I want to shove him off the bed, but instead I settle for rolling myself off the bed. “What time is it?” I say, but even as I finish, the grandfather clock starts chiming. The three-quarter hour.
I run to my bedroom door and pull it open, and I am dimly aware that everyone else in the house has gathered in the foyer, all of us looking at the grandfather clock on the landing. Which is showing 11:45.
“Is that the right time?” I call.
It’s the Erlking who answers. “Yes.”
Great, I think. And we’re no closer to getting anything done.
I go downstairs, and the air feels thick, like syrup I am pulling myself through.
“Selkie!” Aunt Virtue thunders at me, drawing herself to her full height (which isn’t very much). “How dare you disobey us and leave this house?”
“I had to find Dad,” I defend myself. “I had to.”
“Did you think we didn’t try hard enough to find him?” Aunt Virtue continues. “Did you think we gave up on him so easily? Do you really think that nothing can be accomplished unless you do it personally?”
Said like that, she has a point. I feel like a risk-taking idiot for having gone out there. “I just wanted to…” I trail off, realizing that I really don’t have anything I can say to make things better. There is no way to make things better. “They took Dad,” I say. “They took him.” I can feel tears coming close, so I push them back. “We need a plan,” I announce firmly.
“What a refreshingly unfaerie thing to say,” says the Erlking.
“We’ve been trying to come up with a plan and getting nowhere,” says Will.
I only have one idea for a plan, so I say it. “I think I should go outside and start asking people for their birthdays.”
Will blinks at me in astonishment. “That’s your plan?”
“Isn’t that the key? The birthdays? When I said my birthday, it started this whole thing in motion. Maybe it will work for the others.”
“The birthday question isn’t the weak part of your plan,” snaps Will. “Do you know how many people there are just in Boston? Just on Boston Common? You think you’re just going to randomly stumble over the right ones?”
“Ben’s mother said two things that she’s right about,” I begin.
“Ben’s mother who’s been trying to stop this prophecy from the very beginning?” Will mocks, eyebrows lifted.
“Yes. If the prophecy’s going to be fulfilled, it’s got to start helping us out a little bit. And I’m good at finding and collecting just the right things that come in handy later.”
“This is the most ridiculous plan,” Will says dazedly. And I know it is. It’s not a plan—it’s a joke—but it’s all I’ve got.
“All respect, Will,” remarks the Erlking frankly, “but we haven’t come up with a better one.”
“A better one than that? I feel like trying to negotiate with the Seelies would be a better one than that.”
“What time is it?” I ask the Erlking.
He looks at his watch. “11:46.”
“We’re wasting time,” I say, marching over to the front door, and tugging it open. The air outside seems even murkier than the air inside had been. I can’t tell if this is because my head is still fuzzy from the church bells at Kendall or because the actual air has shifted into something more viscous.
Standing on the sidewalk at the base of our front steps is a girl with pale blond hair with the tips dyed all the colors of the rainbow, braided in six different braids on top of her head, and a boy with a thick patch of messy straw-colored hair and a heavy smattering of freckles. The girl is in the process of shaking salt and pepper over the sidewalk. The boy seems to be sifting in some sugar as well. Boston has gone crazy, I think.
The boy and the girl look up at me, and just to prove to Will how serious I am about my plan, I say, “What are your birthdays?”
Astonishingly, the boy and girl exchange a look, and then the girl says, “We’re the winter and the summer solstice. Which one are you?”
I blink. And then I turn to Will. “My plan worked,” I say smugly.
CHAPTER 16
The girl and the boy come inside and the girl says, “I’m Merrow and he’s Trow, and the moon was in its second house and then Virgo was moving toward the horizon and anyway, the stars said we had to come here.”
“The stars said?” Will echoes.
“Yeah. Exactly. And Virgo and the moon too, but mostly the stars,” answers Merrow.
“I know she sounds crazy,” says Trow, “but she’s weirdly persuasive, right?”
She is, actually. Merrow says everything with such conviction that you can’t help but be carried along with her.
“So you’re fays too?” Kelsey clarifies.
“I think so? Fays of the seasons? That’s what Roger Williams said anyway,” Merrow replies.
“Roger Williams?” asks Kelsey. “The founder of the state of Rhode Island?”
“Yes, I know it sounds crazy—” begins Merrow.
“Crazy is actually very difficult to sound to us,” drawls the Erlking at her.
Merrow says, “Well, you’re dressed in a black velvet cape and wearing a huge sword, so I guess you’ve got a point.”
I look at Will. “Do you know Roger Williams?”
Will looks offended. “Of course I know Roger Williams. I just don’t…talk to Roger Williams.”
“If you had less messy breakups with people,” Ben tells him scathingly, “we would have gotten this figured out so much more quickly.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t taken a field trip to the Unseelie Court,” Will retorts, “we would have gotten this figured out so much more quickly.”
“It’s 11:47,” the Erlking says.
“We don’t have time for this,” I cut them off and turn to Merrow and Trow. “I’m Selkie, and I’m the autumnal equinox. I’m hoping you know where the other fay is.”
“The only guess I have on that is Iceland,” says Merrow. “We have to go to Iceland.”
“Did the stars say that?” asks Kelsey.
“No, that was the honey and the ketchup, when we mixed them together in the diner while we were waiting for the train. The stars keep changing; even the constellations keep changing. It’s getting harder to read them.”
I just stare at her, but Will says, as if to reassure me, “This is how prophets talk. They’re all mad as hatters.”
Merrow is much shorter than Trow and me but she manages to make herself seem much taller. “Excuse me,” she says, offended.
“Iceland,” Will muses. “That makes some sense.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because it’s closed to travelers.”
“Not quite,” Ben says. “We can get in but we can’t get out.”
“Like the room at the Boston Public Library,” I recall.
“Exactly.”
“Which is why your mother would have liked the place to hide a fay. No one would have guessed,” says Will.
“You can get out at Thingvellir,” the Erlking says suddenly.
Ben looks at him.
The Erlking shrugs. “We goblins have always known the traveler loopholes.”
“Yes,” Ben says. “I bet you have.” He looks back at Merrow. “Iceland, you can understand, isn’t a place I’m keen to go. In fact, it sounds like a trap to me.”
“All of a sudden you’re worried about traps?” I say, because I can’t help it.
Ben frowns.
Merrow says, “This whole thing is messy right now. There are prophecies upon prophecies. They fold in on each other and contradict each other, and one says what the next doesn’t say, while the next says what the next after that can’t say. You see? The patterns in the salt don’t match the pepper, the patterns in the honey don’t match the bees, the patterns in the sneezes don’t
match the coughs. And don’t even get me started on the stars. Plus the air is thick here; the salt wasn’t falling properly, and the sugar was clumping. Is it always like this in Boston?”
“That’s the Seelies getting closer, throwing off the chemistry of the sky,” says Will nonchalantly.
Kelsey and I exchange panicked looks.
“So what does it all mean?” I ask. I hope I don’t sound desperate and panicked, because I want to be coolly in control the way Merrow seems to be, but I feel like I can’t help it. Everything is a mess and my father is missing and a battle is coming and the air is growing too thick to breathe and the clock keeps ticking and Merrow’s just sitting here talking about salt and pepper.
“I think that none of it is settled. None of it is prophesied. And all of it is prophesied. It is all existing at once. The time is spiraling. It’s because we’re in the middle of it. You can’t prophesy what you’re actually living. All I know is that the next word I can read is Iceland. Actually.” She blinks at Ben. “You have to get it.”
I look between her and Ben. “How do you know?”
“Can’t you tell from the dust motes?” she asks. “I wish I had my tarot cards. I could do this so much more easily.”
“Well,” remarks Ben. “This seems like a genuinely terrible idea, so I’m sure we’re going to do it, right?” He glances at Will.
“What else can we do?”
“If you’re going to Iceland, you’re going to need to talk to the Hidden Folk,” says the Erlking. “I know the Hidden Folk there.”
“You can take us to them?” Will asks.
“They keep to themselves, as you know. But they’ll speak to the Erlking of the goblins of Goblinopolis.”
“Why?” persists Will.
“Trade treaties, of course. They have a terrible weakness for goblin silver. It is the best,” the Erlking allows.
“You have trade treaties with the Hidden Folk?” Ben clarifies. He sounds disbelieving.
“The world is getting smaller, Benedict,” remarks the Erlking. “Even this world.”
I honestly don’t know which world he means by that.
“So you can get us to the Hidden Folk?” Merrow asks.
“I can,” the Erlking confirms.
“Awesome. Then we should leave immediately,” Merrow announces. “Probably the three of us and you.” She points to Ben. “And him.” She points to the Erlking.
I bristle, because Merrow seems a little bossy, and I’m offended that she’s just drifted in here at the end and made it seem like this is all so easy to do.
“And me,” says Will.
“I’m going too,” adds Safford.
Ben looks at him. “Safford,” he begins.
“I’m the expendable one of this group, aren’t I? Don’t you need an expendable one?” He asks it dryly, but the truth is that he has something of a point, which is terrible.
“I didn’t want you to be this involved,” Ben says. “You weren’t supposed to be this involved.”
“I really never had a choice, Benedict,” says Safford. “I have never had a choice, not since the Seelies named my parents and flooded our world and cursed me to Mag Mell simply for sport. Actually, that’s not true: I had a choice, and I’ve made it. So. I’m coming.”
“I’m coming too,” says Kelsey immediately.
I look at her. “Kelsey,” I begin.
“I’m coming, Selkie,” she tells me, giving me a look. “We’ve come this far in saving the world. I’m not going to stop now.”
I look at my aunts, and then I look at Merrow and Trow. Merrow beams at me. Clearly she thinks we are already fast friends. Trow looks a bit bemused.
“Excellent,” says Will as if there is nothing more to discuss. “We’ll leave immediately.”
***
Ben says he feels well enough to jump all of us to Iceland. Except that he can’t jump the Erlking due to the fact that he can’t work when the Erlking is touching him. The Erlking says not to worry about him—he has other ways to get to Iceland—and then he leaves the house.
“He’s going to meet us there, right?” Kelsey says to me as we watch him go.
“Definitely,” I say, feigning a confidence I don’t feel.
Kelsey can tell. “Do you trust him?”
I look at Ben, who is listening to something Will is saying to him, his nose wrinkled in displeasure. “I don’t trust anyone,” I say.
“Yeah,” echoes Kelsey as she rests her eyes on Safford. Poor Safford, who seems so sweet and straightforward and may have the world’s most terrible fashion sense, but other than that just seems lovely.
“I don’t know that Safford’s like that,” I tell her, feeling bad that I’ve colored her crush with the whole disaster that happened with Ben.
“Never trust a faerie, right?” says Kelsey, sounding half-grim and half-wistful.
“It’s so great to meet you,” Merrow gushes, coming up to me. “I feel better now that we’ve got three of us. We’ll go to Iceland, find the fourth, and rewrite the story.”
“Rewrite the story,” I echo.
“It’s what my mom told me we have to do. We have to rewrite the story to…fix a lot of things.” Merrow is speaking bouncily and sunnily, but there’s a shadow lurking in her eyes. I feel bad. Something tells me she has just as much inner turmoil going on as I do; she’s just hiding it better.
“You guys should have some sort of secret fay handshake,” Kelsey says, and I wonder if she feels a bit left out.
Trow smiles at Kelsey. “So you’re not a fay?”
“Not a fay,” Kelsey agrees.
“How’d you get roped into this?”
“I’m just the world’s greatest best friend,” Kelsey explains.
“She speaks the truth,” I contribute and turn to Merrow. “So you know…everything?”
Merrow snorts. “I wish. No. Not even close.”
“How much do you know?”
“She knows just enough to be dangerous,” says Trow.
Merrow ignores him. “I know there are four of us. I knew you were here because the stars told me. I know we have to go to Iceland, although I can’t tell if that’s because the other fay is there. It doesn’t feel right, but I don’t know what else it could be. And I know we’re supposed to rewrite the story.” Merrow pauses then says slowly, “My mother is…Whatever they did to her, it’s…”
I think of Trevor and Milla, the little children I saw named right in front of me, for no reason other than because the Seelies could. I can’t help but shudder. I don’t know what I would have done if that had happened to my aunts or my father, right there with me watching. If Merrow had to see that…“I’m sorry,” I say, aching for her. “It’s…horrible.” It is hardly an accurate word but it’s the best I can do.
“Did they attack your family too?”
I look at my aunts, who are standing in the corner, looking terrified and heartbroken. “Excuse me,” I say to Merrow and go over to them.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Aunt True says, her voice laden with tears. “We can’t keep you here. We can’t stop you. And they have Etherington…”
“I’m going to get him back,” I vow. “That’s why we’re going to Iceland. We’re going to find the other fay, take on the Seelies, and get Dad back. I promise.”
“Oh, Selkie.” Aunt Virtue looks at me, and her eyes are wet. She looks as if she is trying to catalogue everything about me, as if this might be the last time she ever sees me, and I can’t bear the thought of that.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” I say desperately. “We’ll be so fast.”
“Please be careful,” Aunt Virtue says. “Please don’t be heroic.”
“I’m never heroic,” I say, confused.
Aunt True and Aunt Virtue both make noises that
could be close to laughter.
“I’m not,” I insist. “It’s just that sometimes…I have to do stuff. But I’m not—”
“Just be careful,” Aunt Virtue repeats. “We’d come with you, except that we’re two more people to worry about, and Boston’s defenses need all the help we can give them, and—”
“We’re going to keep everything here safe for you,” Aunt True tells me with the air of a promise.
“Good. When I get Dad, we’re going to bring him home.” I’ve made this decision already. We can figure out some way to accomplish this. Maybe we can even make him better. Maybe Will knows some kind of spell. Maybe Ben can help.
I hug my aunts, refusing to hug them for longer than I would normally hug them, because I want this to be just like any other parting.
And then I turn to the knot of people in the center of the room. The people I’m supposed to save the world with.
Ben says, “Ready?” and I nod.
CHAPTER 17
We are outside, in darkness. It is cold, and we are surrounded by a wet, drizzly fog that presses against us. I am near enough to Ben to feel him flinch and hear the curse that he mutters under his breath at the damp.
“Where are we?” Merrow asks cheerfully.
“Iceland,” Ben half snaps at her. “Isn’t that where you told us we had to go?”
“It’s awfully dark,” says Merrow, undeterred. “How do we know it’s Iceland?”
“It’s Iceland,” says the Erlking suddenly from somewhere in the darkness. “And it took you long enough. It’s 11:48 now.”
“How did you get here so quickly?” Kelsey asks in surprise as the Erlking strides up to us, slightly darker than the night.
“Who says I got here quickly?” the Erlking replies mildly. “It’s possible I took the long way around and just happened to meet up with you.”
Kelsey stares at him. “No,” she says. “That’s not possible.”
The Erlking ignores her and says to Ben, “It was obvious of you, wasn’t it? Coming to this part of Iceland?”
“Isn’t it the right part?” Ben asks. He is suppressing shivers now, and I can tell the wetness all around is seeping into his bones. I have a vivid recollection of the way he was in Tir na nOg. “Aren’t we near the Hidden Folk? Certainly this place is covered in magic.”
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