“Don’t worry, you can look at it,” Anna said. “This isn’t a museum. My mother loves deserts. When I go to England, after finals, she said she’s going to compensate by visiting the desert.”
“Can I come, too?” Micha asked instantly. “I want to see a desert, too. I like sand, especially when it’s warm. You can let it run through your fingers. Maybe there’s a desert island in our fairy tale. What do you think, Abel? Why haven’t we ever gone to see a desert?”
“You’d have to go very, very far by plane for that,” Abel said. “I’m sure you don’t want to have to sit still in a plane for so many hours.”
“Of course, I do! I absolutely want to sit in a plane!” Micha exclaimed. “I’ve never been in a plane! Can we fly in one, Abel?”
“When we’ve finished this quiche, we’ll fly upstairs on foot, and you can look at my room,” Anna said quickly. “If you want, you can try to get a note out of my flute. It’s not easy, though.”
Micha didn’t get a note out of the flute, but she held its slim silver body in her hands for a long time. Then she lay in the hammock in Anna’s room and looked up at the ceiling and said she’d like to move in here, but, of course, she would miss her loft bed … and Anna and Abel just stood there and watched her.
“It will never be like this,” Abel said in a low voice. “It will never be this nice at our place.”
Anna put her arms around him and whispered, “It already is. Just not at first glance. Do you know that I sometimes feel better at your place? I thought about it yesterday … but, Abel … what happened to the silver-gray dog, after he jumped aboard the black ship? Is he okay?”
He ran his fingers through her hair, thoughtfully, and let his hand rest on her head for a moment, a strand of hair wrapped around his fingers. He had never touched her hair before. There were many parts of her body, she thought, that he had never touched. Suddenly she was very warm.
“The silver-gray dog,” he said, “crept along the rail, on soundless paws …”
Micha looked up from the old picture book that she was holding on her knees. “Is the fairy tale going on?” she asked, obviously forgetting all the picture books and all the hammocks in the world …
“Let’s go back downstairs, to the fireplace. You’ve gotta tell a fairy tale by the fire; that’s where fairy tales should be told.”
“The silver-gray dog crept along the rail, on soundless paws,” Abel repeated while Anna fed the fire more logs, “till he reached the stern of the black ship. Then the little queen couldn’t see him anymore. ‘I hope he takes care of himself,’ the lighthouse keeper grumbled.
“‘Who are those people?’ the little queen asked fearfully. ‘Those people on the black ship?’
“‘I recognized a few of them,’ the lighthouse keeper answered. ‘There is the jewel trader, for one. He collects all the jewels he can find, but he doesn’t lock them away like the red hunter. He resells them, scattering them all over the world, over the oceans … then, there are the haters. You saw that elderly couple, little queen? That’s them. The haters hate everything that is beautiful. They want to destroy the diamond. And last … there’s the big woman in the tracksuit. Do you know why she’s so fat?’
“‘No,’ the little queen replied, and her whole body shivered when she said that.
“‘She eats the jewels the jewel trader brings to her,’ the lighthouse keeper said.
“‘Then … then, she’ll eat my heart if he gets hold of it,’ the little queen whispered.
“At that moment, a blast of wind whipped over the ocean, blew the waves into towers, and made the little pieces of ice clink against one another. The shipmates lost their balance and fell onto the deck in a heap. The blind white cat complained that someone had landed on top of her.
“‘Sails down!’ the lighthouse keeper shouted. ‘There’s a storm!’
“The asking man and the answering man clung to each other fearfully and shouted senseless questions and answers into the howl of the wind: ‘Where is Michelle?’ ‘Maybe the lighthouse keeper!’ ‘Where does he come from?’ ‘In the box on top of the bathroom cupboard!’ ‘Who is his father?’
“The rose girl helped the lighthouse keeper lower the white sails—all but one. The black ship didn’t take down its black sails. Instead, a strange mechanism on its masts started moving, amid storm and waves: one of the black masts rotated, and the travelers could see that there was a huge net fastened to it. A wooden arm extended, and now the net hung exactly above the little green ship. And then someone working some gears or cranks began to lower it—and it became a deadly butterfly net.
“‘No!’ the little queen screamed and covered her eyes with her hands. But she looked through her fingers.
“It was the jewel trader who worked the gears, steered the net. He had rolled up the sleeves of his leather jacket so they could see the white sheepskin lining inside. The diamond eater in her tracksuit stood beside him. There was one blood-red, dyed strand of hair on her forehead. Behind her, the two haters held onto each other, their eyes aglow with destructive frenzy. And behind the haters, the silver-gray dog pressed his body against the rail. He was nothing but a secret shadow.
“‘The airship!’ the rose girl said. ‘We can still make it!’
“The little queen lowered her hands. Her eyes were big and dark with fear. ‘But the storm will blow us in the wrong direction!’
“The net was sinking, lower and lower. And then, something unexpected happened. There was a scream, a piercing, horrible, eardrum-tearing scream that made the waves stop waving for a second, as if the whole ocean had suddenly frozen. At the same time, the net was lifted up again, the wooden apparatus turned its arm, and the huge trap dropped onto the dark sails. The black ship had caught itself. It seemed to fight with itself now: it buckled and heaved—the waves weren’t still anymore; they pushed the ship around—ropes ripped, and sails fell down from masts like withered leaves from dead trees. One of them covered the fat diamond eater, and another one covered the two haters, who tried to free themselves with angry shouts. But where was the cutter?
“The green ship sailed on through the storm with its one remaining white sail, and the black ship stayed behind, tied up like a big beetle in a spider’s web.
“‘The silver-gray dog!’ the little queen shouted against the wind. ‘He’s still on the black ship! We have to help him!’
“She wanted to turn the yellow rudder, to turn the ship, but on her way to the rudder, she stumbled over the white cat, who had fallen asleep on the floor again, and fell. The rose girl helped her up. Now the ship swayed to and fro gently, for the storm was dying down.
“The last high wave carried something in its glittering embrace. It was a body. For a moment, they saw it clearly, before the sea pulled it down into its bottomless depths.
“‘The jewel trader!’ the rose girl whispered. ‘He’s dead!’
“‘Like the red hunter,’ said the little queen. She put her arms around the rose girl and began to cry, and her diamond heart hurt inside her. ‘So does everybody have to die?’ she sobbed.
“When the water was perfectly still again, something else floated toward them in the light of the setting winter sun. Another body. The body of the sea lion. The asking man and the answering man fished it out of the sea with their long arms. They carefully laid it on the planks, where it turned into the body of a dog, and the little queen dropped down next to him. He was breathing, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“‘My poor dog!’ the little queen whispered. ‘What happened on the black ship?’
“‘Let him sleep,’ the rose girl said. ‘He needs rest.’ She carried the dog in her arms down into the cabin and put him to bed on the polar bear skins. On his left foreleg, the fur was missing in two shiny, circular patches, like burns.”
“Two?” Anna asked. Micha had fallen asleep once more, lying on the sofa next to them.