Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (8 page)

I liked his laugh. He had a laugh as big as he was, and when he laughed, it shook the room
.

The leopards were so close that Ophelia could see herself reflected in their eyes. Still, they did not move forward while the ghost girl clung by her side.

We were poor. I didn’t have fine clothes. Each morning I saw the Queen when she walked in her snow gardens, and each morning she looked up at me. She sent me a golden pear first, then a jewelry box, then she called for me
.

Ophelia heard Kyra’s voice strengthen beside her. Her voice was loud and close. The leopards stopped again, hunched, waiting to pounce.

I liked to write my name. I liked to write it again and again on the same piece of paper. I loved to run
.

“And your hair was red?”

It was red as a flame. I had a scar on my cheek from when I fell from a chair and a burn on my hand from the frying pan
.

Ophelia touched the table with her fingers. She reached behind her back for the box. The leopards let out a hiss and a wail. They bared their teeth.

“What happened when the Queen called you?”

She said, “I have seen you each day and been sorely amazed by your quaint prettiness. Look at your hair and your rosy cheeks, so full of life, exactly like a blossom. Do you remember these things?” Flowers, now, my father had told me of them
.

I shivered in front of her in my little rag dress. She said, “I would like you to come with me. I have a special machine that will make you warm.” And I followed her all the way up the steps, floors and floors and floors and floors, and all the courtiers and all the chambermaids came to watch her lead me
.

Ophelia couldn’t bear to hear the story, but she knew she
must listen or the leopards would have her. They scratched their claws along the marble floor and moved closer. Their tails lashed behind them.

They had smiles on their faces, you know, all those people. They knew exactly what would happen to me
.

“What happened to you?”

The Queen put me in her machine. She said, “Kyra, there is nothing at all to fear.” And that was the end of me
.

Ophelia had the box in front of her now. It was a box painted with a winter scene. Her hands shook. She fumbled with the key—the lid opened on stiff hinges. Inside was a small copper key, very old, discolored green.

Quickly, you must go now
, said Kyra, her voice suddenly weaker.

The lead snow leopard leapt toward Ophelia.

“Tell me what you loved!” Ophelia shouted just in time.

I loved to run. I could run forever, all the way through the streets until the fields began
.

The leopard swerved, tumbled, crouched again on all fours.

“Come with me,” Ophelia said, pressing the elevator button. She heard it rumbling away somewhere below.

But Kyra was fading.

“Tell me your name!” Ophelia shouted, stepping back into the elevator as the door opened.

My name was Kyra
, Kyra said.

Ophelia saw her then, the outline of her. She saw her brilliant red hair. She burnt suddenly into existence in that museum gallery, the snow leopards poised behind her.

“Kyra!” she shouted as the elevator doors began to close.

You must go, Ophelia
, Kyra said, her last words. She was unraveling. She burnt to life once more, and then there was nothing left of her.

The snow leopards leapt forward, the largest striking Ophelia across the sleeve as she fell backward. The snow leopard screeched as the doors shut on its powerful foreleg. It whined until it was free, and the doors closed completely. Ophelia scrambled into the far corner, pulled up her sleeve to see a thin line of blood. She put her head in her hands as the elevator began to descend.

In which Miss Kaminski finds Ophelia and is very cross

The elevator opened onto the long, narrow gallery of gloomy paintings of girls. It was very dark in that corridor; the sun must have set already, and all their quiet, lonely faces were in shadow. Ophelia thought of the ghost girl, and it made her so sad that she had to take her puffer from her pocket and squirt.

She pulled up her sleeve again to look at her wound, which was really only a scratch, but it made her feel terrible. What happened to scratches from magical snow leopards that changed from stone to real living, breathing creatures in the blink of an eye? Perhaps magical scratches were very bad. They might get infected, and she might need to go to the hospital. How would she explain it? No one at all would believe her.

And did she believe it herself?

Could statues really turn into real living, breathing snow leopards? To prove they could, using the scientific method,
she would need to have a sample of snow leopard statues. She couldn’t imagine explaining that one to the Children’s Science Society of Greater London. Max Lowenstein would look at her as though she were from Mars. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe she’d wake up soon. She pinched herself on her cheek to see.

Everything was too strange. It was giving her a terrible headache. She wished her mother were there. Her mother would know what to do. Her mother would say, “Now let’s sit down and put our thinking caps on. Exactly what kind of monsters and mythical creatures are we dealing with?”

Ophelia knew she’d be in trouble. Her father would be angry because she’d been gone so long and Alice would have been waiting forever with their ice skates. She took another puff and tried to slow her breathing.

She read the names as she walked because it calmed her. There were Tess Janson and Katie Patin and Matilda Cole, and she peered at their faces in the dim light. Paulette Claude, Johanna Payne, Judith Pickford, Millie Mayfield, Harriet Springer, Carys Sprock, Kyra Marinova, Sally Temple-Watts, and Amy Cruit.

Kyra Marinova.

Ophelia walked backward, heart hammering. It just couldn’t be.

Kyra Marinova.

She peered up at the face, the pale pretty face and the red ringlets and the quizzical expression. Two tears slid slowly down Ophelia’s cheeks. She shivered and pulled her coat
tighter. Felt the keys in her pocket. She didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Ophelia ran then. She ran out of the gallery of painted girls, through the gilt rooms now filling up with night, along the great colonnade where the painted angels swam in the indigo gloom, past the paintings by the great masters, grown murky. All the guards had vacated their seats. They had packed up their knitting and zipped up their black handbags. The museum seemed completely empty.

But suddenly a whitish blur loomed out of the shadows.

“Miss Kaminski!” shouted Ophelia. “Oh, you gave me such a fright.”

“Forgive me,” said Miss Kaminski. The museum curator did not smile. “We have been looking everywhere for you. Your father has been very worried, and so have I.”

“I got so lost,” lied Ophelia. “I just …”

Miss Kaminski watched her face. She looked at where Ophelia was holding her arm.

“What has happened here?” asked the curator.

“I just …”

Miss Kaminski searched her eyes.

“What happened was …,” said Ophelia, hoping that Miss Kaminski wouldn’t lift her sleeve and see the scratch.

Miss Kaminski took her by the elbow. Her fingernails were sharp, and even through the coat they pinched Ophelia. She felt suddenly very cold.

“Come,” said Miss Kaminski. “I will take you to your father.”

Down, down, down the damp, creaking stairs they went to
the sword workroom, where Alice was waiting with her skates in her hand. Ophelia’s father was holding a medieval sword. Everywhere, men were lifting glass cases and carrying them out of the room under her father’s direction.

“The wanderer has been found,” said Miss Kaminski. She smiled now. She released her grip on Ophelia’s elbow. A warm, sweet cloud of the curator’s perfume washed over Ophelia.

“Ophelia!” said Mr. Whittard, embracing his daughter. “We were worried sick about you. I thought I told you to stay with Alice.”

“Sorry,” said Ophelia. “I just found so many interesting things, and then I got lost.”

“She never does a thing I tell her,” said Alice.

“Alice has been waiting all afternoon to take you ice-skating,” said Mr. Whittard. “I’ll have to stay here, I’m afraid. There is too much to be done. And apologize to Miss Kaminski, please. She hasn’t got time to be running around the museum looking for you.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Kaminski,” said Ophelia.

Miss Kaminski smoothed Ophelia’s hair across her brow. “All is forgiven,” she said.

All the way through the museum, through the great foyer with its silvery wedding mosaic floor and its huge glittering chandeliers, Ophelia thought and thought and thought of the boy. I can unlock him from his room in the morning, she thought. Then I can help him find the sword. The magical snow leopard scratch ached on her arm. Ophelia and Alice walked through the giant revolving doors and out into the
evening. I will help him to find the sword, and then that will be that. The rest he’ll have to do by himself.

Outside, the cold stung their cheeks and their noses.

She thought of Kyra then, Kyra being led to the machine. That thought made her sadder than all the rest.

It made Ophelia cough, and Alice stopped and fixed her sister’s scarf and beanie. The snow fell in dizzying flurries, and in the square, the Christmas tree—the largest Christmas tree Ophelia had ever seen—rustled and twinkled and tinkled with its thousands of silver bells and baubles.

Alice put on her skates and pushed off into the flow of skaters gliding around the rink, her long blond hair floating behind her. She had the antique lace rose in her hair and the brooch winking on her coat, and every now and again Ophelia saw her hold her hand up to look at the sparkling ring on her finger.

Alice came back to where Ophelia sat with her skates still in her hand.

“Why are you taking so long?” Alice asked.

“I’m just thinking,” said Ophelia, looking across the square at the darkened museum. She lifted her hands up to her nose. She could still smell the leaves there, the damp, rotten leaves. She could still smell the girl, the girl who was a ghost. She touched her pocket with the two keys.

My little thinker
, her mother whispered in her ear.

“You think too much,” said Alice.

In the hotel room that night, Alice sat on the edge of Ophelia’s bed. She removed Ophelia’s glasses and put them on the
nightstand. She kissed her on the cheek. She’d done that ever since their mother had died. But tonight her eyes were glassy.

“Your lips are like ice,” said Ophelia.

Which made Alice laugh. Ophelia’s sister looked out through the window beside them, where the snow fell and fell and fell and did not end. She smiled a strange faraway smile.

It was on the tip of Ophelia’s tongue to ask her. Right there. Right then. To shout, “Alice, do you believe in magic?” But Ophelia didn’t ask. She turned on her side instead, felt beneath the pillow for the keys, and then closed her eyes.

In which Ophelia devises a plan and is attacked by a Spanish conquistador

All night Ophelia slept with the two keys beneath her pillow. All night she tossed and turned, and her mother spoke in her ear.
I like the story of the boy
, she said.
Imagine, sent all that way to battle the Snow Queen. It’s good and evil. You know how I adore that sort of thing
. Ophelia covered her ears with her hands. It was true; in all her mother’s books, there was someone good battling something very bad. And her bad things were always very, very bad.

“Let me tell you a story,” Ophelia’s mother liked to say. It was on the nights when Ophelia couldn’t sleep, when her asthma was bad and she had to be propped up on pillows.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“It isn’t a terrifying one,” her mother would say, slipping in beside her.

But it would be.

“Can’t you just tell me a simple fairy tale?” Ophelia might plead.