Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (18 page)

“Your daughter,” said Miss Kaminski in an icy voice, and she delivered Ophelia the way one would a parcel. “A reminder, Mr. Whittard, my sword will arrive today, and I trust that all your preparations are in order.”

She turned on her stiletto heel and left.

“Ophelia Jane,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“I went to the bathroom,” she said, and then convulsed with shivers.

“Are you telling the truth?” he said, wrapping her in his arms.

She remembered what the boy had told her.
Always tell the truth
. “No,” she said.

“Where have you been?” Mr. Whittard asked. “I thought you were lying right there on that chair. I can’t believe it. I thought you were there. I’ve been so busy, but I thought you were lying there.”

“We’re in great danger,” Ophelia said. “Great, great, great danger.”

“Goodness me, what kind of danger?” asked Mr. Whittard.

“In danger of the Snow Queen’s army waking up and freezing the whole world and making everything sad. I’ve met a boy who is a prisoner, and he has lived for a long time, and he
was sent all the way here to give the sword to someone else, but they took the sword ages ago. And all they feed him is porridge. They were keeping him locked in a room, but I’ve let him out. I was chased by snow leopards and helped by a ghost and nearly eaten by a misery bird. Just now we were chased by wolves. Did you hear them howling? I have to find the sword, and I have to find the One Other who can wield it before the stroke of six.”

Mr. Whittard stared at his daughter for a while. He hugged her close to his chest, then looked at her again.

Ophelia stared back at him. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, darling. You do take after your mother.”

“We’re in great danger,” whispered Ophelia. “Didn’t you hear the wolves?”

“You’ve got a fever,” said Mr. Whittard. He felt his daughter’s forehead, which was burning. “I’m taking you back to the hotel.”

He scooped her up in his arms and carried her through the vast and monumental corridors, down the grand staircases. He carried her across the glittering wedding mosaic floor in the foyer. That morning Ophelia fancied she could hear the Wintertide Clock ticking. It seemed to be shaking the whole building. She tried to speak, feebly, to tell her father more, but he was already carrying her through the great revolving doors, out into the snow.

At that very moment the museum guards were fanning out from the elevator on the sixth floor. The Snow Queen waited
quietly while they searched in every corner. Beside her was Mr. Pushkinova, his head bowed. When they at last opened the carriage door, the Snow Queen strode forward.

“Did you really think that scrap of a girl could help you?” she said to the boy. “A little girl who squeaks like a mouse?”

Then she began to laugh, her terrible, clear, tinkling-bell laugh.

In which Ophelia is very ill and Alice is very upset, but they come to a mutual agreement

“I feel better,” said Ophelia, lying in her hotel bed. “I swear, I feel better.”

“Your temperature is through the roof,” said Mr. Whittard. “You’ll have to stay here. All morning. Don’t even start to argue. Alice, you’ll stay here too.”

“I can’t!” screeched Alice. “I’m having my hair done and my dress fitting, and then my portrait is being hung. Miss Kaminski is going to teach me how to hold the special shears and cut the ribbon.”

“You’ll be staying here,” said Mr. Whittard. “And speaking of special things, Miss Kaminski’s prized sword is arriving today and I am meant to be there right now, making preparations.”

“Don’t you understand?” wailed Alice. “I need to be beautiful.”

“You’re nearly sixteen,” said her father, very calmly. “You
need to start acting like an adult. You’re to stay here and keep an eye on your little sister.”

Alice slumped down in front of the mirror. She stared at Ophelia lying on the bed. “You always ruin everything,” she said.

Ophelia wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. She felt weak and small. She coughed. She felt as though she were falling, falling backward a long way, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She watched the snow drifting past the window.

She didn’t know how long she slept.

In her dream her mother was calling her.

Her mother’s voice was coming from deep within the museum, and Ophelia was running, trying to find her. Sometimes the voice seemed closer and she would think, I don’t have far to go. Then the voice would fade. Finally, when she was near the
Gallery of Time
, she heard her mother say her name so clearly that she stopped still.

Susan Worthington was sitting on a chair near one of the windows just outside the gallery. She was sitting the way she always sat, with her legs crossed and a book in her lap. She didn’t look sick. She didn’t look sick at all, and that filled Ophelia with happiness. Her mother’s long brown hair was undone and blow-dried, just the way she wore it when she went to the movies or to dinner. She had lipstick on. Her mother never wore lipstick unless something very special was about to happen.

“Mum,” Ophelia cried. “Mummy!”

She rushed toward her mother and was embraced. She smelt her. Her cinnamony, rosy, clean-haired, ink-stained smell. Her mother smoothed back Ophelia’s hair and gazed at her face. She took Ophelia’s glasses and wiped the tears from her eyes. She cleaned the smudges from Ophelia’s glasses with the hem of her skirt.

“Now, you have a busy few hours ahead of you,” said her mother, “if you are going to save this world.”

“Do you believe it all?” asked Ophelia.

“Of course I believe it all,” said her mother.

“But I don’t know what to do.”

“You do,” said Susan Worthington.

“Should I think scientifically?”

“You should think with your heart,” said her mother.

“My heart?” whispered Ophelia.

“Your heart,” said her mother, and she touched Ophelia’s chest with the tip of her finger. It was the tiniest of touches, but a warmth and new hope spread through Ophelia’s body. She began to smile.

Then her mother looked behind her. There was another voice calling Ophelia, a very loud, very angry voice.

Ophelia spun around and woke up with a start. Alice was sitting in a chair by the window, yelling.

“Why wouldn’t you wake up?” Alice said. “You were shouting so much. Shouting out,
Mum, mum, mum
. And you were crying and then laughing.”

“Sorry,” said Ophelia.

She looked at her watch. She had been asleep for hours. It
was nearly midday. Would the special sword have arrived at the museum? Her mother had been gone three months, nine days, and eleven hours.

“I feel much better,” said Ophelia. She looked at her arm for the magical snow leopard scratch and it was completely gone.

“Good for you,” said Alice, taking her place in front of the mirror again.

“Have you heard of mutualism?”

“Shut up,” said Alice. “You’re annoying me.”

The old Alice would have never said, “Shut up.” The old Alice would have said, “You can tell me about mutualism if you let me braid your hair.”

“Well, it’s a type of symbiosis,” said Ophelia. “Where two animals live together and help each other in a way that is mutually beneficial.”

“I’m ignoring you.”

“Like the red-billed oxpecker eating the ticks off an impala.”

No response. Alice applied her lipstick now.

“What I’m saying is, why
should
you have to miss out on everything?” said Ophelia.

Alice raised her delicately arched eyebrows.

She was paler now, paler than Ophelia could ever remember her being. So pale that fragile blue veins showed beside her eyes. Ophelia looked at her sister’s reflection in the mirror and saw she was very beautiful. Not the pretty, rosy kind of beauty that she had arrived with. This new beauty was much brighter and much cooler.

“I’ll come back to the museum with you,” said Ophelia, “and
you’ll get to have your hair and everything done, and I promise I won’t tell Dad if you don’t tell him that I am there.”

Alice watched her with sparkling blue eyes.

“I have a lot of things that I have to do, important things,” said Ophelia. “Just like you. All I’m saying is, why should we
both
miss out?”

“I’ll be toast if Dad finds out,” said Alice.

“He’ll never know,” said Ophelia.

Alice started to hum her tuneless song and continued painting her lips. Ophelia climbed out of bed. The word
toast
had made her hungry. Her stomach grumbled. She made toast and sat at the little breakfast table. She opened a new tin of sardines and carefully placed some on her toast. She knew she would need every ounce of strength. She wondered what Lucy Coutts ate the day she rescued the baby in the runaway stroller and became a hero.

After her toast she found the hotel sewing kit in the bathroom, and even though she wasn’t sure how to stitch properly, she turned her blue velvet coat inside out and sewed up the hole in her right-hand pocket. She had a feeling she would need a pocket. It was jagged stitching, but it made her feel good.

Alice came to the door, and Ophelia waited for what she would say.

“Let’s go,” her sister said.

In which the Great Sorrow is delivered to the museum, and Ophelia does not realize that Alice is about to be placed in the Snow Queen’s machine

Alice and Ophelia trudged toward the museum. Alice wore a white fur coat and white jeans and silver heels that were way too grown-up for her. Ophelia was in the clothes she had worn all night and all the day before. Her braids were coming undone, and her glasses were very smudgy. The snow was falling so hard and fast that they could barely see. Ophelia wheezed in the frozen air.

On the wedding mosaic floor they parted ways.

“Promise me you won’t tell,” said Ophelia.

“I promise,” said Alice, but she was already staring past her sister as though she were hardly there at all.

Ophelia went to the sword exhibition hall and crept carefully along the corridor. She wanted to see this arriving sword firsthand. It might just be the boy’s sword. She felt cross, not having thought of that before. She could hear her father’s voice
as she entered the room and pressed herself behind one of the heavy velvet drapes that covered each window.