Read Online The Secret Room by Antonia Michaelis - Free Book Online Page B

iron bed.
    â€œNone of that means anything to me anymore,” he whispered. “I don’t get sad anymore, or tired, or sick. Understand?”
    â€œMaybe,” I whispered back. “Arnim—what happens if... if something happens to me? If the Nameless One ...” I cleared my throat. “If he kills me?”

    â€œYou would turn into a bird, like all of them. You would live in the countryside with the hills and the forests.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound so bad,” I said and tried to laugh.
    He put his finger to his lips. “Your time hasn’t come yet,” he replied. “And hopefully it’ll be a long time before it does. You belong here now, with Ines and Paul. Someone has to look after them when I’m not here anymore. Promise me you’ll do it.”
    â€œYeah,” I whispered. “I’ll do it.”
    And then I hugged my brother’s cold, cold body again before reaching my hand out to the painting that I had come out of last time.
    Everything in the world on the other side was still made of black and white, and in my hand was the feather whose pull I was following.
    As I was walking down to the end of the hall, I asked myself why I had never actually looked at the other paintings on the walls of the secret room. Of course I didn’t know the right order—but maybe they could have shown me everything that was going to happen.
    And I admitted to myself that I was just too afraid. Afraid that I would see my body in a painting, that it would be lying cold and still and wouldn’t belong to me anymore.
    I remembered what Arnim had said: “Your time hasn’t come yet.”
    No, it hadn’t, and if I could have made a wish at that moment in the cold, empty, black-and-white corridor, it would have been to be able to sit in the swing in the Ribbeks’ yard many more times in the future.
    The feather led me around a corner, and then the corridor ended abruptly.
    I stumbled into an enormous room whose ceiling was so high that I almost couldn’t see it anymore. When I tilted my head back, I saw that there were wisps of fog drifting back and forth up at the top.
    It was so bitter cold that I wrapped my arms around myself. My teeth were chattering. The feather was pulling like crazy now; I had to force myself not to run. It pulled me through the middle of the room—along a perfectly straight path made of black tiles. It was as if someone had put this black path here just so I could walk along it.
    I walked for quite a while before I noticed what was at the other end of the room.
    There was a throne made of stone whose tiles were as red as blood and as blue as the horizon above the sea. The sudden brightness of these colors made me squint.
    I had to lock my knees to resist the pull of the feather and of being dragged right up to the throne.
    Now I knew why it had helped me when I was being choked by the longing in the palace garden. I knew why it had opened the silver gate for me and why it had led me through the corridors. I knew why it had dragged me along so impatiently.
    It wanted to get back to its master.
    Because he was sitting there on the blood-red, horizon-blue throne, looking down at me.
    I had no doubt that it was him, even though he was no longer in the form of a black eagle.
    Sitting in front of me now was a huge lion, three times as big and strong as an ordinary lion and snow-white like—well, just like snow. But snow isn’t ever as pure and immaculate as the Nameless One’s fur was.
    â€œSo there you are,” he purred. His voice was as gentle as a flower bed full of buttercups, and he smiled. “I didn’t even have to go looking for you. You came to me yourself.”
    I wanted to say something, I wanted to scream at him, to insult him, but my throat was suddenly dry and my tongue wouldn’t obey me.
    The Nameless One kept smiling silently to himself and began to lick his front paw casually. As