by Karen Foxlee
The boy was not in the walled garden. In the walled garden there was a tree. The tree had a plump trunk and a spreading canopy of branches, but it was probably only twice as tall as Ophelia. It was a pleasant tree. She imagined in spring it might have very deep green leaves, and one could lie beneath it in the shade. A soothing, calming kind of tree. A lazing-beneath-it kind of tree. The branches shone with ice, however, and there was not one single hint of greenery in that tiny walled garden.
Ophelia looked around the tree, at the ground. She kicked at snow. She felt with her feet for the hidden sword, just in case. She knew it wasn’t there. Her feeling had brought her here, and here was the Herald Tree.
Here was the Herald Tree that the boy had spoken of.
She had tried to ignore it, but here it was.
She knelt down in the snow, quite close to it. Timidly held out her hand. Of course she wouldn’t be able to hear anything, would she? It wasn’t like she was magical in any way. She hadn’t been trained by the wizards. She didn’t know how to do it.
She placed her hand flat against the cold trunk.
It won’t hurt to try, whispered her mother. It never hurts to try.
Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard closed her eyes.
Later she would say it was like being plugged into an electrical socket. When she touched the Herald Tree, she felt something bright enter her. She tingled in her toes, and her glasses thrummed against her face, and she felt her braids lift, just a little, from her shoulders.
She heard several things at once. Footsteps on a winding wooden staircase, robes rustling, someone singing, and another sound like fingers kneading dough. And all these things she heard as though they were going on right inside of her: as though the staircase were there in her body, and the dough were being kneaded inside her tummy, and someone were singing quietly inside her lungs.
Ophelia, said a voice.
The voice was very deep and very low, and it reminded her of velvet and rolling waves. The voice came from the tree and into her fingers and into her blood, and she felt her name move up her arm and into her heart.
“How do you know me?” Ophelia didn’t know if she spoke those words or those words spoke her.
We have always known you.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
It will soon.
“I can’t find the sword. I’ve looked everywhere.”
The sword will find you.
“How?”
You are a girl of many questions, as prophesied.
Ophelia had never been prophesied before. It made her feel annoyed.
“I rescued the boy, but then the Queen’s taken him again. She’s hidden him somewhere new. Now I have to find him along with everything else.”
You will find him, said the voice. We have seen it. It has all been told.
You’re all very sure, Ophelia wanted to say but didn’t, though the wizards heard her anyway.
She heard one laugh, a deep belly laugh.
All will be well in the end, Ophelia, the voices said in unison.
And that reminded her of something, although she couldn’t say what. She felt the seal between her hand and the tree weaken and her braids land on her back and her shoulders slump forward, and she was released from the current of the Herald Tree.
She stood up and dusted off her knees, not sure at all what to do, except she noticed she had started to cry—tears were flowing down her cheeks and turning to ice as they went. She scrunched her fists up in her eyes and stamped her feet on the ground. Her tears cracked and tinkled and fell to the ground, and she didn’t try to stop them for some time.
Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn’t tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn’t very helpful.
If she were a wizard, she’d write reports for people. She’d make sure everything was very clear. She’d write, Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera. She’d have check boxes. Found your magical sword? Place X here.
She went back inside the museum, her breath smoking before her in great clouds. She dusted away the rest of her frozen tears. She walked through the darkened Prehistoria and then entered an elevator to find her way back to her father’s workroom. Following her heart had got her nowhere. She needed a plan. She’d go to her father. She’d say, “I’ve had a nap; I’m feeling much better. Can I go through your lists of swords? Your spreadsheets? It’s very important.”
She went on tiptoe across the sea monster mosaic. She hoped she wouldn’t meet the horrible Mr. Pushkinova again. She checked again in room 303, but the boy wasn’t there. The door in the turquoise sea was still open, and the bed had been stripped bare. The floor had been scrubbed, and the pitcher and porridge bowl cleaned and turned upside down on the table.
It made her feel abandoned. Yes, that was the word.
She went back out through the stone angels and across the sea monster mosaic and down the long, thin gallery of painted girls in party dresses.
“Hello, Tess Janson,” she said. “You’re looking very bored. Hello, Katie Patin, Matilda Cole, Johanna Payne, Judith Pickford, Millie Mayfield, Carys Sprock, Sally Temple-Watts, Paulette Claude, and Kyra Marinova.”
She stopped there. Put her hand up to touch Kyra’s face, even though she knew you should never touch paintings in a museum.
She moved to the next painting.
“Hello, Alice Worthington-Whittard,” she said.
She stopped.
She opened her mouth.
She tried to comprehend.
A hundred thoughts swarmed into her head, buzzed madly, swarmed out again. Alice. Painted. Chosen by the Queen. Miss Kaminski. The seventh floor … the machine.
17
In which Ophelia must rescue her sister, Alice
She tried, with all her might, not to think of the misery birds. As she went up in the elevator, she tried to think of boys’ names beginning with F instead. She couldn’t think of many of those. There were just Fabien, Finnigan, Falstaff, Fred, Felix, Fergus, and Floyd.
They’d be waiting on their roosts, listening, those misery birds.
Gerald, Greg, Geronimo, Gus, Gulliver, Grant, Gabriel, Galahad, Gavin.
They hadn’t eaten for one whole day, those misery birds. They’d be ravenous.
She’d said she’d never come again to the seventh floor, and here she was. She had to save Alice. And she was sure this was where Alice was.
It’s the right thing to do, whispered her mother.
“But it’s scary,” Ophelia whispered back.
You’ll rescue Alice, and then you can look for the sword while you’re there as well. And the satchel and compass and the instructions the wizards gave the boy. Those are sure to help.
As though Ophelia were only doing something simple, like shopping.
“It’s all right for you,” said Ophelia.
She remembered quite suddenly the morning she didn’t hear her mother’s footsteps on the stairs outside her bedroom. The loose floorboard didn’t creak. She didn’t hear the study door open nor the chair squeak. She didn’t hear her mother’s fingers flying on the keyboard. Everything was still.
That morning Ophelia slipped out of bed and walked across the hall and up the stairs. She paused outside her parents’ bedroom. There was another noise.
Smaller.
Scratchier.
She pushed the door open. Her father was on his side, fast asleep. Her mother was propped up on her pillows, a notebook open in her lap. She was writing with a pencil.
“I thought …,” said Ophelia. The sense of relief had made her feel dizzy.
“I’m still here,” said her mother.
Ophelia waited for the elevator door to clang open on the seventh floor. She stood in the silence that followed, her legs shaking. She began to walk very quietly across
the marble floor, for the first time toward the right-hand corridor. There were no rooms in this corridor, just bare white walls, and in the distance—it seemed forever away—one single door. Ophelia walked toward it. There was a tiny plaque on the door. She could see it from a distance but could not make out the words. When she was closer, she adjusted her glasses. She didn’t want to read the words. She was terrified of what she would see.
The plaque read in small silver letters:
MISS KAMINSKI
MUSEUM CURATOR
I knew she was bad from the beginning, her mother hissed.
“Shh,” said Ophelia.
She knocked very quietly on the door, and when no one answered, she opened it.
“Alice,” she whispered.
There was no reply.
It was a very plain office. There was an old white sofa and an old pine box that served as a coffee table. An old bookshelf. The walls and curtains were white, and the desk was also a pale pine. There was one large crystal paperweight holding down a thin pile of papers. Behind the desk, a window gave a view of the cold city.
Ophelia took a puff on her inhaler, and she wished she hadn’t because it was a very loud noise in the very quiet room. She started with the desk. She lifted up the paperweight first and went through the small pile of papers beneath. Seating arrangements. All of them written by hand in a silvery ink.
In the first drawer, there was a silver pen. In the second drawer, white sheets of writing paper. In the third drawer, there was nothing but a frosted pink lipstick, a hand mirror, and a packet of mints. In the fourth drawer, there was a silver key.
Ophelia ran her fingers along the spines of the books in Miss Kaminski’s bookshelf. Prehistoric Art. The Amulets of Eastern Europe. The Museum in the Late Twentieth Century. Franco-Flemish Social History. She sat down on the sofa and looked at the pine-box coffee table. She saw that the box had a lock. She went back to the desk and retrieved the key.
The box was stiff with age, but the key opened it. The lid made a hideous squeak. Inside was the satchel, worn smooth by time. She opened it, and she took out the folded piece of paper. It was a little crumpled. A little stained. A fragile, ancient thing. And written in the Great Wizard’s strange block letters on the outside, the word Instructions.
She felt in the bag again.
There it was, the old, tarnished compass. She held it in her hand before placing it back inside. Her fingers brushed against something else. She peered inside and saw a little biscuit man, two shiny currant eyes staring back at her. She slipped the satchel strap over her head and shoulder, and it fitted perfectly.
“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.
18
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.
19
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.
Be kind to everyone whom you meet along the way, and things will be well.
Kindness is far stronger than any cruelty.
Always extend your hand in friendship.
Be patient.
You may feel alone, but there will always be people who will help you along the way.
