The Secret Room (17 page)

But then I noticed my nose was twitching. What was that funny smell? I crept downstairs, sniffing. The smell was definitely coming from downstairs.

It actually wasn't a bad smell.

It was a little like hot dogs ... or baked potatoes in aluminum foil... or like a campfire ... campfire!

I raced down the stairs, three at a time, and dashed into the living room. That's where the smell of fire was coming from. I ran into a thick black cloud of smoke. And now, with the smoke all around me, it didn't smell like hot dogs or baked potatoes any more, just like danger and burned cloth. I coughed and still couldn't see a thing.

The candle
, I thought.
Ines must have forgotten the candle
.

Where was it? Gasping, I tried to find my way back to the door. I couldn't orient myself. I had to go into the kitchen. There was water in the kitchen. A bucket! Where could I find a bucket?

Instead I found a big cooking pot, which I filled to the brim. I could barely carry it, but somehow I managed to pour the water where I thought the table with the candle would be. It sizzled, but the smoke didn't stop. I brought more water, a lot more—I dragged pot after pot from the kitchen to the living room. My shirt was clinging to me like a wet rag, and once I had to stand in the hallway and take out my inhaler—but I didn't give up.

Finally, after a huge amount of water and sweat and coughing, the smoke started to clear. The sofa had been in the middle of it, and now I saw that the quilt on it had been responsible for the fat black billows of smoke. The candle must have fallen over right onto the sofa ...

I opened the window, flopped onto the flooded living room carpet, and stared up at the charred remains of the ceiling for a while. My pulse was pumping my blood through my body like an over-excited dog. Finally, I stood up and got an oven mitt. I used it to grab one end of the quilt and pulled it outside through the patio door. It could keep stinking out there if it wanted to.

I filled the pot one last time. Then I watered the burned corner of the sofa carefully, like a flower, and then watered the smoldering blanket in the grass.

And as I was standing there, wheezing, someone called my name from the fence.

“Hey!” the person called. “It stinks something terrible at your place! Is it you that smells like that?”

I looked over at the fence.

But I didn't have to. I knew who it was without looking: Tom was standing on the lawn, leaning both his elbows on the top plank of wood and holding his nose.

His sister Anna was standing next to him, her eyes huge with fright, looking at me and the charred blanket.

“You should shower more often!” cried Tom and snickered. “And why are you dressed like that?”

I looked down at my pants that were wet and black with soot. I looked at the large cooking pot at my feet. It was still half full of water.

I don't know how it happened—the momentum from all the excitement and running around was probably just still flowing through me.

I lifted the pot up calmly and went over to the fence. Tom stared at me, dumbfounded. He was so dumbfounded that he didn't budge. I lifted the pot up and, without a word, emptied it onto his head.

Then I stepped back, satisfied, and watched the water run down Tom's collar, watched the way it made his light hair darker and ran down his soaking shirt in rivulets, over his pants and into his sneakers. It really was a big pot of water.

Tom stood there gasping for air. He wanted to say something, but first he opened and closed his mouth a couple times because he couldn't think of anything.

It made him look like a big fish without fins.

“You—you—, ” he finally said. “You can't do that!”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I can't?”

“He's soaking wet!” cried Anna.

Her bulging eyes had gotten even bigger, but now there was anger in them too.

“He'll catch his death of cold!” she cried and stuck her pointer finger out at me reproachfully. “And you'll be to blame!”

I tucked the empty pot under my arm and shook my head.

“No, he won't. It's summer. Just take your brother home, and make sure he changes his clothes! You're a little wiser than he is.”

Anna seemed to like that because she smiled cautiously and took Tom by his wet sleeve and pulled him away from the fence. “I'm—I'm going to get you back for that, you— you grimy scarecrow,” he growled.

“Take a look at yourself,” I answered cheerfully. “And anyway, I have other things to do.”

When I looked back once more from the patio door, I saw that Anna had also turned around. She was standing in the middle of the lawn, waving.

“Why do you look like that?” Arnim wanted to know when I was back in the secret room.

“Don't ask! I had to soak a sofa.”

“A sofa?”

“Yes,” I said and sighed heavily. “And because I had really gotten into it, I also soaked Tom.”

“I see,” said Arnim.

We went over to the last painting, the very last one with the black and white spotted bird instead of me.

“When I leave this time, either everything will be okay,” I whispered, “or it will end here.”

Arnim nodded.

“Are we going to see each other again?” I asked.

Arnim tilted his head thoughtfully. “Maybe ...”

Then I wrapped my warm arms around his cold body, and we stood like that for a while, totally silent.

“Keep your fingers crossed!” I said. And then I touched the painting. Just a few seconds later I landed on the tiled floor of the courtyard next to the sheet of glass.

There was a tiny silver lock on the side, just like on the cage. I stuck the key in it and turned it.

The glass sprung open like a door. Yes, and there was the knife, right below me, glistening.

The chamber was much deeper than I had thought. I sat down on the edge and lowered myself into it carefully.

The knife was waiting for me.

“Take me,” it seemed to say. “Take me with you, and let me finally do what I was meant to do.”

I lifted it and ran my finger along the horsehead scabbard.

What had this knife been made for? And who had made it?

“Because everything has an opponent,” it answered silently. “For every evil thing there's a good one, for every black thing there's a white one, for every sad thing a happy one.”

“And you?” I asked after I had struggled out of the chamber. “Are you the Nameless One's opponent? Then why haven't you done anything to stop him before?”

It was as if a quiet laugh came out of the metal and into my fingers. “I didn't have anyone to hold me,” it replied. “I can't do anything by myself. That's why it was so easy for him to lock me in here.”

“But now—now you have me?”

“And you have me,” said the knife.

Then I felt something touch my shoulder.

I was so startled that I took a step forward—and in front of me was the chamber where the knife had been, and now there was no thick sheet of glass to keep me from falling in.

The Nameless One
, I thought. This time he would kill me.

But before I touched the floor of the chamber, I had wings again and instead of fingers I had bird claws that were holding the knife. I flapped wildly and desperately, trying to get away from the cruel ruler of the palace. But when I looked around, there was no lion and no eagle to be seen.

Just a yellow bird and a green one, following me into the air.

“Where is he?” I called to them in confusion. We flew in wide spirals, higher and higher into the air whose darkening blue revealed the approaching evening.

“Who?” cried the green bird, Spinach Luggage.

“Him!” I cried. “The one with no name! The powerful one! The ...”

“Shut up!” chirped Yellow Pea of Santorini. “No one's here. It's just us. It was us who sat on your shoulders. We had to get you to fall so you'd turn into a bird again. Because you have to hurry, boy! Hurry!”

“He's on his way here!” Spinach Luggage added.

I desperately tried to fly faster.

We flew over the sinister heart of the palace, over staircases that led to nothing and towers that were split in half. The knife was heavy in my claws, but it gave me a feeling of security.

Spinach Luggage and Yellow Pea were flying over the black-and-white chaos a short distance ahead of me. It was good that they were there, the two birds and the knife. I wasn't fighting all by myself anymore.

But we didn't get far.

We had just flown over the first jagged parapet next to the courtyard with the sheet of glass in it when a black shadow appeared above us in the evening sky.

Now he'll send out his storm clouds
, I thought,
let his thunder rumble, and summon his storm
. The shadow came closer and closer. Soon it was soaring high above us, and I saw his yellow eagle eyes.

Why wasn't he preparing to dive down? He looked like he hadn't seen me at all...

“He hasn't,” said the knife in its cold, silent language. “Look at your feathers, Achim!”

I turned my head. And it was a good thing that it had rained and Ines had lit the candle, that she had forgotten to blow it out, that I had put out the fire on the sofa and had dragged the charred blanket out to the yard and that...

Because now my feathers were speckled black and white like the palace below me. The soot that had stuck to my pants and sweater also stuck to my bird feathers. There were no more violet speckles, no more green legs. There were just a few feathers that were still white, sticking up here and there out of the black.

I had the best camouflage imaginable. From above I must have blended in with the palace like a chameleon.

The Nameless One's keen, glowing eyes looked for me in vain.

But he saw the two small birds flying with me, the yellow and green ones. And with a cry of rage and disappointment, the eagle swooped down onto them.

I watched them flap for freedom. But they weren't fast enough.

Like a bolt of black lightning, the Nameless One dove down from above, his mighty wings churned the air like water, and he hurtled by so close I was almost thrown off course.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw an explosion of green and yellow feathers.

“Keep flying,” said the knife. “Don't turn around.” But I turned around. Just once.

And then, lying amid all the confusing black and white, I saw two small patches of color. Limp and lifeless, they lie on the ground and didn't move, the eagle's huge dark body perched over them silently and threateningly.

A little later, I landed in the palace garden. My sooty wings became sooty sweater sleeves again, my sooty claws became sooty shoes, and even my heart felt like it'd been through a fire.

“But he can't kill them!” I whispered desperately. “They were already dead! He can't kill them again! They have to be here! They have to be sitting in a cage here somewhere!”

I felt around in my pants pockets for the tiny silver key.

I ran from tree to tree, from cage to cage, and with wild frenzy I let lock after lock snap open, let bird after bird fly to freedom.

Soon I was surrounded by colorful fluttering and excited twittering, confused tufts of ruffled feathers bouncing all over the white gravel path. You would have thought that someone had unexpectedly emptied a box of paints all over the palace garden.

I didn't stop to watch the spectacle around me. I raced back and forth in zigzags like a scampering rabbit, the knife in one hand, the key in the other, looking for the two small birds that might have saved my life.

“I can't find them!” I cried desperately to the trees. “Where are they? Where?”

But the trees didn't answer. Their rustling had petered out; their leaves were still.

And the chirping and chattering had fallen silent.

My cry echoed through the palace garden like the beat of a drum, and I felt frightened and stopped running.

“Where are they?” I whispered once more, very quietly.

Then, as if on cue, the freed birds flew up from the ground, and the air was suddenly filled with the beating of their wings, hundreds and hundreds of them climbed into the air through the beautiful, sad trees and swung into the sky as one huge flock.

I tilted my head back and watched them go.

The night was coming. It took the colors from the birds and painted them gray and black, but its darkness couldn't harm them. Soon, on a bright sunny day, they would gather with all the others and start their long journey south.