The Secret Room (8 page)

Tiny pieces of tiles formed all kinds of new flowers and stars. But it was impossible to orient yourself based on them. And after a while, I had no idea how long I had been wandering through the palace. An hour? Ten?

These corridors had to end somewhere!

Or had I gotten turned around a long time ago and been walking in circles?

For the third time since I had been there, I took out the feather. In fairy tales, I thought, everything happens three times, after all. I held it in front of me like a divining rod, and there was in fact a kind of magnetic pull on the feather that I could follow. Now I had the feeling that I was going through the right doors and going down the right corridors. Even though I didn't know what to expect at the end of them.

A butler holding out a red velvet pillow with a key on top? A band playing a fanfare for me? A room where Arnim was sitting on a stone bench looking at me?

I could at least be sure that I wasn't going in circles because I came to a corridor where there were pictures hanging on the walls. Or more precisely: framed photographs. Photographs of people.

Black and white, of course. What else?

I stopped in front of some of them to look.

There was a little girl with long braids. She was sitting on a swing, and a man who must have been her father was pushing her from behind and laughing.

There was an old man in an armchair with a young man sitting on the armrest and reading aloud to him.

There were three triplet sisters in old-fashioned knee-highs and mini-skirts in front of a building that might have been a school. There were two men fishing and a huge family gathering in a garden.

I noticed that there were no pictures that showed people all by themselves.

The people in the pictures were always in groups, and they always seemed to have close relationships with one another.

The feather pulled me on, as if it were impatient. The farther we went, the stronger its pull became.

“Where are we trying to get to?” I asked it, but my voice was so surprisingly loud in the empty corridors that I clapped my hand over my mouth, like I had said something I wasn't supposed to say.

“... trying to get to ... get to ... to ...” my voice echoed from all directions.

And then I gave in to the feather's pull and went faster to escape the echo of my own words.

Finally we came to a courtyard, but it was empty, and the feather dragged me on like a dog on a leash.

It pulled so hard that I almost didn't see the sheet of glass that was lying flat, embedded into the floor in the middle of the courtyard.

Maybe the feather didn't want me to see it. It was square and about the size of a table—and it had to be very thick, because before I had even really realized it was there I had already walked across it.

Under the glass there was a rectangular room or chamber, tiled completely in white, without a single speck of black. In the chamber there was a small metal object. I knelt down next to the glass and pressed my nose against it.

The object was made of the same carved silver as the palace gate. It had a handle on one end and the other end was stuck in an ornately decorated scabbard that looked like a horse's head.

A knife. But not one that could be used to threaten someone. A paper knife or a knife for cutting thread.

Disappointed, I stood up and waited for the feather to lead me on.

Why would someone bury a simple paper knife under a thick sheet of glass in a courtyard? In a courtyard that looked like it had been created for the sole purpose of housing this strange tomb?

And why not bury a dagger or a sword?

At the other end of the courtyard, I was swallowed up by another corridor, and again I wandered past an endless row of old photos.

I only touched them in passing, with fleeting glances. Gradually the photographs began to infuriate me, and it took me a while to figure out why: They all showed the same things—families. Something that I'd never had.

And then I stopped short, and my anger melted away like syrup into the ocean.

I knew the faces in this photo!

“Wait!” I whispered to the feather. “Just a second!”

“Secondddd!” hissed the echo mockingly in my ear. “Sec-ondddd ...conddd... onddd... nddd... ddd... dd... d...”

The sound scratched through my ears like cat claws, and I doubled over and clamped my ears shut.

But afterward I stayed where I was to take a look at the photograph.

It showed three people gathered around a table. In the middle there was a game board with a bunch of little figures, and there was a low-hanging lamp that gave off a warm light even in black and white. One of the people was sticking his tongue out and crossing his eyes. It was Paul. The other two were laughing. They were Ines and Arnim.

I swallowed once, twice, then I backed away from the photograph, and then I turned and began to run.

I didn't dare stop until there were many doors and corridors between me and the picture. I couldn't get enough air, and I leaned against the ice-cold wall and reached for my inhaler.

When I could breathe once more, my shaken thoughts slowly started to calm down again—like cocoa powder that settles back to the bottom of the cup.

The people in the photographs—they were all the Nameless One's prisoners.

Many of them were waiting to finally become birds, many were waiting for the sadness to come to an end.

They were all giving the owner of this palace his white and black tiles—their longing and their sadness. It had to be hundreds, thousands, millions.

I tried to take the next photograph from the wall, but it was hung with a strong metal wire that wouldn't give way. Was that it? Did I have to tear the photograph of the Ribbeks off the wall and take it out of the palace?

I put my inhaler back and wanted to continue following the feather, but then I noticed that I wasn't in the tiled corridor anymore.

I was standing at a window in the secret room. A sweet-smelling flower petal was tickling my hand that was resting on the windowsill, and outside the birds were starting to put their heads under their wings to shield themselves from twilight's melancholy.

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned around and found myself looking into Arnim's green, green eyes.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, worriedly.

I nodded. “Yeah ... of course. It's just that... I found a picture, you know. In the palace. You were in it, and Ines and Paul, and there were many, many other pictures like it...”

“And you're going to take if off the wall?”

I sighed. “I wish that I could, I really do wish that I could. But the wire that's holding it is too strong.”

“Then you have to cut it,” he said.

Outside, there was a large black shadow circling in the sky.

Arnim saw it too and pulled me away from the window.

“Go now,” he whispered, “before he comes over here and discovers you. We'll see what happens tomorrow.”

That night, after dinner, Paul said, “We thought we could play something together tonight. Hear how the wind is whipping around the house?”

I listened. “Hm-m,” I said.

“On nights like this you have to sit under a lamp and eat potato chips and play games,” Paul explained.

I nodded, even though I actually felt too upset. The black and white photograph of Ines, Paul, and Arnim was stuck in my head and was gnawing away there like a rat.

I helped Ines clean up while Paul looked for something in the living room.

By then I knew very well what went where in the kitchen.

“What's wrong?” asked Ines. “You look so … stressed out.”

“Oh, no,” I quickly objected, “it just seems that way.”

She looked at me from the side. “Are you feeling okay? Or are you hatching some kind of sickness?”

“Hatching?” It sounded funny. “Nah, I don't think so. No sickness, no egg, nothing.”

Ines laughed.

“Well, all right, come on. Judging by the racket in the living room, Paul's found what he was looking for.”

And he had.

As we entered the living room, I swallowed hard, because my worst fears had come true: Everything looked exactly like it had in the photograph.

But of course not in black and white.

The low-hanging lamp shone with its cozy light, there was a game board on the table with a bunch of small figures on it, and Paul was even crossing his eyes.

“It was hiding behind the cabinet,” he said and coughed. “I think I just swallowed two cups of dust.”

Weak in the knees, I sat down on a corner of the sofa.

Outside the wind rattled the shutters as if it were trying to play music.

“Arnim was still too little for it,” said Ines, nodding at the game board. “But he always insisted on playing it. He would watch us and thought the colorful figures were wonderful. Now...”

She trailed off.

But I knew what she had wanted to say. “Now he would have been old enough for it,” I said.

She nodded, and I felt the air go thin.

I breathed deeply—it didn't help.

“Achim!” said Paul. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing—I ...” I gasped. “I just have to find my—my inhaler...”

I saw Paul kneel down beside me at once, and I felt an arm around my shoulders that probably belonged to Ines. My fingers dug feverishly in my pockets.

Finally I found the little can and pulled it out. One spray was enough—and everything was over. I sat on the edge of the sofa, still panting a little.

Then I looked from Ines to Paul and back to Ines. They were looking at me with wide-open, worried eyes.

Now everything was out in the open. Now I had to confess to them. Now they would bring me back because I didn't work right.

“A-asthma,” I said, I couldn't say more, and my voice was very small and squeaky.

Paul nodded and to my surprise, Ines said, “Of course. We know.”

“You—you both know about it?”

“That's why we were allowed to take you with us, even though we live so far away from the orphanage. Because the air here is good for you.”

“But,” I stammered, “but...”

Ines put her finger to her mouth. “But now it's really important that you listen,” she said, “and learn how to play this game. Paul is really fidgety and impatient to finally be able to explain it to someone. He didn't figure it out till last night.”

Paul threw a small, ugly lump of playdough at her.

“I almost won,” I said.

“Really?” Arnim raised his eyebrows. We were sitting next to each other on the bed.

Outside, the wind hadn't died down yet, even though it was already the next day and it had had a whole night to run wild. But it wasn't tired, and here, where there was no window glass, it swept through the room like a restless, invisible animal.

One of the vine's tendrils from outside on the tower had been bent by the wind, and I saw that there were no more blossoms on it. The storm must have plucked them off—I looked around sadly for the delicate white and dark violet petals, but they weren't in the secret room.

“Why didn't you win?” asked Arnim.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I let Ines win. Paul was too far behind, unfortunately.”

“Why?”

“Why was Paul so far behind? He's pretty bad at the game, I think that's why. He doesn't really think about it.”

“No.” Arnim shook his head so that his red hair flew out in all directions. “Why did you let her win?”

What a question! “I don't really belong here,” I answered. “So I feel like I'm not supposed to win any games here either.”

Arnim laughed. “You're really crazy, do you realize that?”

“Look who's talking!” I said angrily. “What do you know? You weren't ever in an orphanage, were you? You always had Ines and Paul, all to yourself, the whole time you were alive...”