Read The Secret Room Page 4


  “This is Nreur,” said Arnim.

  “What?” I asked. “I can’t pronounce that.”

  “You don’t need to,” said the bird, laughing. I hadn’t known that birds could laugh—but actually it was the voice of the man with the big beard that was laughing.

  “He needs someone to go with him to the palace of ...” Arnim looked around and fell silent. “He needs someone to take him there, Nreur.”

  The bird nodded. “Yellow Pea will do it.”

  Then he climbed onto Arnim’s arm, closer to the bars, and wriggled his neck through. “You’re a brave boy,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Achim,” I said.

  “Good. Give me your hand, Achim. Palm up.”

  I hesitated. Then I stuck my hand through to him—and before I could pull it away, he had cut a deep scratch into it with his sharp beak. I cried out. A thin trickle of blood ran down my arm.

  “Tsk, tsk,” said the bird. “You didn’t like that. I thought you were supposed to be brave? Put your hand on my chest. Yeah, like that...”

  And with those words I found myself sitting on the windowsill. The bars in the window were suddenly much farther apart; I could slip through them easily.

  And the dark blue bird with the unpronounceable name now towered over me.

  “Cute,” he said.

  I looked down at myself, and though I should have known what to expect, I was so shocked I almost fell off the window ledge. There were only feathers—an unbelievable pile of soft, white feathers with violet speckles, a lot like the flowers on the vine on the tower wall. And two green legs peeked out underneath. My neck wasn’t as long as Nreur’s, but it was still very flexible. It felt funny to twist it around and look behind myself.

  “Take care, Achim,” said Arnim, reaching through the bars to stroke my feathers.

  His green eyes weren’t just earnest now, they were filled with worry.

  Worry for me. And just when he should have been feeling happy that I had decided to go for him, I pushed off the ledge and flew out into the empty air.

  Oh, and how I flew! What a wonderful feeling it was, not to have anything below me but the view of the land and nothing above me but the sky! I flapped my wings up and down and watched the land glide by below me.

  And then I understood Arnim’s longing.

  I would go to the Nameless One’s palace and find out how Arnim could turn into a bird. And then he would be free.

  The dark blue bird sailed along next to me and nodded from time to time.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Nice and steady—raise your left wing a little ... no, not so much ...”

  If Karl had told me two days ago that soon I would be getting a flying lesson from a dark blue bird seven stories above the ground, I would have laughed in his face.

  The hills below us soon gave way to a dense forest of flowering trees—trees, like the ones you imagine growing in Africa, where it rains a lot, or in a greenhouse. And they were full of birds that were chirping and cawing to one another loud enough that we could hear it from where we were.

  “When are all of you flying south?” I asked Nreur.

  “In a week or two,” he answered.

  “Then I should hurry up and figure this out,” I said, “so Arnim can go with you.”

  We flew for a long time without resting, over meadows and mountains and forests and lakes—and strangely enough, I didn’t feel tired at all.

  But even in this place it becomes evening at some point, and as the shadows lengthened and took hold of the land, I saw another shadow circling far, far above us, one that had nothing to do with nightfall.

  Nreur saw it too. I noticed that he was getting more and more uneasy. Every so often he would glance around, as if he were worried that the shadow would suddenly appear right behind us.

  “This far but no farther,” he said finally. “I have to get back to my flock. They need me because it’s my job to lead them south. Someone else will take you from here.”

  And he whistled the same beautiful, deeply sad melody that Arnim had used to call him. He had hardly finished when another bird flew up to us—a small, pale yellow one who looked a little like a sparrow.

  “This is Yellow Pea,” said Nreur. “Actually, her name is Yellow Pea of Santorini, but we just call her Yellow Pea. Her sister is Little Bit with Dried Cod.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Nreur made a U-turn and vanished out of sight.

  “You guys have really strange names,” I said to Yellow Pea.

  She nodded. “Arnim named us. He was still really young at the time, you know.”

  “And he made up things like Little Bit with Dried Cod?”

  “Well, yeah—it was on a menu in some touristy place. Translated wrong. Paul read it to Arnim. He loves telling that story...” she trailed off.

  “Why are you flying with me to the palace and not Nreur?” I wanted to know. “Isn’t it dangerous for you?”

  “Yes,” she answered, “but Nreur is leading the migration south. He’s needed. I’m not.”

  She was silent for a while, and then I could feel my courage fading until it almost disappeared.

  “What—what’s the worst thing that could happen?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Down there,” she said instead, “can you see it?”

  Yes, I did see it. The palace.

  Its domes and roofs were gleaming in the last rays of daylight, and its towers rose into the sky like the necks of proud birds. The walls shimmered like ivory and ebony, but I knew that they were the black of sadness and the white of longing that the Nameless One had used to build them.

  “And it just gets bigger every day,” said Yellow Pea, as if she had read my thoughts.

  The palace stood in a huge garden, full of the most beautiful trees I’d ever seen. I couldn’t explain why they were more beautiful than the flowering trees in the forest full of birds, but they were so beautiful that I felt a deep pain when I looked at them.

  Either everyone who saw the palace garden felt the same way, or Yellow Pea really did seem to know what I was thinking because she said: “It’s because they’re so sad. The sadness creates a beauty beyond compare.”

  And then Yellow Pea could go no farther.

  She gave me a nod and turned around, just like Nreur had done. I looked up, watching for the menacing shadow in the sky, and thought this was how songbirds must feel when there’s a hawk nearby. But whatever had been there before was gone now.

  The sun was sinking into a puddle of red and violet on the horizon when I landed among the trees at the edge of the palace garden. My shoelaces had come undone, so I knelt down to tie them.

  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.”

  CHAPTER 4

&nb
sp; In which the sea is capped in white

  and a song gives me a warning

  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?”

  “We ventured too close to the palace,” came the feeble reply. “We wanted to free our brothers and sisters. None of us succeeded. He’s faster and smarter and more powerful than any of us.”