by Karen Foxlee
What could he see? Me untying my laces to examine my blisters. The crown of my hair, my brown face. He kept quiet, that great magical owl, until he could keep quiet no more. He let out one long screech and plummeted down through the trees.
I looked up and saw him. He was coming straight toward me. He was as large as me, maybe larger, his wings—huge white, glittering sails—blotting out my vision. I rolled to the side and he barely missed me.
Now, what was it that the wizards had told me about the owls? There was something I was supposed to remember. If only I had listened to that lesson. The owl swooped steeply back up through the trees to take his position. I felt for the sword, dragged it from its scabbard, but it immediately nosed to the ground. It was so heavy, my hands shook just trying to hold the thing. And already Ibrom was descending and screeching again.
This time I somersaulted beneath him, and he held my ankle briefly in his great talons. I rose in the air with him before twisting free. The owl shot upward again toward the trees.
I pulled the one arrow from my quiver—yes, one arrow, another fact to lament—and drew my bow.
I stood the way the wizards had taught me. Felt the earth through my bare feet. I wished more than anything that the wizards had taught me something magical. Now I was going to be eaten by an owl and I was only a short way from the town.
Earth, bare feet. If you ever have to shoot a great magical owl with an arrow, you should remember this, Ophelia. Everything is connected. If you touch the ground, you touch the tops of the trees. If you touch the trees, you touch the wings of birds.
The arrow thrummed free from my bow. It flew straight and true, upward, upward, upward until it lodged in Ibrom’s breast. The great magical owl fell to the ground with a thump. The forest floor shook, the leaves whispered, a curious stillness descended.
Does it seem too simple to you? I was so shocked that he fell that way, my arrow through his heart. How could it be? Ibrom lay on his side, lifting one wing helplessly. I went toward him. What was it they had told me about magical owls? Was it that I was never, under any circumstances, meant to kill them? But the wizards had taught me to always assist those in need.
The owl stared at me. He was not dead, only terribly injured. Looking into his eyes, Ophelia, I felt like I was looking into a flame.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Then I remembered. “I mean, hello. I mean, I come in friendship and mean you no harm.”
Which seemed an awful thing to say, considering what I’d just done.
“I am a boy chosen by a protectorate of wizards from the east, west, and middle to deliver this sword so that the Snow Queen may be defeated.”
Ibrom closed his fiery eyes and opened them again. “Yes, yes, yes, I know all this,” he whispered. Flinched. Raised his great wing.
“What should I do?” I asked. “Should I take the arrow from you?”
“No,” said Ibrom. The owl’s voice was so deep, the forest trembled beneath my feet. “Come closer, so I can see you.”
I crawled forward. Ibrom lifted his huge feathered head, but it fell back again.
“Much is spoken of you,” said the owl. “How you have been sent to save the world. You are small. Smaller than I imagined. But you smell delicious. If I had caught you, I would have taken you by the shirt so as not to mark your skin. I would have taken you to my nest and gazed at you all night before educating you in the ways of misery.”
Which are terrible words, are they not? But I could tell he was not all bad.
“You see, I can look forward in time just as well as your wizards can,” he continued. “And I have seen the One Other, who is just as small and just as puny. I have spent nights beside her bedroom, looking upon her. I know that she will never be of use to anyone, not against the Queen. Not against snow and sadness.
“The hopelessness of it—two such beings entrusted to save all the realms. None of it is possible.”
“What would give you comfort?” I asked. “I shouldn’t have shot that arrow. It’s just that you were going to—”
“I travel the world,” Ibrom interrupted. Even his whisper made my body shake. “I have seen great, unthinking machines made by men to perform horrible deeds. I have seen guns as huge as elephants and bombs that have laid waste to whole cities. I have seen battlefields where dying men are eaten by crows. I have seen immeasurable sorrows. The Queen desires you, and it was my task to find you and take you to her.”
I looked into his unearthly eyes.
Ibrom gazed back. His body vibrated with unused magic. “Come closer,” he said. “I have a proposition for you. If you will give me a small part of yourself, I will give you a portion of myself in return. This exchange will provide you with a charm. This magical blessing will keep you safe from the Queen for just a little while, long enough for you to make it to the valley forest, where the wolves will not follow you. The Queen will be unable to harm you in this time, and if she does, she will harm the whole of her army. So tightly are we bound together by her misery.”
What should I do? Should I believe such a creature? What would you do, Ophelia, in such a situation? The owl closed his eyes and waited. Is that what the wizards had taught me? Never, under any circumstances, trust a dying owl?
“Which part will I give you?” I asked.
“A finger, perhaps?”
“Will it hurt?”
“Only for a while.”
So I looked at my fingers for a long time while the owl took terrible, shuddering breaths. I wished I could make decisions. The world was so full of things I had to decide. If I made the wrong decision, everything would be wrong. Everything. And it wasn’t fair again, you see. I needed my fingers. I needed them to hold sticks, and to fish, and to pick up stones from the river and skip them across the bright morning water. I thought of all these things; then I held out my hand to the owl.
“Shush,” said Ophelia. She held her own hand, protecting her fingers against nothing. “Don’t tell me any more.”
“Mr. Pushkinova will be back with my lunch soon anyway,” said the boy. “What about the third key? That’s what is important now. We don’t have much time. And this magical tar you speak of?”
“It’s superglue,” said Ophelia. “And it’s not really magical. I’ll go now.”
“Be careful,” said the boy.
Which is all very well to say, thought Ophelia, when you have to enter a room containing a magical beast that likes to eat people. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.
She raced to the sword workroom, where Mr. Whittard was holding a rusted rapier in his hands. He was looking at it as though he were holding the greatest of treasures. Sometimes he had looked at Ophelia’s mother in this way. When Susan returned from a walk, for instance, and her cheeks were pink and her hair wet with rain and she was so full of stories that she glowed.
Ophelia waited patiently beside her father until he stopped looking at the sword and noticed her.
“There you are,” said Mr. Whittard. “Are you feeling better? How were the dolls? It was very nice of Miss Kaminski to organize all that. She really is very kind.”
Ophelia didn’t like the way he said Miss Kaminski. He said Miss Kaminski as though he were thinking of something special. And he knew Ophelia certainly didn’t like dolls.
“I’m feeling much better, thank you,” she said. “But I need some superglue.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, it’s a surprise, really.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Please, Daddy. I promise it’s for nothing bad. I’m meeting Alice,” she lied. “She’s having her picture painted, remember? And the superglue … is for something I’m working on. Miss Kaminski is letting me fix some of the old doll furniture while I watch. She said I looked like the kind of girl who could help with such a job. I’ll be gone for ages. Portraits take a long time, you know.”
“Well, in that case,” said her father. He looked around, then opened and shut a few dra
wers. “There were a few huge tubes here, actually.”
Finally he located a drawer containing several large yellow tubes with extra-long nozzles.
Ophelia was surprised by how easily she lied. She had two stolen keys in her pockets, and the lies were sliding off her tongue. Soon she’d probably be shoplifting. She expected that was how it started.
At the foot of the staircase, she turned to her father. “You haven’t seen that sword, have you?” she asked. “The one with the wooden handle and the closed eye? The magical one?”
“No, but if I find it, I will tell you,” said Mr. Whittard, and calling after her, added, “Wait, we’re having dinner tonight with Miss Kaminski, so I’ll need you and Alice back here by five o’clock sharp. Alice has promised me she’ll take you to buy a dress.”
Dresses, thought Ophelia as she raced up the stairs. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress. She certainly didn’t own one. Why on earth was her father trying to get her to wear a dress? Her mother would never have tried. Her mother would have said, “I hope you didn’t take those jeans out of the dirty clothes basket?” And if Ophelia had, she would have shaken her head and said, “There is no hope for you, O. Really, there is no hope.”
Ophelia stopped walking and closed her eyes. This happened sometimes when she thought of her mother. She felt she couldn’t move, not another step; couldn’t take another breath. That must have been what it felt like for the boy, when he thought about the bread and cheese. She could almost sit down on the stairs and begin to cry. But she didn’t.
Instead she started ascending the stairwell again slowly. She tapped her left-hand pocket. She felt the two keys there, her puffer, the museum map, the tin of sardines. She looked down at the tube of superglue in her hand. She inhaled a deep breath of the fusty museum air, steeling herself for what she had to do.
In the dinosaur hall Ophelia slipped the superglue inside her coat. She looked at the elevator with the large cross on the doors and shuddered. She pretended to look at some dinosaur knee bones. The old guard watched her every move and took almost twenty minutes of furious knitting to fall asleep.
Ophelia walked past the elevator three times until she worked up the courage to enter it. She touched the superglue inside her coat. She had expected magic to be very clean and powerful, but instead it was messy and uncomfortable and full of decisions. It made her legs tremble.
Ophelia pressed the number 7.
The seventh floor was just as quiet and cold and still as it had been on her last visit. The elevator doors opened loudly, making her wince. She stepped into the silence. Her skinny knock-knees shook inside her too-big jeans; each breath caught in her throat. She reached into her pocket and very carefully took the plain key she had stolen from the box in the snow leopard room. She scratched a little at the greenish color with her fingernail and saw, engraved in small writing on its side, the number 707. She placed it back in her pocket.
In the left corridor she moved as noiselessly as she could, her heart beating in her ears. She took the superglue and unscrewed the top, and at door number 701 she inserted the nozzle in the keyhole and squeezed. She was careful with the drops. She moved to number 702 and then number 703, squeezing in the clear liquid.
When her breathing slowed and her heartbeat quieted, she could hear again. There were soft sighing sounds coming from behind the doors. She tried not to think of them. She tried not to think of the other rustlings that had now become apparent. She tried not to think of the very strong feathery smell. She glued up the locks of 704 through 714, skipping number 707. She glued up the locks of 715 through 721. She heard the clank of the elevator doors closing and the elevator going away to another floor.
Which meant that someone had called it.
Which made her freeze, with the superglue in her hands.
Maybe someone had called it and they were going to another floor, she thought. She turned the corner, where the remaining doors were, and also the little white cupboard, from which she had stolen the first key. She quickly glued up locks 722 to 730. Then she did the same for 731, 732, 733, and 734.
She was back in the first corridor when she heard the whir of the elevator motor. The elevator was returning. She wished suddenly, more than anything, that she had never met the boy behind the door—it didn’t matter how interesting or exciting he was, it didn’t matter that he had been given lessons by wizards, which she shouldn’t really believe in, or that he had been given a blessing by a great magical owl. She took the two steps she needed as the elevator doors began to open, fumbled with the key to 707, inserted and turned it. Then she stepped inside and closed the door softly behind her.
The misery bird was five times her size and hanging upside down, fast asleep. She dared not breathe. It was just as the boy had said, the ugliest, most horrible thing she had ever seen. The bird had the head of a fierce eagle, tucked tenderly into the snow-white plumage of its chest. It had the black leathery wings of a giant bat, folded neatly at its sides. Its terrifying talons gripped a bar that ran across the ceiling. Each time it exhaled slowly, the wind from its silvery beak ruffled Ophelia’s hair.
Ophelia could not take her eyes from it.
It’s a monster. It’s a monster. It’s a monster, her head said.
The bird monster slept.
She heard footsteps in the corridor. The sound of high heels clipping on the marble. Ophelia was suddenly so cold that she could not stop herself from trembling, and her teeth began to rattle in her mouth. It must be the Queen. A phone rang. The footsteps stopped suddenly, and Ophelia heard someone sigh.
“What?” a woman’s voice said. “Can you handle nothing alone? Must I do everything?”
The footsteps receded.
It must have been the Queen. Did Snow Queens use phones? It must have been.
Ophelia stood before the misery bird, trying to think of what to do. She heard the elevator doors open and shut and the elevator clank away to a lower floor. Everything would be all right. She would find the key. There in the corner of the room was a golden box. Only that golden box could contain the golden key that would work in the golden keyhole. She would open that box and take out the key. She would open the door and then glue it shut. She’d go to the elevator and press down and tell the boy that she couldn’t possibly help anymore. Yes, that was exactly what she’d do. She took one step toward the box, as quietly as she could.
The misery bird opened its wings.
The misery bird’s wings opened so suddenly and with such a snap that it made Ophelia fall backward and land with a bump on the ground. Its wings snapped open like a deathly black fan and trembled slightly. They almost filled the room. The bird opened its luminous gray eyes. It made a dangerous, low noise in its throat.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Ophelia. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
The bird peered at her.
Now she was going to be eaten. She knew it. It wasn’t fair. Her father would always wonder what had happened to her. He would say, “She went somewhere with superglue and then we never saw her again.”
Ophelia closed her eyes and waited for the end.
She waited and waited, and then she got tired of waiting and opened her eyes.
The bird was staring at her with its intelligent eyes. It stretched its long, thin neck out and came very close to her face. It sniffed her features slowly. Its breath made Ophelia close her eyes again. She made a little squeak. She couldn’t help it. The bird sniffed her hair and sniffed her shoulders and sniffed her pockets. First her right, then her left.
It took her left pocket within its powerful beak and ripped it clean off. The map, the sardines, the puffer, and the keys clattered to the ground. The bird stretched its neck all the way down and examined these things. Finally it took the sardine tin and brought it up to Ophelia.
She took it with shaking hands. She pulled the ring top and peeled the lid open.
“Is this what you want?” she croaked.
The bi
rd opened its massive beak. She picked a sardine out and placed it on its hard gray tongue. When it had swallowed, it opened its mouth again. While she fed the bird, she knelt down and picked up the keys. She took a tiny step sideways toward the little box on the floor in the corner of the room. Then another. The bird’s neck stretched after her and the sardines.
“Nice birdie,” she said, plucking another sardine and placing it on its tongue.
She knelt down again, picked up the golden box from the ground, and placed another sardine in the misery bird’s mouth. She took the key and opened the lock, a task that required her to hold the sardine tin and the key together in one hand. A task that required her to remove her eyes from the misery bird’s face. She felt its breath on her neck. She squeaked. She fumbled inside the box for the key. There it was. It was a long golden key, exactly the right size for the boy’s prison door.
“More,” she said to the misery bird. “Have some more.”
She placed the last sardine from the tin in the bird monster’s mouth.
“Can I go now?” whispered Ophelia.
Trembling, she picked up her puffer and map and glue. The misery bird looked at her closely. It yawned with its sardine breath. It retracted its neck and tucked its head neatly under its wing. Ophelia thought that probably meant yes. She walked to the door, her legs like wobbly stilts.
She opened the door very carefully.
The bird watched her with one eye.
She closed it. She inserted the superglue nozzle in the keyhole and squeezed. She moved back along the corridor to the large empty room and the elevator. She would let the boy out, she thought, and then that was it. He was on his own. She pressed the elevator button and heard it approaching from below. If the Queen was in the elevator, it would be the end of her. She knew it. She felt quite suddenly as though she was going to wet her pants. Up, up, up the elevator came. The doors slid open. It was empty. Ophelia pushed the button marked down and sank to the floor inside.