Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy Read online

  “Ophelia,” whispered Ophelia.

  Miss Kaminski looked at Ophelia as though she had heard something but was not sure what it might be. She looked at her as though she were looking at something small and insignificant. Ophelia saw her gaze at Alice, who was sitting in the corner of the room, in an old throne, twirling her long blond hair and looking very bored.

  “Miss Alice looks like a girl who would be interested in jewels,” said Miss Kaminski.

  Alice, reclining on frayed cushions, looked very uninterested. She held up a section of her hair and examined its end, and stared straight through Miss Kaminski as though she weren’t there at all.

  “Wigs, shoes, dresses?” said Miss Kaminski. “Dolls, music boxes, mirrors? Mazes, the customs of love, Oriental textiles, white horses with wings made of marble, lipsticks, the history of dance, violins, piccolos?”

  Alice continued staring at a point past Miss Kaminski’s head. She was being quite rude.

  “The dresses,” continued Miss Kaminski, “are some of the most beautiful and most expensive ever made in the world. I would love for you to see these things, Alice.”

  “I guess,” said Alice at last.

  “And Miss Cordelia,” said Miss Kaminski.

  “Ophelia.”

  “I think you look like a girl who would like very much to see …”

  “Dinosaurs,” said Ophelia.

  Miss Kaminski led them through the galleries, and in and out of the silver staff-only elevators. She looked back at them from time to time, smiled, beckoned them on. Ophelia did not like her, although she couldn’t say why. If she was to think about it, logically, Miss Kaminski looked like a model in a magazine and she smelt very nice. Both of these things should have made her agreeable. Yet every time Ophelia was near her, she felt worried. She was worried in a nameless, shapeless, strange way, which, however hard she tried, she couldn’t put her finger on. Walking behind Miss Kaminski, Ophelia had to pull on her braids again to make herself feel better.

  Miss Kaminski took them first to the Gallery of Time, and the crowd parted in two waves before her. The Wintertide Clock was as tall as the ceiling and its face as white as snow. Its hands were silver and dangerously sharp. It ticked so loudly that Ophelia could feel its mechanics inside her and through the soles of her feet.

  Around the perimeter of the clock face, there were smaller clock faces, and when Ophelia peered closer, she saw that within these smaller clocks, there were even tinier timepieces.

  “The Wintertide Clock is the most important piece in the museum and one of the most important clocks in the world,” Miss Kaminski said, and although she spoke only to Alice, the crowd grew hushed. “It has over seven hundred moving wheels and cogs, and keeps time to the movement of the stars and the moon.”

  Miss Kaminski pointed to the many clock faces with one elegant sweep of her arm.

  “Standing here, I can tell the time anywhere in the world. In Sofia or Saharanpur. In Mobile, Mito, and Mogadishu.”

  She spoke to the crowd now as well.

  “But why does this remarkable clock chime only once every three hundred years? No one can remember now, but we know from records that the day is fast approaching. What song will its bells play us when it chimes? People, soon the world will understand its great mysteries.

  “On Christmas Eve, Battle: The Greatest Exhibition of Swords in the History of the World will begin and will coincide with the opening of the Wintertide Clock’s chime doors. We shall hear those chimes and understand this clock’s true purpose.”

  Alice sighed and turned up the volume in her earphones.

  Beneath the silver chime doors, Ophelia saw the little window that the boy had mentioned. It contained a very ornate number 3. She thought of the boy locked away in the loneliest part of the museum. She shook her head. Oh, how that boy, locked behind that door, made her feel unsettled. She felt her stomach twist itself in knots. He shouldn’t have been there, and he shouldn’t have spoken to her, and he shouldn’t have asked her to save the world.

  All this talk of wizards. If wizards were real, how could they take his name, however much it was attached to his soul, and hold it in their hands, as heavy as a stone? She tried to imagine explaining that at the Children’s Science Society.

  But if she retrieved the key for him, then she could at least say she had helped. She could probably find his name too. He probably hadn’t even tried to think about it—really think, sit down with a freshly sharpened pencil and go through the alphabet, which would be the methodical, scientific thing to do. That was what you had to do in those sort of situations.

  If she could let him out and help him find his name, then at least he might be able to get home. Once they had his name, first name and surname, then they could go through the phone book. There was bound to be one somewhere.

  Adam, Ophelia thought, just to get started while they walked along. Alphonse, Abelard, Abernathy, Aaron, Abdul. Abraham, Adolf, Adrian, Albert, Alexander. She needed a piece of paper. She could sit down with him. They’d cross off the names that meant nothing to him and circle the ones that felt familiar. Surely it wouldn’t be so hard to find the right one.

  Miss Kaminski led them through many galleries. She showed them an urn made out of beetle shells.

  Axel, Ophelia thought, feeling positive. Addison, Ainsley, and Aristotle.

  Miss Kaminski then led them through a room filled with carnival masks and another filled with crowns.

  Ajay, Alan, Alastair, thought Ophelia, still upbeat.

  Miss Kaminski showed them both the great staircase and the lesser staircases and the golden arcade, where the ceiling was studded with precious stones.

  Andrew, Ambrose, Archie. A little less happy.

  She had put her hand in her pocket to retrieve her puffer, and when she did, the little hole ripped into an even bigger hole. She caught her puffer just as it was about to fall through. She placed it in the left-hand pocket and knew she would never be able to use the right-hand pocket again. It made her feel very despondent to be a one-pocketed girl.

  Aladdin, Albie, Alex, Alf … actually quite downcast.

  All the way through the teaspoon gallery … downright glum.

  Suddenly Miss Kaminski stopped. To her horror Ophelia saw they were standing on the sea monster mosaic. Ophelia retrieved her inhaler and puffed. Miss Kaminski cocked her head just a little, as though she were listening for something.

  “I’ve always felt this is one of the least interesting sections of the museum,” she said, before continuing on.

  In the dinosaur hall, the huge ceiling arched overhead. It was all wrought iron and skylights covered in snow. The place danced with shadows and was alive with echoes. The walls turned even the smallest of whispers into shouts. It was a cold, murky place. The guard woke in the corner on her chair and began to knit furiously.

  “There are hours of amusement here,” said Miss Kaminski, standing in the gloom beneath the giant skeleton of a Brachiosaurus. Her sentence was repeated by the walls several times. “There are the dinosaurs, of course, and in these cabinets, some of the most remarkable fossils in the world. I will show Alice some wonderful dresses, and we shall return for you in one hour.”

  “Thank you,” said Ophelia.

  And the walls said, Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  “Do not go anywhere else,” said Miss Kaminski.

  “I won’t,” promised Ophelia.

  I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.

  Miss Kaminski patted her on the head. She meant it kindly, but Ophelia noticed the distaste in the museum curator’s eyes, as though she were patting a small toad.

  Ophelia waited until they had gone. The guard lowered the knitting to her lap and went back to sleep. There was one other person in the hall. An old man. He stood for so long, bent over a small pile of bones in a glass box, that Ophelia thought perhaps he had come yesterday and frozen solid there. She quivered with the cold. The shadows of birds moved above the snow-covered skylights
.

  The old man finally creaked upright, looked at her sternly, and left through the darkened door.

  Ophelia walked around the Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. Triceratops was starting to crumble, and some bones lay scattered on the floor beneath it. No one had bothered to pick them up. Barry, she tried. Bartholemew, Baxter, Bert, Bob, but without much conviction. She peered into the gloomy, dark cases at the strange collections of bones. She walked round and round the great room. Past the guard, past the fossils, past the dinosaurs. Each time she went round the hall, she tried to ignore the small elevator the boy had mentioned standing in a darkened alcove humming quietly to itself. She walked round and round the room until her legs ached.

  The elevator doors had a large cross painted upon them, which could only mean “Do not enter.” Each step Ophelia took, the panic rose inside her.

  You are too young to worry so, her mother said, suddenly inside her mind. It was exactly what her mother always said.

  “That’s all right for you to say,” replied Ophelia silently and quite angrily. “You haven’t got a boy that needs to be rescued.”

  More than anything, she felt annoyed at the boy for appearing behind that door and knowing her name and asking for her help.

  “I’m not brave enough,” Ophelia said aloud, and the walls whispered, whispered, whispered. The guard did not wake up. Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard looked at the guard sleeping and looked at the dinosaurs and walked very quietly up to the elevator.

  She pressed the large round silver button, and the doors slid open.

  She stepped inside. It was deathly still. The lightbulb flickered.

  She pressed the button engraved with the number 7.

  The elevator opened onto the seventh floor, into a huge room that was empty and cold. There were no statues or artwork, just the white marble floor weaved with silver. The windows, covered in delicate, spidery patterns of ice, looked out over the city square and the giant sparkling Christmas tree.

  There was not a sound in that room. The silence buzzed in her ears. Her boots made a terrible clatter on the floor and her breath plumed in front of her. She trembled with fear.

  On either side of the immense, empty room there was a doorway that led onto a corridor. She walked as quickly as she could across the expanse of empty marble floor to the left-hand corridor. She pulled her blue velvet coat collar up and put her hands in her pockets. Her teeth chattered.

  On either side of the left-hand corridor there were rooms. Each room had a number above it in silver. She touched the handles lightly. The doors were locked.

  The corridor had a very strange smell. It took her all the time to walk to room number 716 to remember what it was. It was exactly the smell of Mr. Fleming’s pigeon coop at 7 Bedford Gardens. Mr. Fleming lived right beside the Whittard-Worthingtons in Kensington, London, and Ophelia could speak to him over the back fence if she stood on a garden chair. He bred and raced Danzig highflyers and blue dragoons, and he was very kind to Ophelia, sometimes opening the little gate between their gardens so she could look at the newly hatched chicks.

  Yes, it was just the same here, a dank, moldy, feathery type of smell. There must be pigeons living in the ceiling, Ophelia thought, and then shivered. Her chin went numb with the cold. Her ears ached.

  The corridor turned just after room number 721. She was surprised to see that at the end of the passage, not very far away, there was a small white cupboard against a blank white wall.

  She felt very pleased. The whole exercise had been easier than she expected. The little white cupboard had only one little white drawer. She opened it very quietly and saw one small golden key. Everything was exactly as the boy had said it would be.

  She took the key and put it in her blue velvet coat pocket. Her favorite right-hand coat pocket. She smiled to herself. She smiled to herself because the day had turned out to be very interesting and she had turned out to be really quite brave. The key fell through her right-hand pocket hole and clattered onto the floor.

  There was silence at first, then a rustling, sighing, swishing, hushing sound.

  The rustling, sighing, swishing, hushing sound was small to start off, but then it grew louder. It grew so loud that it was the only sound that Ophelia could hear.

  The sound came from behind the doors.

  Then another noise. A noise more terrible than the first. The sound of something very sharp on the marble floor.

  A click, clack.

  A scritch, scratch.

  The sound of talons.

  The distinct sound of claws.

  Ophelia scooped up the key and began to run. She ran and did not look back. She turned the corner and sped toward the elevator, waiting with its open mouth. Each room she passed, the sound grew louder. The click, clack, rustle, sigh, scratch, and now the rattling of the doorknobs. Something was trying to escape. She slipped on the marble floor in the large open room, skidded on her denim bottom into the elevator, scrambled onto her knees, slammed the number 3 with her fist, and fell backward as the door closed.

  3

  In which Miss Kaminski returns for Ophelia and looks at her suspiciously

  Ophelia could not breathe. She couldn’t breathe when she stepped out of the elevator. She couldn’t breathe when she stood pretending to carefully study Triceratops. She couldn’t breathe when Alice and Miss Kaminski returned for her.

  She took a squirt on her puffer.

  Then another.

  “Are you okay?” said Alice.

  “Yes,” squeaked Ophelia.

  “You’re as cold as ice,” said Alice, touching her sister’s cheek.

  She wrapped her scarf around Ophelia’s neck. It reminded Ophelia of the old Alice. The Alice before their mother was ill. The Alice who took the stairs three at a time and sang into her hairbrush and laughed loudly on the phone to her friends. The Alice who held Ophelia’s hand and lent her hairclips and offered kind and well-meant, if not utterly useless, fashion advice.

  Ophelia could feel the key heavy in her left pocket, where she had carefully stowed it. She was sure Miss Kaminski must be aware of it. Surely there was a light shining from her pocket announcing to the world that she, Ophelia, was a thief.

  Miss Kaminski looked at her rather suspiciously. She bent down and touched Ophelia’s cheeks with her very cold hands, which only made her feel more freezing.

  “Look,” said Alice, and she turned her head to show an antique lace flower clip in her long blond hair. “Miss Kaminski said I could borrow it from the collection.”

  Alice had put away her headphones. Her cheeks were flushed. She pointed to a little pink diamond brooch on her coat lapel and held out a turquoise ring on her finger.

  Miss Kaminski smiled. The museum curator knelt down in front of Ophelia. “And did you enjoy the dinosaurs, Miss Amelia?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” Ophelia squeaked again, too scared to correct Miss Kaminski. “I did very much.”

  Miss Kaminski deposited the sisters in the sword workroom and did not stay long. She said she was continuing preparations for the greatest and most remarkable sword of all to be unlocked from its city vault in two days’ time to take its place of pride in the exhibition.

  “Mr. Whittard, when you see this sword, your heart will stop,” Miss Kaminski said.

  Ophelia watched her father try to speak in the presence of the beautiful museum curator. He nodded, fumbled with his glasses, then managed to knock over a cup filled with pens. Alice sighed loudly. As soon as Miss Kaminski was gone, Ophelia jumped up.

  “I have to go somewhere,” she said.

  “Aren’t we going skating?” shouted Alice.

  “I won’t be too long,” said Ophelia, already halfway up the stairs.

  She ran through the galleries until she found the narrow corridor that led to the room filled with teaspoons. Her feet led her then. Through the telephones, the mirrors, the elephants, the wolves. She slipped through the crowd ogling the Wintertide Clock in the Gallery
of Time. She raced down the hallway filled with gloomy paintings of girls.

  She stopped there because she was out of breath.

  And because she thought it must be sad to be a painting of a girl that no one ever stopped to look at.

  She walked slowly down the corridor, gazing at each girl or almost every girl—there were so many of them, and they all looked very similar. They were all very pretty, and they all looked very disappointed. She saw that at the bottom of each gold frame there was a name.

  Tess Janson, Katie Patin, Matilda Cole, Johanna Payne, Judith Pickford, Millie Mayfield, Carys Sprock, Sally Temple-Watts, Paulette Claude, Kyra Marinova, and Amy Cruit. She stopped reading after that because she’d got her breath back.

  “Goodbye, Amy Cruit,” said Ophelia. “Can’t stay. Got to rush.”

  “Breathe,” said the boy through the keyhole.

  Ophelia knelt with her hands on her knees.

  “There are things up there on the seventh floor,” she said finally.

  “Of course there are things up there,” the boy replied.

  “But what sort of things are they?” said Ophelia angrily.

  “They’re the misery birds,” he said. “They are a type of bird and a type of monster. You’re very brave.”

  “You should have told me they were up there.”

  “I did tell you they were up there. You didn’t believe me.”

  Ophelia shivered. She was just beginning to thaw. She rubbed her hands together, cupped them over her mouth, and breathed into them. She looked through the keyhole.

  “I’m not meant to have bad frights,” she said. “It’s my asthma.”

  “Did you get the key?” asked the boy.

  “Yes,” she said, and slipped it from her pocket. She went to place it in the lock hidden in the door of the turquoise sea.

  “No,” said the boy. “It doesn’t open that.”

  “Pardon?” Now Ophelia felt really cross.

  “This key opens a small box on the sixth floor. I haven’t seen it, so I cannot say at all what it looks like, but I know it’s there.”

  “How do you know?” asked Ophelia. The mention of a floor so close to the seventh made her queasy. Suppose those miserable birds woke up again? What must they look like if just the sound of them had made her hair stand on end?