by Karen Foxlee
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.
6
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.
“Oh, darling, fairy tales are for beginners,” her mother would reply.
When she woke the next morning, Ophelia sat up and took the long gold key and the greenish plain key and held them in the palm of her hand. She looked out the window at the half-dark city, where the snow was falling.
What will you do? her mother asked her.
“Shoo,” said Ophelia.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Alice, who was seated in front of the dressing table mirror, admiring her reflection.
“No one.”
Alice placed a snow-white beret on her head and smiled at herself.
“Where did you get that hat from?” asked Ophelia.
“Miss Kaminski gave it to me.”
“Why does Miss Kaminski keep giving you stuff?”
“Because she is very nice and very charming and absolutely fashionable.”
Ophelia performed an exaggerated eye roll. Very nice,
very charming, absolutely fashionable, she mimicked silently as she got dressed. She remembered how Miss Kaminski had pinched her through her coat last night. That wasn’t very nice or very charming. Remembering, she looked at the wound on her arm, the long, thin scratch left behind by the snow leopard. She touched it gently with her fingertip. It ached and burned.
In the hotel suite lounge, Mr. Whittard was seated at the table with a pile of spreadsheets, his hair standing up on his head, his glasses perched on his forehead.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a line of words when Alice and Ophelia came out for breakfast. “I’m up to Teutonic long swords. I found one with a complete breastplate in a cardboard box. Can you believe that? Rare as hen’s teeth.”
Alice stared through him with her immaculately made-up eyes.
“I’m looking for a sword, actually,” said Ophelia.
“Really, O,” said Mr. Whittard. “What type of sword?”
“It’s a very plain sword with a wooden hilt and a marking of a closed eye,” said Ophelia. “And it’s very magical.”
“That’s lovely, darling,” said Mr. Whittard.
“It belonged to a boy, and it was taken off him, and he needs it to defeat the Snow Queen.”
“Really?” said Mr. Whittard, but Ophelia could tell he wasn’t listening anymore. That was what happened to her father when he was with swords.
“Miss Kaminski’s showing me more dresses and jewels today,” said Alice. “She said I might even be able to have my portrait painted by the museum artist.”
“Well, that will keep you out of trouble,” said Mr. Whittard. “But, Ophelia, you are staying with me today. Absolutely no wandering off. I don’t want a repeat of yesterday’s performance.”
“Daddy,” said Ophelia. She had so much she needed to do. “Please. I promise I won’t get into any trouble.”
Mr. Whittard looked at his youngest daughter, with her pale face and her ragged braids and her smudgy glasses. How much trouble could she possibly cause?
“No,” said Mr. Whittard. “You’re staying with me, and that is that.”
It was terrible news. She had a fresh tin of sardines in front of her, and now she couldn’t eat them. She slipped the unopened tin into her pocket, crossed her arms, and ignored everybody.
The best thing that can possibly be done in terrible situations is to look for the facts. That was Ophelia’s maxim. As she walked through the frozen streets with her father and Alice, she organized the facts.
The facts were:
1. Boy locked in room 303;
2. Need chance to get to him and let him out;
3. Boy needs his magical sword;
4. Need to find the One Other, who is the only one who can use it to defeat the Snow Queen.
She wondered if boys from elsewhere were Homo sapiens. And wizards too. What family did they belong to? And what about Snow Queens? Where did they come from, and how did they reproduce? Was there a classification of magical things just as there was a classification of living things? Just asking these questions made her feel better.
“What on earth are you mumbling about?” asked Alice.
“None of your business,” said Ophelia.
But to find the sword? She needed data, and she needed a grid to conduct her search. They walked across the square, past the giant Christmas tree and the ice-skating rink. She took the museum map from her pocket. Her plan was to take the map and shade in every room where there was a chance of a sword. Of course, her first stop would be Battle: The Greatest Exhibition of Swords in the History of the World. She would be able to look there while she was with her father But she could also try Napoleonic Wars, Colonial Expansion, Chinese Empires, Egyptian Artifacts 3000–2000 BC. There were also Life on the Frontier, Men’s Clothing Through Time, Japanese Ceremonial Dress, and History of the Incas.
She knew her father would grow tired of his plan to keep her with him. He’d be too busy. All she needed to do was ask too many questions. When she had her chance, and she knew she would have one, she would race to the boy’s room and release him, and together they could search these rooms.
When they arrived in the foyer, they unwound their scarves. Ophelia saw a huge sign had been erected. It said:
It made Ophelia’s stomach sink. Her stomach sank exactly the way it did when it was Lucy Coutts’s turn to pick the medicine-ball teams.
They walked across the great, glittering wedding mosaic floor, and their footsteps echoed.
“What are you looking so worried about, O?” asked her father, turning back to her and taking her gently by the shoulders.
“Nothing,” said Ophelia. How could she possibly tell him?
“Aren’t you enjoying the holiday?” he asked, but before Ophelia could answer, he continued. “Just think, you and Alice could go to the winter markets this afternoon. Maybe you could find a small Christmas tree. I know how hard things have been, but we have to make the most of our time here.”
That was as close as her father ever came to mentioning their mother. He could not, would not, speak her name or mention their sadness.
“You could go ice-skating again,” he said.
“I guess,” said Ophelia.
“Remember, portrait painting,” said Alice, pointing to her face.
In the sword workroom Alice assumed her position on the old throne, looking very bored, while Ophelia sat beside her father at his worktable. She picked a light blue pencil and began to shade her map.
“What are you up to, then, Ophelia?” her father asked.
“I’m devising a plan for a large-scale search for that ancient and magical sword.”
“Well, you’ll have to stop your games for a moment, because we have to go to the sword exhibition hall now,” said Mr. Whittard. “I’m going to do some work on the conquistadors.”
“Good,” said Ophelia. “That’s exactly where I need to go.”
The sword exhibition hall was on the main floor and bitterly cold. Exactly the same stinging cold as on the seventh floor and the sixth floor.
“Why is there no heating?” said Ophelia.
“I know, I know,” muttered her father. “I tried to discuss it with Miss Kaminski yesterday but didn’t get very far.”
Their breaths billowed in front of them. In the exhibition hall the windows were covered in heavy velvet curtains, and all the lights were turned down low. The exhibition mannequins were covered in white sheets of plastic. There were hundreds of them. All standing in their places, from “Iron Age” to “Bayonets of World War I.” She could see the outlines of them. They were all holding swords.
“A little creepy, isn’t it, O?” said Mr. Whittard.
“Mummy would have liked it,” whispered Ophelia.
“Yes,” said Mr. Whittard. He wouldn’t look at Ophelia. “Yes, she would have.”
He finished what he was doing and ruffled Ophelia’s bangs as he passed. He would change the subject now. She knew it. It was what he always did. He couldn’t talk about it at all.
“Come on, then, work to be done,” he said.
There were swords in glass cabinets, swords hanging in glinting lines on the walls, swords on pallets ready to be unloaded. There was a raised dais, and a large empty glass case stood in the middle of the room.
“Now, that is where Miss Kaminski’s pride and joy is going to go,” said her father. “She really is being very mysterious about it.”
Mr. Whittard went to work on the conquistadors, placing the information panel and fiddling with the interactive screen. Ophelia went to work searching for the magical sword. She started with “Bronze Age.” She lifted up the plastic on the mannequins and examined the swords. They were nothing like the sword that had belonged to the boy.
She wished she had remembered her gloves. She was always forgetting her gloves nowadays. She stuck her freezing hands in her pockets and felt the map, the puffer, and the keys. The keys made her feel guilty and proud at the same time. It was very confusing.
“Be careful with them,” said Mr. Whittard. “They’re all in exact positions.”
“I will be,” said Ophelia.
“I’ve just forgotten some passwords for this computer here,” said Mr. Whittard. “Will you be okay for ten minutes while I run back?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I won’t be long.”
“I’m fine.”
When he was gone, Ophelia checked “Iron Age,” “Mesopotamians,” “Egyptians,” and “Syrians.” She checked “Greeks” and “Spartans.” She hurried through “Viking Sword Masters” and “Boer Wars.” She walked quickly, casting her eyes over every sword in the tall glass cabinets. There were long swords, short swords, elaborate swords, and plain swords. There were shining swords and crumbling swords half eaten away by time. But there was none that looked like the boy’s sword. All she had left to look at were “Medieval Knights” and “Conquistadors.”
Without the small sounds of her father’s tinkering, it was deathly, horribly silent.
“I’m all right, but …,” said Ophelia, and she took a squirt on her puffer.
She tried to think of boys’ names beginning with D to take her mind off the silence. Darius, Donald, Damien. Dale, Derek, Daniel. Deon, Dalton, Dougal. Darren, David. Something about David felt right. The hairs on her arms prickled. She would have to say that name to the boy and see if he felt anything.