Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (2 page)

The keyhole was in a foreign city where it always snowed. It was on the third floor of the museum, in the 303rd room. Ophelia wasn’t at all sure how she got there, only that she let her feet take her wherever they wanted to go.

Her father had taken a job at the museum. He had become,
at the eleventh hour, the curator of
Battle: The Greatest Exhibition of Swords in the History of the World
. The previous curator had left without warning. In three days, Ophelia’s father was to prepare hundreds of swords to be exhibited on Christmas Eve.

He also hoped that a week in a foreign city would be just the medicine for his daughters. They could explore and ice-skate while he worked. And they would have a white Christmas away from their home, which had grown so quiet.

He was very busy, though, far too busy to spend much time with them. He told Ophelia she must stay close to her older sister, Alice. But Alice was not interested in seeing any of the attractions. She wanted to go nowhere and do nothing. She wanted to sit all day with her headphones, playing gloomy music and thinking gloomy thoughts. She’d been like that ever since their mother died, which was exactly three months, seven days, and nine hours ago.

“I’ll take you ice-skating later,” Alice said, but in a very halfhearted way.

So, all morning Ophelia had walked alone. She had been upstairs and down. She had climbed in and out of elevators that rattled and creaked between the floors. There were grand galleries filled with priceless treasures and glittering halls filled with dazzling relics. There were precious paintings by the old masters and glorious statues and huge urns, and the ceilings danced with painted angels. Ophelia tried, as hard as she could, to be interested in all these things.

She leaned her head to one side and nodded approvingly.

She looked up interesting facts in the rather useless guide.

She tried to stifle all her yawns.

But fortunately, these glimmering places also led to murky corridors. And these murky corridors also led to dimly lit rooms. And these rooms contained smaller, stranger collections. And it was these places that made Ophelia’s heart beat faster.

She found a lonely room filled with teaspoons.

Which led to a room containing only telephones.

Which led to a shadowy arcade of mirrors.

She passed through an exhibition of stuffed and preserved elephants. She tiptoed through a quiet pavilion filled with the threadbare taxidermied bodies of wolves. She squeezed through the crowd in the
Gallery of Time
and saw the famous Wintertide Clock. It ticked so loudly that people had to stick their fingers in their ears. She ran down a long, dim hallway filled with melancholy paintings of girls.

It was very cold. Windows were left open to stinging sparks of sleet and snow. The wind whistled and moaned through the galleries and down the stairwells. It made the cobwebs on the chandeliers dance.

Even with a map it was a very confusing place. Signs pointed in the wrong directions, and no one bothered about fixing them. The sign for
Porcelains 1700–1850 AD
led to
Costumes and Culture of the Renaissance
. The sign for
Costumes and Culture of the Renaissance
led to
Bronze Age Artifacts
. The sign for
Bronze Age Artifacts
led to an imposing red, locked door.

There was no point in asking the guards. The guards sat in corners and knitted or dozed. Sometimes, they snarled
and yelled like banshees for no good reason, and other times, they let children climb on the glass cabinets, using the brass handles for footholds. Sometimes, they came rushing at people who just happened to stand too long in one place, and other times, they smiled huge toothless smiles and offered old fruit from their large black handbags.

The museum in the city where it always snowed was the type of place where a person could very easily get lost. Miss Kaminski, the museum curator, had said so herself. Miss Kaminski was dazzlingly beautiful. Her blond hair was tied in an elegant chignon, and she was surrounded by a cloud of heavenly perfume. She had smiled at Ophelia and Alice before placing a perfectly manicured hand on their father’s arm.

“It is advisable that they do not wander alone,” Miss Kaminski said. “The museum is very big, and several girls have become lost and never been found.”

But Ophelia didn’t feel afraid. It was much better on her own. It was a relief to be out of the workroom, where her father had begun work as soon as they arrived in the city. He was unpacking swords and polishing swords and cataloging swords endlessly. Her father knew everything there was to know about swords. His card read:

MALCOLM WHITTARD
LEADING INTERNATIONAL EXPERT ON SWORDS

“I have a very tight deadline, Ophelia. Christmas Eve!” he said whenever Ophelia tried to talk to him. “I’m sure there are more than enough things here to keep you and Alice occupied.”

If ever you have the chance to visit this museum, the keyhole to room 303 is quite close to a much-celebrated sea monster mosaic floor. It is marked on the maps by an octopus symbol. That first morning, Ophelia spent some time walking on the mosaic waves and the mosaic foam. She traveled the length of all eight glittering tentacles, observed the people falling back from the monster’s mouth. She bent over and looked directly into its eye.

It was the sort of thing her mother would have loved. Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard wished more than anything that her mother were alive.

Near the sea monster mosaic floor, she noticed a gallery with a red rope hung across its entrance. Ophelia slipped under the rope and went inside. It was a small exhibition of broken stone angels. There was no guard in the room, so she touched some wings, even though she knew she shouldn’t have. It was very quiet and very still. All she could hear was her own footsteps and her own breathing. It had a peculiar, empty smell. No one had been that way for a very long time.

In the corner of the room there was a very normal-looking gray door. Above the door were the small silver numbers 302. Ophelia opened it.

The room behind the ordinary gray door was also almost normal. The floor was checkerboard. The tall windows, with tatty velvet curtains pulled back, gave a view of the city. The sky was also gray.

The room would have also been ordinary if it wasn’t for the little stage at its end and the faded mural of mountains and a blue sea and a boy with a sword. Above this scene, painted in
golden letters, cracked and peeling, stretching in an arch, were the words:

THE MARVELOUS BOY

There was a small door. It was hidden among the peaked blue waves with their little whitecaps, and in the small door there was a golden keyhole.

Ophelia crossed the checkerboard floor and climbed one step up onto the stage and walked across the floorboards. She knelt down to the keyhole and pressed her eye against it to see inside.

She did it without thinking.

It was the type of girl she was.

She did not expect anything unusual.

She did not expect to be looking straight into a large blue-green eye.

“Hello,” said the owner of the eye, a boy’s voice. “I come in friendship and mean you no harm.”

Ophelia was on her bottom, crawling backward away from the door. Her heart was lurching and leaping inside her chest. She felt for her puffer in her blue velvet coat pocket and gave herself a squirt.

“Who are you?” she said, or at least tried; her words came out squeaky.

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

“But I don’t believe in wizards,” Ophelia said.

“Come closer,” said the voice.

Anyone would say,
“Don’t go closer.”
Ophelia wasn’t stupid. In fact, she belonged to the Children’s Science Society of Greater London, which met on Tuesday nights. Of course she wouldn’t go closer. It was only common sense.

Ophelia knelt, staring at the mural. The beautiful mountain range, the turquoise sea, the boy with the solemn expression and his sword raised. She pulled down hard on her braids, because that sometimes made her feel better.

“Why can’t you come out?” Ophelia asked.

“I’m locked in.”

“A prisoner?”

“Yes,” said the voice.

Ophelia could have walked away. She could have picked herself up and walked backward from the room. She could have followed her feet all the way past the stone angels and across the sea monster mosaic. She could have run down the long hallway of painted girls and squeezed through the crowd in the
Gallery of Time
. She could have raced down, down, down the damp, creaking stairs to her father, cataloging and classifying swords. When Mr. Whittard asked her what she’d been doing, she could have said, “Absolutely nothing. It’s very boring here.”

But she didn’t. She walked on her hands and knees slowly toward the keyhole.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The blue-green eye was surrounded by dark lashes. When the owner of the eye leaned back, she could see it was a boy. He
had a pleasant enough face. He wiped his bangs out of his eyes. When he smiled, a dimple appeared in his right cheek.

“I need your help,” the boy said, “to save the world.”

Ophelia wasn’t expecting that. It made her cross.

“I’m so glad you came, even if you are very late,” he continued. “I’ve had only Mr. Pushkinova to speak to and I haven’t been allowed out for ages now that the ending is near.”

“Who’s keeping you in there?” Ophelia asked.

“I am a prisoner of Her Majesty, the Snow Queen,” said the boy.

“But I don’t believe in Snow Queens.”

“Do you believe in magical swords?”

“Well …,” said Ophelia. She didn’t want to sound impolite.

“Great magical owls? Misery birds?”

“Who?”

“What about ghosts?” asked the boy, leaning forward again.

She thought awhile. The smile in the large blue-green eye faltered; the lid closed momentarily.

“Ghosts?” the boy asked again.

Ophelia chewed her fingernail. “I might believe,” she said, “in the possibility of ghosts, but I’m not sure. I need to research the evidence more.”

“What
do
you believe in?” asked the boy.

She didn’t like his tone. “I believe in lots of things,” Ophelia said, trying to sound very certain. “There was a big bang; all the stars are still traveling apart right now. The moon is a certain distance from us, but sometimes it comes closer and sometimes farther—that’s how it pushes the sea. Everything in the
whole world can be classified scientifically. For instance, I am from the kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, order Primates, family Hominidae, genus
Homo
, species
Homo sapiens
. I only eat class Pisces and only if they’re called sardines. I don’t believe in unicorns or dragons or anything magical, really.”

She took her mouth away from the keyhole and pressed her eye there.

“Well, they only give me porridge to eat,” said the boy, “and everyone knows unicorns and dragons aren’t real. But you may believe in ghosts?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Good, I must tell you many things,” he said. “If you choose to help me, you must find the key to this door. We need to find my sword, which is magical, and the One Other, who will know how to wield it. On the Wintertide Clock there is a number in the little window at the very bottom of the face, just below the door of chimes, that will tell us how much time we have.”

Ophelia bit her bottom lip.

“I told my father I’d only be gone a little while,” she said.

“Please, Ophelia,” said the boy.

Of course she couldn’t save the world. She was only eleven years old and rather small for her age, and also she had knock-knees. Dr. Singh told her mother she would probably grow out of them, especially if she wore medical shoes, but that wasn’t the point. She had very bad asthma as well, made worse by cold weather and running and bad scares. Ophelia thought this
should have all been proof that she couldn’t possibly help. She leaned away from the keyhole.

Everything was meant to be simple. Mr. Whittard was to work, and Alice and Ophelia were to ice-skate. They’d go to the rink in the city square beneath the giant Christmas tree. A foreign city was meant to take their minds off terrible things. Ice-skating would help them forget some of their sadness. Now here was a boy asking her to do impossible things. He was making everything unsimple.

“After you have been to the Wintertide Clock, you must find the elevator in the dinosaur hall,” said the boy. “That will take you to the seventh floor. You will need to take the left corridor. The right corridor leads to the Queen’s chamber. The left corridor is where the misery birds are kept—you must be careful not to wake them. At the very end of the corridor, there will be a small white cupboard with a small white drawer. You must bring the key that is in that drawer to me.”

He’s full of orders, thought Ophelia. Check the clock, take this elevator here, get that key there.

“Why were you chosen by a protectorate of wizards?” she asked. The best way to get to the bottom of things was with questions. “And how can someone take your name from you? I don’t think that’s really possible.”

The boy sighed. The sigh of someone who is in a hurry but who knows he has to stop and go back to the very beginning to get anywhere.

“Sit closer,” he said. “And I’ll tell you.” Through the keyhole, the boy said: