When the ship had almost reached the island, the animal lady saw that it was a ferry full of children. All the children were wearing blue helmets, and they had big cushions attached to their backs and tummies.
‘I want a cushion on my tummy!’ shouts Mattias.
‘What’s a horizon?’ asks Matilda.
‘It’s where the earth ends,’ Jan says. He turns the book around — this page isn’t scary — and shows them the thin line beyond the ferry. He points to it. ‘This is what the horizon looks like. Although it’s just an illusion really; the earth doesn’t end there, it’s as round as a beach ball. You know that, don’t you? So the earth never ends, it just carries on until it comes back behind you...’
The children stare at him in silence. Jan sees that he has got himself all tied up in knots, so he carries on reading:
Eventually the ferry ran aground on the island. There was a horrible screeching, grating noise as it drifted on to the rocks. The children jumped ashore, but Maria was too scared to show herself. She had gone into her little house, locked the door and made herself a pot of really strong taminal tea. She could hear cheerful cries outside, but she drank her tea and didn’t open the door.
This picture shows Maria cowering behind closed curtains; they have a chequered pattern which makes Jan think of the barred windows at the hospital. She is pouring hot tea, steaming and bubbling, into a big cup which is all the colours of the rainbow. But what is taminal tea?
‘Hello?’ a girl’s voice shouted. Cautiously Maria peeped out, but the girl wasn’t standing outside her door.
She was standing by the lighthouse.
And the lighthouse door was open.
For the first time since Maria came to the island, the Great Mr Zylizylon had opened the door of his big tower!
‘Hello? My name is Amelia... is anyone home?’
This time the drawing shows what Maria could see through her window: a little girl in a thin dress standing in front of the black door of the lighthouse. But one thing distinguishes the girl from the other children, Jan notices. She is not wearing a helmet, and there are no cushions attached to her body.
The children are as quiet as mice. The atmosphere in the room is thick with anticipation.
Jan turns the page.
Through the window Maria watched as little Amelia walked up the steps to the door of the lighthouse.
‘Hello?’ she called again.
She took one more step; she was almost inside now.
Then Maria did something without even thinking about it. She raised her hand, closed her eyes, and quickly made a guardian animal.
Jan was expecting the children to ask what a guardian animal is — he doesn’t know either — but no one speaks.
Maria could give anyone at all a guardian animal, but unfortunately she never knew what they were going to look like. So when Maria opened her eyes she saw that Amelia was being hugged by something that looked like a big frog. A yellow frog with long, hairy legs.
‘Amelia!’ shouted the frog. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages!’
The guardian animal gave Amelia another hug and quickly drew her away from the door.
Maria let out a long breath. She went and opened the door of her little house, just as the sound of heavy footsteps could be heard from inside the lighthouse.
‘Come inside!’ she shouted, pulling Amelia into her house. The guardian animal remained outside.
Jan turns the page, ready to read on. He scans the first sentence: They heard a loud roar, and at long last the Great Mr Zylizylon came out of the lighthouse... But before he actually reads it out loud he notices the drawing on the left-hand page, and closes his mouth.
This drawing is clearer than the others, with long, firm pencil strokes. It shows Mr Zylizylon stepping out into the daylight.
Mr Zylizylon is a monster. He is broad and hairy, and he has a leash around his thick neck. It is made of severed human hands. The monster has raised his arms and opened his wide mouth, ready to fall on the guardian animal, which is cowering on the ground in terror.
The children are waiting for Jan to carry on reading.
He opens his mouth. ‘Then...’ He tries to think fast. ‘Then Maria the animal lady and her new friend Amelia went down to the ferry and all the children sailed away from the island. And Maria lived happily ever after in peace and quiet.’
He closes the book. ‘The end!’
But Josefine straightens up. ‘That’s not how it ends!’ she shouts. ‘The monster eats up—’
‘That’s how it ended today,’ Jan breaks in. ‘And now it’s time we had our fruit.’
The children start to get up, but Josefine looks disappointed. Jan keeps the book tucked firmly under his left arm as he hands out bananas with his right hand; when everyone is eating he slips away to the cloakroom and puts the book in his bag.
He wants to read the ending on his own. He’s just borrowing it, he’s not stealing it.
Back home that evening he flicks through The Animal Lady and looks at the words Zylizylon and taminal. Then he switches on the computer and looks them up on the internet. They both exist, and they are both drugs. Drugs that are used to suppress anxiety.
Then he thinks about the name Maria Blanker. Where has he heard it before? He gets out Rami’s only album, Rami and August, and reads through the sleeve notes. He was right. At the bottom, after the usual blurb about which musicians played on the album and who produced it, there is one more line:
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO MY GRANDMOTHER, KARIN BLANKER.
Suddenly The Animal Lady feels like a book he is going to have to read over and over again, until he knows the story by heart. He puts it down in front of him on the kitchen table and stares at the cover. Then he glances over at his box of pens and pencils.
Perhaps he won’t just read it? He reaches out and picks up a Faber-Castell. A soft lead pencil. And he begins to fill in the spidery lines in the book, deepening the shadows. It feels so good that he carries on in black ink. Slowly the drawings become clearer, more detailed. The only things Jan doesn’t touch are the faces; he decides to leave them looking vague and indistinct.
The work takes up the entire evening. When the ink has dried he can’t help himself; he goes and fetches his watercolours and begins to do some careful colouring. The sky above the island becomes pale blue, the sea dark blue; Maria’s dress is white and her frog has just a hint of yellow. Mr Zylizylon remains dark grey.
By midnight Jan has finished twelve drawings. He stretches his fingers and straightens his back; he has done a good job. The Animal Lady is starting to look like a real picture book.
Gradually he has become totally convinced that it was Alice Rami, sitting in her room behind the concrete wall, who dreamed up the story of Maria and the Great Mr Zylizylon. She might not want this to happen, but he is going to help her to finish it.
The bunker was ready now, but there were still a few more things to sort out.
By the middle of October Jan had been at the nursery for almost four months, and had got to know the staff in both Lynx and Brown Bear. They were all women, and one of them was Sigrid Jansson. He knew that Sigrid was a cheerful and spontaneous classroom assistant who sometimes found it a little difficult to keep a close eye on the children. Sigrid was kind and pleasant, but her thoughts were often elsewhere. Whenever Jan spoke to her in the playground she was ready to chat, but rarely looked at the children.