Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy Read Free Page B

get used to it in time, and it is only for your own good. If the protectorate keeps your name, it will allow you to return one day through the meridian, which is the point of no return between that world and this. Or at least that is what we hope.”
    Which didn’t make me feel very confident.
    All that summer I had to go to them each day, and they taught me what they could. They taught me how I must alwaystell the truth and always stop to help those who needed help, and something about magical owls, but I missed that part because I wasn’t listening. I had to repeat again and again, “I am a boy chosen by a protectorate of wizards from the east, west, and middle to deliver this sword so that the Snow Queen may be defeated.” My voice grew hoarse from saying that. And they taught me that, in the other world, I would find a kind and just ruler.
    And I asked them, “Well, do you know his or her name?” and they just stared at me patiently.
    But I got used to those wizards, who really are very kind. If you have heard it said that wizards eat nothing but biscuits, then you have heard the truth. The biscuits at the wizard house were made by Petal, who was not tall and thin like the others, but short and round. And also she was a woman and also seemingly a wizard, which made even less sense to me.
    On that first day they let me down from the schoolroom and deposited me in the kitchen, where Petal was kneading dough. She was sitting in a slant of sunlight from the large kitchen windows, her red hair aflame, her large arms working the dough. She banged the dough with her fist and picked it up and slammed it on the table so that clouds of flour rose and settled in showers over her. She smiled at me.
    “I’m going to make biscuits,” she said.
    I didn’t answer, but scowled.
    Petal had a broad, calm face browned by the sun and very large, pleasantly freckled hands. “Are you terribly sad about your name?” she asked.
    “Well, wouldn’t you be?” I replied.
    “I would. It’s true. I would. But one day it will be yours again.”
    “But I want it back now. It was mine, and stealing is wrong.”
    “Indeed,” said Petal. “Indeed.” She took a small piece of dough and roughly made it into the shape of a little man. “Here, watch this.” She took the little man and cupped him near her mouth and breathed a tiny soul into him. She put him on the table, and he stood up and danced its length, spinning and turning and doing cartwheels.
    It was the first piece of magic that I had seen in the house, and it made me laugh.
    “Can you do it again?” I asked.
    “I could,” she said. “But then I would have to lie down for the rest of the day, and there is work to be done.”
    The wizards smell like the earth and mushrooms. The smell of them stays in the room for hours after they’ve gone. Yes, I got used to those wizards in a way.
    All the while that summer, everyone was waiting for her. The Snow Queen, I mean. At first it seemed too difficult to believe in such a thing. Then the first of the refugees appeared from the north, skinny and starving, children, mainly, who had managed to escape her. They said she had teeth like razors and hair like a blizzard and she carried a sword called the Great Sorrow.
    When the wizards heard that, they said, “It is as we have seen.”
    Which didn’t make the town folk feel confident at all. Theforges worked day and night, making weapons. Everyone looked to the horizon. People were spooked by certain clouds coming over the grasslands and swamps. They packed up their belongings, ready to take flight, then unpacked them again when they realized they were nothing but ordinary clouds on ordinary days.
    They complained to the wizards. Why would they spend such time bothering with a boy? Why could they not fight the Snow Queen with their magic? The wizards didn’t say much to that. They took me into the forest. They taught me which plants to eat and which not to. They taught me how to shoot