The Secret Room

by Antonia Michaelis

  Then the old walls started to crunch and groan, and in the pale moonlight, I saw the plant wilting. Its leaves dried before my eyes and rolled up, brown and lifeless. The heads of its flowers hung down and began to disintegrate.

  The large, roughly cut stone blocks that the tower was made of began to shift and then I realized that the plant had been holding it together.

  I looked up at the five barred windows.

  “Arnim!” I cried. “Arnim, I’m here! I’m coming!”

  I looked down at the knife in my hand. I wanted to thank him, but before I could say anything, it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. And I remembered the horse’s last words: “I’m dying too. I can feel it. This is the end.”

  But not for me, it wasn’t the end for me yet.

  I grabbed the first branch of the withering plant that I could and started to climb up the wall. I couldn’t waste any time—its tendrils were all loosening themselves from the wall and the stones were starting to fall.

  The tower wouldn’t be standing for much longer.

  When I reached the first of the five windows, I saw that there was a small oil lamp burning inside. Its flickering light revealed a set of bars that was no longer anchored in the wall. They were melting like chocolate, and I grabbed the window sill and pulled myself up with my last ounce of strength.

  Behind me I could hear the lion’s furious roar.

  I had just dropped into the room through the window when he pounced. A giant leap carried him from the ground to the once-barred windows like a white arrow, and his roar made the crumbling walls tremble.

  He threw me to the stone floor with such force that I thought I heard my spine crack. I felt the small silver key pop out of my pocket.

  Helpless as a beetle, I lay on my back and looked up into the Nameless One’s glowing yellow eyes. They were full of pain and furious destructiveness.

  I saw the black stripes of the open wounds he had gotten from the battle with his opponent, even though apparently, like the horse, he just didn’t bleed.

  “So,” he growled, “so he said, ‘This is the end.’ Is that what he told you? Well, then I’ll take the final step.”

  The white lion bared his teeth as he had done once before, but this time I couldn’t move to get my inhaler.

  Where was Arnim?

  The world around us was collapsing.

  The walls cracked, the oil lamp suddenly blazed brightly.

  And I saw that I couldn’t defeat the Nameless One. He was immortal; he would always exist. People would keep dying and other people wouldn’t be able to let them go. The Nameless One’s palace would keep growing till the end of time, and people’s tears would keep nourishing him because there can’t be a world without tears.

  That’s why I couldn’t win this battle, that’s why I wouldn’t be able to keep living. I was standing in the way of sadness—and in all its beauty and all its horror, sadness was stronger than anything else.

  I closed my eyes.

  CHAPTER 13

  In which a kitchen utensil plays a key role

  I waited to feel the white lion’s bite.

  But he paused—something had distracted him at the last second. And suddenly I smelled ... burned fish sticks.

  Fish sticks? How absurd!

  Right before your death you can smell anything—wonderful smells like rose petals and fragrant moss, or maybe the first smell you remember in the world, like your mother’s skin—but fish sticks?

  I opened my eyes again and followed the lion’s gaze.

  He was looking past me toward the door to the secret room, and his expression was one of incredible astonishment.

  The door with the silver handle had flown open, and Paul was standing in the doorway with a steaming frying pan in his hand.

  He raised it high above his head ...

  “Not so fast!” he cried and then he was next to us and smashed the heavy iron pan right into the white face with the glowing yellow eyes above me.

  The lion growled. He turned to attack Paul, but Paul swung the frying pan, and a shower of charred fish sticks flew into the Nameless One’s face. Paul struck with the pan again and again, in a blind rage and with a strength I never would have thought he had in him.

  “Take that!” he cried. “And that! Achim belongs to us, understand? He belongs to us! He’s our kid! And we’re not just going to let him be taken away! Got it? Got it?”

  The Nameless One winced at every blow. Gradually, his paws lost their grip.

  Finally, he went back to the window, while all around us large stone blocks were breaking and falling from the walls.

  The iron bed, the iron table, and the iron chair were melting in on themselves like the bars had, and the paintings fell to the floor, their frames shattered with a loud clatter.

  The giant white lion reared up once more. Paul thrust the handle of the frying pan right into his face. A terrible howl caused the oil lamp to shatter and the Nameless One staggered backwards.

  He broke through the crumbling wall and disappeared with the stone blocks into the night.

  Paul let the frying pan fall and lifted me from the floor like a feather. Through the collapsing walls I saw the Nameless One’s huge body lying in the dark grass below. He was moving. Slowly, with great effort. And at that moment I knew that he would get up again. Not now, not immediately. It would take hours, maybe days—but he would survive and continue to rule over his black-and-white palace.

  Paul was trying to carry me to the door, but I reached out for the crumbling windows.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Wait! Arnim! Arnim, where are you? And the yellow and green birds? They’re somewhere in the palace still! And the Nut Bird with his broken wing! And the gray horse! Put me down, Paul! I have to go back! I have to find Arnim and free Spinach Luggage and Yellow Pea …”

  I wriggled in his grip, twisted around, and bit Paul’s hand trying to get free, but he held me as tightly as a vice. I felt tears running down my face, tears of anger and desperation.

  “You can’t save the whole world, Achim,” said Paul, hoarse from screaming. “Stop struggling. Just look. There ...”

  He nodded toward the night outside.

  And there in the bright light of the moon was a small bird with red and gold feathers and green, green feet. He was flying away from the tower, very purposefully, it seemed to me, and in his beak he was carrying a tiny silver object. I would have bet anything it was the key.

  Paul silently pointed to the painting that was hanging from the last part of the wall left standing.

  It hadn’t fallen down and broken like the others.

  For the simple reason that it hadn’t been hanging there until just now.

  The painting showed a sky, red at dawn. And in the sky there were three birds—a yellow one, a green one, and a red and gold one. They were flying away from the trees in the palace garden, toward a flock of other birds in the distance that you could only make out if you squinted your eyes.

  But you didn’t need to squint to know that they were flying south. South, far, far away from the Nameless One’s palace.

  “Let’s go, Achim,” said Paul.

  And I knew that I had been right: There would always be people who died, and other people who couldn’t let them go. The Nameless One would keep using their sadness and longing to build his black-and-white palace walls forever. Maybe it just had to be like that.

  But Arnim, Arnim, my brother, was free.

  And Paul carried me through the door of the secret room with his strong arms, out into the hall, where Ines was yelling that she couldn’t find the pan with the fish sticks anywhere.

  Behind us, the tower finally collapsed.

  The End

  AFTERWORD

  Well, that was my story about the secret room, my brother Arnim with the green, green eyes, and me—and about the Nameless One’s black-and-white palace and the trees that are so beautiful it hurts.

  You can choose whether or not you want to bel
ieve it.

  In any case, ever since the night that Paul carried me out of it like a little kid, the door to the secret room was nowhere to be found. And no more vines with strange flowers have grown in the Ribbeks’ yard.

  Oh—and I almost forgot: Now my name is Achim Ribbek. It sounds a little funny, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

  The last weekend before school started, Paul and Ines and I went to a little island on the coast together.

  You had to take a steamboat there, and I had a new raincoat, and I didn’t get sick on the ship at all.

  I have to tell Karl about it, since he wants to be a sailor.

  Ines said he can visit us sometime soon. Maybe during fall break. If he wants to.

  On Monday I rode my bike to my new school.

  Ines actually wanted to go with me, but then Tom and Anna came by and said I could go with them.

  Tom’s in my class. He’s almost nice to me now. The incident with the water made a strong impression on him and also the fact that Ines told his mother how I put out the fire all by myself.

  And we threw away the broken plate under my mattress.

  “Good thing,” said Ines when I told her about it. “That was a really ugly plate.”

  On the first day of school, I was standing on the playground with Tom and Anna and a few other kids, and suddenly there was an incredibly loud honking sound in the air above us. Anna pointed up and said, “Look! The geese! They’re flying south!”

  “I know.” I smiled. “And they’re not the only ones.”