Weird, Marja thought, even in this strange world composed of pages with letters she could not calm down. Reading usually serves its purpose.

Yeah, usually. But usually there was no Kirka who had been sitting in her armchair next to the classics shelves for hours and wrote her heart out on a small piece of paper. Again and again Marja caught herself looking over at the girl and looking at Kirka's skillful hand movements.

She probably had a beautiful handwriting, from the looks of it. Marja would also like to have one, but her teacher always had trouble deciphering the spidery, small letters she put on paper.

Stop it now! Read on, Marja scolded herself and finally concentrated on the words that were swarming around in front of her and waiting to finally be read by someone. Written some day by somebody whose name she had never heard of but whom she admired deeply. Marja always thought it couldn't be so hard to write a story, but when she once tried to write a story herself, she realized this was a fallacy. You need an idea. You need motivation. You have to put the words together somehow so that they would read nicely. Marja had already started some stories with this attitude, but never found them to be the way they should be. What was she doing wrong? That would probably remain an eternal mystery.

Suddenly Marja noticed that Kirka had put her writing pad aside and now sat bolt upright with her eyes closed as if she was meditating. Helplessly, Marja struck her started book again, remembered the title in case she wanted to borrow it, and began to browse the shelves inconspicuously while not letting Kirka out of her sight.

But the pale, blonde girl did not move a millimeter as if she was frozen from one second to the next, like the little stream that flowed across the island from one coast to the other, creating a romantic atmosphere on spring evenings together with the smell of cherry blossoms. However, if the temperature dropped below zero, it would freeze overnight in such a way that you could skate on it, if it were not so narrow and uneven.

"Not very long ago," suddenly Marja heard Kirka muttering and flinched a bit. She didn't expect to hear the honey-blond girl speak again.

"There lived a girl with black-brown hair, smooth as her shoulders, and poison-green eyes. So far nothing special, it seemed," she continued. Almost automatically Marja touched her dark, straight hair. Indeed. It reached up to her shoulders.

"The only thing", Kirka continued with her eyes still closed, "that attracted attention was her purple wool scarf. You never met her without it. She wore this red scarf around her neck all year round, whether it was freezing cold and boiling hot."

Confused, Marja clutched the scratchy fabric of her scarf while her mouth remained open with amazement. "Ahem...", she cleared her throat in embarrassment. "Are you talking about me?" Apparently ripped from her thoughts, Kirka opened her eyes and looked around as if she had never seen her surroundings before. Then, however, her gaze stuck to Marja.

"Oh!", Kirka exclaimed, smiling without looking at Marja. "Did you say something? Sorry, I was just thinking."

"Obviously," Marja replied dryly. She didn't like Kirka's played innocence - well probably she did though, but she didn't like admitting it. The cheekier they were, the sooner people attracted Marja's attention. "Now say why you're talking about me when nobody's listening!" Kirka seemed a little surprised when she looked up at the speaker.

Calmly she rose from the chair so that she stood opposite her. She was perhaps half a head shorter than Marja, but with her edged, serious face and high cheekbones, she didn't look much younger.

"As far as I understood, you listened to me," she said to Marja and looked at her with her head tilted. With a satisfied expression on her face, she added: "And I've met you quite well so far. From memory. I haven't even opened my eyes. Not bad, is it?"

A little angry Marja wanted to respond something, but she was not able to do so. For some reason this... this audacity of her counterpart robbed her of her language. She also had a wish on her lips that only her pride kept in check. Yet she could literally taste it and just couldn't swallow it.

"Go on with the tale," Marja asked.

Kirka hid her amazement behind another satisfied smile. "You liked it? Oh, how wonderful! And it certainly wasn't even two lines! That's what I've always wanted to achieve."

"Yes, all right!", Marja impatiently interrupted her. "Either you continue now, or... I'll turn around right away and walk out of the library. Then you have no audience anymore."

Kirka made a frightened face. "Oh! That's a harsh threat, my dear darling! I'd better start again," she said and sat back in the blue chair, which was still standing directly behind her, as she did not move another millimeter away from it than was necessary.

With a friendly gesture Kirka pointed to a small wooden chair with a flat-footed cushion and asked Marja to sit down. Hesitantly, Marja took a seat on the chair, which creaked loudly under her weight, and glanced at Kirka directly from her bright green eyes.

In contrast to other people, however, Kirka returned the look completely unimpressed. Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and spoke. About her, Marja. How one day her woollen scarf was stolen by strange men, how she followed them into an old house, how she met an older man there and he told her about the magic of the scarf... Marja listened spellboundly to Kirka's words, all so wonderfully strung together as if she had them on paper, a story that captivated her, as in the films and books.

At some point Kirka's tale ended with the sentence that Marja kept in mind for many years afterwards: "And this story seems to have come to an end, but behind the words, behind what you now know, there are so many other stories that one life is not enough to tell".

"You really said that beautifully," Marja stated with a smile. Kirka just shrugged her shoulders and said: "It's true. Do you watch movies? There are so many people in it, extras and actors, and yet only the story of the main characters is told. What if the Beggar one street down could tell another story? Or the guy who's reading a menu in the background? I'm always thinking about that."

"And that's a very interesting characteristic of yours, sweetheart," commented Mrs Schröder as she walked past the two girls with a pile of books in her hand. Marja was a little frightened because she hadn't seen her coming. Kirka turned slowly to her, then nodded. "And how about you?" she asked the librarian.

She stopped in the middle of her movement and slowly took back the book she was about to put on one of the shelves. She looked Kirka in the eye thoughtfully. "Yes, my child, how about me? Well, I can't say I don't think about one-time characters in books, but maybe only until they're no longer a topic of conversation. Of course it's amazing what thoughts you have about insignificant people, but" - she cheered Kirka up on her shoulder - "but, you may also concentrate on the one story that is told to you. Enjoy them. Then you can feel like you're there yourself."

After that, the woman continued to put the books on the shelves, one by one, as carefully as if they were glass figures. Mrs. Schröder always treated books as if they would break with every wrong movement and whoever returned one of them to the library in a bad condition probably wouldn't do it again so quickly.

When the librarian disappeared behind the next shelf and was out of sight, Kirka angrily clutched the pencil she had initially scribbled with on her writing pad. "You may concentrate on the story that is told to you," she imitated Mrs. Schröder with a disguised voice, so that Marja could not suppress a giggle, even if she did not understand Kirka's displeasure.

"What's wrong?" she asked when she managed to make a serious face again. Kirka snorted angrily. "What's wrong?" she repeated, "This lack of imagination - that's not right! Doesn't she care about what happened to all the others? Is it no fun for her to think about what their past could be like? God, the whole world doesn't know anything about imagination anymore."

She scolded like an old man. Again Marja felt the absurd urge to laugh, but she held back and put her hand on Kirka's shoulder. "Not everyone is an author," she said to the young storyteller, who then looked at her briefly with something like disdainfulness, so that Marja flinched in shock as if she was electrocuted. Then, however, she nodded with a shrug of her shoulders.

"At least", she tried to cheer herself up and smiled contemplatively, "I am then one of the few eleven-year-old authors among us humans, right? Or the only one on the Nameless Island."

Marja grinned in amusement. "The Nameless Island? The official name is Märcken, but nobody uses it, the island is probably just too small for that. "Did you know that some maps don't even show it?" Kirka nodded. She knew a lot for her age. Marja almost forgot that she was talking to a girl who was younger than herself, rather than a woman who stood before her, marked by life, and explaining the world - the world of stories, not reality.

"And, girls? How far have you got", Mrs Schröder wanted to know with a friendly smile on her full lips.

Suddenly Marja remembered the book she had started to read, but had put it back in the cupboard. 'At the end of the tide', it had been named. A beautiful, expressive title that raises questions about the content. Marja also liked the blurb.

She quickly chose it, borrowed it and then turned again to Kirka, who stood next to her in front of the desk that served as the "book edition" waiting for Marja to finish.

"Will you come back tomorrow?" Marja wanted to know from her. Kirka contracted her eyebrows and pursed her lips as if she had to think it over. Then the girl began to grin and bent over to speak in a lowered voice as if no one was allowed to hear her: "Just come. No matter what time, I'll be there."

Marja nodded. She understood. Finally she said goodbye to Mrs. Schröder and the now not quite so unfamiliar girl and made her way over half the island to her house.

Luke jumped tail wagging around his mistress after he had greeted her with joyful barking. " All right, dear boy?" Marja buzzed his head, whereupon Luke just jumped around more excitedly. Sometimes the old guy almost seemed like a puppy to her.

Luke had been there since Marja had been able to remember. About eleven years ago he came to them as a newborn because his mother had rejected him, so Kristopher, Marja's father, raised him with the bottle. Luke had grown up to a strong male, who could take on other retriever males, and had already done so several times.

Marja sat down on one of the chairs in front of the dining table and let Kirka's story cross her mind. Eleven years old. Heavens, the poor thing. You don't have to be able to write complete novels at such an age. Some adults couldn't. (In Marja's imagination adults used to be something like all-rounders, but it didn't take too long until she realized that nobody could do everything).

Now she had to think about Freddie. You' re gonna be a writer. How did he come up with something like that? Had he never read a real book, instead of Marja's essays or birthday cards? Why would she be a writer? That was a question she had wanted to ask Freddie so often, but she never got around to it without a suitable opportunity.

Marja heard the front door unlocked and her mother, disguised as if she was walking into the house from a hiking tour through Antarctica. Her daughter could easily have thought her to be a burglar, the way she had pulled her purple scarf over her mouth and nose and the cap reached to her eyebrows, but Marja knew better.

"Brrr!", Elona wiped her arms, while her trembling was hard to miss. "Honestly, you'd think the world had been fogged with liquid nitrogen - or put in the fridge," she added as she noticed Marja's amused expression. Of course she knew what liquid nitrogen was, but her mother didn't realize that.

"Yes, exactly!", she reiterated her comparison. "Simply pushed into the refrigerator on a silver plate with a hood, as if the world was nothing more than fish, which you don't want to eat yet, but which shouldn't go bad either. Yuck! "Whoever made that up should be ashamed of himself!"

Now Marja couldn't stop laughing after all. It was too funny how her mother kept coming up with new things to get upset about when there was nothing else. "Now calm down, Mommy!", tried Marja to appease Elona. She turned to the girl in such amazement, as if she were just now noticing that she was sitting there.

"Oh, Marja! Do you know that it always warms people's hearts when they see you smiling? At first I thought it was just me, but recently a saleswoman addressed it," she told as she grazed the purple woollen gloves off her fingers and stuffed them into the sleeves of her thick jacket, as well as the scarf and cap. She simply refused to put them in the basket on the shoe rack for fear that she would not find them there any more.

Marja got up from her chair and walked towards her mother. "You're off work early," she said, leaning her left hand against the black shoe rack. " It is only one o'clock."

"And Saturday," Elona added, although Marja saw that something was not working as usual. When her mother also realized this, she sighed: "Journalism is a tough business. You haven't made the headlines in a week, you've become unimportant to the boss. Don't get involved in such a thing, dear, don't do it."

But when she saw Marja's worried look, Elona quickly added: "But don't worry. "It's just sometimes difficult to find an interesting news story in this town." She winceed. "Why don't I run outside and yell at the neighbours they should do something interesting? That's worth a message, isn't it?"

Marja had to laugh, even though the stones on her heart just started to pile up instead of falling down. But the idea of Elona running through the streets screaming like a madman while all the neighbours barricaded themselves fearfully in their houses was too funny to let the worry take over. Even if it was there anyway, and that wasn't a nice feeling.

"Were you in the library," Elona asked casually as she wiped off her winter shoes and then entered the living room, relieved by the white door, in which the crackling fireplace together with the two heaters provided pleasant warmth.

Marja nodded. She remembered that she wanted to tell her mother about Kirka. "Would you have thought that you could write books at 11 years of age," she asked Elona and sat down next to her on the leather sofa.

Her mother handed her the white blanket of sheep's wool, in which Marja gratefully wrapped herself before answering: "Sure, why not? When I was a child, maybe a year older than you, I was a passionate member of the school paper. I always enjoyed writing the little articles and at some point I decided to make it my profession. You might also like it, but unfortunately there is no school newspaper in your school. With three students, it probably isn't worth it either."

Marja grinned. "Yeah, back when you guys were out roaming the houses dressed like boy scouts, huh?" she raised her mother.

She just shook her head. "Stop it already. That wasn't so long ago. And why do you think we roamed the streets? Where do you get that kind of stuff from, for God's sake?"

But Marja's face became serious again. She had realized that her mother wouldn't understand what she was after. But somehow she was right. Why not? Why shouldn't a child be able to write books? Besides, it was only small stories that Kirka wrote down.

After a moment of silence, Elona asked: "By the way, where is the scarf Grandma knitted for you, Marja?"

Her daughter pointed behind her, where the corridor was, separated from a wall, and in this also the shoe rack. "I put it in the basket. Why?" Elona raised her eyebrows in doubt and replied: "Because it is not there."

Now it was Marja who raised her eyebrow. "Really?", she wanted to make sure again, because she was really sure she had put the scarf in the basket.

Elona shook her head. "Absolutely, not there."