The Book Jumper

by Mechthild Gläser

  My grandmother’s hallway, on the other hand, was incredible. The ceiling arched so high above our heads that looking up at the paintings on it almost made me dizzy. Instead of fat naked angels on clouds and other such popular motifs, the artist had painted pictures of people with books. Some of them were reading, some were pointing toward bulging bookcases, and others had placed open books across their faces. Interspersed with the pictures of people, the same coat of arms appeared again and again: a green stag with huge antlers, perched proudly atop a pile of books against a wine-red background. A chandelier hung at the center of the entrance hall, its arms made up of strings of golden letters. Matching lamps were mounted at regular intervals along the wood-paneled walls, and between them were more stag coats of arms. The floor was spread with brightly colored Oriental rugs, with letters woven into them that I’d never seen before, and on the opposite wall a staircase swept upward, its oak banister fashioned from carved books. It was just possible I’d inherited my love of reading from my grandmother, I reflected.

  “Follow me, if you please. I shall attend to your luggage shortly,” said Mr. Stevens. For a man of his age, his back was remarkably straight, and his polished shoes made not the slightest sound on the opulent rugs.

  We, on the other hand, left a squelching trail of muddy footsteps in our wake. “Um,” I whispered to Alexis, “do you think maybe we should take off our…?” But she shook her head distractedly. Only now did I notice that her fists were clenched around the fabric of her woolen coat. She was chewing at her bottom lip and her eyes flicked nervously back and forth.

  Oh well. We had to get a move on anyway, to keep up with the butler. But I still felt bad about making such a mess in the most beautiful hallway I’d ever set foot in, and I tried to pick my way around the edges of the rugs. At least the glossy wooden floorboards underneath would be easier to clean.

  They were certainly a lot more slippery. I’d only gone a few steps when I lost my balance on the sheet of mud and rainwater beneath the soles of my sneakers and my feet slid out from under me. For a split second I teetered in the air (one flailing arm grazing Mr. Stevens’s pomaded coiffure, and ruffling its cement-like surface), before landing heavily on my bum. Oh, crap!

  The butler turned to inspect me through his now wonky glasses, eyebrows raised, but said nothing. The hair on the back of his head stood up in spikes like the feathers of a cockatoo.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  Alexis, without a word, put out a hand to help me up. She was used to my frequent accidents and liked to console me, at times like this, by calling me her “little giraffe,” because it sometimes seemed as though my arms and legs were simply too long for me to control. And I did often feel like a giraffe compared to all the other girls my age, who’d gotten curvier over the past few years instead of taller and thinner like I had. A giraffe with roller skates strapped to its clumsy feet.

  I let Alexis pull me to my feet and refrained from rubbing my bruised bum, trying to preserve the last shred of my dignity. Mr. Stevens (whose hair, incredibly, had already regained its former bombproof glory) carried on walking. We’d crossed the entrance hall now and he led us through a door set into the wood paneling, onto a long corridor, up some stairs, along another corridor … I was just starting to think that if I ever got lost in this house I’d never be able to find my way out again, when we finally arrived at a sitting room containing a silk-upholstered divan.

  “Please.” He motioned to us to sit down and busied himself lighting a fire in a large grate. But we didn’t sit down because the fire, which was soon crackling merrily, was far more inviting. Alexis and I stationed ourselves as close as possible to the hot flames, while the butler disappeared from the room. The heat almost sizzled as it met my skin. It sank slowly into my hands and face in what felt like a series of tiny little electric shocks. I closed my eyes and relished the reddish-orange glow that shone through my eyelids. But where the heat of the fire met my wet clothes it bounced off as if from a suit of armor. Only in one or two places did it manage to work its way—slowly—through the fabric.

  I don’t know how long I stood there willing the heat to filter right through to my bones. Perhaps it was only a few moments. Mr. Stevens returned much too soon, at any rate. “Mairead Lennox, Lady of Stormsay,” he announced.

  I forced myself to open my eyes and turn away from the fire.

  Like all the women in my family, it seemed, my grandmother was tall. She was even taller than Alexis and me. Or did she just look taller because her white hair was drawn up into an imposing knot on the top of her head? She had the same dark eyes as me and Alexis, anyhow, shining in a nest of fine wrinkles. Her nose was a little too long, her lips a little too thin. But she must have been very beautiful once upon a time. In her dark green silk dress, fastened at the neck by a white collar and a brooch, she seemed—like her house—to belong to a different era. On a ribbon around her neck hung a slim pair of reading glasses, the frames set with tiny red stones.

  For a while, she and Alexis looked at each other in silence. Alexis, standing there in her very wet, very colorful clothes, kneading the fabric of her coat so hard she wrung little droplets out of it. I’d always thought of Alexis as a sort of vegan reincarnation of Pippi Longstocking. Strong, brave, different from everybody else. A friend who I called by her first name. A mother who didn’t give a crap if people snorted contemptuously to see her walking along the top of a wall, singing loudly, as she took her five-year-old daughter to kindergarten. It wasn’t like her to be nervous. But she was now.

  Alexis moistened her lips as my grandmother’s gaze shifted to me. She looked searchingly at me, and an unspoken question hung in the air between us, although I had no idea what it was. Alexis, too, remained silent. I swallowed, and Lady Mairead raised her eyebrows expectantly. The fire behind us crackled, and outside the rain drummed against the windowpanes. The climbing roses and the manicured shrubs rustled, bracing themselves against the storm that was howling around the house. My grandmother’s nostrils flared as she breathed in. The water from our hair and clothes trickled off us and formed puddles at our feet.

  Still Alexis didn’t say a word.

  This was unbearable!

  “Um—so—I’m Amy,” I ventured finally. “Nice to meet … er … to make your acquaintance,” I stammered, and then, as no response was forthcoming, I added a “Mi … lady?” for good measure. Everyone knows aristocrats can sometimes have a bit of a thing about their titles. At the same time, entirely of their own accord, my legs twisted themselves into a kind of mangled curtsy. It wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of elegance. I felt the blood rush to my face.

  The ghost of a smile played around the corners of my grandmother’s mouth. “Is this your…?” she asked Alexis. “Can it really be true?” She took a step toward me and ran her fingertips down my cheek and along the line of my chin.

  Beside me, Alexis nodded. “I got pregnant very young.”

  “Indeed,” said Lady Mairead, and now she smiled in earnest. “Well then, Amy—I suppose I must be your grandmother,” she declared, adding, in a language I assumed was Gaelic, “Ceud mìle fàilte!” Luckily she switched straight back to English. “A thousand welcomes to Lennox House, Am—”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Alexis interrupted her. “That’s not why we came back.”

  “No? Why, then?”

  Alexis took a deep breath, as if speaking to her mother was a great effort. “We needed to get away for a bit and we didn’t know where to go,” she began. “Perhaps we were being a bit hasty, but … Anyway, we just want to stay here for a while and … recover, that’s all. It’s Amy’s summer holidays. We have to go back in a few weeks.”

  Alexis knew perfectly well, of course, that I hated my school now. I never wanted to see my so-called “friends” again. But when we’d decided to flee abroad we hadn’t talked about how long we should stay. And I supposed we might have to go back to Germany at some point. After all, I was still planning to do
my A-Levels there and study medicine afterward. But I didn’t want to think about that right now, and my grandmother too batted away Alexis’s objections with a sweep of her slender hand. “If you want to stay, you know what my condition is. She has to read. As long as you are here, she will read, and when the holidays are over, she can decide for herself.”

  “Read? What do you mean?” I asked. “Why do I have to read?”

  Alexis sighed. “It’s a long story, treasure. It’s to do with our family, but it’s not important. We—”

  “She doesn’t know,” said my grandmother flatly. “She doesn’t know.” Her lips tightened as if she’d just bitten into a lemon.

  “What don’t I know?”

  Lady Mairead was about to explain, but at that moment Alexis finally overcame her uncharacteristic nervousness. “Not tonight, okay?” she told my grandmother. “I’m just not up to it right now. Amy’s soaked and frozen half to death, as am I. Things haven’t been easy for us these past few weeks and getting here in this storm definitely wasn’t. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  At first it looked as though my grandmother was about to object, but she seemed suddenly to realize that I was still shivering. “Very well,” she said. “Mr. Stevens will make up your rooms and run you a bath.”

  A little while later, Alexis and I were lying in a bathtub the size of a swimming pool. When I stood up the water reached all the way to my waist, and if I tucked my legs in tight enough, I could even swim one and a half strokes from end to end. But as it was we were far too tired to do anything remotely sporty. Instead we just bobbed about in the hot water, thawing out our numb toes. Fragrant drifts of bubbles floated between us. From the ceiling of the marble bathroom hung another chandelier made of golden letters.

  As we’d negotiated the mansion’s intricate web of corridors, I’d asked Alexis why she and Lady Mairead had such an issue about whether I should read or not. It was a no-brainer, after all—I certainly wasn’t going to not read for the whole of the holidays. For years now, working my way through the contents of the city library had been my favorite pursuit. But Alexis had only shrugged and said, “This entire family is crazy, Amy—you know that.”

  Now we relaxed wearily into the heat of the water, which felt almost painful against my cold skin. Its warmth spread slowly through my body, right to my core. I let myself sink just below the surface and, without moving a muscle, watched my long, thin hair as it wafted and coiled through the water in slow motion. Its rusty sheen was only a pale echo of Alexis’s wild mane; when my hair was wet, you could barely even tell it was red. Still, I did feel a little bit like a sea anemone on a tropical ocean floor. That must be a nice life—nothing to do all day but sit around being caressed by the warm current.

  It had just occurred to me that on second thought I was quite glad I wasn’t a sea anemone because I’d probably get bored pretty quickly down there on the seabed without any books, when the gentle lilting of the water grew choppier; Alexis was on the move. First she paddled all the way across the bathtub; then she took a deep breath and dived down under the water. She crouched on the bottom of the tub for nearly two minutes, and when she resurfaced her eyes looked as if she was trying hard not to cry. She was probably cursing the day she’d twisted her ankle on the pasture of the organic farm where she worked, and had a splint put on it by a good-looking doctor in the ER. Dominik had found his way into her heart, and our family, far too quickly. The two of them had been together less than a year, but he’d become part of the family straightaway. He’d cooked steaks for himself and me, in our otherwise vegan kitchen; he’d come ice skating with us.… I missed him. He was the only one I missed.

  “I’m sure we’re going to have a lovely holiday on Stormsay,” I said, quoting Alexis. And I meant it. Because anything was better than sitting around at home, where everything reminded you of everything. Where Alexis had had her heart broken and where I risked running into kids from school—a school where people were not very forgiving toward a girl with straight As and a flat chest.

  Alexis blinked back her tears. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you’re right.” She looked at me for a few moments. Suddenly she grinned and scooped some of the bubbles toward her. “Hey, Amy, could there be any more perfect start to a holiday than a full-on bubble fight?”

  I smiled and started stocking up on soapy ammo.

  Later, as I lay in bed cocooned in a warm quilt, I listened to the storm outside my window. Through the howling and raging of the wind, I was sure I heard another sound, like a child sobbing. Was somebody crying out there on the moor? No—it must be my imagination.

  The princess lived in a castle with silver battlements and stained-glass windows. It stood on a hill from which the whole of the kingdom could be seen.

  Every day she climbed to the top of the highest tower and looked out across the land.

  She knew her kingdom, knew it well.

  But only from afar, for she never set foot outside the castle.

  Since her father the king and her mother the queen had died, she no longer dared venture outside.

  She thought the meadows and lakes too dangerous, the forests too impenetrable. An old fairy tale, which her subjects had long ago ceased to believe, told of a monster lying in wait somewhere, hidden deep in a cave.

  The princess feared the monster.

  2

  THE SECRET LIBRARY

  THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE with a start from a nightmare in which I’d been pursued by photos and laughter. The pictures had shown me in the swimming pool locker room without my bikini top, captured on the camera phone of a so-called friend. Posted on our year’s Facebook page. “This is your before picture on Extreme Makeover!” Paul had commented on one of the photos, as if I needed a whole load of plastic surgery in front of rolling TV cameras just to be able to lead a normal life. In the dream I’d shut myself in the school bathroom where no one could hear me, and cried.

  Just like in real life.

  Jolina really had taken the photos, and she really had shared them on Facebook and WhatsApp so that people with nothing better to do could look at me naked and laugh about it. It was stupid and childish.

  But it still hurt.

  Especially because I’d thought Jolina and I were friends. But now it seemed she preferred to fit in with everyone else than keep hanging out with me—the geek, the bookworm, the nerd. Alexis had told me time and time again how wrong they all were, that it wasn’t true what they said about me, that I was pretty and likable and a lovely person. I knew it was mainly because they were jealous of my good grades and my fluent English that they were always looking for something they could use to upset me. But part of me secretly believed them nonetheless. However stupid it was, there was a sore spot in my soul, a tiny hole through which my self-esteem was trickling away.

  But I wasn’t going to let it—I’d promised myself. I was just going to forget about the photos and the laughter. And Stormsay was going to help me.

  Resolutely I blinked back the images of the night and found myself lying in a four-poster bed. A swath of red-checked fabric was draped above my head, overflowing into four thick walls of curtain. My bed was like its own little room within a room. A cocoon with only me in it—and the e-reader by my pillow, of course. It reminded me of when I was little, when I used to make caves out of old blankets and hole up inside them with my favorite books. I lay there a moment longer gazing at the slivers of light that slipped through the chinks in the fabric here and there, painting patterns on the embroidered quilt. Then I got up.

  The guest room Mr. Stevens had put me in wasn’t particularly big, but it was magnificently furnished, just like the rest of the house. The wallpaper was made of dark red silk with a shiny floral pattern, and there was an armchair with gilded legs, a chest of drawers with a mirror mounted above it, and a deep window seat covered with cushions where you could sit and look out over the grounds and the moorland.

  My muddy suitcase stood in the middle of the room like a foreign ob
ject. I’d been much too tired yesterday to unpack it. And even now it was all I could do to fish out a few pieces of clothing—a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a long cardigan would have to do. My wardrobe wasn’t particularly varied at the best of times: unlike Alexis, I wasn’t keen on brightly colored, patterned clothes and stripy tights. I preferred earthy colors, khaki, or black.

  Directly opposite the four-poster bed was the door to the bathroom, which I was to share with Alexis. Environmentally friendly creams and pots of makeup, hair clips with flowers round the edges, and batik hair bands were already lined up along the edge of the sink and on the shelf above. Alexis had settled in, then. She was probably already having breakfast.

  I was pretty hungry by now, too—after all, I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning apart from a couple of sandwiches at Dortmund Airport. I had a quick shower, threw on my clothes, and tied back my wet hair in a ponytail. Then I went out into the corridor in search of something to eat.

  I soon struck lucky. I’d only gone a few steps when the raised voices of Alexis and my grandmother showed me which way to go. Unfortunately, they seemed to be yelling at each other. At first it was just unintelligible shouting, but the closer I got the more words I could distinguish.

  “… can’t force her!” cried Alexis. “… never have even come here if I’d known…!”

  “… did you think…?” replied my grandmother. “… our family’s birthright … can’t stop her from…!”

  “… give a shit about our birthright!”

  “If you want to stay here…!”

  “… argh!”

  I went up a spiral staircase and onto another corridor: the voices grew clearer. They seemed to be coming from a room at the end of the hallway.

  “She likes reading, doesn’t she?” asked Lady Mairead. “So why are you so against it? I’m sure she’ll enjoy it.”