Free In the River Darkness by Marlene Röder Page A

shrill, dissonant melodies that hurt my ears.
    Two of the strings on my cello were broken. I held my instrument in my arms for a long time and stroked the smooth, red-brown wood to soothe my nerves.
    Nothing truly terrible had happened. The strings were easily replaced. Maybe I was slowly getting paranoid? It could just be a series of coincidences.
    But deep inside I knew that someone had secretly been in my room. I could feel it. A presence was like a blight that defiled everything. My white walls were contaminated, as if they had become murky. The shadows from the branches of the cherry tree flitting across them seemed threatening now.
    I looked outside at my tree. For a good climber, it wouldn’t be difficult to get into my room by clambering across its wide branches. But if there had ever been wet footprints on the stone path in our yard, the sun had long since made them disappear.
    I didn’t say anything to my parents to keep from worrying them even more. But from that day on, I always kept my window shut when I wasn’t in my room.
    While the cherries slowly ripened on the other side of the glass panes, I tried to forget the whole thing. It worked pretty well, and that was mainly thanks to Alex.

Chapter 8
Alexander
    The smell of freshly mown grass and ozone filled the air, and the riverbanks were pink with blossoming spring herbs. In the June sunshine, I strolled past Mia’s house on my way to meet up with the guys at the bridge. Suddenly, a cherry pit skittered across the dusty path in front of me.
    “Hey, Alex!” a voice called.
    I looked up and saw Mia sitting in the crown of the tree. If my grandmother had been sitting on that thick branch, I could hardly have been more astonished.
    “What are you doing up there?” What an idiotic question! Cherries dangled from her ears, juice ran down her chin. She looked downright cheerful! That’s a word I would never have expected to associate with her.
    “I’m following a friend’s suggestion,” Mia replied, peering down at me. “Eating cherries is supposed to feel like music.”
    “And?”
    She plucked a dark red cherry from its stem with her lips, closed her eyes, and chewed thoughtfully. “Mmm . . . yeesss.”
    “Will you throw one down for me?” I called, opening my mouth wide. From among the leaves came a sound that sounded awfully close to a giggle. Then a cherry landed on the path, three steps in front of me. Somewhat bruised, but still perfectly edible. I popped it into my mouth. “You missed—amateur!”
    The second one hit my shoulder, the third even landed on my nose. Mia was a quick study. “Not bad. But wouldn’t you rather come down from there? Then you might even get one in!”
    “Nah. Not really,” Mia grinned. The sun shone through the leaves and glistened on her hair. The coloring was slowly growing out, and you could see that her natural color was a warm chestnut.
    The sight of Mia perched up there reminded me of a children’s riddle that Grandma annoyed us with every summer: “A young girl sits in a tree wearing a red skirt. In her heart is a stone. Now what can that be?”
    “That’s easy! A cherry!” Mia laughed.
    “Wrong, it’s
you
!” I teased her. “With a stone heart that won’t soften enough for you to come down and share your cherries with me! Alright then, I’ll climb up to you.”
    I started climbing up the tree, which wasn’t so hard. The smooth bark felt like warm skin under my fingers. While I swung from branch to branch, a bombardment of cherries rained down on me. The fruits burst on my body and left blotches on my T-shirt and bare arms. Small, blood red marks. Like tiny wounds.
    And then, finally, I reached her branch. I think we were both surprised by the sudden intimacy. Our faces were almost touching; out of breath, we stared at each other.
    I studied her face: the pale, delicate skin; the narrow nose; her dark brown eyes with the long lashes. Her softly curving lips. From her earlobes dangled her shell