The Girl Who Never Was (19 page)

x I am soaking wet when I get back to my room. And what I find when I get there is Gussie, sitting perched on the windowsill. She looks at me, dripping onto the floor, and lifts an eyebrow.

'Well,'she remarks, 'I was wondering where you'd gone. And now I know. The Le Fays have always hated water. His mother was the same way.'

I want to tell her to get out of my room, because I don't want to deal with all of this for a little while. I just want to collapse and not think so hard. But she mentioned Ben's mother, and I find myself saying, irresistibly, 'Did you know her?'

'Oh, yes. She was the best enchantress of the day. Everyone in the Otherworld knew her. Which was precisely why the Seelies imprisoned her. The Seelies like powerful faeries, you

know. They drink up the power, make it their own. They like having power around them; they get a bit drunk off of it. It's why I'm here and why you're here. But Benedict's mother was'not easily amenable. To anything. Headstrong. Seelies hate that.'

'So they named her?'I conclude, feeling cold on Ben's behalf. I want to hear what she says in response to that.

'Oh, no, she escaped.'

'Escaped?'So she did escape, I think. 'She escaped from here? From Tir na nOg?'I want to clarify. I want to know everything about this story. If she was the only faerie to escape, then I want to know how she did it. And so I say, 'How?'

Gussie lifts both eyebrows this time. 'If I knew that, do you think I'd still be here?'

'How long have you been here?'

'Time doesn't exist here. Haven't you noticed? How long have you been here?'

I know exactly how long I've been here. I open my mouth to say. And then realize that I have no idea. Has it been two nights? Or just one? Or maybe more? Surely I was in Boston just the other day. Wasn't I? But it seems so far away. I can feel my face screwing up with effort as I think about this.

'See? They make you forget. It's what they do.'

'But'I haven't forgotten. I won't forget.'

'Not yet. You're stubborn. But it will come. I don't remember where I came from anymore. I had a house

once. I think I did. I don't remember where it was. I'm not a faerie, you know. But I can't remember what I am.'Gussie looks thoughtful for a moment. 'They call me 'Lady Gregory'sometimes, and I think that maybe that means something? I don't know.'

Gussie looks so bewildered that I can't stand it. I don't know much about her, but so far, as long as I have been here, she has seemed to be pulled together, to know what's going on. I realize at that moment that I'd been depending on her to know what to do'to give me guidance.

'I need to make a silver bough,'I say desperately.

She looks at me sadly. 'For what? Who will you give it to? Even if you could make one.'

She has a good point. And I don't know. I falter. Who do I know who I could give the silver bough to?

'Anyway, you need glass to make a silver bough. And they don't allow any glass at the Seelie Court, haven't you noticed? They hate silver boughs. You need a Threader too, because you need a Threader needle. And all the Threaders'I don't remember what happened to the Threaders.'

I think of the glass in my kangaroo pocket, of the Threader needle I grabbed on my way out of'the house'on'I can't think of the name of the street, and for a second, panic rises inside of me. Then I press it down. I say, 'If I had glass and a Threader needle, what then?'

'You'd need a drop of Seelie blood.'

And I am half-Seelie. I look across at Gussie and I say,

curiously, 'How do you know this? I thought only Seelies knew how to make silver boughs.'

Gussie looks confused. 'I'don't remember, now that you mention it.'She makes a frustrated sound. 'Oh, it's so annoying, because there are things that I feel like I've been clinging to all along. Like you. You're important'the visitor who would come to the Seelie Court. The fay of the autumnal equinox. As long as you are here, they will draw power from you. You will make them more powerful than they have ever been. That's what they say, isn't it?'

'That's not the prophecy I heard,'I point out.

'As if there's only one prophecy about anything. As if there is only one choice for you to make. You are surrounded by choices, child. You can do as you wish, and each choice brings with it its consequences. Now you are here though, and the choices have disappeared. They have won. You are their prize.'

'But I'm prophesied to''

'Didn't you just hear me?'she interrupts me sharply. 'That's not how it works. You were supposed to bring peace, you and the other three fays of the seasons, if you'd met each other, if you'd joined each other. But separately, the prophecy was always that you would fall to the side of the Seelies. It is in your blood. There was no guarantee it would all turn out to be the prophecy we wanted. How foolish everyone is. How foolish. How foolish.'She suddenly brings up her hands and covers her face with them,

as if in agony. 'It all went wrong, and you are here, and it is all over. It is all over.'

I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I want to say it's not true, that I have not shifted the prophecy, but I think of how much my aunts and the Threader didn't want me to come here, and maybe it's true'maybe I've ruined everything forever.

'But why does it have to be me? Aren't there four fays of the seasons? Where are the rest?'

'They're still hidden, of course. You're the only one who has asked the right questions. So far.'

Well, I'm tired of it just being me. I want the rest of them to be put into the same impossible situations I'm finding myself in. 'Hidden where?'

'No one knows that, of course, except the faerie who hid them.'

'And who was that?'

'You would need the book to know that.'

'What book?'

'A Pickle for the Knowing Ones.'

Well, now she isn't even making any sense at all. I give up entirely on this pointless topic of conversation.

'I don't want to be part of a prophecy,'I hear myself say. 'I just want to be me. I don't want all these consequences hanging off of everything I do.'

Gussie lifts her head out of her hands and looks at me. 'And now you sound just like a Seelie,'she remarks. 'Let

the past be in the past. No consequences, so no regrets. No memory to remember any of it.'

x Gussie leaves after condemning me as sounding like a Seelie, and with that ringing through my head, I peel off my clothing and spread it out as best I can on one of the fluffy carpets, hoping that it will dry off. Then I put Ben's sweatshirt back on, because I don't dare take it off for more than a few moments, and crawl into bed. The sky is just beginning to lighten from black to navy. I have time'I think, because it's so hard to tell with the way time moves here'before my mother comes to get me, but I don't know what to do with this time. I feel that I need to figure out the rest of our plan. I can make a silver bough, I think, if Gussie's instructions on that point are correct, but what good will that do me? She's right that I don't know what to do with the silver bough once I make it. And I'd been so excited about getting the silver bough. So had Ben. And we had neither of us thought through the fact that we're still stuck in here with a silver bough. It doesn't let us leave; it just lets other people come in.

The plan'or the lack of a plan'whirls itself around and around in my head until I feel like I am going mad. There is nothing I can do, nothing I can think of; I cannot think of it any longer. I turn my head into my pillow and wish

desperately to just stop thinking about all of these things, for just a little while. It would be such a relief to just quiet my brain and stop thinking.

You changed,'says my mother when she glides into my room that morning.

'My clothes have seen better days,'I tell her. My clothes do not seem to be drying, and I wonder if the rain falling on Ben is enchanted to be even wetter than normal rain. I have bundled them up, in all their guilty drippingness, and stuck them under the bed, and I've pulled on one of the jingle-bell lined Seelie dresses I found in my room's armoire. And I've topped it all off with the sweatshirt, of course, which seems to be drying better than the rest, maybe because it's enchanted. But my mother shouldn't be able to see the sweatshirt. My mother should just see my jingle-bell dress.

My mother smiles, but it is as chilly as her smiles always are. 'Look at you,'she announces. 'You look more like a proper Seelie already. Ready to take your rightful place.'

I follow her as she dashes down corridors. The route is a different one and unfamiliar, but we emerge into the same central bright room. I am convinced the walls themselves move here.

I sit in the room and pick at breakfast. I do not think

about planning my escape. I am exhausted by the idea. I just need a break from it. I need to think about other things for a little while.

Gussie arrives at breakfast and sits next to me. She seems subdued, and I wonder if she is thinking of the things she said to me last night or this morning, or however time is moving here. Her hands shake as she reaches for a copper goblet to drink from.

I watch them in concern. 'You okay?'

'Fine,'she whispers, although she's so pale that even her lips are white. 'I'm fine.'

I glance at my mother, who is busy pulling yarn out of the air, behind which is the uneven flash of one of the named faeries, drifting away through madness. I look back at Gussie and lower my voice. 'Have some water.'

'I said too much last night,'she says, her eyes darting nervously around the room. 'I remembered too much last night.'She puts her fingers up to her temples and closes her eyes as if she has a terrible headache. 'I haven't remembered so much in ages. I shouldn't have'I shouldn't have''

'Yes,'I agree. 'It makes your head hurt, doesn't it? Just stop for a little while. Give yourself a break.'

Gussie looks over at me. 'A break.'

And then there is a commotion at the other end of the room. I turn to see what's happening, and what's happening is that two bear-like animals dressed in copper armor are carrying in two wriggling, screaming bundles. A murmur

goes up from the Seelies all around us. Excitement. Something happening!

I am caught up in it too. Everything here had felt stifled and stalled and stuck, but now there is something actually happening. I follow the knot of Seelies instinctively, walking over to where the bear-creatures drop the bundles to the ground.

One is a little boy. He cannot be more than three or four. He sits on the hard marble floor and sobs. And the other is'the little girl who asked me for the fusel when I first arrived in the Otherworld. She kneels next to the little boy and pulls him up against her protectively, and I think of Safford, telling me about the little brother she was devoted to.

The little girl is also crying hysterically, but she is speaking, looking up at the Seelies all around her. 'Please no,'she is begging. 'Please. I said to take me instead. Please.'

'Foolish child,'my mother rebukes her coldly. 'You thought we would bargain?'

'Please,'cries the little girl, cuddling her brother in more tightly. 'Please.'

'What is his name?'asks my mother of the little girl.

When she doesn't immediately answer, my mother leans forward and tips the little girl's head up, not unkindly. And she says, 'Tell me his name.'

And the little girl does. I blink in surprise, but she says in a dull monotone, 'Trevor Suddington Lamp North.'

My mother smiles and nods. 'And what is your name?'

'Milla Doenna Nimble North.'

My mother straightens and steps back, and the little girl flinches, and suddenly she is sobbing hysterically again, and I realize that my mother must have enchanted the answers out of her.

And then my mother says, very slowly and with a great deal of intent, intent that I can feel in the shiver of the air, 'Trevor Suddington Lamp North.'

And where there was a little boy being hugged by a little girl, there is nothing, suddenly, but a pile of dandelion fluff and a flash in the air that might make you look twice. There is a wail, not just from the little girl but from underneath the air somehow, and I think of the murmur of sobbing from all the mad, flimsy faeries in the corners of my eye. Their grief is a roar that threatens to overwhelm me.

My mother looks at the little girl, curled into a ball, because the dandelion fluff that had been her brother is gone, has drifted off into the air, is floating all around us, barely visible. She is sobbing as if her heart has broken.

My mother says, almost casually, 'Milla Doenna Nimble North.'

And there is no more sobbing from the little girl because there is no more little girl. There is a slant of dust motes in the air, dancing in the sunlight. And underneath, for just a moment, I can hear the pulsing crying of all the other named faeries.

There is, meanwhile, a murmur of pleasure from the Seelies,

and I can understand why, because I can feel it too, a charge in the air, like a buzzing jolt of electricity. Power, suddenly, all around, tangible, and I feel like if I leaned into it, it would feel fantastic. But I don't lean into it. I am holding myself so stiffly that I feel like I could shatter. My hands, I realize, are clenched into tight fists by my sides.

My mother turns and smiles at me, her translucent eyes lit up with a cruel and terrible delight that makes me feel ill. 'Isn't it delicious?'she says to me.

'What did they do?'I ask.

My mother blinks at me, obviously confused. ''Do'?'she echoes.

'Why were they named?'

My mother makes a little shrug. 'Why not?'

x I can feel my heart pounding in my ears the remainder of the interminable day. Or the day goes by in a blink. I can't tell. Time is different here. It doesn't work right. It's both too fast and too slow all at once, and I can't explain it, but for some period of time that I can't determine after the naming, I sit, frozen and trying not to seem frozen. My mother is looking at me suspiciously, and I try to relax. Because I was relaxed earlier. I had stopped thinking about Ben, stopped worrying about a plan to escape. I had told myself I was taking a break, but I had started to forget. I had just been sitting in the bright,