Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (15 page)

“The name?” she asked, trying not to sound angry.

The boy smiled at her slyly. “Can’t you guess?”

He really was too much. She refused to guess any more names.

“Honestly,” she said aloud, shaking her head. She pulled the boy’s coat closer. She looked at the Edwardian parlor fire, and from the corner of her eye, she noticed again the blurriness of him. It was worse now, as though he were only half there. He seemed exhausted from just telling that story.

“You should speak your heart,” said the boy, sensing.

But she didn’t mention his evanescence. It seemed too hard. She had expected magic to be simple and tidy, with people disappearing in puffs of smoke—not slowly, by degrees, in a lonely, aching way.

“The thing is,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “owls don’t really speak, not really. I mean, only in stories, perhaps.”

“The thing is,” he replied, “only the right sort of people can hear them.”

There was not a hint of anger in his voice. He smiled at her.

“If you do not believe in such things,” he said as they got up and walked again, “then it is best I don’t tell you of the troll mountain.”

Ophelia didn’t encourage him. She said nothing. She listened to their footsteps on the cold marble floor.

“Or how I met a giant called Gallant, who took me across
the sea on his shoulders past the meridian, the point of no return.”

Ophelia stopped and looked very carefully at a display of medieval farming tools, pretending to be engrossed in a pitchfork.

“But across the sea was this kingdom, and it was here I met the King,” he said.

“And the Snow Queen,” said Ophelia, “who made you her prisoner.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “But that wasn’t straightaway. Many years passed first.”

“What were you doing for those years?”

“Well, mostly I played and ate sweets,” said the boy.

I’d never seen mountains like the ones in the new land. Jagged, rocky mountains, not wearing a stitch of trees. Or a city as big as the one I entered that day. The town where I came from was small, and the wizard house, with its tower, was the tallest building to be seen. But here there were giant houses everywhere, with bells in their towers at each corner, and the streets teeming with people.

I searched in my satchel for the instructions. I had to search with my left hand; my right hand, with its missing finger, still ached in its bandages. I found the list of instructions but didn’t read them. I’d spotted one of the last of the biscuit men that Petal had baked for me. I ate one while I thought.

After that I spent some time looking for the compass. To tell you the truth, I thought I’d lost it. I lose things easily.
My mother always said so. I was always forgetting my coat in winter and my ink pen in school, and I was always leaving my shoes on the riverbank. It seemed no amount of apologizing could appease her. I had to wait until the storm passed. Forgetting things made me feel bad. But the shoes, for instance—they were nothing important when I played in the river, which was so wide and still. The fish you could almost catch with your hands, and the blade of grass was sweet in my mouth, and every stone I skipped skipped perfectly.

Yes, it is strange that the wizards chose me.

But the compass was very important. I eventually found it in my tunic pocket, and I followed it south through the streets. Now remember, the wizards had told me in the other world I must find the just and kind ruler. And as it would happen, south took me exactly to the palace gates.

The King duly heard of my arrival. He was seated beside his nanny, who was folding his underpants very neatly. She was telling him how a walk in the garden would do him good and relieve him of his melancholy.

The King was not old as you’d expect, only a boy, much like me. He was prone to bouts of misery. There was always someone knocking on the palace door, trying to cure the King of his sadness. There was an herb man, and a man with glass jars filled with smoke, and a man with powder vials kept inside a magnificent velvet bag. And if they could not cure him, there was always someone trying a new trick. A man who juggled daggers or men dressed as women who danced in a bawdy
way, or a terrible, wizened old man who charmed large green snakes.

That day he was in the throes of melancholy when the chamberlain shouted, “Your Highness!” causing the nanny to drop a whole stack of folded underpants. “There is a boy with a divine message who carries a mighty sword handed down from the angels. He says a great invasion is on the way.”

The King sighed loudly. “Perhaps, Chamberlain,” he said, “you would bring this boy to visit me.”

When I was before the young King, he looked me up and down and sighed even louder. “They tell me you have come from a distant land, perhaps from beyond the sea,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, and being truthful, I still felt wobbly on my feet, because it had been a very long way. I forgot everything I was meant to say.

“And has this land got a name?” said the King, who plucked a blade of grass and began to chew it.

“Take that out of your mouth this very minute,” said his nanny.

The King obeyed and put the grass down.

“Yes, it is called the Kingdom,” I said. “And I come from a place called the Town.”

“
This
is the Kingdom,” he said, waving his arm around him. “
My
Kingdom, to be precise.”

“It’s a very nice kingdom,” I said. “And very large and very grand.”

The King looked pleased. “And your name?” he asked.

“I don’t have a name,” I said. “It was taken from me by the
protectorate of wizards from the east, west, and middle to keep me safe.”

“No name?” said the King. “That’s very unusual. Still, tell me how you came from such a faraway place. Am I to believe you walked the whole way?”

“I ran in the beginning. In the forest and the valley and through the belly of the mountain and then across the ocean.”

“In a boat?” he asked, looking very bored.

“A type of boat, I suppose.”

“I see,” said the King. But I could tell that he didn’t. “The problem is,” he said, “that there is no other land across the ocean. That is only a place that exists in fairy tales. Isn’t it, Nanny? Across the sea is the place you speak of when you tell me those stories at bedtime. All of which are make-believe.”

The old nanny hobbled forward.

“Did you say something?” she said.

The King rolled his eyes at me. “I said, this boy here says he has come from a land across the sea and he walked the whole way here.”

“Well,” said the nanny, taking her glasses from her pocket and stepping closer to peer at me. “He must be very tired, and you haven’t even asked him to take a seat.”

He looked cross. He pointed to the grass in front of him and I sat down. “Tell me your message,” said the frowning King.

“Hello,” I said. “I come in friendship and mean you no harm.”

The King laughed very loudly at that.

“I am a boy,” I said when he had stopped laughing, “chosen
by a protectorate of wizards from the east, west, and middle to—”

“Wait,” said the King. “Let me guess. You have come all this way to tell me the harvest will fail this year. You have special powers of foresight—I knew it as soon as I saw you. No, wait again, you have come all this way to tell me that a hole has opened up in the crust of the earth and we can crawl through now to the place where everyone walks on their hands.”

“No,” I said.

“What, then?”

“I have been chosen to deliver this sword so that the Snow Queen may be defeated.” I took the very plain magical sword from its scabbard and went to hold it in the air, but as usual my arm trembled so much with the weight of it that I couldn’t prize its tip from the ground.

The King was very amused.

“I have to give it to someone else, the One Other, who will help defeat the Snow Queen.”

“Who is this One Other?” asked the King.

“I am not sure,” I said. “The wizards said I would know the person when I found him or her. Although the great magical owl gave me a clue when he bit off my finger to put a charm on me.”

Now, to the King’s credit, he looked at me and tried to stop his mouth from twitching. But he lost the battle. He covered his face with his hands, and then threw his head back and roared with laughter. He grabbed his knees from the pain of it. He laughed and laughed until he wiped the tears from his eyes.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” he said at last. “What shall we call him, Nanny? Shall we call him Boy?”

“Oh, he is very lovely,” said the old nanny. “Should I make up a nice, soft bed for Boy, seeing he has come such a long way?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Nanny, I think that would be a good idea indeed.”

I cannot complain about the care I was given. The royal tailor was called that very first day and was told I should be attired in only the finest things: brocade velvets and coats embroidered with golden birds and the best silk stockings. The nanny combed my hair in the way that was the style. A man was employed to do nothing but wash my face with a warm flannel whenever it was required. I ate every type of food that could be imagined. The small room beside the King’s was made up with a new bed with satin cushions and covers.

“Whatever you want, you shall have,” said the young King, “as long as you stay and be my friend.”

“What of my message?” I asked.

“Oh, we will talk more of it later,” he said. “For now I command you to be my friend.”

Each time I spoke of leaving, the King grew petulant.

“I command you to stay,” he said. “I command you to play that game again. The one where you pretend to be a boy from another land. It’s ever so funny. Everything was so tiresome before you came.”

I thought of my home. I won’t lie. Each night, I took the
magical sword the wizards had entrusted me with and held it heavy in my hands. I wondered for hours of what I should do. I wrote great stories in my head in which I escaped and found the One Other. But I never left the bed. Each time we went through the streets or to parties or to dances on the royal litter, I looked at the crowd. I looked at each and every person. I tried to imagine them with the sword. I looked for something in their eyes that made them capable of defeating the Snow Queen, although I had no idea what that might be.

Each day I was entertained by jugglers and fire-eaters and poets and storytellers. Yet each night I thought of my mother, and my heart ached. Each night I tried to remember my name.

“Do not despair,” said the nanny when she tucked me into bed each night. “One day you will return home again.”

“But for now I command him to stay here,” said the King from the next room. “Because otherwise who would I have to talk to at night?”

Each night the King spoke through the little wall that separated our bedrooms. He spoke, sometimes for hours, of his worries. He worried about the world. People kept wanting to go off exploring it, and sometimes these people never came back. He was worried about his headaches, and maybe he was about to start having visions because he heard this was what happened.

“The wizards had visions,” I said.

“What of?” asked the King.

“Of my journey. It was a bit murky in parts. The Great Wizard said it was like looking into a brown river.”

“Did these wizards teach you anything magical?” asked the young King.

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, only how to listen to the Herald Trees, I suppose.”

“A Herald Tree,” he said after a very long pause, because he must have been growing sleepy. He yawned. “I think I own one of those.”

The Herald Tree was in the farthest reach of the King’s garden, and we rode there the very next day on our elephants. Oh yes, the King had imported elephants. He was always doing things like that.

“I haven’t been here for a very long time,” said the King. “But my father showed it to me once. He said it was a very rare tree. It had been given to my mother and father on their wedding day. It was from a distant place. I am sure it was called … what did you call it?”

“A Herald Tree,” I said, not wanting him to be wrong.

The King opened up a rusty door hidden by vine, and we entered a tiny walled garden. In the middle of the walled garden was the tree. It was a smallish tree, stout, with a bulbous trunk and spreading crown of glossy, dark leaves.

The first time I placed my hand on it, I heard everything. The King spoke endlessly. The birds sang mercilessly. There was the distant rumbling of the royal thoroughfare. I separated all these things out and found the emptiness, just the way the wizards had taught me. In the emptiness I heard Petal first. Petal, clear as day, laughing.

“You must not forget us,” she said.

The King interrupted by tapping me on the shoulder.

“What do you do that for?” he asked. The truth was he didn’t like anything that didn’t involve him.

“It’s the way the wizards speak across distances,” I said.

That made the King laugh heartily. He sat down on the grass and rested his back against the wall. “I command you, listen again,” he said. “And see what they have to tell us.”

I placed my hand on the tree once more. “Do not forget steadfastness, child. Remember the sword. Remember your cause,” said the Great Wizard, almost as though he were whispering in my ear. Then more voices:

“One of your ponytails is higher than the other.”

“That always happens when I have to do it myself.”

“You’ll get better at it.”

I listened to these voices and was very confused.

Then suddenly there came the slicing, scraping sound of a sleigh, the trampling of hooves, great wings, monstrous wings, the screeches of owls. I leapt back from the tree and held my hand as though it had been burnt.

“What?” asked the King.

“I heard the Snow Queen,” I said. After all, the wizards had taught me to always tell the truth. “She is close.”

The King slapped his thigh and doubled over. “You never stop, do you?” he laughed. “Now we must ride back to the castle because I feel like playing another game.”

It was hide-and-seek; then we rode boats on the river stocked specially with rainbow-colored fish. This was followed
by quoits and checkers and badminton. Each and every day, as soon as one game was finished, the King thought of another.