The Secret Room (11 page)

But Arnim pointed silently. “You came out of this one.”

On the wall next to the iron bed there was a painting of a tree that was so tall that the other trees next to it looked like clover. The crown of the tree was small and flat, as if a tiny cloud were sitting on the incredibly long, thin trunk. Through the foliage you could see some kind of circular silhouette on one of the branches.

“A nest,” Arnim said. “You landed in a nest.”

“It looks more like a ping pong ball,” I said. “But I'm about to see it up close.”

And that's just what I did.

The straw under me tickled, and I opened one of my eyes tentatively.

I saw the same dim light I'd seen over the last few days in my room.

Just as I was opening the other eye, I realized that the faint light I was seeing was coming through hundreds of small holes in a roof above me.

I pulled my head out from under my wing—because I was still a bird—and looked more closely at my surroundings. I found myself in a tiny, perfectly round room—it must have been what it looks like inside a marble. One that was hollow and riddled with holes, so actually more like a marble that should be thrown away.

The thought made me laugh.

“Well, hello!” said someone next to me who I hadn't even noticed yet. “You're awake again.”

“I—I think so,” I answered meekly and looked through the dim light at my disheveled companion. His feathers were of no distinct color. They were somewhere between brown, gray, and green, and the nearest thing he resembled was a vulture.

An old, worn out vulture.

“I'm Achim,” I said politely. “And what might your name be?”

“Oh, that doesn't matter. What's in a name? Around here they call me the Nut Bird, but I've had many names. Many names and many lives ...”

His voice gave way to a rasping cough.

“The Nut Bird?” I asked. “Why?”

The bird let out a scratchy laugh. “Because that's what we're inside of,” he explained. “That's why.”

“Inside?”

“Inside a nut. We're sitting in a giant nutshell. This tree here, you know, only produces a single large nut in its whole life. And because it's so unbelievably tall, the nutshells have to be unbelievably sturdy so that the nut doesn't crack open when it falls to the ground. It even has pores, see? That's so the nut can breathe, because it matures as long as the tree's alive. And that's a long time, a very, very long time.”

“I didn't know that nuts breathe,” I said—and didn't believe it either.

He gave a dismissive flap with one wing.

“Anyway, one night the nut was struck by lightning. It was a terrible night. It was storming and pouring rain, and the sky was spitting fire like an angry dragon. I went lurching through the air—just like you were doing when I found you. And someone very powerful was following right on my heels.

“Then I saw the lightning from far away. I thought it would set the whole tree on fire, but it just struck a circular hole in the nutshell. Didn't even come out on the other side.

This shell
, I thought,
has to be the strongest structure imaginable
.

“I didn't really think about, I just slipped through the hole ... inside I found a little pile of ashes and the last bits of the nut.

“But I was safe. Whoever had been following me ranted and raged for a while outside, but the hole was too small for him. Then he turned back. So I've lived here since then.”

I fluffed my flattened feathers. “The one who was following you ... was that...”

“Shhh!” said my host. “Don't say it out loud. He can hear you. You never know.”

“You never know ...” I repeated thoughtfully, and then asked, “Why did you save me?”

“I didn't,” said the old bird. “You saved yourself, my boy. All I did was pluck you out of the air like a ripe apple.”

He chuckled quietly to himself.
Maybe
, I thought,
he's a little crazy
.

I crawled to the entrance. It was really difficult to move one of my wings and my right leg still hurt.

I looked down at the plains. They were empty.

There were just a few scattered crowns of trees far below—but no twittering of birds came from them, no colorful spots adorned their branches.

I was horrified.

“Where are all the birds?” I asked anxiously. “Have they already set out? To the south?”

“No,” answered my host. “Don't be scared. They're just not gathering here. There are too few trees for protection. Everything's bare and flat. Not a good place for nervous birds.”

I looked at him thoughtfully. Now, with the sunlight falling on him through the entrance, the bird looked even older and even more worn out than before.

“And you?” I asked. “Aren't you going to be flying with the others?”

He shook his head, lifted both his wings, and let them fall again. “Look at me,” he said. “My wings haven't been any good for a long time. The journey south is too far for them.”

“But that wasn't always the case?”

“My wings used to be impressive, glorious even. But they got torn up that stormy night. Before I found this tree.”

His voice trailed off, and he stared out into the hazy blue in the distance like staring into a dream. “Since then I've stayed here and taken care of those who've also been injured. I take care of them until they're healthy again, I don't ask anything of them, and I let them go.” He sighed. “Maybe it helps—maybe not. I've never seen any of them again.”

“You're going to see me again,” I promised. “I'll come back and tell you that I've freed my brother and everything's going well. And we'll fly out into the sky together and the ... he won't be able to hurt us anymore.”

The Nut Bird chuckled again. “Sure, my boy, sure. And pigs can fly.”

“Really!” I said. “I know what I have to do! I just have to cut the wire that's holding the photograph. That's the shackle that the birds in the cages were singing about. As soon as I find the right knife ...”

The old bird fell silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “You're strong enough to fly. So fly. Do what you feel is necessary. But let me tell you one thing: The shackle the birds were singing about... I also heard their words once:

Then listen, listen: There's a key you'll have to find only then will you manage to cut the line and break the shackles from the stone..
.

Is that it?”

I nodded.

“The shackle isn't the wire,” he continued. “It's something else—I don't know what. I never found out.”

“How do you know that it's not the wire?” I protested angrily.

He ran his large, feeble wing over my head.

“Because I tried it, that's how.”

“You ... tried it?”

“I went into the palace to free my brother too, a long time ago,” answered the old bird. “And I thought the same thing as you. But I was wrong. The photos don't mean anything. Later I saw that they were much too obvious. He's smart. He hung them there intentionally so that you'd think that they were the key to the riddle. That mistake cost me my wings. Don't you make the same one.”

I thanked him, stunned. Now I was back where I had started—I had no idea what I should do.

“What direction is the palace from here?” I asked.

“Over there,” answered the large bird and pointed with his rumpled wing. “Farewell, my boy.”

And then I spread my wings and left his unusual nest.

Behind me I heard him murmur the last lines of the old song: “... but the suffering will be your own, your own.”

I was starting to think about the words when I realized I was back in the secret room again. How did that keep happening? What kept making me appear here again? And— was there any way to predict it?

Did it happen every time that the Ribbeks came home? I shook my head in confusion. It was almost as if there were someone somewhere who could see everything and knew when I'd be needed in the world on this side of the paintings. Someone like the narrator of a fairy tale.
If this is a fairy tale
, I thought,
I'd like to give the narrator a piece of my mind and say that there were a few things in this story that I didn't like one bit ..
.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Arnim.

He was leaning into the window next to me and, lost in thought, was wrapping another flowerless tendril of the vine around his finger.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Maybe about autumn.”

Yes, autumn was approaching with all its might; its wind tore through the world voraciously and took away what it could.

I leaned far out the window, looking in the grassy plains below for the white and dark violet petals that had been torn from the vine. But they were nowhere to be found.

“The wind's strong,” I said. “But I promise that I'll do it before the wind gets too strong for you to fly south.”

Arnim looked up and smiled sadly.

“Maybe,” he answered.

A little later I was eating dinner with Ines and Paul again for the first time in a long while.

And because Ines thought that I still wasn't totally well, she moved the meal to the living room and wrapped me from head to toe in a green woolen blanket.

There was a fireplace in the living room that I hadn't noticed before. I only saw it now that there was a fire burning in it.

The logs crackled, I sat there and nibbled at my bread and cheese, and I thought,
I could just sit like this forever and ever
. If there were no iron bed and no tower and no palace made of black and white tiles—then I would have been happy to just sit there and look into the flames.

That would be so nice
, I thought.

But there was an iron bed and a palace and a nameless ruler, and as long as they existed, I couldn't just sit there quietly.

That night I sat in front of the fireplace and wrote a letter to Karl.

Dear Karl!
I wrote.
A lot has happened already, and I don't know what'll happen next. I have a brother now, he's got very green eyes and red hair and very cold hands. I've flown through the air and have been inside a nutshell, but there's no way you'll believe all that. When I see you again, I'll tell you all about it. If I don't see you again, and someone tells you that I died or something, don't worry. Because I will have turned into a small white bird with violet speckles and I'll be going south with the others
.

Don't forget me
.

Yours
,

Achim

As I was putting the letter in the envelope, I knew exactly what Karl would say: “Good old Achim!” he would say and laugh. “He's gone totally bonkers.”

The fever had vanished. And since Ines didn't have to go to the flower shop till later that day, we went shopping at the market together.

Just her and me.

I was allowed to sit up front like a grown-up, which felt strange and a little exciting. Flying through the air and fighting a giant white lion—that's one thing. But sitting in the passenger seat!

On the way from the car to the store, Ines wrapped me up as big as an Eskimo. Of course that was crazy because I wasn't an Eskimo, and even an Eskimo would have protested. But she insisted.

“It's cold,” she said, “and you were sick. Ergo: You'll immediately get sick again if you get too cold. Ergo: Hat, scarf, and my warm, old jacket.”

The jacket was much too big for me, but Ines thought that my own jacket wasn't warm enough.

“What does ‘ergo' mean?” I asked from under all my layers of clothes.

“Ergo means that I'm right.”

Ines took my hand. At least she had forgotten gloves.

Shopping at the outdoor market was totally different than shopping as I knew it.

“That's why you have to help me,” said Ines. “Anyone can go shopping. That I can do by myself.”

But now, she explained to me, she wanted fresh mushrooms and flowers and autumn air.

Fact: I didn't attract attention in my Eskimo suit. The women behind the vegetable stands all had scarves around their heads that made them look like they had toothaches. I held Ines's basket and read the shopping list to her.

It wasn't easy. Ines's handwriting looked almost exactly like the wrinkly walnuts that were lying around in big sacks here.

“Couple of hammocks,” I read and tugged at Ines's sleeve. “Ines, what did you mean with a couple of hammocks?”

She bent over and frowned down at the list. “No,” she muttered, “it says: a couple of haddock. It's a type of fish.”

But she wasn't sure anymore when we got to the fish stand. “I can't remember what on earth I wanted the haddock for,” she said and looked at the list again.