"I'm not calling them in at all. I don't want anything to do with him. I'm going to fulfill this prophecy, with or without him. This isn't about him." But even as I say it, I hear my mother's voice in my head. Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die. This isn't about him. But it's not entirely not about him either.
"When Will came to me, when he asked if I would consent to your being hidden at Parsymeon, if I would help him to protect you…I made my choice then. Not the most popular choice I've made as Erlking—prophecies are tricky things, and you can never be sure if you are bringing about your downfall or your victory—but it was the choice I made. Sometimes you have to gamble with the birds. Will saved us, offered us shelter, at a time when we needed it. How could I deny him the ability to do the same for you? And then it came complete with a traveler invasion. Travelers are hugely troublesome beings; always getting into trouble, you can't keep them out. They were constantly stealing jewels from our mines, and there was no way to stop them. Until we evolved, of course."
The Erlking rolls onto his back. "Anyway, sometimes I think I should have objected to Benedict's presence. But his enchantment was useful, necessary. None of the rest of us are as skilled at hiding things. We needed him. We might need him still. All the same…" The Erlking glances over at me. "I'd be careful of him, were I you."
【CHAPTER 7】
We are woken by the Erlking's pocket watch chiming at us.
The Erlking looks at it and confirms. "11:15."
"We should get going," says Will.
The Erlking doesn't reply but just walks over to the horses.
"Here," says Will, handing us some pieces of dried fruit.
"If you heat it up, does it become fresh fruit?" Kelsey asks him.
"Don't be absurd," Will replies, as if her question made no sense at all.
Kelsey sighs.
"Let's go," says the Erlking, swinging himself gracefully into his saddle.
"How long until we get to the Unseelie Court?" I ask, clambering gracelessly onto the horse behind him.
He winces as I tug accidentally on his cloak, tightening it around his throat, and reaches up to adjust it and give himself some air. He doesn't say anything, just urges the horse onward.
I cannot tell if I feel like I understand him more or less after the conversation last night. I find the Erlking a strange mixture that I can't quite read. Will appears to trust him implicitly, but I'm not to that point yet.
The day is just like the previous day, darkness all around and unceasing forward movement, and finally I ask again, "How long until we get to the Unseelie Court?"
"We're there," he answers me curtly.
I blink at his back, which I can only locate in the darkness because I know it is right in front of me. "What? When did we get here?"
"A while ago."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"What was there to say?"
"'We're entering the Unseelie Court.' That's what there was to say."
"I didn't think it was important."
"It looks the same as everything else."
"That's why I didn't think it was important. Shh."
I am offended. "Don't 'shh' me—"
"Shh," he says again more firmly and draws his horse to a halt. "Will," he calls. "What is that?"
"Nothing good," I hear Will's voice answer from the darkness behind us.
"What does that mean, 'nothing good'?" I ask. "What can you hear?" I am straining very hard to hear something, anything, but all it sounds like is silence to me. Maybe, very far away, the sound of water dripping.
"I think it's a dragon," comes Will's voice, hushed, as if the dragon might hear us talking about it.
We are all very silent. But no matter how quiet we are, I cannot hear anything.
I am about to say that when, very suddenly, a stream of fire licks its way toward us, accompanied by a loud roar, flames curling through the darkness. The horse rears under us, and I grab at fistfuls of the Erlking's cloak to keep from falling off. The flames subside, the darkness darker now and heat still lingering in the air. The creature is no longer roaring, but the echo of it is ringing in my ears. The Erlking is trying to soothe the horse, which is now prancing sideways.
"I thought you were going to be able to use your wiles with your ex-girlfriend," I remark sarcastically.
"I said I could use my wiles to get us in. I never said she wouldn't kill us once we were here," he retorts and then twists to call over his shoulder, "Everyone okay?"
"We're fine," Kelsey responds, sounding a bit shaken.
Will, by way of answer, sends a light orb shooting out in front of us, illuminating the landscape.
We're in the middle of a cavern, stalactites dripping from a ceiling high above our heads, through which Will's orb is bobbing and weaving. Directly in front of us, the ground disappears into a yawning ravine several hundred feet across. There is a bridge suspended across it, floating magically, and there, on the other side, is a squat, heavy, black castle.
"That's the Unseelie Court," says Will.
"I don't suppose we can just cross over the bridge," I note grimly.
"Not with a dragon underneath it," remarks Kelsey.
On cue, the dragon, from out of sight in its pit, belches fire that rolls over the bridge in hot billows.
"Get off," the Erlking says to me, and I manage to clamber off the horse. He swings off gracefully and strides purposefully over to the bridge, stopping just at its edge, looking down.
"Well?" Will asks him.
He shakes his head a bit. "You can't even see the bottom, it's so deep." He steps back, frowning at the bridge.
"Well, we have to get across somehow," I say. This was my only idea, the thing I said we had to do to fulfill the prophecy. We can't have spent all that time getting here just for it to turn out to be a waste. "Can we enchant the dragon somehow?"
"I can cast a protective spell that will block the fire from reaching the bridge," Will says. "The dragon isn't really the issue."
The dragon roars, flames momentarily engulfing the bridge in white heat.
"I can't wait to hear what's really the issue," comments Kelsey, staring at the embers left behind by the flames, "if it's not that."
"The bridge is enchanted," explains the Erlking impatiently. He is pacing up and down the cliff, looking irritated. The Erlking, I realize, doesn't like being still. When Kelsey and I just look at him, he continues, "It isn't really there."
We look back at the bridge.
"It's not?" I say.
"It's there as long as the Unseelie Court wants it to be there."
"Oh," I realize. "So we could get halfway across and…"
"Yes," he concludes grimly. He turns decisively from the bridge and looks at me. "We have to go to the Unseelie Court, you claim. We have to find Benedict's mother to find the other fays to keep the prophecy on track and defeat the Seelies."
"Yes," I respond.
"This isn't because you hope Benedict is there and you've gotten yourself all starry-eyed over the best enchanter in the Otherworld, is it? Because I'm not doing all of this just because you're under some sort of spell."
I draw myself up, offended. "He left me," I say. "It was his choice. I wouldn't be here if I was just chasing him. The precious book of power said that his mother hid the other fays, and we need the other fays for the prophecy, and you said this is where his mother is."
"We also need Benedict for the prophecy," Will says. "I think. If I'm reading it right."
"But that's secondary," I insist.
The Erlking continues to look at me for a long moment. Then he nods. "Then I'll go first," he says and turns to face the bridge.
"Wait," Will protests. "What?"
"I am the least valuable," the Erlking proclaims steadily, regarding the bridge. "The most expendable. There is no prophecy about me the way there is about the rest of you. And I am the most likely to be trapped by the bridge, since I'm the one who upset a member of the Unseelie Court. The rest of you are innocent. Well, as innocent as you can be in the Otherworld. Which in your case, frankly, isn't very. But anyway. I'll go first. Alone."
There is a long moment of silence. I feel like one of us should protest—he's only involved in this because we asked him to be—but I'm worried that instead he'd suggest sending across Kelsey or Safford, who are also more expendable than me, and I don't want that to happen.
I look at Will, who sighs and rubs at his temples.
The Erlking turns away from the bridge and walks over to Will. "You can cast the enchantment to block the dragon, right? I don't need to be worrying about that too." He is unstrapping the sword from around his waist.
"Yes," Will tells him. "Of course. What is that?"
Because the Erlking is now holding the sword, sheathed in its scabbard, out to Will. "Here's something nobody else knows, Will. This sword is the Seelie talisman. I can't have it vanish with me, if I do vanish. Take it, and keep it safe, and bring it back to Goblinopolis for me. Do you promise?"
Will nods and accepts the sword. "My word of honor," he promises, and he tries to say it very brusquely but I can tell he is touched by the trust in the gesture.
"Excellent." The Erlking turns back to the bridge and walks confidently over to it, standing on the very edge. "Ready?" he asks Will.
"The spell is already cast," Will answers him.
The Erlking steps onto the bridge without a moment of hesitation. I think we are all holding our breath there on the edge of the cliff—I know I am—but the Erlking strides confidently along the bridge. His cloak drifts in his wake, and the dim light from Will's orb picks up the blue sheen to his dark hair. The dragon breathes fire but it passes up and over the bridge in a fiery arc that would be beautiful if it wasn't so obviously very deadly. The Erlking's rhythm does not hitch. He gleams and billows his way across the bridge and then steps onto solid land on the other side, where he turns and executes a bow in our direction, gathering his cloak dramatically around him.
"Is it safe then?" I ask, even though I know the answer.
"Safe enough for him," Will responds.
"Should we all go over at once?"
"No," says Will. "If it disappears and kills all of us at once, then that is far worse than it disappearing and killing just one of us, at which point the rest of us can try to come up with an alternate plan."
"Then who should go next?" I ask. And suddenly I hear myself saying, all in a rush, to Will, "I think you should go last."
Will regards me with surprise. "Really? Why?"
"Because you can get everyone back to Boston easily. And you'll know what to do to protect my aunts and father, as much as you can. If you go, I'll have no idea what to do to save them."
Will looks at me for a moment. "But you're the fay—"
"What will it matter if I'm left all alone? I won't know what to do."
"Selkie," Will says gently. "You'll be you. You've gotten us to this point, haven't you?"
"And I left my entire family back there and who knows what's happening to them. Please don't fight me on this. You can save them. I can't. I'm going next."
And then, before there can be any more discussion about it, I run over and onto the bridge.
"Selkie!" Will and Kelsey shout from behind me, but I am already on the bridge and there's nothing they can do now.
I keep running, focused on the Erlking on the other side of it, watching me expressionlessly. The bridge feels very solid under my feet; I find it difficult to believe it's not real, except for the fact that I can't see how it's moored to land in any way.
Then, just like that, it's not real. The bridge disappears underneath my feet, and I am falling through space.