Seven of clubs

… that enamel and ivory
grew in my mouth …

I read the sticky-bun book late into the night. When I awoke early the next morning, I shot up in bed. The light was still on above the bedside table. I realized I must have fallen asleep with the magnifying glass and the book in my hands.

I was relieved to see that Dad was still asleep. The magnifying glass lay on my pillow, but I couldn’t find the sticky-bun book. I eventually discovered it under the bed and hurriedly hid it in my pocket.

Having removed all the evidence, I climbed out of bed.

Everything I had read before I fell asleep was so disturbing I felt nervous and restless.

I parted the curtains and stood between them and the window. There was water as far as the eye could see. I didn’t see any other ships, apart from a few small fishing boats. It was just before sunrise, and dawn lay in a thin glowing strip between the sea and sky.

How could the mystery of all the dwarfs on the magic island make sense? Of course, I couldn’t be sure that what I read was true, but everything I had read about Ludwig and Albert in Dorf had seemed so real.

The Rainbow Fizz and all the goldfish had definitely come from the island Baker Hans had landed on … and I had seen a goldfish in a bowl with my own eyes in the little bakery in Dorf. I hadn’t tasted any Rainbow Fizz, but the old baker who gave me a fizzy drink that tasted of pears had said something about a drink which was much better …

Of course, everything could be made up. I had no exact proof that there was any such thing as Rainbow Fizz, because everything written in the sticky-bun book could be pure fantasy. It wasn’t that strange that the baker in Dorf brightened up his window with a goldfish either … but it couldn’t be denied that it was a bit strange that he baked a little book inside a sticky bun which he put in a bag and gave to a random traveller. Whatever the case, it was quite an achievement to write a whole book with such tiny lettering; and another thing – which I couldn’t get out of my head either – was that, just before this, I had been given a magnifying glass by a mysterious dwarf.

Yet this morning it was not these technical details that bothered me the most. My mind was in turmoil for a totally different reason. I had suddenly realised people living on earth were just as oblivious to things as all the drowsy dwarfs on the magic island.

Our lives are part of a unique adventure, I thought to myself. Nevertheless, most of us think the world is ‘normal’ and are constantly hunting for something abnormal – like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don’t realise the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fitted together.

While I watched the sky grow redder and redder and then lighter and lighter, I felt something all over my body which I had never felt before, and have never lost since.

I stood in front of the window, feeling like a magical creation bursting with life, yet at the same time knowing almost nothing about myself. I realised I was a living being on a planet in the Milky Way. I had probably always known this, because it was not so easy to ignore that sort of thing when you had had an upbringing like mine, but it was the first time I’d felt it myself. Something had taken over every single cell in my body.

I felt as though my body was something odd and unknown to me. How could I stand here in the cabin and think all these strange thoughts? How could I grow skin, hair, and nails? Not to mention teeth! I couldn’t grasp the fact that enamel and ivory grew in my mouth, that these hard things were me. But most people don’t normally think about that sort of thing until they have to go to the dentist.

It was a mystery to me how people on earth could simply roam around the world without asking questions, over and over again, about who they were and where they came from. How could life on this planet be something you either turned your back on or took for granted?

I was brimming with all these thoughts and feelings, which made me feel happy and sad at the same time. They made me feel lonely, too, but this kind of loneliness was good.

I was pleased, however, when Dad suddenly let out one of his gravelly lion roars. Before he got out of bed, it struck me that it was certainly important to keep your eyes open, but nothing mattered more than being with a person you loved.

‘You up already?’ Dad said, sticking his head under the curtain just as the sun rose above the expansive sea.

‘So is the sun,’ I replied.

That’s how the day we would spend at sea began.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-28