The Secret Room (14 page)

But where should I look for it? Just when I thought I was getting close, there was always a new obstacle in my path. It was incredibly frustrating.

I was just about to leave the courtyard when suddenly the day grew dark.

It had already been cool and cloudy, but now an icy wind was blowing between the high walls and an unexpected blanket of clouds covered the sky above me. I looked up and saw that the sun had disappeared.

In a matter of seconds, the air had become as heavy as lead, and my wings were almost no match against it.

I heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance and somewhere lightning flashed across the sky.

I reached the upper edge of the walls around the courtyard and remembered the Nut Bird. He had mentioned thunder and lightning when he talked about the night that the Nameless One had torn up his wings ...

Was there such a thing as a normal storm here?

I lurched aimlessly into the coming storm, above the confusing bowels of the palace—until I saw him. In the middle of the chaos, he was sitting on the top of the highest tower, craning his black-feathered neck into the wind.

The Nameless One. I saw his cold yellow eyes flash in the darkness. They were looking at me.

This time he would tear up my wing too because there was no Nut Bird around to save me. I had nothing more than my small claws and my stubby beak to defend myself.

No, this was no normal storm—he had conjured it up. He roared the thunder. He controlled the lightning.

The storm that he made propelled me to him like a helpless autumn leaf.

And before I could think of what I should do, lightning flashed in the sky, brighter and more jagged than I had ever seen before, and it struck me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw two other birds struggling against the storm, not too far away, a green one and a yellow one. But maybe it was just my imagination. The next moment the world disappeared.

“Nut Bird?” I murmured, when I slowly came to. “Is that you? Did you snatch me out of the sky again?”

Because apparently I was still all in one piece, and my wings didn't feel like someone had tried to tear them up.

I was lying on something hard—it wasn't straw. But maybe the Nut Bird had needed the straw for something else.

I opened my eyes.

No, I wasn't in a nut. There was a faint light around me, but that was because it was evening. I could see the dark green of leaves on the branches of a tree and a white line that was snaking along in the distance.

There were also flowers between the leaves, flowers that were so delicately beautiful they brought tears to my eyes.

But birds can't cry.

So I swallowed and swallowed and the sadness that had no way out welled up inside me like a deep, hidden lake.

Then I knew where I was.

And at the same moment I saw the bars.

Silver bars. They separated me from the twilight outside, from the flowers and leaves and from the white line too.

The snaking line was a gravel path, and the flowers and leaves were growing on the trees of the palace garden.

I was sitting in one of the cages hanging from their branches.

Why hadn't the Nameless One killed me?

“Because,” whispered the bars of the cage. “Because you're safe here. And because you'll suffer here forever.”

“The longing will come,” murmured the trees. “It will come and take possession of you. On the gate to the entrance of the palace, one more small, helpless bird has been carved into the silver. But who's going to see it?”

“The next one!” I whispered desperately into the evening. “The next one who comes! He'll see me sitting here waiting for him! He'll set me free!”

“But no,” whispered the leaves. “He'll end up here, just like you.”

A terrible thought came to me. Were other birds in the cages people like me? People who had come here of their own free will to defeat the Nameless One? What had happened to them in the other world, the world of the living? In the newspapers there were always stories about people who had disappeared. Were they waiting here, in the cages in the palace garden, hidden beneath colorful feathers, next to the others who had become birds after they died? And would I just disappear too?

The dusk faded while I thought about it, and the night came. A night full of sounds. Lots of birds sighed in their sleep. Invisible nocturnal creatures wandered under the trees, and once in the shadows, I saw a large rat scurry over the white gravel.

I cowered in a corner of the cage and listened in the strange darkness.

“Hey!” I whispered. “Hey! Can anyone hear me? Is there anyone else here who's actually still alive on earth? And can you help me?”

There was no reply for a long time, but then I heard a timid little voice from one of the branches next to me.

“Why aren't you sleeping?” whispered the voice.

“What good is sleep?” I asked.

“It alleviates despair,” answered the voice.

“The key,” I whispered. “The song talks about a key. Do you know where I can find it?” The little bird sighed deeply.

“There's a second verse to the song,” he said quietly, and then, even more quietly, he began to sing:

“The key's not something you can find

if you look too hard for it
.

It won't be found until you forget
.

But listen: You have to hurry night and day

over thousands of miles, but you can't stay
.

You'll travel the corners of your mind

and go much farther than dreams can glide.”

“Much farther than dreams can glide?”
I asked. “How can I possibly go there?”

Suddenly everything seemed totally hopeless. Even if I somehow managed to get out of the cage, I would never find the key.

The sound of beating wings broke through the haze of my despair. A bird had flown over, very close, and now soared away almost silently.

I was surprised. “What's a free bird doing here in the palace garden?” I asked the little bird next to me.

But I didn't get an answer. Even the quiet rustling of my neighbor's feathers were gone.

Then I understood.

He was the bird whose flapping wings I now heard in the distance.

He had never been in a cage. He had come here to sing me the second verse of the song.

But why had he risked so much for me? Who was he?

“Hello!” said Arnim and snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hello? Can you hear me? What's going on? What are you thinking about?”

I shook my head in confusion.

“I'm, well—here,” I said.

“Looks that way,” said Arnim and laughed a little. “What happened?”

“Oh, Arnim!” I cried, letting myself fall onto the hard, iron bed in exhaustion and burying my head in my hands. “It's terrible. He caught me. He put me in a small silver cage, and I don't know how I'm ever supposed to get out!” I told him about the lightning and the second verse of the song and everything.

Arnim sat down next to me and ran his cold fingers through his hair.

“Don't give up hope, Achim,” he said comfortingly. “It'll all turn out all right. We'll find a solution. For sure.”

Funny
, I thought.
Now it's suddenly Arnim who's comforting me. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

“Go back to Ines and Paul now,” whispered Arnim. “It's not just me who needs you to go on long journeys and fight lions and eagles. They need you just as much.”

What a strange observation, I thought as I ran down the stairs.

Suddenly I couldn't get to the kitchen fast enough, to feel the warmth, to smell the slightly burned potato pancakes ...

“You seem to be pretty healthy again,” said Paul and grinned from ear to ear.

“You're late to dinner. That's a pretty good sign!”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

And I slid him my plate and smiled at Ines. I didn't feel guilty that Paul had pointed it out.

“They need you just as much,” whispered Arnim's voice in my head.

I looked at them, how they sat there talking and laughing.

Before I had come into the kitchen, it had been quieter.

Did they really need me?

That night, I spent so much time thinking about the second verse of the song the little bird had sung to me that I worried I would never fall asleep.

I would travel thousands of miles—but in what direction? And how would I get so far?

I pulled the old toy dog Lucas close.

“Lucas,” I whispered. “Do you know what the worst part is? It's no use thinking about it.
The key's not something that you can find if you look too hard for it
. What should I do?”

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because suddenly I was dreaming. In the dream I was walking down a staircase. Its steps alternated black and white. I still had Lucas in my arm. At first the steps seemed to be leading through nothingness, but then the nothingness dissolved into a fog.

And then I saw that I was in the bowels of the palace.

How confusing
, I thought. In reality, I'm a bird sitting in a silver cage in the palace garden, and at the same time I'm in Paul and Ines's and all the other people's world, where I'm lying in bed and dreaming that I'm on a staircase in the Nameless One's world.

The stairs changed direction and now led upwards, curved and twisted. They had to be somewhere above the roofs of all the long, straight corridors.

Maybe in this dream I could find the key to the cage where, outside of this dream, I was sitting.

The steps turned, went around several towers, and, to my astonishment, behind one of them I finally saw the courtyard where the knife was waiting under the sheet of glass.

And as I was standing there, looking down into the courtyard, I noticed something. There was an opening in one of the four walls, several feet above the floor.

It looked like the beginning of some kind of passageway. And the light from the moon in my dream fell on the entrance to it.

Where did the passageway go? Inside, to one of the corridors with the countless photographs? Or beyond the wall, to the other side of the palace into the open?

“Lucas,” I whispered. “Lucas, what if the passageway leads out to the open! If it's a connection between outside and inside! Then I could start outside and fly through the passageway into the courtyard—without having to cross over the palace! Then the Nameless One might not notice me at all!”

The stairs led a little closer to the courtyard and got steeper—and finally they came to an end in front of the ridge of a roof.

This ridge led right into the courtyard. I wanted to get a better look at the opening, so I would have to walk along the ridge first.

“Well, okay,” I said to Lucas. I clamped him under my arm and climbed onto the black-and-white tiled roof with my arms outstretched.