Author's Note: Here is a scene from THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS, from Ben's POV. Did you wonder what happened after Ben sends Selkie away for her own good? Wonder no more. ;-)
Spinning an enchantment takes no effort and no time, if you are Benedict le Fay. Hiding Selkie Stewart is something Ben does without thinking. Sometimes Ben thinks he does little else. He hides her from herself, and that is, he is realizing, terribly unfair to her, if you are a faerie who still worries about fairness, which Ben is thinking he might be. Because hiding Selkie, losing who she is, is a terrible tragedy.
But with bells chiming menacingly all around him, Ben thinks it his only option. It is his first instinct, with Seelies closing in and suns being torn out of skies. If you are Benedict Le Fay, you do it because you think of nothing else you can do, and so you hide Selkie Stewart.
And that means Ben has to erase himself from her memory, but it’s a worthy sacrifice. What is more important than keeping Selkie Stewart safe? Knowing that she’s alive, somewhere, being Selkie, even if she isn’t yet sure who that really is?
There is nothing more important than Selkie being alive and safe. Including being safe himself.
With Selkie safe, Ben stops running. He waits. Ben sits in the middle of the wildflowers all around him and enjoys the sunshine with his last few minutes of freedom. To the extent he has a choice in this, he wants to exercise it, and he’s doing it now: He wants to be captured here, in the middle of this cheerful, pretty world where he last saw Selkie. So he sits and listens to the chiming bells approaching.
The Seelies appear in the span of an eye-blink. They are very fast, if you are keeping that sort of time. If you are keeping another sort of time then they never move at all.
Ben looks at them, at the amassed crowd of them, tall and slender and cool, pressing in all around him. He is surrounded, and he could jump to another world if he wanted to, but they would follow, and there’s no point. So he lifts himself lightly to his feet and bows a little bit in greeting.
The Seelies don’t seem to find him charming.
“She was just here,” says one of them, stepping forward, toe-to-toe with him.
“Who?” asks Ben innocently.
The Seelie smiles at him then, the most chilling and terrifying smile. Ben doesn’t shudder, but it’s a close thing. “You know exactly who.”
Ben collects himself and considers his answer. “I think you’ll find my knowing her never happened,” he decides finally. And then he smiles back.
The Seelie’s smile stays in place, cold and very unamused. “You think you’re clever, don’t you? You think you’ll withstand anything to keep her safe. You think you’ll be able to counter anything we might try to do. Because you are Benedict Le Fay.”
She says his name with intent, and it feels like it slices Ben cleanly down the middle, but he refuses to let himself wince. He stands there and looks at the Seelie, and he doesn’t say anything. But he keeps smiling.
“Yes,” the Seelie hisses at him, coming even closer, peering into his face.
Ben struggles to stay impassive, not to react.
“Arrogant,” says the Seelie. “Just like your mother. She thought the same thing, that she could fight us on her own terms, that she could win. You see how that turned out. Oh, wait. That’s right. You didn’t see how that turned out, did you, Benedict Le Fay? You never knew your mother, did you?”
Ben doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t let himself say anything. He doesn’t want this Seelie to think she’s getting the better of him.
“You’re very quiet,” says the Seelie. “Your mother never stopped talking. Your mother was full of words. Powerful things, words. Bad things to throw around unthinkingly. She was a reckless faerie, your mother. You are quieter but you are no better. And, like her, you will be your own downfall.”
Ben takes a deep breath and reminds himself: Selkie is safe. What did the rest of it matter?
Then the Seelie leans forward and whispers directly in his ear. “You think she won’t come after you? Is that really what you think? Foolish faerie. We know your weaknesses better than you can imagine. Yours. And hers. She will come. All you have done is delivered her directly to us. For that, we will make you a most honored guest at Tir na nOg, Benedict le Fay.”
Ben barely feels the naming. Because he is busy thinking of the enchanted sweatshirt he’d left with Selkie, which he’d intended to keep her safe but which would, eventually, trigger her memory of him. It had been his way of protecting the prophecy, and of making sure that Selkie eventually remembered exactly who she was.
But maybe it had been an enormous mistake…
