Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy Read online

  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.

  I was treated by the King’s visiting physicians whenever I looked a little sad. It felt to me as though a tide had gone out: the memories that had always shimmered just beneath the surface receded. I thought of my mother, you see, and the thought didn’t hurt me. I didn’t cry. I didn’t ache. The days passed. The weeks passed. The months passed. Years.

  11

  In which Ophelia and the boy are chased by wolves

  Ophelia and the boy were standing in the arcade of mirrors. There were mirrors as large as houses and mirrors shaped like stars that divided them again and again until they were almost nothing. There were mirrors that made them tall as giants and others that made them short and stout. The boy looked at himself in a long mirror. He held out his arms.

  “What’s happening to me?” he whispered.

  He’d noticed it, and the fact made Ophelia’s heart sink. He was looking at his reflection, at the blurring of his edges, as though the outside of him were smudged.

  “I’m not sure,” said Ophelia. “Maybe it’s the charm wearing off?”

  She tried to think of something comforting to say to a disappearing boy, but it was difficult. It was while she was thinking that she heard a long, mournful howl. The boy froze where he stood before the mirror, arms raised, examining himself.

  “What was that?” whi
spered Ophelia.

  Another long howl, a frenzy of baying in return. It was close, very close. The boy unfroze, turned to Ophelia, his eyes filled with terror.

  “Wolves,” he whispered. “They know I am free. We must run.”

  They ran. They ran through Seventeenth-Century Ceramics, where the teacups rattled on the shelves, through a room filled with marble bodies, arms outstretched, through A Millennium of Religious Hats, the mitres trembling slightly with their passing footsteps. Through the largest collection of thimbles in the world, past triptychs, past trombones. Past mummified cats, past miniature paintings, past Yurts and Yaks: Life in Mongolia.

  “Why are there wolves?” cried Ophelia as they ran. “Where have they come from?”

  “They are the Queen’s wolves,” said the boy.

  They ran through Mysteries of the Aztecs, The Hunter Through Time, and Ophelia accidentally knocked over a pile of spears stacked haphazardly against a wall.

  “I don’t understand,” she cried.

  “Stop trying to,” said the boy.

  The howling was now very close.

  Too close.

  The boy changed tack suddenly, leaping onto a long, dark staircase and shutting the door after Ophelia. They ran to the first landing and crouched in the shadows.

  “What should we do?” whispered Ophelia.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy, which didn’t offer her much faith.

  They heard footsteps then—not human footsteps but the drumming feet of running dogs, which was a noise Ophelia had never heard before. A scratching, pounding, smacking sound.

  “What’s that?” she said. She hoped he wasn’t going to say wolves. But she didn’t have to wait for his reply. The door to the stairwell burst open, and on the landing above, she saw the crouched shapes of them.

  “Quickly!” shouted the boy, pulling her by the arm.

  They were at least three times her size. She saw that before she turned, pulled by the boy. There were several of them, a hulking, skulking, moving mass. Green eyes glowing. Wolves. Most definitely, impossibly wolves. Wild wolves roaming in a museum. Now, what would Max Lowenstein say about that?

  Don’t look back, said her mother urgently in her ear. Just run.

  Ophelia and the boy entered an exhibition of crowns, and they slammed the door shut behind them. They heard the thud of the wolves against the wood, the scratching of their nails.

  “We need to get away from them,” panted Ophelia. “We need to get to another floor quickly.”

  “Yes,” he panted back. “They’ll be through in no time.”

  Behind the exhibition of crowns there was a small cafeteria. They raced around the tables and chairs, knocking over a stand of chips, then tumbled into the kitchen. They heard the gallery door slam open and the wolves leaping into the room.

  “Oh dear,” squeaked Ophelia.

  Her eyes scanned the room. There was no elevator, there was no exit. The cafeteria was a dead end.

  “Backward,” she screeched. “Garbage chute.”

  The wolves were in the cafeteria now. They moved toward them slowly, growling low. The largest of them, with wild green eyes, came forward sleekly, its gray fur erect. It snarled, showing its fangs.

  “I’m scared of wolves,” whispered Ophelia.

  The boy was lifting up the garbage chute door.

  “Quickly,” he said.

  Ophelia dived in headfirst and began to slide away into the darkness. She heard the boy shouting.

  “A charm was bestowed upon me by Ibrom, the great magical owl, who I shot through the heart with my arrow!” he shouted. “You cannot harm me until the final hour.”

  She knew he would be holding up his hand, his missing finger exposed.

  But he didn’t sound so sure. She could hear the wolves howling.

  “Hurry!” she yelled as she slid away in the blackness, twisting and turning between the floors. She put out her hands and managed to stop herself from falling farther by turning sideways and stretching across the tunnel.

  She heard the clang of the chute’s metal door. Had he made it?

  “Oh, please, please, please,” she whispered. She heard the soft, rushing noise of something sliding toward her. “Oh, please, please, please.”

  A hard thud. She was knocked from her position by the boy. They slid together through the darkness, not speaking.

  Finally, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “But it really stinks in here.”

  Ophelia and the boy used the exit in the large museum refectory. They dropped to the ground soundlessly and looked into each other’s eyes.

  “What will we do?” whispered the boy.

  “The ghosts said the wolves were afraid of them, that they’d never go to the sixth floor,” Ophelia whispered in reply.

  Good thinking, whispered her mother, which made Ophelia, despite everything, smile.

  They could no longer hear the wolves but didn’t want to chance taking the elevators.

  The stairwells were as confusing as every other part of the museum. The first murky set took them only as far as the third floor, where they had to creep through several dark galleries. The next staircase, with green marble and gold banisters, took them as far as the fifth.

  Ophelia sighed loudly, extracted her map. They crouched together over it until they found the closest staircase, which inexplicably began behind a plain wooden door in an exhibition of sewing baskets.

  At last the polar bear reared up before them, and even though she knew it wasn’t alive, Ophelia found herself reaching out to clutch the boy’s arm. He felt real. He did. The boy was flesh and bones, yet if she looked at him from the corner of her eye, he was so faded that she could almost see the teetering stack of sewing machines through him.

  They squeezed themselves through racks of ball gowns, picked their way over a pile of birdcages, around several chests overflowing with gold coins, past more merry-go-round horses with melancholy eyes.

  They heard the very distant baying of wolves.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Ophelia. “We just need to find the door. It’s in here somewhere. Then the wolves won’t follow us.”

  The boy agreed. He was paler now. He looked exhausted. He walked slowly behind Ophelia. They moved between several rows of farm equipment (now, where had that come from?), clambered over a pile of life buoys (they weren’t here last time), stepped gingerly through an expanse of colored glass bottles (definitely not here before!). Try as they might, they could not find the door.

  “Everything’s different,” she said. “Almost everything. I don’t know how it could be, but it is. The polar bear was there and the sewing machines and the ball gowns. But there’s all this new stuff, and everything has changed position. There were these flags last time, and all these paintings, and a big anchor as tall as the roof, and I can’t even see that this time. And the door was right at the end, but now I can’t even see the end.”

  “It’s her sorcery,” said the boy.

  “Will they find us?” asked Ophelia.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t want to be eaten by a wolf.”

  “No,” said the boy, with all the comfort he could muster.

  “My mother loved stories about wolves. She wrote them all the time.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just—didn’t the wizards teach you anything about what to do in a situation like this? I mean, something magical.”

  They had stopped in front of a very fancy carriage. The boy opened the carriage door and they climbed up inside. They sat side by side. The carriage was near a window, and they looked out at the city still in darkness, with a tiny sliver of gray light on the horizon. Oh, how frozen it was.

  “Only what I’ve told you,” said the boy. “About telling the truth, and being still and feeling the earth through your feet, and helping anyone that needs help. And how to hear the Snow Queen, of course, or smell her or sense her from a long way off. And how to
listen to the Herald Trees. And to never give up, even when you seem lonely and a long way from home.”

  “Not how to make yourself invisible or anything?”

  “No,” said the boy.

  Ophelia slumped back into the seat and covered her eyes.

  “You mustn’t give up,” said the boy. “All will be saved if we find the sword.”

  He looked deathly pale. He rested his head against the carriage glass and shivered. Ophelia took the coat and laid it across him.

  “I need to find my father,” she said. “I have to get there before he realizes I’m gone. I need to tell him everything. He’ll know what to do about the wolves. He has to listen to me. He’ll help me search. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  She touched the boy’s sleeve, because it shimmered in the first morning light, as though it were not a real thing but a ghost of a thing.

  The boy took her hands. It didn’t feel odd. Not the way it would have felt odd if any other boy held both her hands. Like, say, Max Lowenstein from the Children’s Science Society of Greater London, where she went on Tuesday nights. Max was nice to talk to and knew a lot about the taxonomy of cats, but she never, ever would have let him hold her hands.

  She could feel the space where the boy’s finger was missing, eaten by the great magical owl.

  “Ophelia,” said the boy. “Don’t go, not yet. I have more to tell you.”

  One day the King came to me, Ophelia, wearing a very serious expression. There had been rumors for some time, whispered in the royal corridors, spoken of over pots boiling in the kitchen, mentioned in hushed voices by chambermaids, and the King could no longer ignore them.

  “Boy,” he said. “I have something I must say to you.”

  I was frightened by his serious gaze.

  “I have noticed,” said the King. “And others also …”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s a strange thing,” he said. “And in the beginning I didn’t believe it to be true.”

  Again he stopped.

  “What?” I asked again.

  “What I mean to say,” said the King, “and I don’t mean to cause you any alarm … what I mean to say is you, my faithful friend, have been here nearly six years and you haven’t grown at all.”