Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee Read Free Book Online Page A

spiderwebs. It was at the very back of the huge room. Of course, she thought, there wouldn’t be only one room on the sixth floor. There would be several rooms. Behind this door there were probably many boxes. There would be boxes in piles, heaps, mountains, oodles of boxes stacked up in pyramids. She reached out for the doorknob and opened the door.
    Behind the door there were no oodles of boxes. There were no boxes at all. Ophelia stepped into a room that was vast and almost in darkness. There was nothing in this room but huge pillars, evenly spaced, disappearing into the dark above her.
    It
was
like a forest, that room, but it didn’t sing and rustle like an ordinary forest. It was quiet and the only noise was the slight creaking of the floor beneath her feet. It was much colder in that room than in the first. She pulled her coat collar up as she began to walk and wished she had a flashlight. There was something falling from the heights above her. Dust, she thought at first, white dust, and she put her hand out to catch some. The stuff was wet on her palm, which was confusing, and if she’d been outside, she would have said straightaway that it was snow.
    Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard did not consider herself brave, but she had always been very hopeful. “Anything is possible if you have a plan” was her motto. “Anything is possible if you think scientifically.” It made her smile now, in the darkened room.
    Of course, behind this room, there would be another room filled with boxes. She would search it in a grid pattern, which was exactly how archaeologists and police officers found things. She would search it slowly and methodically. She might even find the old sword while she was there. And the One Other, whoever that was, if it was even someone at all. Some more of the wet white stuff fell from the ceiling, but it didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. There was a strange smell tickling her nose, a singed kind of smell, a little like burnt popcorn.
    She walked through the forest of pillars. She walked and walked, and there did not seem to be an end to that room. She thought of the boy’s name to pass the time. Colin, she thought. No, not Colin, that was silly. Christopher. Crawford. Conan. Clyde, Clive, Cameron, Carl, Cassidy. Surely one of the names would jump out at her, and she would know. There was a noise. A whispering, rustling type of sound and it seemed to come from beneath her feet. She bent down and felt with her hands in the dim and picked up a pile of dark leaves.
    “That’s very strange,” said Ophelia.
    And at exactly the same time, she heard another sound. It might have been the wind or the sighing of snow through the leaves, only it was very close to her ear. And the sound that might have been the wind or the sighing of snow through theleaves suddenly became a multitude of girls’ voices, whispering very close to her.
    You are safe here
, they said.
The wolves do not like us, the owls do not like us. The white horses will not come here, nor the white lions. They will never, ever, ever, ever enter here. They are afraid of us. Are you here for the box with the second key?
    It was the soft, rushing, sighing, singing, whispering of voices.
    “Who are you?” shouted Ophelia, spinning around, the leaves falling through her fingers.
    No answer. In the silence she heard someone giggle.
    What is your name?
the voices asked, a blustery, blowing circle of voices.
What is your name? No one has tried for so long. We have been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting
.
    “Who are you?” shouted Ophelia again.
    We are many
, said the voices.
We are the children. We belong to the Queen
.
    “Can one of you speak alone?” demanded Ophelia. “You’re hurting my ears.”
    The voices sped away then. She felt the breath of their departure. She didn’t know that those ghosts couldn’t bear to be apart. That all night they lay in tangles, waiting, combing each other’s hair with their fingers, touching