So now what? I turned on my own axis. My eyes focused on Henry’s door again. The brass lion’s head and the fittings of the three locks, one above another, shone as if freshly polished in the dim light of the corridor. For a few seconds, I stared at the words DREAM ON, carved into the wood in playfully curving characters, then I just walked away. I must get out of here. I ran down the corridor, turned the corner to the left, and didn’t stop until I saw the next door that I knew. It was Arthur’s, and for a split second I actually thought of knocking at it. Arthur might know the answers to my questions.
I quickly let my hand drop again. Had I really come to this—looking for Arthur’s company out of sheer desperation? I could have kicked myself, but I never got around to it, because suddenly I felt sure that I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t the first time that the corridor had been lying there perfectly calm and peaceful, yet I could sense someone else’s presence.
And I wasn’t wrong. Senator Tod came out of the shadows where the corridor next branched. Along with his cloak and the slouch hat pulled right down over his forehead.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the leopard girl,” he said, and he sounded positively glad to see me.
I was neither particularly shocked nor especially afraid, which surprised me a little.
“If it isn’t the Senator,” I replied. “Dressed to the nines as usual. Although that leather cloak reminds me a bit of the costumes in cheap B movies.”
Senator Tod put back his head and let his laughter ring out. By now this gruesome sound, however, had lost a good deal of its effect on me. I didn’t even get goose bumps. He fell silent and came a step closer. Now I could see the watery blue eyes under the brim of his hat.
“Is that by any chance a spider on your arm?”
It was. A large, hairy tarantula was slowly climbing up my sleeve. It was only with difficulty that I suppressed a shriek. If this hadn’t been a dream, I’d have hopped around, screaming at the top of my voice. To be honest, I’d have done that even with a spider only half the size of this one. I wasn’t very keen on animals with more than four legs, so I had spent quite a lot of time screaming while we were in India. But I wasn’t going to give Senator Tod the satisfaction. And this wasn’t real life. In real life, I was lying safe and sound in my bed, in a house that was a total no-go area for tarantulas.
“You know, I’ve never met a girl who wasn’t afraid of spiders,” said Senator Tod, gloating. As he saw it, I was rigid with terror. “Psychologically, there’s a simple explanation. The living creatures we fear most are those whose physical appearance is least like that of human beings.”
It took me a bit of an effort, but I put out a hand and stroked the tarantula’s hairy back.
“So nice and fluffy,” I said. “Have a feel of it yourself. I think it’s called confrontation therapy, isn’t it?”
I was expecting him either to pounce on the tarantula or turn it into an even bigger spider (which is what I’d have done in his place), and I was preparing to turn myself into a brimstone yellow butterfly. But Senator Tod just gave me a crafty smile.
“Oh, very brave, little one,” he said. “But you can’t fool me. I see just what’s going on inside you: dilated pupils, pulse beating faster, higher frequency of breathing.… Oh, look at that, here come some more.…”
Two more tarantulas had appeared between us and were making for my legs. And yes, my breathing really was a little irregular.
“I count on subtle effects, you see,” Senator Tod went on, sadistically clicking his tongue, and two more spiders turned up. This time they came scrambling down from the walls.
This was getting to be more than I could take.
“You can keep your eye on one spider—but two?” The watery blue eyes were watching me intently. “It’s the unpredictably quick movements that make them so frightening. Did you know that they can jump a long way?”
“Is that so?” As the spiders came closer, I grew two extra arms. And two extra legs. All of them very hairy. As Senator Tod watched, I turned myself into an enormous tarantula, and it wasn’t even difficult—I had the little brutes right there before my eyes to be copied. Before my eight eyes, to be precise, two large and six small eyes, all of them staring at Senator Tod.
Taken completely by surprise, he staggered back, and suddenly held up a little bottle filled with some kind of bright, shining liquid. He seemed surprised by it himself, but he held it out in my direction and shouted, “Don’t come any closer!”
I wasn’t going to, but I burst out laughing. Someone had been watching The Lord of the Rings once too often. “The light of E?rendil? I’m afraid that won’t work here.” I was laughing so hard that I could hardly keep my balance on my thin spidery legs, while my huge body swayed back and forth, but I managed to exchange the little bottle in Senator Tod’s hand for one of the tarantulas on the floor. I moved the other three to his slouch hat. And then, because my peals of laughter seemed to have detracted a bit from my terrifying appearance, I changed back to my own shape and smoothed down my T-shirt.