Shadows in the Twilight Read Online Free PDF Page A

around through all the clothes scattered over
the floor.
    'Put these on,' said Gertrud, handing him a pair of
yellow trousers. 'Hurry up! After eight o'clock in the
evening it's too late to change what's usual.'
    'Why?' Joel wondered.
    'It just is,' said Gertrud. 'Hurry up now!'
    Joel put on the trousers. They were far too long for him.
He recalled that Gertrud had once made them from a few
old curtains. Then he put on a checked shirt, and Gertrud
knotted a tie round his neck, just like Joel used to do for his
father. Gertrud was wearing an old pair of overalls that
used to belong to the Fire Brigade. Joel had once asked her
how she managed to come by so many old clothes.
    'That's my secret,' she'd replied. 'I suppose you
know what a secret is?'
    Joel knew.
    A secret was something you kept to yourself.
    The house where Gertrud lived had three rooms. It
was a normal house, with nothing peculiar about it. But
what was different was that it had two kitchens. Joel
didn't know anybody at all who had two kitchens, apart
from Gertrud.
    The other kitchen, the small one, was in Gertrud's
bedroom, along one wall. There was an electric hotplate
and a little sink with hot and cold water.
    'Why do you have two kitchens?' Joel had asked, the
first time he'd seen it.
    'Because I'm so lazy,' Gertrud had said. 'In the mornings
when I wake up, I don't have the strength to go as far
as the big kitchen. So I make myself some coffee in here.'
    That made Joel suspect that Gertrud wasn't all there.
But as there was nothing dangerous or frightening about
her way of being different, he'd decided that it was just
exciting.
    Exciting and strange.
    He had even gone so far as to invent a word to
describe Gertrud. None of the words he knew was good
enough, and so he'd joined together exciting and strange
to make a new word.
    Gertrud was strangeiting .
    But he'd never told her that. Perhaps it was forbidden
to invent new words? Perhaps there was a committee of
stern-faced old men in grey suits somewhere or other,
deciding what words could exist and which ones were
forbidden?
    Joel even had a secret word for forbidden words.
    He called them unwords .
    Gertrud dragged him over to the big mirror in the
middle room. It was the biggest of the three rooms. It was
also the most fascinating one. There were so many things
in it that it was almost impossible to pick your way
through it. There was a big birdcage hanging from the
ceiling. But Gertrud kept a stuffed hare inside it. There
was an aquarium next to one of the walls. A lamp attached
to the side of it lit it up – but there were no fish swimming
around in the warm water. Instead, there was a toy
locomotive on the sandy bottom. A big sofa in the middle
of the floor was crammed full of books. Hanging on the
walls were carpets like the ones Joel was used to seeing
on the floor. But Gertrud's floor was made up of piles of
sand and stones, and sometimes in the winter she would
cover it in fir branches brought in from the forest.
    There was a big mirror in one corner of the room.
They stood in front of it, and laughed at each other.
    'Good,' said Gertrud. 'Now we're not usual any
longer. So we can begin.'
    Joel looked at her in surprise. To be honest, he felt a
bit odd in the yellow trousers and the checked shirt.
There again, he couldn't help being curious to know
what she was going to think of next.
    Gertrud sat down on the floor, and Joel followed suit.
    'Just look at that,' she said.
    'Look at what?' Joel wondered.
    Gertrud pointed at a lamp dangling on a flex hanging
from the ceiling.
    'Just look at that lamp,' she said. 'It looks so usual. A
normal lamp hanging on a normal flex from a normal
ceiling. We'll have to do something about that. What can
we turn it into?'
    'I don't know,' said Joel. 'I mean, a lamp is a lamp?'
    'But it doesn't have to look normal,' said Gertrud.
'Just think if it looked like a mushroom instead!'
    'A mushroom?' said Joel.
    'You must know what a mushroom is? Now you'll
find out what