Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

THE NORTH WIND DOTH BLOW AND WE SHALL HAVE SNOW

In the end the Queen was nothing like she was in the stories the Marvelous Boy had been told, first as a child beside the hearth and later by the wizards. There were no claws. No sharp teeth. She was young. Her pale hair dripped over her shoulders. She opened her blue eyes wide and smiled sweetly at the King
.

“I do not like him, my darling,” she said, not once raising her voice. “I do not like him one little bit.”

“B-b-but he is my Marvelous Boy,” stammered the King. He hated to disappoint her; they were only newly wed
.

“That is the problem exactly,” she said. “They tell me he does not age. That he has been here ten years yet looks just as he did when he arrived. That his hair has not grown, nor his body. It makes me uneasy. I cannot sleep peacefully while he is free to roam. And this story they tell me, of the sword he carries. How can I feel safe when I hear such a thing?”

“Now, now,” said the King. “For many years, he has been my faithful companion.”

“I should like him locked away,” she said
.

“Locked away?”

“We shall lock him away. He shall be locked in a room and allowed out only to be exhibited. He shall be displayed beside all my other precious things; he is a curiosity. I will feel safer.”

“I don’t know,” said the King. “He is a good boy; he means no harm.”

The new Queen narrowed her eyes at him
.

The snow had already begun by then, and now it did not end. It covered the palace grounds, the once-green gardens, the Herald Tree. It blanketed the hills and the fields. It covered houses. Whole villages simply disappeared. The lakes froze over, and then the sea. Children’s faces grew thin and gray. Old ladies keeled over and froze in the streets
.

When the room was ready, the Marvelous Boy was led along the great corridors. In the palace there were hundreds of rooms and hundreds of staircases and hundreds of glass cabinets. Displayed there were her jewels and her other still trophies: snow lions and leopards, white elephants, snowy owls—a whole room of them, frozen in time, their wings pinned open on the mounting boards
.

There were great mosaic floors depicting the wedding pageant of the King and Queen and wintry worlds and sea monsters eating boatloads of people
.

“Whatever made you think of that?” asked the King about the sea monsters
.

“It was a story I once heard,” said the Queen, “and I enjoyed it so.”

She really was very cruel
.

The boy did not struggle as he was led to his room. He had struggled already. Three times since the wedding he had tried to run from the city, and three times he had been returned
.

Around the door there had been painted a mural of his marvelous journey. In the mural the boy stood with his magical sword raised, but at the door his sword was taken from him and handed to the King. His satchel too, which contained the instructions and his compass. The boy looked to the King, but the King would not return his gaze. Inside his room there was nothing but a bed and chair and one window, high up. The Queen smiled and looked very pleased. She fingered the key on the chain at her throat
.

“You have failed in everything you set out to do,” she said when they were alone, just the Marvelous Boy and her. “I do not know why the wizards chose you, such a poor, sorry thing. Why did they think you could defeat me?” She did not pause for his answer. “And this charm that is bestowed on you so that I cannot harm you—it is nothing but an irritation. When the charm has worn off, I will run you through with my sword. What are years to me? I shall build a clock to count the seconds and minutes and days and years, and when they are passed, its chimes will sound, yes, and I will harm you greatly.”

She said it very pleasantly, as though she were talking about marshmallows or afternoon tea
.

“I will find the sword,” the boy whispered. “And the one who will wield it.”

“It will be destroyed,” said the Queen, “melted down, chopped into a thousand pieces.”

“We will find a way to defeat you,” said the boy
.

Which made the Queen very amused, so that she laughed quite merrily. Then she left him there, closed his door, and turned the key
.

In which Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard discovers a boy in a locked room and is consequently asked to save the world

Ophelia did not consider herself brave. She wasn’t like Lucy Coutts, the head girl in her grade, who once rescued a baby in a runaway stroller and was on the front page of all the papers. Lucy Coutts had heavy brown hair and pink cheeks, and she called Ophelia
Scrap
, which made everyone laugh, even Ophelia, to show she didn’t mind.

Ophelia didn’t consider herself brave, but she was very curious.

She was exactly the kind of girl who couldn’t walk past a golden keyhole without looking inside.