The Boy with the Hidden Name (8 page)

waist and lifts me as if I weigh nothing. I make a noise of sur-

prise and, after a bit of inelegant scrambling, manage to get

myself onto the horse behind the Erlking, which requires me

basically to sit on his cape. I wonder if he’s going to be upset about that and decide not to mention it.

“Let’s go,” he says. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we

get this over with. The clock is ticking.”

“What time is it now?” I ask.

“11:12.”

“We’ve only lost another minute?” I say, surprised.

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“The Seelies must be having trouble with the Boston

enchantments. We did do a few things right all those years

ago, eh, Will?”

“It was only a few minutes ago, Kainen, wasn’t it?”

replies Will.

The Erlking urges the horse forward, and I immediately

wrap my arms around his waist to keep from falling back-

ward. We move forward at a slow, ambling walk. I’m torn

between wishing we were moving a little faster and being ter-

rified of falling off.

Everyone is silent. The Erlking’s mood doesn’t seem to wel-

come small talk. For a little while, we wend through the streets of Goblinopolis, keeping next to the river, and the people all

seem to recognize their king and gape at us as we pass before

remembering to bow low and deep. The Erlking doesn’t

acknowledge any of this, and we just keep plodding forward.

The outer limit of the city is marked by a flat wooden

bridge over a bend in the river, very unlike the light and

elaborate bridge leading to the palace, and there is a gate-

house at the end of it. A goblin dressed a little like one of

the Three Musketeers sweeps his hat off his head and bows

graciously to us as we pass, and then, almost immediately, the

world becomes dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, until we

are moving through a darkness so black that it matches the

Erlking’s cloak, the lights of Goblinopolis well behind us. In

fact, the only way I know he is there is because I have my arms

around him. I cannot see him at all. Nor can I see anyone else

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in our party, although I can hear the hooves of their horses

and the rhythm of their breaths. The darkness closes in all

around, making me feel claustrophobic, and I realize now

why cave horses don’t need eyes: what would they look at?

“Can’t we create some sort of light or something?” I ask

finally, when I can bear it no longer. It seems to me that we

have been walking through pitch blackness for hours, and I

am beginning to hear sounds at the edge of my conscious-

ness. The dark keeps pressing in on us from all sides.

“You’re better off not seeing,” the Erlking replies, which is

not very comforting.

It
is
comforting to hear someone else’s voice in this intense world of night, and to keep him talking and because I genuinely mean it, I say, “Thank you for this. For helping.”

“I haven’t much of a choice,” he responds, sounding grim.

Maybe it’s not the best time to try to talk to the Erlking,

I decide.

“Close your eyes,” he says to me after a long moment of

silence, and he sounds a bit softer. “It won’t bother you as

much if you close your eyes.”

I do as he suggests, and he’s right— the darkness is much

more bearable when I’m not trying to see through it.

x

I fall asleep. Probably not surprising, since it’s been a while

since I’ve slept and the world around me is so dark and the

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rocking of the horse and the warm velvet of the Erlking’s

cloak are comforting. I wake up when the rocking stops. The

Erlking has drawn our horse to a halt, and he is sitting up

straighter in the saddle. There is an alertness to him, almost

a quivering, and I get the sense that he is listening to some-

thing I can’t hear.

“We stop here,” he decides at last.

“Stop?” I echo, alarmed. “We don’t have time to stop.”

“We have plenty of time,” the Erlking replies. “It was barely

a quarter after the hour.”

“But…stop
here
?” I can’t help but say. I don’t want to stop here. I want to get out of this eternal darkness.

“It’s nighttime,” he tells me.

“It’s been nighttime for hours.”

“No, it hasn’t. You overworld creatures are really appalling

at telling time underground. Go on, hop off the horse.”

“I can’t see the ground,” I tell him. “I’m not hopping off

this horse until I can see the ground and I can verify that

there are no rats on it.”

“You’re quite troublesome,” the Erlking sighs.

“She’s half ogre,” Will explains, and then there is light. It’s

probably not very bright, but it’s so dazzling after the dark-

ness that I squint and the Erlking throws up one hand to

shield his eyes from it. It is an orb of light, hovering over

our heads.

“Some warning would have been nice, Will,” the Erlking

grumbles.

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“Sorry,” Will says, not sounding it.

“Did you do that?” I ask.

Will nods, looking almost offended at the question. “I am

a wizard, you know.”

“Yes, and you even know some useful spells,” I agree and

then survey our surroundings. It’s a small round dirt room,

I supposed you could call it, almost like a clearing in the

middle of tunnels. The ceiling is close over our heads, and the

“room” has a number of narrow dark openings.

“Did we come through one of those tunnels?” Kelsey asks,

looking at the openings as Safford helps her off their horse.

I follow her gaze, noticing how tiny the tunnels are. The

walls and ceiling must have been right on top of us as we’d

traveled. Just thinking of it makes me claustrophobic.

The Erlking looks unconcerned. “That’s why I said it was

better that you not be able to see. Are you going to hop off

the horse anytime soon?”

“Oh,” I remember. “Yes.” I slide gracelessly off the horse,

feeling stiff and sore.

The Erlking dismounts gracefully, of course. “If Will starts

us a fire,” he remarks, fiddling with his saddle bag, “we

can eat.”

Will, scratching his head with one hand, waves at the

ground with the other, and there is a fire, dancing merrily.

Another good spell. Will’s wizardry is coming in useful. Why

don’t
I
have any magic?

“Excellent,” says the Erlking and pulls something out of

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his saddle bag. He thrusts it into my hands without a word

and then leads the horse a short distance away. Safford’s and

Will’s horses seem to sense where he is and follow.

I look down at the bundle in my hands and realize it’s

food. Bread and cheese and what looks like dried meat. And

some oranges. The Erlking has thought to feed all of us. I

am relieved.

Will takes the food out of my hands and pins some bread

onto a fork he’s conjured, stretching it out toward the fire to

toast it.

“Why can’t you just conjure food?” asks Kelsey.

“Because that would be like conjuring oxygen,” Will replies

as if that’s some kind of answer. “Can’t be done.”

Kelsey shrugs at me and sits close to the fire. I follow suit.

“Are you sore, Kelsey?” Safford asks her anxiously.

“I’m fine,” she smiles at him.

The Erlking is apparently done with the horses. He comes

over to the fire. “You should heat the meat. It’ll take the spell away,” he tells Will.

“Oh, I was wondering about that,” Will says and conjures

another fork that he hands across to me.

I put a piece of meat on it. It is thick and leathery. “What

spell?” I ask.

“It’s been glamoured to be dried,” Will explains. “It isn’t

really, it’s perfectly fresh, should be delicious.”

The meat is delicious, pressed with a slice of cheese between

pieces of toast.

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The Erlking passes around the oranges, and everyone strug-

gles with them, but I pull the butter knife I’d taken out of my

pocket and slice into it cleanly, pulling out the wedges and

sharing them with Kelsey.

“Where did you get that?” Will asks.

“I borrowed it,” I say.

The Erlking lifts his eyebrows at me but says nothing.

When we are done eating, the Erlking announces, “We

should all get some rest.”

“
Rest?
” I say. “But…”

The Erlking holds out his pocket watch. “11:12,” he says.

“Holding steady. We can rest.”

“But what if they suddenly pick up the pace?” I ask anxiously.

“My pocket watch will chime at the quarter- hour; it will

wake us up. We should get some rest.”

“Big day tomorrow,” remarks Will hollowly.

“Do you know if my family got to Goblinopolis safely?” I

ask the Erlking.

He looks at me blankly. “How would I know that?”

“They have musical instruments with emotions, but they

don’t have
cell
phones
,” Kelsey mumbles.

Will waves his hand and conjures us blankets. “Would you

rather have cell phones or newly conjured blankets?” he asks.

I think of all the people I want to talk with right now. “Cell

phones,” I say. “Why can’t I conjure up a cell phone? Why

can’t I conjure up
anything
?”

Will looks surprised. “You’re not a wizard.”

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“Right, but I’m a faerie and I’m an ogre and I can’t

do
anything
.”

“You’re good at naming.” Will sounds bewildered.

“Which is horrible, by the way.” Using someone’s name to

hurt them— kill them. My one and only super power.

“The Seelies used good naming power to conquer the entire

Otherworld. I wouldn’t dismiss it so easily, if I were you,”

says the Erlking.

“Okay,
yes
, but still. I want to enchant meat so it looks dried but it’s really fresh. I want to be able to light up an

entire cave. I want to be able to do
something
.”

“First of all, you might never be able to do those things. It’s

like saying to me that you want to be a concert pianist and a

ballerina and an acclaimed painter. You can’t be everything.

Second of all, they all take practice. Nobody gets to be a pia-

nist or a ballerina or a painter overnight. You’re a faerie, and you’re naturally good at naming, which is actually a very,
very
special thing to be. The rest of it will take time. Remember, it took you time to learn how to
walk
. You’re not going to learn how to be a faerie in the space of a couple of hours.”

I know what he’s saying makes sense, but I’m resentful. I

have a prophecy to fulfill and I’m tired of feeling terrified for my life all the time. I wish I felt like I could do something to make myself feel better.

And then the Erlking says, “You’re you. You’re exactly what

we’ve been waiting for. Half faerie and half ogre and you.

What could be better than that?”

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“And you’ve already done things that nobody has ever done

before in the history of the Otherworld,” adds Will. “How

can you be complaining that you don’t have special powers

when you escaped from Tir na nOg?”

“That…” I can feel Safford and Kelsey both looking at me,

and I wish that I hadn’t started this topic of conversation.

“That was Ben. And luck.”

“It was you,” Kelsey says. “Maybe it was a bit of all of

us, but that’s how the world works, even the Otherworld.

Stronger together than apart.”

“A bit trite,” says Will, “but if it makes you feel better, sure.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” huffs Kelsey.

The Erlking says, “It is time for everyone to go to
sleep
.”

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e veryone else seems to fall asleep immediately, but I am

not tired, since I took that long nap during the journey.

I lie awake, watching the magical fire crackle and trying to

keep my breaths deep and even. Because I am awake, I know

when the Erlking leaves, creeping stealthily away from the

circle of the fire. I sit bolt upright, straining to see past the firelight, to figure out where he went, but he is dressed in

black, and he fades into the shadows all around us.

I sit by the firelight while everyone else sleeps, waiting for

him to return.

When he does, I don’t even hear his approach until he

speaks. “You’re awake,” he says, his voice low, and then he

settles onto the ground beside me.

“Where did you go?” I ask, keeping my voice low as well.

“Reconnaissance. Ear to the ground kind of thing. The

Unseelie Court doesn’t stay in one place, you know, but