The Secret Room (15 page)

It wasn't as hard as I had imagined. You just had to put one foot in front of the other and not think about anything else—not about how high it was and not about getting to the end—your feet would go on by themselves. In dreams it just worked like that.

“Tightrope walkers,” I whispered. “This is just what tightrope walkers do, Lucas. Soon we'll know if the passageway actually...”

Just then someone called out: “Achim!” and the whole palace with its walls and parapets ripped open. I flailed my arms to keep from falling ...

And made the mistake of looking down.

Below there was grass wet with dew, and I saw outstretched arms.

Then I fell.

I landed softly. On someone, actually.

“Achim!” gasped the voice again, and now I realized that it belonged to Paul.

“Achim, are you awake? Can you hear me?”

There was a tangle of arms and legs and wet grass around me, a piece of terry cloth almost choked me for a moment, but finally I managed to free myself and sat breathing heavily for a while.

I could feel the wetness of the dew seeping through my pajamas.

The images and thoughts in my head needed a while to calm down from their ridiculous dance.

“Paul,” I said finally.

“Yes,” said Paul.

We were sitting next to one another under an apple tree. The swing was hanging next to us in the night. It swayed back and forth a little; even the branch it was attached to was swaying.

Paul pointed up. “What are you doing here—at this hour?” he asked. He was also wearing his pajamas. That was the terry cloth that I had been wrestling with.

“Where is here?” I asked blankly. “I was dreaming,” I wanted to say. But I couldn't explain what I had been dreaming about, so I didn't mention it.

“You were balancing on that branch up there,” explained Paul. “I just happened to see you out the window when I was going to the bathroom. What were you doing?”

He didn't sound at all upset, just incredibly surprised.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Hm,” I said.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

I thought about it. “A little.”

“I was scared you'd fall ...” he said, “and then you did fall, because I called your name. That might not have been such a good idea on my part.”

“Hm.”

He helped me up. Somewhere a cricket who hadn't noticed that summer was almost over was chirping.

A large bird rose from a nearby fruit tree and flew away, flapping strongly.

“An owl,” said Paul, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Does that happen to you a lot?” he asked. “That you walk around at night without realizing it?”

“I—I don't think so,” I answered quietly. How would I know if I didn't realize it? Was it a bad thing to walk around at night? Would they want to give me back after all?

“When I was a kid, I had a friend who would always walk along the top of the roof at night,” said Paul. “When it was a full moon. A dangerous habit...”

I looked up into the branches of the apple tree, with the stars shining between them. They looked just like the stars shining through the branches of the tree in the palace garden.

“And—she was still your friend?” I asked after a while.

“Of course,” Paul nodded. “I was just always scared that she would fall. I could barely shut my eyes during the nights when there was a full moon.” He laughed. “But she didn't fall. Never.”

He took my hand. “Let's go back inside,” he said. “We'll try to sleep a little more.”

When I was lying in bed again, I thought about the key and whether I had been on the right track in the dream, there on the black-and-white stairs.

Then I remembered the last line of the song again.

And farther than dreams can glide
.

The next morning Paul ate breakfast with Ines and me because he had overslept.

He grumbled to himself a little and looked tired, but he didn't say a word about my wandering in the night.

Ines laughed at his scowling face. “What on earth is wrong with you?” she asked, spreading jam on her bread. “You look like you were climbing a mountain last night instead of sleeping.”

“Tree,” mumbled Paul. “It was a tree.”

I knew what he meant, but Ines just shook her head.

After Paul had had a lot of coffee and left, Ines and I sat there for a while and looked out into the sunshine. Our thoughts hung over the table like a quiet cloud. I remembered how, at the beginning, Ines had always thought she had to talk the whole time. Everything was better now.

“How would you like to come with me to the flower shop today? Just for a change of pace?” Ines asked finally. “And just for the morning.”

“Oh—um,” I said, taken aback. Something in me wanted to invent an excuse so I could go up to the secret room, into the painting, and back into the cage where I was actually sitting the whole time. I had to figure out how to free myself. I needed every minute … but something else in me insisted that I say yes.

“I'll think about it,” I said. And since I could always think better in the yard, I grabbed the bowl with the potato peels and added: “Just while I take this out to the compost.”

“Don't forget to come back and tell me whether you want to come!” Ines called after me.

I nodded and waved. What was she thinking? The compost pile was just on the other side of the yard, not the other side of the world.

But back by the compost there was someone standing at the fence.

I emptied the bowl and pretended not to see who was standing there, but at some point I would have to look up.

“So?” said Tom.

He was leaning over into our yard and chewing his gum slowly while he eyed me. Now and then he'd blow a big pink bubble that he'd let burst with a loud pop.

“What is it?” I asked and held the large bowl in front of my stomach like a shield. “What do you want here?”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked into the distance.

“Nothing's going on at our house,” he said. “Just wanted to come take a look around. Say—shouldn't I be asking what you're doing here?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you, wise guy. You're the one who came over. I was already here. And you know what?”

He blew an especially big bubble. I stepped from one foot to the other uneasily.

“My mom was looking out the window last night when you were wandering around in the yard. She said you even climbed a tree! In the middle of the night! You're not really normal, are you?”

“And why is your mom awake in the middle of the night?” I asked in return. I could feel the air getting thinner, but I forced myself to act like I didn't notice it. Maybe I could somehow trick the air itself.

“Is it illegal not to be able to sleep at night?” replied Tom angrily.

“Is it illegal,” I asked, “to climb trees at night?” The air came back. I took a deep breath.

Then I turned around and went back to the house.

“My mom says that you don't have a mom!” Tom called after me.

“That's why I'm going to work with Ines now,” I muttered—but unfortunately he couldn't hear me anymore.

“Good,” said Ines, “then put on your shoes.”

She watched me tie my shoelaces and pull on my jacket, and finally she said thoughtfully, “Soon we have to go into the city together. Go on a marathon spree.”

“A what?” I asked, confused.

“Visit all the stores. Come on!”

“What do you need?” I asked as I hurried after her. We climbed into the big car—Paul's school was close enough that he could bike there.

“Not me,” said Ines and accidentally ran over an old lawn chair pillow in the garage as she backed out into the street. “Not me. You.”

“Me?”

“Pretty soon the soles of your shoes,” said Ines, “are going to go on a walk without you. And your jacket—it's really nice, but it wasn't made to take the wind here. And just in general. You need to get a few warm things for the winter. The weather was completely different where you were before.”

“Hm,” I said.

But inside I felt really funny. Ines actually wanted to go shopping for me. A jacket. Shoes. Things for the winter ... Did that mean I would stay? No, I said to myself silently, it didn't mean a thing. You shouldn't look forward to things that weren't certain. Otherwise you'd just end up feeling sad if something else happened.

So I muttered, “Winter's not here yet.” She looked over at me.

“But it's on its way,” she said.

Ines's flower shop didn't belong to Ines at all. It belonged to a big, chubby woman who smiled a lot and gave us homemade cake. Then she went home because Ines and I were there.

Behind the shop itself there was a second room with an incredible number of flowers with long stems rising out of large vases. There was a very large table in the middle and there were scissors and rolls of wire and colored paper on the walls. There was a messy pile of dried plants lying in the middle of the table, but Ines said they were floral arrangements. If she said so ...

“I'm going to finish making these arrangements,” she told me, “and you watch the front of the store to see if anyone comes in. If someone wants something, call me, okay?”

“Okay,” I answered.

But I had no idea what I was supposed to say if someone came in.

I sat on the small chair behind the cash register as if it were a barricade and let my eyes wander around the room.

No one came in.

The white roses next to the entrance reminded me of the white flowers on the vine, and the dark violet stars next to them almost looked like the black flowers ... I ducked down behind the table instinctively.

Somewhere behind me I heard Ines rummaging around. If Ines was here, I told myself, there couldn't be any lions or any giant eagles. I was filled with a feeling of thankfulness.

I decided to make a bouquet—a really nice one, not a brown, dried-out thing.

The table with the cash register on it had a row of drawers. I found a pair of scissors and a piece of green wire. And then I started looking around. I found the most wonderful flowers, big yellow sunflowers and small red striped ones, roses of every color, lilies with long, delicate leaves ... I cut the heads off of all of them and took a whole armful of them to the table.

I was so engrossed in my work with wire and flowers that I forgot everything around me. I forgot Arnim and the secret room, the cage with the silver bars and the old song, I forgot Tom and his sister, my adventure in the apple tree in the night, and my asthma.

There was just the flowers' fragrance, their bright colors, and the wire that kept slipping away... no customers came in to disturb me.

Finally all that was missing was a bow, and I looked through the drawer for the right ribbon.

But I couldn't find any, just a bunch of tape and packing paper and all kinds of odds and ends—I didn't even want to open the bottom drawer because it would definitely just have more odds and ends.

But then I did it anyway, and the bracelet fell into my hand.

It was a little tiny bracelet, a silver chain with a pendant on it.

I held it up to the light, and for a while, I knelt on the floor like that, motionless, my hand lifted and my eyes fixed on the little thing.

Once Maria had taken us to a baptism, Karl and me and a couple of other kids. The baby that was being baptized was somehow related to her. And someone had given him a bracelet just like this.

At the time I had wondered what in the world the baby was supposed to do with it. Wouldn't a milk bottle or a teddy bear have been better for him?

I let the chain swing back and forth from my pointer finger.

Whose baby had it belonged to?

It probably said on the pendant. I looked closer and paused. I had expected a silver charm—a heart or a lucky four-leaf clover.

But this pendant was a different shape. The birthday written on it was eleven years ago. There was no name.