by Karen Foxlee
I looked down at myself.
“You have not changed. You have not aged. You’re exactly the same as the day you arrived. The royal barber says even your hair has not grown. Don’t you think this is strange?”
It was true. I couldn’t argue. I hadn’t grown up at all. The King, who had turned seventeen, had grown taller and thinner. He had sprouted a fine, downy mustache. But me, I hadn’t changed at all. I was exactly the same size and height as when I arrived. My hair was the same length, my eyes the same color and clarity, my skin the skin of an eleven-year-old boy.
“But I told you already,” I said, and I’d told him it many times. “It was the charm put on me by the great magical owl. It was meant to keep me safe for three days and three hours and three minutes, but I think, perhaps, it was spun wrong and now has lasted longer.”
The King tilted his head to one side and smiled. He did that whenever I spoke of my journey. He called the two highest priests in the kingdom. They poked and prodded me, and asked me great and convoluted questions about God and the angels that I couldn’t answer.
“It is certainly unusual,” said the second highest of the priests. “Would you say miraculous, Your Holiness?”
The highest of the priests didn’t like to waste the word miraculous on trifling matters. He would much rather save it for large balls of fire ripping through the sky or people resurrected from graves, all of which hardly ever happened. And also it was a Thursday, and nothing miraculous ever happened on Thursdays.
“Marvelous, perhaps,” the highest priest said. “But not miraculous. He will need to be monitored.”
Right then I remembered again my reason for being there, as was sometimes the case, and the words rushed out, exactly the way the wizards had taught me.
“I come in friendship and mean you no harm. I am a boy chosen by a protectorate of wizards from the east, west, and middle to deliver this sword”—I went to hold up the sword. Where was it? It was under the bed, collecting dust—“so that the Snow Queen may be defeated.”
It was a very hot day. The King laughed and waved his golden fan before his face. “Ah yes, the Snow Queen,” he said. “This snow we are waiting for.”
I must have looked despondent.
“Now, now,” said the King. “To cheer you up, I will declare today the Festival of the Marvelous Boy.”
“Oh, please, no,” I said.
“There will be a procession in the street, and you will be carried in a great chair. Chancellor, quickly see that a chair is built of gold. Each year, on this day, you will be paraded. And each year we will see if you have changed. There will be music and dancing and food.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“I command it,” said the King.
So each year from that day, the Festival of the Marvelous Boy was held. I was made to dress in my splendid coat and carry my sword—which the King offered to dip in silver, but which I declined.
Each year it was true: I did not age. Each year I was paraded through the streets, and the crowd cheered and danced and sang. The land was more prosperous than it had ever been: the King’s coffers were filled with gold, and the crops grew tall, and there was no one hungry. Everyone put it down to me, the strange, ageless friend of the King.
Each year I stood beside the King, who shouted, “People, our friend from the other Land, all hail the Marvelous Boy.”
The crowd cheered so loudly that I could not hear, but all I felt was empty and unfathomably sad.
“But when does the Snow Queen arrive?” asked Ophelia. She was still holding the boy’s hand. His skin was pale as snow. His eyes closed as he spoke.
She came when the King was twenty. An emissary from a distant land came to offer the hand of the ruling monarch’s eldest daughter. She was, by all accounts, the most beautiful girl in the entire world. The King scratched his head and said, “Not another one.”
“You should consider it, sir,” said the chancellor. “It is said that this land is famous for its diamonds and other glittering gems, and for its perfect furs.”
“At least a meeting,” said the royal ambassador to all other realms.
“What do you think, Nanny?” asked the King.
“Well, I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm,” she replied.
“What do you think, Boy?”
“She is probably very nice,” I replied.
She came in a white coach with a silvery trim, pulled by seven white horses. She wore a glittering white gown and a sparkling crown in her white-blond hair. She carried a large and glittering sword in a jewel-encrusted scabbard. When the King saw her, he fell in love immediately. He felt at once as though he were falling and flying. He couldn’t breathe. The princess disembarked from her coach and held out her delicate, pale hand.
“You are enchanted to meet me,” the princess said.
The King was.
He could not eat, he could not sleep. He could not sit down, he could not stand. He moaned and rolled on his bed. He held his head in his hands. Oh, how he was violently sick with love.
He forgot about me.
Now, when I first saw the princess, I too almost fell to my knees. It was not because of her great beauty, although very beautiful she was. She was coming down the long golden walk, you see, flanked by her courtiers and her maids-in-waiting and her collection of miniature white poodles, which snapped and snarled at everyone who passed.
She stopped.
I stopped.
She smiled.
Her best, least wicked smile.
And I knew immediately who she was.
“I know of this charm,” she said to me when we were alone. It was after the first time I had tried to escape. “Which my not-so-faithful servant Ibrom bestowed upon you. Not three days, as you have told the King, but three hundred and three years.”
“Three hundred and three years?” I whispered, the air knocked out of me by her words.
“Yes, you will live that long, and I will not be able to harm you until the charm is gone. When it is, I can run you through with my sword, the Great Sorrow. You have heard of her, haven’t you? The wizards will have told you all about her, no? They will have seen my sword in their pathetic little visions.”
A prison room was built for me. The King asked that the picture of my marvelous life be painted on the wall, with my name in very big letters, arched just so.
“Can we still have the Festival of the Marvelous Boy?” he asked.
“I will consider it,” said the Queen.
My sword was taken from me to be destroyed. I tried to look at the King, to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. Then the Queen closed the door and locked it with her golden key.
Each year at the Festival of the Marvelous Boy, a crowd came. I was allowed from my room to stand on the little stage. Each year I looked at the faces. I looked into the eyes of the children, each and every one of them, but I recognized none of them. None of them seemed right.
Each year the crowd grew smaller.
Fewer faces to look at and hope for.
The King grew old. When he visited, he walked with a cane. He kept a key to my room. Each time he came, it was as though he had something to say. But when he arrived, it was as though he had forgotten it. He came and sat beside my bed and said nothing.
“Will you not let me go?” I asked.
The King said, “You know, Boy, you know very well I could not disobey her.”
The snow did not end. It fell and fell and fell until the land was white, and the children grew hungry.
“Do you see now what has happened?”
The King lowered his ancient shoulders and began to cry. “Yes, I see it now.”
“Did you really destroy the sword?” I asked gently now, for I hated to see him so sad.
“No, Boy. I did not destroy it. I pretended I was taking it to be destroyed but then hid it quickly when she wasn’t looking. I hid it first in the elephant stables. They all froze, you know. Then later, years la
ter, I hid it in the gardens. Then much, much later, in a junk room. After that … well, it was a very long time ago and I don’t at all remember where. I have looked for it myself now and been unable to find it.”
“Don’t worry, then,” I said. “As long as it still exists, all will be well in the end.”
“The sun is nearly up,” said Ophelia.
The boy opened his eyes.
“I know you will find the sword, Ophelia,” he said, with great certainty. “I know you will find the sword and the Snow Queen will be defeated.”
12
In which Ophelia meets Miss Kaminski again
Ophelia left the boy in the carriage and ran down the staircases between the floors. The dawn light was filling up the galleries. The painted angels were swimming to life. Straightaway Ophelia noticed something was afoot in the museum. Everywhere the old guards were on the move. They were marching in and out of rooms, with their large black handbags by their sides. They had scowls on their faces. They were kneeling down and looking into the heating vents, peering into the huge urns, lifting up and looking behind curtains. Ophelia leapt into a public elevator just in time.
She raced along the corridors, sped downstairs, upstairs, in and out of rooms. And before she could stop her feet, she had raced straight into the pavilion of wolves.
She skidded to a halt on the marble floor. She stayed very still, barely breathing. The wolves looked back at her with their dull glass eyes. They didn’t move. They were their usual mangy, threadbare selves.
“Okay,” Ophelia said to herself. “Everything is fine.”
She took a squirt on her puffer, then took one step backward slowly. The wolves did not move. Another squirt, another step.
She ran through the small circular library and out the other side. She raced down the long, thin gallery of painted girls in party dresses. She trembled with the cold. They really should do something about the heating in this stupid museum, she thought, and then froze.
“Miss Kaminski,” cried Ophelia. “You gave me such a fright.”
“Forgive me, Ophelia,” said the curator. She said her name very precisely, in a way that made Ophelia shiver even more.
Miss Kaminski smiled, but Ophelia thought she didn’t really look sorry to have given such a scare. She looked secretly pleased.
She knelt down. Her buttermilk-colored suit made a sighing sound. She smiled her beautiful smile again. She held Ophelia just below the shoulders. She had icy hands. Ophelia could feel them even through her blue velvet jacket.
“You’re very early in your wanderings today,” said Miss Kaminski. “And look, without any shoes.”
Ophelia looked down at her stocking feet. “I stayed with Daddy last night, here in the museum,” she said. “And I just thought I’d run very quickly to see the … dinosaurs.”
“Oh yes, the dinosaurs,” said Miss Kaminski.
Up close like that, Ophelia noticed there were tiny spidery lines around Miss Kaminski’s eyes. She looked young and old at the same time. Her eyes were the palest blue. Her frosty pink lipstick was a little smudged at the corners. Miss Kaminski searched Ophelia’s face as though she was looking for something.
She had a fresh, clean smell like washed and sun-dried sheets, and something else, something sweeter. It tickled Ophelia’s nose.
“Did you like the dinosaurs again?” she said. “You have not grown tired of them yet?”
“Oh no. I’d never grow tired of them.”
“What else have you been doing so early in the morning?” the curator asked. Her hands squeezed Ophelia’s shoulders. She squeezed while she smiled very sweetly.
“Oh, nothing, really,” whispered Ophelia.
Miss Kaminski’s long, pale fingers, with her immaculate, polished nails, were hurting her.
“Ouch,” said Ophelia.
Suddenly she felt very small. She felt very small in that vast museum. All the painted girls with their lonely, bored faces looked down at her. They looked at her as though they had seen it all before. Ophelia’s breath puffed in front of her, but the museum curator’s breath did not. Ophelia saw it hover in front of her mouth, a small, polite mist.
“Do you miss your mummy?” whispered Miss Kaminski.
The pain was very bad in Ophelia’s shoulders now.
Tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn’t stop them. She looked at the white floor. She looked at the painted girls. She looked at the ceiling.
Miss Kaminski leaned forward. She placed her lips on Ophelia’s forehead and kissed her there. She didn’t remove them. Ophelia felt a tightness in her chest. Every breath that she had was being pressed gradually out of her.
“I hope,” said Miss Kaminski slowly, as she squeezed the breath out of Ophelia, “you are being a very good little girl.”
After this, she stood up.
“I think now you should go back to your father’s workroom, and you should sit on a chair and stay out of harm’s way.”
Ophelia couldn’t answer. Her chest was too tight. She felt as though she had been drenched through with cold rain and left to dry in a winter wind. She quivered and coughed a tiny, little cough.
Miss Kaminski took her by the hand. She led her down the stairs and through the Gallery of Time. She pulled Ophelia down the damp and creaking stairs to her father’s workroom.
Each step. One foot after the other.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Ophelia became aware of something. The sweet, warm scent that Miss Kaminski wore was exactly the scent of hot chocolate.
The curator pulled her roughly by the arm.
“Hurry up,” she said.
In the sword workroom, Mr. Whittard jumped up. A sheaf of papers cascaded onto the floor. He straightened his eyebrows, ran a hand through his hair, stood at attention, his mouth hanging open at the sight of Miss Kaminski.
“M-m-miss Kaminski,” he stammered.
“Mr. Whittard,” said Miss Kaminski.
Ophelia stood between them, trembling. She retrieved her inhaler and took a puff.
Mr. Whittard looked at Ophelia and looked at the old throne, where the blankets still lay with the shoes sticking out at the end.
“Your daughter,” said Miss Kaminski in an icy voice, and she delivered Ophelia the way one would a parcel. “A reminder, Mr. Whittard, my sword will arrive today, and I trust that all your preparations are in order.”
She turned on her stiletto heel and left.
“Ophelia Jane,” he said. “Where have you been?”
“I went to the bathroom,” she said, and then convulsed with shivers.
“Are you telling the truth?” he said, wrapping her in his arms.
She remembered what the boy had told her. Always tell the truth. “No,” she said.
“Where have you been?” Mr. Whittard asked. “I thought you were lying right there on that chair. I can’t believe it. I thought you were there. I’ve been so busy, but I thought you were lying there.”
“We’re in great danger,” Ophelia said. “Great, great, great danger.”
“Goodness me, what kind of danger?” asked Mr. Whittard.
“In danger of the Snow Queen’s army waking up and freezing the whole world and making everything sad. I’ve met a boy who is a prisoner, and he has lived for a long time, and he was sent all the way here to give the sword to someone else, but they took the sword ages ago. And all they feed him is porridge. They were keeping him locked in a room, but I’ve let him out. I was chased by snow leopards and helped by a ghost and nearly eaten by a misery bird. Just now we were chased by wolves. Did you hear them howling? I have to find the sword, and I have to find the One Other who can wield it before the stroke of six.”
Mr. Whittard stared at his daughter for a while. He hugged her close to his chest, then looked at her again.
Ophelia stared back at him. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, darling. You do take after your mother.”
“We’re i
n great danger,” whispered Ophelia. “Didn’t you hear the wolves?”
“You’ve got a fever,” said Mr. Whittard. He felt his daughter’s forehead, which was burning. “I’m taking you back to the hotel.”
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her through the vast and monumental corridors, down the grand staircases. He carried her across the glittering wedding mosaic floor in the foyer. That morning Ophelia fancied she could hear the Wintertide Clock ticking. It seemed to be shaking the whole building. She tried to speak, feebly, to tell her father more, but he was already carrying her through the great revolving doors, out into the snow.
At that very moment the museum guards were fanning out from the elevator on the sixth floor. The Snow Queen waited quietly while they searched in every corner. Beside her was Mr. Pushkinova, his head bowed. When they at last opened the carriage door, the Snow Queen strode forward.
“Did you really think that scrap of a girl could help you?” she said to the boy. “A little girl who squeaks like a mouse?”
Then she began to laugh, her terrible, clear, tinkling-bell laugh.
13
In which Ophelia is very ill and Alice is very upset, but they come to a mutual agreement
“I feel better,” said Ophelia, lying in her hotel bed. “I swear, I feel better.”
“Your temperature is through the roof,” said Mr. Whittard. “You’ll have to stay here. All morning. Don’t even start to argue. Alice, you’ll stay here too.”
“I can’t!” screeched Alice. “I’m having my hair done and my dress fitting, and then my portrait is being hung. Miss Kaminski is going to teach me how to hold the special shears and cut the ribbon.”
“You’ll be staying here,” said Mr. Whittard. “And speaking of special things, Miss Kaminski’s prized sword is arriving today and I am meant to be there right now, making preparations.”
“Don’t you understand?” wailed Alice. “I need to be beautiful.”