Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee Page B

children, in their silvery puffy coats, were already arriving with their skates in their hands, to circle round and round the ice rink, with their frozen faces and their empty eyes. Her father would be waiting for her. Perhaps he already knew she’d lied. He’d probably ban her from coming to the museum ever again.
    She ran past the
Triceratops
and the
Tyrannosaurus rex
—the guard now gone—and she ran along the darkening corridors. She ran upstairs and downstairs and in and out of the great glittering galleries until she found the small lonely room of teaspoons. She raced down the gloomy gallery of painted girls, across the celebrated sea monster mosaic, and into the room of broken stone angels. She collided with Mr. Pushkinova, the map, puffer, and superglue falling to the floor. The tall old man held her arms to stop her from falling too. His hands were grayish and cool.
    “I’m so sorry,” said Ophelia. “I didn’t see you there.”
    “What are you doing here?” asked Mr. Pushkinova very slowly and very quietly. She didn’t know if he whispered or hissed the words.
    “I was just …”
    “What have you got here?” he asked. He reached down to the ground, and Ophelia heard his bones creaking. He took the superglue first and examined it, then her puffer and the map. He opened the map and looked at all her careful shading. He handed the items back to her.
    “Interesting.” He definitely hissed this time.
    “It’s just …,” said Ophelia.
    But she didn’t finish. Mr. Pushkinova leaned suddenly forward so that his face was inches from hers. Ophelia looked at his small, angry mouth and his ancient, stained teeth, which, when she was up close like that, looked a little too pointy. She looked into his terrible, cloudy eyes.
    “I will warn you only once: do not meddle in magic, little girl,” whispered Mr. Pushkinova. “There is nothing that you can do which will help the Marvelous Boy.”
    He took a deep breath. What was he going to do? Ophelia had a terrible sense that it wasn’t something very nice. Then he did the not very nice thing.
    He bared his teeth.
    A vile, low growl rumbled from within him.
    Ophelia turned and ran. She ran as fast as she could. She ran across the sea monster mosaic, down the gloomy gallery of painted girls, into a small, hushed circular library. She crouchedbeneath a spiral staircase. She hugged her arms around herself, shaking. She shook so violently that she thought her teeth were going to break apart. Then when she stopped shaking, she put her head in her hands and began to cry.
    She sobbed until her sleeves were wet, because she had forgotten her handkerchief. She cried because she had no handkerchief. She cried because she didn’t know what to do. If her mother had been there,
she
would have known what to do.
And
she would have had a handkerchief. She cried because Mr. Pushkinova was a horrible man. There was nothing good about him. How could the boy say there was anything good about him? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she had been scratched by a snow leopard and pushed by ghosts and nearly eaten by a misery bird and growled at by a horrible man. She wasn’t used to that sort of thing. And now she was going to be late again, and Alice would look at her missing coat pockets and raise her perfectly plucked eyebrows.
    Then in the middle of feeling sad, she started to feel angry.
    What did Mr. Pushkinova know?
    How did he
know
she couldn’t help the boy?
    She wiped her eyes. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know anything at all. If she wanted to rescue the boy and find the sword and save the world, then she could. And she would.
    That’s my girl
, her mother whispered in her ear.
    Ophelia pulled down on her braids hard until she felt better, and then she stood up and ran to meet Alice in the foyer.

8
    In which dinner is eaten in a revolving restaurant and Ophelia falls asleep at a crucial moment
    Ophelia stared at her reflection in the darkened hotel