The Secret Room (6 page)

Wait, I thought, birds don't wear shoes.

I looked down at myself: a red sweater, two legs in jeans, and striped socks.

Sure enough, I was a person again.

I sat down on the root of a tree and breathed in the sweet fragrance of the garden with my human nose.

Then it was like someone flipped a switch.

Suddenly I was no longer sitting on the root of the tree, but instead in a room where a small oil lamp was burning.

I shook my head in confusion and realized that it was the secret room.

The oil lamp was sitting on the iron table, and Armin was sitting next to it, looking at me in amazement.

“Oh,” I said.

“You—you came out of the painting,” he declared.

“What?” I turned around. The strange painting that had caught my eye earlier was hanging behind me. It showed a boy in a red sweater and jeans sitting under a tree in a garden. And without a doubt, the boy was me.

“How—what—how do I get back to the palace garden?” I stammered.

Arnim shrugged. “I guess you have to get back into the painting,” he said. “But you can do it tomorrow. It's almost time for dinner. I bet Paul and Ines are starting to wonder where you are.”

I managed to sneak out of the house without being noticed and then made a bunch of noise when I came back in so that Ines and Paul would think I had been outside.

“Achim?” called Ines from the kitchen.

“Coming!” I called back, stomping loudly.

“You're a little ... late,” said Paul when I slid into a chair.

“Hm.”

“We were a little worried,” said Ines. But she didn't look like she had been just a little worried. She looked like she had been very worried. Her eyes were red like she had been crying, and her hair had come loose.

I looked at my plate, feeling miserable.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

“I'm probably ... just over-thinking it,” said Ines quietly. “It's just ...” I saw Paul put his hand on her arm.

“It's just … because before,” she continued. “You know, Achim, I thought maybe something happened to you … the big street isn't that far away ...”

Paul stood up and put his arms around her.

I just sat there without knowing what I should do. It was my fault that Ines felt bad. It was my fault that a tear was rolling down her cheek.

“Did Paul tell you that Arnim would have been eleven this year, just like you?” she whispered and wiped the tear away.

“Yes,” I said.

We ate our cold, burned potato pancakes in silence while the stars came out on the other side of the kitchen window.

“Listen,” said Paul finally. “I've decided to take off tomorrow morning. All of a sudden I'll get the flu or something. And then I'll take you to the beach. How does that sound, Achim?”

I nodded. “That sounds really good.”

But secretly I was squirming desperately like an earthworm.

Before I had gone into the secret room, I would have been excited that Paul had taken off work just for me. But now I had other plans.

There wasn't much more time before the birds would fly south and before they did, I had to find out how we could free Arnim.

Later, lying in bed, I considered slipping through the door right then that night—but I might not be back in time, and if I weren't in my bed in the morning, Ines would probably go totally berserk.

The beach wasn't far away.

We set out right after breakfast, and Ines packed us a picnic.

“I'm going to work,” she said. “One of us has to work for a living.”

But she laughed as she said it, and if you didn't look too closely, you couldn't see a trace of last night's Ines in the Ines of this morning.

I said that we set out for the beach. But that wasn't the whole story. We rode.

There was a shed next to the house, and among the shovels, buckets, skis, and folded deck chairs there were three bikes. Two big ones and one small one.

“This is yours,” said Paul, pointing to the small one. “I got it from one of my co-workers yesterday. His son got too big for it.”

The bike was red with black handlebars and had a men's bike frame and a big brass bell. I had never had my own bike before. At the orphanage we had all taken turns using the bikes.

“Are you—are you sure that it's mine?” I asked cautiously.

“Well, it's definitely not mine,” said Paul as he sat down on it. His knees practically came up to his ears. I giggled.

“So it has to be yours,” said Paul, “because otherwise we don't have anybody who can ride it.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “Arnim.”

But I said it so quietly that Paul didn't hear.

And then we climbed onto the bikes and rode off.

The path was bumpy and led between two fields. The brass bell rang brassily all by itself at every stone I hit.

“I think your bike's trying to tell you something,” Paul said. “I think it's a real chatterbox.”

Once we got to the beach we put our bikes into a rack that was otherwise totally empty. The ocean lay before us, vast and blue. The sun had gone, leaving behind only the wind, which blew cold around our ears—but it didn't matter.

Ines had let me borrow a scarf that was much bigger and cozier than mine. But it was also much longer. “Now you look like a mummy,” Paul declared. “A sea-mummy. Sounds good, right?”

“Hm,” I said. That time I really couldn't say anything else. The scarf was wrapped over my mouth and up to the tip of my nose.

We walked along the water and found a lot of shells and stones. We put them into a bag that Paul had brought along.

At the orphanage everyone got a pair of sturdy rubber boots—when we had to walk to school in the rain, the other kids had given us funny looks and snickered, but they were perfect for the beach. Besides, Paul was also wearing a pair. Mine were red, his were yellow. If everyone here wore rubber boots, then no one in school would laugh at the sight of them.

And then I remembered something terrible.

I pushed the scarf down and pulled at Paul's sleeve. “Paul,” I said, “Paul, what about school? Today is Wednesday, and it's actually supposed to start on Wednesday.”

The thought that I had just missed the first day at my new school made me feel awful.

But Paul turned to me and grinned.

“It doesn't start till,” he stopped to think, “the week after next Monday,” he said finally. “Summer vacation started later here. You still have a week and a half to collect all the shells on the beach and build a skyscraper out of them.”

I laughed in relief. “Yeah, but maybe not a skyscraper,” I said. “I'm going to build a seascraper. Those don't exist yet.”

Paul looked at me, totally amazed that I had uttered such a long sentence.

When the bag was full and couldn't hold another single stone or shell, we decided to have our picnic. We leaned up against a fishing boat that someone had pulled up onto the beach and unpacked Ines's basket.

We sat there, drinking steaming hot tea from a thermos and eating our sandwiches, which were now the exact shape of the Tupperware containers Ines had packed them in.

I had only been to the ocean once in my life, as a treatment for having such a bad cough and never being able to get enough air. I almost can't remember it, but I'm pretty sure we didn't have hot tea or sandwiches on the beach.

And it was true about the air: there was more of it here at the sea. Since I had been living at the Ribbeks' house, I had hardly needed my inhaler at all.

I wanted to tell Paul about it, but then I realized he might not even know that I had asthma, and that if I told him, he might not want me anymore. So I didn't say a word.

White caps started to form on the waves, and Paul said, “Soon it'll really be autumn.”

We climbed onto our bikes again and took the bumpy path back. My bell was talking to itself, and it was beginning to rain.

At home, Paul said that he had some paperwork to do for the school he worked at.

I was saved.

I almost forgot to take off the red rubber boots before running up the narrow staircase and throwing open the door to the secret room.

Arnim was waiting for me.

“I—I was at the beach with Paul,” I panted. “I couldn't come any earlier.”

“At the beach ... I remember.” His green eyes looked through me into the distance. “We always collected shells there, Paul and I.”

I swallowed.

“And did Ines make a picnic?”

“Yeah, I think so. Did you two collect shells and have a picnic?”

He didn't sound jealous, just curious.

I nodded.

“It's good that Paul has someone to collect shells with him again,” said Arnim.

Then we both went up to the painting that I had come out of last night. I had no idea how I would get back onto the canvas. Feeling helpless, I put out my hand to touch the cracked paint. As soon as I touched the painting, it happened. I heard Arnim say, “Oh”—and then I was back in the palace garden again.

I was sitting on the root of the tree, my back against its trunk, and I was still a person.

Maybe it was because I was touching the ground?

The trees around me rustled in the wind as if they were speaking to me in a thousand voices. But I couldn't understand them.

I could only look at their branches, heavy with blossoms, and their dark, whispering leaves. A deep sadness fell over me.

Yes, Yellow Pea had been right: The trees were so beautiful because they were sad.

I stood up and walked through the garden toward the palace. I saw it shimmering through the trunks of the trees, but soon I noticed that the garden was bigger and the palace was farther away than I had thought.

A web of white gravel paths led me through the trees. The flowers lining them were just as wonderful to look at as the trees, but their heads were hanging down as if they, too, were bearing some great sadness.

And after I had wandered through the garden for a while, I understood why the trees and the flowers were so sad.

Hidden between their petals and leaves, hanging from the branches of the trees, were hundreds, thousands of cages, and in them were birds.

They were sitting perfectly silent and weren't moving at all; they followed me mutely with their beady black eyes and sometimes shook their heads.

They were birds like Nreur or Yellow Pea of Santorini— brightly colored, beautiful birds. But their feathers had lost their brilliance.

I stopped in front of one cage. It was a very small one with a very small white bird inside.

“Who locked you in there?” I asked the little bird. “And why?”

“Shhh!” said the bird. His eyes were huge with fright. “Don't talk so loud! It was him, the one who doesn't have a name. He's everywhere, he can hear you, and he'll destroy you if he finds you here.”

“We'll see about that,” I whispered. “What did you do to get locked up here?”