuinely did not know which you would choose. Interesting.”

  Ben’s mother speaks suddenly from where she is staring at the heap of him against the stone wall. “Have you ever read the prophecy?” she asks, and I don’t know who she’s talking to.

  My mother is the one who answers her. “What? What do you mean?”

  “The prophecy is both clear and vague. There is always a Le Fay in the prophecy. But the prophecy does not say which Le Fay. Did you know that, Benedict?”

  Ben has lifted his head again and is regarding his mother curiously. “I did,” he admits after a moment.

  “So Will told you, did he? He chose you. He wanted you. I volunteered, you know. I was willing to do it. But Will wanted you. You, he said, would be so very strong. The strongest of the Le Fays. He was right. And I don’t think you even understand why.”

  Ben looks extremely confused. “I…” he says.

  “What are you doing? What are you talking about?” snaps my mother.

  Ben’s mother raises a hand, and my mother freezes in place, unable to move. Her lips move soundlessly, ranting and raving, I can see the fury in what she’s saying.

  Ben’s mother looks at her scornfully. “So arrogant, all this time. You’ve always thought you could control the Le Fay power to your own ends. And that has never been true. Never trust a faerie.”

  His mother turns back to Ben, who is absolutely gaping at her. “It is our joint enchantment, Benedict, your hidden name. You never realized that, did you? I sealed it for you, years ago, with the power that Will told me you would have, the power which carries the strongest of enchantments. We Le Fays have always been susceptible to it.” Her voice is trembling with emotion. I dart my gaze between Ben and his mother, unsure what is going on. Ben looks incredulous, astonished. “My darling boy,” she says, her voice actually breaking on it. “The prophecy is that a Le Fay is to die here today.”

  Ben’s mother tosses something across to him, something he catches reflexively. He stares down at it for a moment of complete and utter silence. Then he gapes over at his mother, who smiles at him—not an anti-smile, but a sweet, adoring smile.

  Then my mother shrieks, “What is that? What have you done?”

  Ben’s mother looks back at her. “Ah, starting to shake it off, I see.” She turns back to Ben. “Well, waste no time. You were slow enough with the curse that it was a much closer call than it ought to have been. Try to avoid the same mistake twice, my dear.”

  Ben springs into action with an energy that I can tell startles all of us. He skids into my father and me. “Hold your father’s hand,” he gasps at me. “Don’t let go of it.”

  “Ben, what—”

  “Kiss me,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” I answer without hesitation. Because it’s true. I can’t help it. I do. And it takes that moment, that split-second decision in a castle in Avalon, after all of the other agonizing decisions I’ve had to make today, to make it so abruptly, blindingly true to me.

  “Good. Hold your father’s hand, and kiss me.”

  I do. I let Benedict Le Fay kiss me into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 28

  When I say I let him kiss me into oblivion, that is not just a figure of speech. I kiss him, and the world seems to explode around us, lightning bright. His hands close into my hair, clench into fists, and he kisses me like I am the only thing left in the universe. For a second there, I think that maybe I am.

  We are still kissing when we collide, hard, with something that knocks us apart. My hand still clinging to my father’s, I look up into a sky of roiling gray clouds. There is a moment of silence so complete all around me that I think it’s possible I went deaf. Then the sound rushes up and captures me, a cacophony of shouting and pounding and clanging and more shouting.

  I sit up. We are in the middle of the Common, with the battle raging all around us. The light is uncertain, diamond bright and then pitch-black. It is dizzying and disorienting.

  The Erlking comes running past, sword drawn, then stops and backtracks, frowning at us. “How many times do I have to get you troublesome fays off the field of battle?”

  An arrow lands beside me before I can answer, a bit too close for comfort, quivering with the force of its landing.

  Someone grabs my hand. Ben, with the blanket shrugged off one shoulder. “The battle’s going to turn,” he says to the Erlking. “Night’s going to fall. Have your army ready.”

  “How do you know that?” the Erlking asks and slides his eyes up and down Ben. “And what are you wearing? Or…not wearing?”

  “Would you turn off your seductive superpower?” Ben responds impatiently. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s go,” he says to me.

  I take Ben’s hand, letting him pull me up, and I pull my father up beside me.

  “Did we get the prophecy back on track?” I ask as he pulls me up the Common in a mad dash.

  “Yes, and I know who the fourth fay is.”

  “What?” I want to ask more questions, but we reach Beacon Street, which is a rutted mess of towering crags of pavement and deep valleys at the bottom of which sit destroyed cars. And sometimes people. I look away, swallowing back nausea.

  Ben says under his breath, “Oh, I haven’t got time for this,” and just like that,
we are on my front step.

  I stare at him in astonishment. “You were just a mess,” I point out, because he had just been a crumpled heap on Avalon. “And how do you know who the fourth fay is?”

  “Because my mother gave it to me. She gave me all of it.” He pats his pocket, where he’s put whatever it was his mother threw to him. Then he touches the front door of my house, which opens for him.

  Everyone piles into the doorway to the living room, staring at us.

  And then all hell breaks loose. Kelsey flings herself onto me, while Merrow and Trow and Safford all start exclaiming.

  “What happened?” Kelsey demands.

  “It’s a long story,” I manage.

  “And you.” She turns to Ben and shoves him.

  Ben hadn’t been paying attention to her, so she catches him entirely by surprise, staggering him. “Ow,” he says and rubs at his shoulder.

  “You can’t just run off and not tell any of us what you’re doing,” Kelsey snaps. “You scared us. Both of you.”

  Ben looks confused, and I can tell the idea he would be worried about never even crossed his mind. “I…oh,” he says and crinkles his nose as if this is too much to deal with.

  “And what are you wearing?” she demands after a second.

  “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. Where’s the box?”

  Merrow is looking at us curiously. “It’s here in the living room.” She turns to me. “You came back from Avalon.”

  “That was the wrong prophecy,” I tell her. “That’s not the prophecy I want to succeed. We have to win.”

  “But we need the fourth fay, don’t we?” asks Aunt Virtue, sounding confused.

  I hug both of my aunts on my way into the living room.

  “Ben knows who it is,” I say and then turn to Ben, who has dragged the box out into the center of the room. “What do we have to do to get him? Or her, I guess?”

  “We have to do this. Kelpie.”

  Kelsey utters a little cry, wheeling backward. My eyes widen in surprise, and I start to demand what Ben’s done to her, and then it hits me.

  I turn to him in shock. “Wait. What?”

  “Fourth fay.” Ben points to her. “Hidden. Hidden so deep that her name was hidden. A special talent my mother’s perfected. But what did she tell you, my mother? She gave us the clue all along. You have a habit of collecting the most important things you need. And you collected Kelsey.”

  “You’re insane,” Kelsey tells him. “I’m not a fay. Selkie, tell him. I haven’t been able to do anything this whole time.”

  “Kelpie,” he says again, and Kelsey cries out in pain again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m naming you.”

  “Yeah, stop it.” I frown at him.

  “Selkie, I wouldn’t be able to name her if she wasn’t a fay. She’s a fay. And now the four of you need to open this box and see what’s inside it.”

  “But I don’t have a secret power like—”

  “You do,” I realize suddenly. “Your secret power is being here.” I kept saying that we should step onto the street and ask the birthdays of random people. I should have started with Kelsey. Because it sweeps over me suddenly, and I should have seen it so much sooner: I don’t know when her birthday is. “Kelsey,” I say. “When is your birthday?”

  “It’s March 21,” she answers readily, and then her mouth drops open.

  “Exactly,” I say smugly. Then I take the key out of my pocket, go over to the box, and insert it in the lock.

  “All of you, help me.” Trow, Merrow, Kelsey, and I all grab the key. It turns easily, as if it hadn’t given us all sorts of trouble in Iceland. And we’d had the four fays all along. If only we’d known, if only we’d realized, if only we’d said the right words then, Will would never have had to—

  I don’t let myself finish the thought. We have no time to get caught up in what-ifs right now. We haven’t had time in a while.

  Time to find out what this all-important thing we sacrificed Will to get actually is.

  We open the box.

  And pull out four old books, the leather binding them cracking with age. Each of them has a symbol stamped on it in flaking gold: a snowflake, a sun, a leaf, and a flower.

  I hand them out, corresponding to our season, and then I flip mine open. Nothing. Completely blank.

  “Because we have to rewrite the story,” Merrow says.

  I think of my mother on Avalon. Your story is the most important thing. My story, I think. The stories we tell. The words we use.

  “We have to tell our stories,” I hear myself say. “Words have power. They’re the most powerful things—it’s why Seelies don’t allow histories to be written down. We need to use our words to tell our stories.” And I suddenly realize that everyone has been telling me this all along. I didn’t need any special powers. What I needed was just to be me. That was what I needed.

  And then the windows blow in, the lavender windowpanes exploding all over us.

  There is an entire Seelie army outside my house, and for a moment, we all look at each other, and then chaos happens.

  “Get them out, get them out, get them out!” Safford shouts, and for a moment, I think he is talking about the Seelies, but then I realize he’s talking about us. The fays.

  “Upstairs!” Ben shouts at me as one of the Seelies must name him, because he doubles over in pain.

  “We can hold them off!” Safford gives me a shove. “Get up the stairs and write your stories.”

  I try to protest, and then Safford, right in front of me, fades into dust.

  I scream. I can’t help it.

  Someone names me, one of the Seelies, because I feel the pain, but it feels like it is far away, because I am covered in the dust that was Safford, who ferried me across Mag Mell when this whole journey was still so new. Safford, who tagged along because he was expendable, and because he wanted, so badly, for us to defeat the Seelies.

  Ben shoves at me, and I turn and run up the stairs, pulling Kelsey in my wake, Merrow and Trow on our heels. We pile into my bedroom, and I slam the door shut and lock it.

  “Are you really locking the door?” Trow exclaims, as down below us I hear what is unmistakably my aunts screaming. “You think that’s going to stop them?”

  I don’t let myself think about the war going on downstairs. Ben has all of his mother’s power apparently, and he’ll hold them off as long as he can, and we need to write our stories. We need to fix this.

  “Write,” Merrow commands Trow. “We need to rewrite the story. Just like my mom said, remember?”

  “Write our stories,” I say. “The story we want. We can fix this. We need to find the words.”

  I find pens on my desk, throw some to everyone else, and I sit on my bed. For the first time since this whole thing started, I know exactly what to do. Because now that I have to write my story, I know exactly where it begins.

  One day my father walked into his Back Bay apartment to find a blond woman asleep on his couch.

  CHAPTER 29

  When spring comes to Boston, the populace always seems dazed. They wander out to the greening spaces, as if they can’t quite figure out what happened. Where did the snow go? Where did the sun come from? What is this strange sweetness in the air?

  The seasons shift and tumble, and we never question it. We wake up one day and the world is different, the day is longer or the night is shorter, and we move forward, until the time when the day is shorter or the night is longer. It is its own kind of magic, the march of time in this fashion.

  I notice it now because, for me, spring really does come out of nowhere, even more than it usually does. One minute I am writing down my story in my bedroom while underneath me a war rages, and the next minute the clock on the landing is chiming one o’clock and I am wa
king from a doze. My aunts are hunting for gnomes in the conservatory and pretend not to know what I’m talking about when I ask what happened. I know they are pretending, and I know they think this is what they should do, that maybe everything will go back to normal if they don’t acknowledge everything that happened. This is the special talent of my ogre aunts, I think: the ability to only recognize the reality they want. And frustrating as it is, I am so relieved to have them back that I can’t help but love them for it.

  And in this world I have wakened into, it is spring.

  I stand with the door open, looking out at the traffic on Beacon Street. The street is paved smooth. In fact, it is smoother than I have ever seen it, clear of potholes. There are tourists taking photos of the lavender windowpanes in my house, and there are besuited businesspeople hurrying past. I think that one of them, a particularly attractive one, pauses and salutes at me, a funny little half wave, half bow. I blink at him.

  “Selkie,” a voice calls to me from the staircase, and I turn away from the doorway.

  “Dad,” I say in shock, because there he is, looking wonderful, descending the staircase toward me. “You’re here!”

  “Of course I’m here,” he tells me. “Where else would I be?” He hugs me, and he whispers in my ear, “Well done.”

  “But what happened?” I ask, bewildered.

  He draws back a bit and cups his hand onto my cheek. “We won,” he answers simply. “Thank you. Now.” He drops his hand. “Your aunts are going to pretend nothing ever happened. We can let them do that. In the meantime, Arawn and I are going for a drink.”

  “Who?” I turn as my father walks past me, pausing by the open doorway to pull a bowler hat off the coat stand by the door. That bowler hat has always been on that coat stand. I have never seen anyone wear it before. I never even thought about the fact that it must have been my father’s. Just the sight of him in it makes me want to cry.