Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy Read Online Free Page B

Miss Kaminski as though she weren’t there at all.
    “Wigs, shoes, dresses?” said Miss Kaminski. “Dolls, music boxes, mirrors? Mazes, the customs of love, Oriental textiles, white horses with wings made of marble, lipsticks, the history of dance, violins, piccolos?”
    Alice continued staring at a point past Miss Kaminski’s head. She was being quite rude.
    “The dresses,” continued Miss Kaminski, “are some of the most beautiful and most expensive ever made in the world. I would love for you to see these things, Alice.”
    “I guess,” said Alice at last.
    “And Miss Cordelia,” said Miss Kaminski.
    “Ophelia.”
    “I think you look like a girl who would like very much to see …”
    “Dinosaurs,” said Ophelia.
    Miss Kaminski led them through the galleries, and in and out of the silver staff-only elevators. She looked back at them from time to time, smiled, beckoned them on. Ophelia did not like her, although she couldn’t say why. If she was to think about it, logically, Miss Kaminski looked like a model in a magazine and she smelt very nice. Both of these things should have made her agreeable. Yet every time Ophelia was near her, she felt worried. She was worried in a nameless, shapeless, strange way, which, however hard she tried, she couldn’t put her finger on. Walking behind Miss Kaminski,Ophelia had to pull on her braids again to make herself feel better.
    Miss Kaminski took them first to the
Gallery of Time
, and the crowd parted in two waves before her. The Wintertide Clock was as tall as the ceiling and its face as white as snow. Its hands were silver and dangerously sharp. It ticked so loudly that Ophelia could feel its mechanics inside her and through the soles of her feet.
    Around the perimeter of the clock face, there were smaller clock faces, and when Ophelia peered closer, she saw that within these smaller clocks, there were even tinier timepieces.
    “The Wintertide Clock is the most important piece in the museum and one of the most important clocks in the world,” Miss Kaminski said, and although she spoke only to Alice, the crowd grew hushed. “It has over seven hundred moving wheels and cogs, and keeps time to the movement of the stars and the moon.”
    Miss Kaminski pointed to the many clock faces with one elegant sweep of her arm.
    “Standing here, I can tell the time anywhere in the world. In Sofia or Saharanpur. In Mobile, Mito, and Mogadishu.”
    She spoke to the crowd now as well.
    “But why does this remarkable clock chime only once every three hundred years? No one can remember now, but we know from records that the day is fast approaching. What song will its bells play us when it chimes? People, soon the world will understand its great mysteries.
    “On Christmas Eve,
Battle: The Greatest Exhibition of Swordsin the History of the World
will begin and will coincide with the opening of the Wintertide Clock’s chime doors. We shall hear those chimes and understand this clock’s true purpose.”
    Alice sighed and turned up the volume in her earphones.
    Beneath the silver chime doors, Ophelia saw the little window that the boy had mentioned. It contained a very ornate number 3. She thought of the boy locked away in the loneliest part of the museum. She shook her head. Oh, how that boy, locked behind that door, made her feel unsettled. She felt her stomach twist itself in knots. He shouldn’t have been there, and he shouldn’t have spoken to her, and he shouldn’t have asked her to save the world.
    All this talk of wizards. If wizards were real, how could they take his name, however much it was attached to his soul, and hold it in their hands, as heavy as a stone? She tried to imagine explaining that at the Children’s Science Society.
    But if she retrieved the key for him, then she could at least say she had helped. She could probably find his name too. He probably hadn’t even tried to think about it—really think, sit down with a freshly sharpened pencil and go