Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy (4 page)

If Ophelia had shown her pocket to her mother, who was not practical at all, she would have sighed.

“Surely we have a needle and thread somewhere here,” her mother would have said, and taken Ophelia from room to room in their house, looking in drawers and boxes. She might have
found some twine or even some glue. She might have used her stapler; she’d done that once with the hem of Ophelia’s school uniform. The stapler lived on her writing desk, right beside the vampire-teeth paperweight.

Ophelia stuck her finger through the hole. She felt it tear a little more. She was nothing like her mother, she thought. Her mother had believed in almost everything. Her mother had believed in vampires with satin cloaks and shape-shifters that slid through keyholes. She believed in the ghosts of children who terrorized schools and strange creatures who sucked the thoughts from their victims’ brains. She loved crumbling castles and dark towers and secret doors.

Her mother wrote about these things. She wrote about these things all morning in her study. Her stories were sent away in bundles of paper tied up with string and returned as the books that lined the sitting room. Dark books. Thick books. Books with her name, Susan Worthington, emblazoned on the front in blood-red letters that glimmered in the dark.

Ophelia walked down the long gallery that contained the paintings of bored-looking girls in party dresses. She squeezed through the crowd in the
Gallery of Time
. She didn’t bother at all to look for the little window in the clock that the boy had asked after.

She went through the pavilion of wolves and the exhibition of elephants. She stamped through the arcade of mirrors, the room filled with telephones, the gallery of teaspoons.

No, she was nothing at all like her mother. She didn’t believe in boys who came from
elsewhere
. She simply refused.

In which Ophelia, while refusing to save the world, does something very brave indeed

Miss Kaminski was tall and elegant in a crisp white pant-suit. She stood in the doorway to the sword workroom and smiled a dazzling smile. Mr. Whittard, looking up from his station, magnifying glass and lamp in his white-gloved hands, turned red at the sight of her.

“I have been thinking,” said Miss Kaminski. “Perhaps Miss Alice and Miss Cordelia would like a special tour of the museum.”

“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.