Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (20 page)

More leafless trees, an avenue of them, glittering with ice.

He could never survive outside here. Never.

Ophelia’s chest felt very tight. She took her puffer from her newly sewn pocket and puffed twice. The thing about the boy was that she missed him. She missed him so much. Just thinking of him captured, locked up somewhere anew. The Queen, planning to …

The trouble with magic was that it was messy and dangerous and filled with longing. There were too many moments that made your heart stop and ache and start again.

She looked for doors. Doors that might lead into small walled gardens. Perhaps he was locked away inside one. In an outdoor pavilion. She ran her finger along the walls, feeling for seams, the edges of a door. The snow made her gloves wet, and her fingers stung.

The problem with magic was that it made her feel very alone.

She knew the boy was true. He was as real as she was. And she had to save him.

And in thinking these things, she felt her finger hit something on the wall. A fine edge. She stopped and started to scrape away the ice and snow, and it wasn’t long before she realized that it was the outline of a little recessed iron door. She carefully scraped away the snow hanging from the door handle. Then she turned the handle, holding her breath, waiting to see what lay behind.

The boy was not in the walled garden. In the walled garden there was a tree. The tree had a plump trunk and a spreading canopy of branches, but it was probably only twice as tall as Ophelia. It was a pleasant tree. She imagined in spring it might have very deep green leaves, and one could lie beneath it in the shade. A soothing, calming kind of tree. A lazing-beneath-it kind of tree. The branches shone with ice, however, and there was not one single hint of greenery in that tiny walled garden.

Ophelia looked around the tree, at the ground. She kicked at snow. She felt with her feet for the hidden sword, just in case. She knew it wasn’t there. Her feeling had brought her here, and here was the Herald Tree.

Here was the Herald Tree that the boy had spoken of.

She had tried to ignore it, but here it was.

She knelt down in the snow, quite close to it. Timidly held out her hand. Of course she wouldn’t be able to hear anything,
would she? It wasn’t like she was magical in any way. She hadn’t been trained by the wizards. She didn’t know how to do it.

She placed her hand flat against the cold trunk.

It won’t hurt to try
, whispered her mother.
It never hurts to try
.

Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard closed her eyes.

Later she would say it was like being plugged into an electrical socket. When she touched the Herald Tree, she felt something bright enter her. She tingled in her toes, and her glasses thrummed against her face, and she felt her braids lift, just a little, from her shoulders.

She heard several things at once. Footsteps on a winding wooden staircase, robes rustling, someone singing, and another sound like fingers kneading dough. And all these things she heard as though they were going on right inside of her: as though the staircase were there in her body, and the dough were being kneaded inside her tummy, and someone were singing quietly inside her lungs.

Ophelia
, said a voice.

The voice was very deep and very low, and it reminded her of velvet and rolling waves. The voice came from the tree and into her fingers and into her blood, and she felt her name move up her arm and into her heart.

“How do you know me?” Ophelia didn’t know if she spoke those words or those words spoke her.

We have always known you
.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

It will soon
.

“I can’t find the sword. I’ve looked everywhere.”

The sword will find you
.

“How?”

You are a girl of many questions, as prophesied
.

Ophelia had never been prophesied before. It made her feel annoyed.

“I rescued the boy, but then the Queen’s taken him again. She’s hidden him somewhere new. Now I have to find him along with everything else.”

You will find him
, said the voice.
We have seen it. It has all been told
.

You’re all very sure
, Ophelia wanted to say but didn’t, though the wizards heard her anyway.

She heard one laugh, a deep belly laugh.

All will be well in the end, Ophelia
, the voices said in unison.

And that reminded her of something, although she couldn’t say what. She felt the seal between her hand and the tree weaken and her braids land on her back and her shoulders slump forward, and she was released from the current of the Herald Tree.

She stood up and dusted off her knees, not sure at all what to do, except she noticed she had started to cry—tears were flowing down her cheeks and turning to ice as they went. She scrunched her fists up in her eyes and stamped her feet on the ground. Her tears cracked and tinkled and fell to the ground, and she didn’t try to stop them for some time.

Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn’t tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn’t very helpful.

If she were a wizard, she’d write reports for people. She’d make sure everything was very clear. She’d write,
Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera
. She’d have check boxes.
Found your magical sword? Place X here
.

She went back inside the museum, her breath smoking before her in great clouds. She dusted away the rest of her frozen tears. She walked through the darkened
Prehistoria
and then entered an elevator to find her way back to her father’s workroom. Following her heart had got her nowhere. She needed a plan. She’d go to her father. She’d say, “I’ve had a nap; I’m feeling much better. Can I go through your lists of swords? Your spreadsheets? It’s very important.”

She went on tiptoe across the sea monster mosaic. She hoped she wouldn’t meet the horrible Mr. Pushkinova again. She checked again in room 303, but the boy wasn’t there. The door in the turquoise sea was still open, and the bed had been stripped bare. The floor had been scrubbed, and the pitcher and porridge bowl cleaned and turned upside down on the table.

It made her feel abandoned. Yes, that was the word.

She went back out through the stone angels and across the sea monster mosaic and down the long, thin gallery of painted girls in party dresses.

“Hello, Tess Janson,” she said. “You’re looking very bored.
Hello, Katie Patin, Matilda Cole, Johanna Payne, Judith Pickford, Millie Mayfield, Carys Sprock, Sally Temple-Watts, Paulette Claude, and Kyra Marinova.”

She stopped there. Put her hand up to touch Kyra’s face, even though she knew you should never touch paintings in a museum.

She moved to the next painting.

“Hello, Alice Worthington-Whittard,” she said.

She stopped.

She opened her mouth.

She tried to comprehend.

A hundred thoughts swarmed into her head, buzzed madly, swarmed out again. Alice. Painted. Chosen by the Queen. Miss Kaminski. The seventh floor … 
the machine
.

In which Ophelia must rescue her sister, Alice

She tried, with all her might, not to think of the misery birds. As she went up in the elevator, she tried to think of boys’ names beginning with
F
instead. She couldn’t think of many of those. There were just Fabien, Finnigan, Falstaff, Fred, Felix, Fergus, and Floyd.

They’d be waiting on their roosts, listening, those misery birds.

Gerald, Greg, Geronimo, Gus, Gulliver, Grant, Gabriel, Galahad, Gavin.

They hadn’t eaten for one whole day, those misery birds. They’d be ravenous.

She’d said she’d never come again to the seventh floor, and here she was. She had to save Alice. And she was sure this was where Alice was.

It’s the right thing to do
, whispered her mother.

“But it’s scary,” Ophelia whispered back.

You’ll rescue Alice, and then you can look for the sword while you’re there as well. And the satchel and compass and the instructions the wizards gave the boy. Those are sure to help
.

As though Ophelia were only doing something simple, like shopping.

“It’s all right for you,” said Ophelia.

She remembered quite suddenly the morning she didn’t hear her mother’s footsteps on the stairs outside her bedroom. The loose floorboard didn’t creak. She didn’t hear the study door open nor the chair squeak. She didn’t hear her mother’s fingers flying on the keyboard. Everything was still.

That morning Ophelia slipped out of bed and walked across the hall and up the stairs. She paused outside her parents’ bedroom. There was another noise.

Smaller.

Scratchier.

She pushed the door open. Her father was on his side, fast asleep. Her mother was propped up on her pillows, a notebook open in her lap. She was writing with a pencil.

“I thought …,” said Ophelia. The sense of relief had made her feel dizzy.

“I’m still here,” said her mother.

Ophelia waited for the elevator door to clang open on the seventh floor. She stood in the silence that followed, her legs shaking. She began to walk very quietly across the marble floor, for the first time toward the right-hand corridor. There were no rooms in this corridor, just bare white walls, and in the distance—it seemed forever away—one single door. Ophelia
walked toward it. There was a tiny plaque on the door. She could see it from a distance but could not make out the words. When she was closer, she adjusted her glasses. She didn’t want to read the words. She was terrified of what she would see.

The plaque read in small silver letters:

MISS KAMINSKI
MUSEUM CURATOR

I knew she was bad from the beginning
, her mother hissed.

“Shh,” said Ophelia.

She knocked very quietly on the door, and when no one answered, she opened it.

“Alice,” she whispered.

There was no reply.

It was a very plain office. There was an old white sofa and an old pine box that served as a coffee table. An old bookshelf. The walls and curtains were white, and the desk was also a pale pine. There was one large crystal paperweight holding down a thin pile of papers. Behind the desk, a window gave a view of the cold city.

Ophelia took a puff on her inhaler, and she wished she hadn’t because it was a very loud noise in the very quiet room. She started with the desk. She lifted up the paperweight first and went through the small pile of papers beneath. Seating arrangements. All of them written by hand in a silvery ink.

In the first drawer, there was a silver pen. In the second drawer, white sheets of writing paper. In the third drawer, there
was nothing but a frosted pink lipstick, a hand mirror, and a packet of mints. In the fourth drawer, there was a silver key.

Ophelia ran her fingers along the spines of the books in Miss Kaminski’s bookshelf.
Prehistoric Art. The Amulets of Eastern Europe. The Museum in the Late Twentieth Century. Franco-Flemish Social History
. She sat down on the sofa and looked at the pine-box coffee table. She saw that the box had a lock. She went back to the desk and retrieved the key.

The box was stiff with age, but the key opened it. The lid made a hideous squeak. Inside was the satchel, worn smooth by time. She opened it, and she took out the folded piece of paper. It was a little crumpled. A little stained. A fragile, ancient thing. And written in the Great Wizard’s strange block letters on the outside, the word
Instructions
.

She felt in the bag again.

There it was, the old, tarnished compass. She held it in her hand before placing it back inside. Her fingers brushed against something else. She peered inside and saw a little biscuit man, two shiny currant eyes staring back at her. She slipped the satchel strap over her head and shoulder, and it fitted perfectly.