The Secret Room by Antonia Michaelis

air. I think he was aiming for Ines’s plate, but he missed and the pancake landed on a tea cup.
    I shook my head. “Paul,” I said, “you need practice.”
    I clapped my hand over my mouth and looked back and forth between them.
    They just stood there grinning.
    That night I dreamed of the feather. It was floating in the middle of the room as if it were watching me.
    â€œI’m waiting for you,” said the feather. “I’m just waiting and waiting. I’m very patient. Time passes differently here. I know you’ll come. Soon. Maybe even tomorrow. I’m ready.”
    I woke up soaked in sweat.
    Ines was standing next to my bed and looking at me with a worried expression.
    She didn’t say anything when she saw that I was awake. She just stroked my head and then left silently.
    When I was getting dressed that morning, I wondered if she didn’t know everything. Maybe the other night she hadn’t really been scared that I had been run over in the street. Maybe she was scared of the endless sadness of the trees in the palace garden or of the Nameless One’s terrible shadow.
    â€œInes,” I said as she was leaving the house after breakfast, “don’t worry. I can handle it.”
    She nodded. And then she left. I watched her until the gaudy yellow of her rain jacket was lost amid the red and violet asters around the corner. Then I raced up the stairs.
    â€œWhich painting did I come out of?” I asked Arnim.
    The middle window had a blossom stretching through it that was such a dark shade of violet it almost looked black. He pointed at the painting next to it.
    â€œFrom that one, the one where you’re standing with your hand stretched out to the palace. Tell me, Achim—what happened last time?”
    â€œA lot,” I replied. “And nothing. I walked through the palace garden, where the trees are so beautiful it hurts. And I talked to the birds that are trapped in cages there because the Nameless One caught them. They were all trying to free someone, just like me.”
    â€œThat’s what they had been doing?” He looked at me intently. “And you’re still going back?”
    â€œNow don’t you start too!” I complained. “Everyone’s always telling me I should just back off. Is this some kind of game you’re playing? Did you all make bets about how many times I’d say ‘No, I’m not quitting’? About when I’d give up?”
    Arnim shook his head. “It’s just—a long time ago, you know, Ines and Paul used to tell me that one day I might have a brother. And I imagined a really small brother who would just lie in his crib and cry ... I never would have thought that he’d be so brave.”
    â€œThere’s just no other way to do it,” I said.
    I reached out my hand to the second painting—
    And it touched the palace wall. The tiles were so hot from reflecting the sunlight that it felt like I’d stuck my hand in a fire.
    I blew on my hand, like Maria had always done when someone got hurt, and walked along the wall to find the entrance to the palace.
    What was Maria doing right now? And Karl, and all the other kids at the orphanage?
    Karl was at school, of course. And was my desk next to him still empty? Or was someone else sitting in it, and had Karl forgotten me completely?
    I decided to write him a letter and that he’d be the only one I would tell everything—about Arnim and the secret room and the birds.
    About the broken plate under my mattress and about the ocean and Paul’s pancakes.
    I had only been here for four days and so much had happened already! It almost seemed like I hadn’t seen Karl for years.
    While I was thinking all this, I walked farther and farther along the checkered wall, but I never came to a gate or a door.
    Maybe there wasn’t an entrance at all?
    Maybe the Nameless One got into the palace from above, gliding