Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (21 page)

“Oh, Alice, where are you?” Ophelia said into the quiet room.

Sitting there on the sofa, she became aware of a very faint vibration through the soles of her feet. She stood up. When she moved toward the door, it grew weaker. If she moved toward the bookshelf, it grew stronger.

“Alice,” Ophelia whispered into the quiet. “Alice.”

Nothing.

She touched the bookshelf, and it thrummed beneath her fingertips. Something was behind it. She felt with her fingers. She felt the shelves and the spines of the books. Perhaps there was a secret switch. She lifted the books forward one by one, starting at the bottom right-hand corner. She nearly gave up. But Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard was always very thorough.

The very last book, in the top left-hand corner, opened the door.

The bookshelf slid to one side, and the secret room was revealed.

Ophelia gasped with astonishment.

“Alice!” she shouted.

The machine was in the center of the small, secret room. It was a dull gray color, about the size and shape of a coffin. It hummed and gurgled and vibrated violently as Ophelia rushed around it, looking for a way to stop it.

At the very end there was a large black lever. Ophelia pulled down hard on it, with all her might, but felt her feet lift from the ground from her exertion.

“I’m trying, Alice!” she shouted. “I’ll get you out of there.”

She tried again and again, jumped and pushed down, cried out with her efforts until finally she felt the lever give, and the machine’s violent droning ceased. The lid hissed open and lying there, perfect, more beautiful than she had ever seen her, was Alice.

In which it becomes apparent that Alice has broken the machine

Alice opened her blue eyes. She stared angrily at Ophelia.

“What’d you do that for?” she said. “I don’t think you’re meant to stop it. You shouldn’t interrupt beauty treatments.”

She sat up scowling and swung her legs over the side. “Do I look all right?” she asked.

“That isn’t a beauty treatment,” said Ophelia. “I’ve just rescued you. Who put you in there?”

“Miss Kaminski, of course. Why?”

“I knew it. That machine was going to extract your soul and turn you into a ghost,” said Ophelia. “Then you’d be trapped forever in the forest, and the Snow Queen—Miss Kaminski—would be stronger and live forever.”

“Are you insane, Ophelia?” asked Alice as she rummaged in her handbag for her mirror. “Miss Kaminski said the machine would improve my skin and make me look more beautiful than ever.”

Ophelia shook her head. “It’s true, Alice. Think about it: why would she put you in this thing, in a hidden room, at the very top of the museum. Why?”

“It was a little strange, I thought,” said Alice.

“Of course it’s strange.”

“And it did seem weird when she laughed after she closed the lid.”

“There!” said Ophelia. “She’s pure evil.”

“But she said she’d come back in an hour to get me.”

“Alice, think about it,” said Ophelia, but she could tell she was losing Alice.

Her sister touched her hair, and with a flick of her head, shook away her suspicions. “She said it was all very safe.”

“It’s not safe, Alice,” Ophelia said. “And I’m not insane. Terrible things are happening here. When the Wintertide Clock chimes, the world will end.”

Ophelia was aware of how it sounded.

“Do you know what time it is, then?” asked Alice. She was back to looking at herself. She touched her cheeks. “I think the beauty treatment has made a difference.”

“It’s just after four,” said Ophelia, looking at her watch. Their mother had been gone three months, nine days, and fifteen hours.

“Four! I’m meant to be at the sword exhibition hall by four,” said Alice. “They’ll be waiting for me.”

“I can’t believe you broke the machine,” said Ophelia.

“What did you say?” said Alice, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She was quickly applying lipstick. “And what’s that hideous bag you’ve got on?”

“It’s a special bag. It has a message from a wizard and a magic compass and a biscuit.”

“Ophelia, you’re
so
weird,” said Alice, rushing past her, running her hands through her hair, her crystal dress sweeping behind her.

In which Ophelia reads the wizard’s instructions

The amplified ticking of the Wintertide Clock was very loud in the galleries and the corridors. The sound reached every inch of the museum; it filled every small space and every large dazzling room. It beat and beat and beat, and Ophelia felt it in her stomach and in her toes. It was a countdown. A countdown to the end. It was the ticking of a time bomb. And nobody knew.

She would find her father. She’d have to make him understand.

Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard raced through
Oriental Tapestries, Neolithic Man, Alchemy: The Exhibition
. She took the clanking elevator to the
Age of Enlightenment
. As she ran, she glanced everywhere for the sword.

She went through a small room containing a collection of Chinese finger bowls, another containing medieval jewelry. She ran through a re-creation of a nineteenth-century street.

When she’d found her father, she’d say, “Dad, stop. Stop what you are doing. You have to stop and understand.”

She sped past a small collection of fossils,
Farming Equipment, Culture of the Cossacks
, dolls, teddy bears, shoes,
History of Silhouettes
(which she was sure was in a different place now). There were rocks, gemstones, a room filled floor to ceiling with sepia photographs. There were
Romans at Work
and
Romans at Leisure
.

Ophelia
, said her mother.
Slow down. Think about what you have with you
.

She slowed down. She stopped in a very big space filled with several stuffed elephants, their saddles and headdresses studded with jewels.

“What do I have?” said Ophelia aloud. “I have nothing. I can’t find the boy. I can’t find the sword. I haven’t even started to look for the One Other.”

Breathe
, said her mother, very calmly.
Find a place to sit down
.

Ophelia walked to a window behind the elephants. She felt her stomach growl. How long since she had eaten? She saw the sky had grown dim. The streetlights had come on. The snow whirled and spiraled to the ground. Her body ached with tiredness.

You have the boy’s satchel, don’t you?
asked her mother.

Ophelia opened the satchel. She took out the little biscuit man Petal had baked all those years ago. If she ate it, perhaps it would give her the strength to keep going? She raised the magical biscuit man to her mouth and then stopped. Her mouth
watered, but she put the biscuit man back into the satchel. She knew it wasn’t meant for her.

Instead she took out the fragile paper containing the words from the Great Wizard. She unfolded the thin piece of paper.

The letter was written in a very old-fashioned writing, a little shaky. It was a list.

First, always be kind, it read.

Ophelia leaned her cheek against the cold window. She closed her eyes.

Your heart
, said her mother, very softly in her ear.
Use your heart, my dear daughter
.

In which Ophelia remembers some other words and an owl in a tree

At the end Susan Worthington liked to rest in a chair in the front sitting room, in the sunshine. The sitting room had comfortable chairs and a cuckoo clock, which they had bought in Switzerland, and family photographs on the walls: Alice and Ophelia smiling beside the sea, buckets in hand. Alice as a baby in her mother’s arms. Susan and Malcolm on their wedding day. It was a good room, bright and warm and full of love.

One day her mother had called Ophelia there.

“Come here, let me clean your glasses,” her mother said. She cleaned them with the hem of her skirt. “There, you should always do that. Promise me you’ll do that at least three times a day.”

Her mother had grown very thin. Her hands were bony and pale. Her hair had grown back in small tufts. That day she had a deep blue scarf on her head.

“You look tired,” she said to Ophelia.

“There’s this owl,” said Ophelia. “It has been hooting every night in the tree in the front garden.”

“I’ve heard it too,” said her mother.

“And once I got up to look out the window, and I could see its big golden eyes shining in the dark.”

“I wish I’d seen that.”

“You could put it in one of your books.”

“I just might,” her mother replied. “Come here. One of your ponytails is higher than the other.”

“That always happens,” said Ophelia, “when I have to do it myself.”

“You’ll get better at it,” said her mother.

She smoothed back Ophelia’s bangs and straightened her school tie. “I want to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“About everything.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Ophelia, because she knew what her mother wanted to say.

“When I’m gone, you mustn’t be terribly sad,” said her mother.

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m only telling you in case,” said her mother. “Promise me you won’t stay too sad forever.”

“Don’t talk about it,” said Ophelia. She put her hands over her ears.

“Ophelia, darling. Listen. I want to talk to you.” She took Ophelia’s hands from her ears.

It was a perfectly ordinary day when they had that conversation. The mail thumped through the mailbox onto the foyer tiles. A truck started up somewhere outside. There was a gaggle of schoolgirls passing outside on the street, shrieking with laughter.

“Sit on my lap,” said her mother. “Like you did when you were a little girl.”

She sat on her mother’s lap, and they didn’t say anything. The clock tick, tick, ticked. She lay against her mother’s chest and listened to her heart beat.

“I just wanted to tell you that everything will be well,” said her mother, “in the end.”

“When will I know it’s the end?” asked Ophelia.

“I will write it for you,” said her mother.

“In capitals?”

“In capitals.”

“With a full stop?”

“With a full stop.”

“Underlined?”

“Underlined.”

In which Ophelia uses her heart, and the compass comes in handy