It was already after nine when Anke slowly opened her eyes.
Somewhere outside, she could hear voices.
Several voices.
At first, she thought nothing of it.
Probably Käthe Kruse, lecturing someone about their life choices before breakfast.
Anke pulled the blanket higher.
But suddenly she realized how close the voices sounded.
Far too close.
Her eyes flew open.
There was absolute chaos outside.
Anke swung her legs out of bed considerably faster than usual, threw on her flowered bathrobe, and stomped toward the front door.
No time for coffee.
Not even time to do something about her hair.
The night before, Nils and his father had stayed at her house until well past midnight.
His father had received a security camera from his father-in-law for Christmas but considered technological gadgets fundamentally pointless. Ever since, the device had remained unopened in the garage between old paint cans, a broken leaf blower, and a set of winter tires.
Now the camera was finally going to be put to use.
Nils had proved surprisingly capable.
Even so, it had taken them until half past one in the morning to get everything properly installed.
Cables had to be laid, angles tested, and Herbert repeatedly prevented from pecking at the camera.
Anke yanked open the front door.
A young woman she had never seen before was sitting on her wooden bench.
Right where Anke normally drank her morning coffee.
The stranger wore a purple crocheted top and loose green harem pants, and her long dreadlocks were partly hidden beneath a turban-like scarf.
Beside her stood a thermos flask.
Something was floating in the cup next to it that Anke spontaneously decided looked like soaked tree bark.
With the reverent care of a gold prospector who had just made the discovery of a lifetime, the woman held a single chicken egg in her hand.
At the picket fence stood Petersen with Taranis, who was growling at a completely harmless flowerpot, along with Käthe Kruse and Mrs. Lieblich from the next street over, all of them already arguing loudly.
Holger Grünwald appeared from around the corner of the house with an egg carton in his hand.
The organic butcher looked as though someone had personally explained inflation to him.
“There are only three eggs today, Anke!” he shouted. “Where is this going to end? I’ve got an order list stretching into next week!”
“There are four,” the strange woman said calmly. “I have the fourth egg.”
Käthe Kruse immediately folded her arms.
“But still not five.”
Anke closed her eyes for a moment.
This was definitely too much for just after waking up.
No peaceful morning coffee.
No seagulls.
No silence.
Instead, complete strangers were discussing her chickens as though the nation’s food supply were at stake.
With an exhausted groan, she dropped onto the bench beside the stranger.
“You must forgive me, Mrs. Lorenz,” the young woman said kindly. “I took one of the eggs so I could read it.”
Anke stared at the stranger as though some creature from another planet had suddenly appeared beside her.
“Read it?”
The young woman nodded calmly, picked up the old tin cup marked EGG MONEY, blew into it—along with a few harmless droplets of saliva—and then poured something into it from her thermos.
A greenish-brown liquid gave off a faint curl of steam.
“Here,” she said solicitously. “Drink something first. You look dreadful. This beverage contains all the cosmic energies of the universe.”
Anke stared at the cup.
For years, it had survived wind, rain, and probably several generations of flies without ever being washed, and now apparently the entire universe had been poured into it.
She didn’t want anything cosmic.
She wanted peace and quiet.
A coffee.
And, for the first time in ten years, a cigarette.
“I want that egg,” Holger Grünwald said, fixing the stranger with the stare of a man who appeared ready for anything.
“Exactly,” Petersen immediately agreed. “It’s his egg first, and then it’s mine.”
“Oh, really?” Käthe Kruse cut in. “We’re not having strangers simply walking off with our eggs.”
Mrs. Lieblich nervously raised her shoulders. “Perhaps I should go home.”
The woman ignored them and looked at Anke with an unsettling intensity, as though Anke were moments away from death but still needed to acquire some vital piece of knowledge before entering eternity.
She held out her hand.
Anke felt as though she were looking into a jewelry store display.
The woman appeared to have more rings than fingers.
“My name is Isabelle, and I’m from Berlin,” she said calmly. “It was already on the news at five o’clock this morning. Apparently, there were some unusual events here yesterday. They even mentioned a possible egg crisis.”
“Give me that egg right now.”
Holger Grünwald stepped dangerously close to Isabelle. His eyes were fixed on the egg like those of a dying man staring at the last bottle of water on earth.
“On the news?” Käthe Kruse whispered reverently.
“Egg crisis?” Petersen repeated slowly, as though he first had to digest the words.
“Anke, say something. That egg belongs to me.” Holger’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper.
Anke slowly raised her head.
She’d had enough.
“Right. That’s it,” she snapped. “First of all, those eggs belong to me.”
“I think you’re mistaken, Mrs. Anke,” Isabelle said calmly. “First and foremost, the eggs belong to themselves. And this one…” She raised the egg slightly. “…wants to be with me. It carries important information for humanity and must under no circumstances disappear into the greedy stomachs of these people.”
She cast a contemptuous glance toward the picket fence.
“Greedy?” Käthe Kruse protested immediately. “I only wanted one for breakfast!”
“And I have customers!” Holger Grünwald shouted. “People are waiting for their eggs!”
“I was here first,” Petersen growled, folding his arms. “Besides, Taranis needs protein.”
The wirehaired dachshund was still arguing with the flowerpot.
Mrs. Lieblich timidly raised a hand.
“I actually wanted one too…”
Anke could feel a headache developing.
Isabelle remained perfectly calm. She placed a single coin on the little table.
“I’ll give you one euro for the egg.”
“One twenty,” Holger snorted immediately.
“Fifty,” Petersen called out.
“Eighty,” Käthe Kruse said indignantly. “We don’t want American conditions around here.”
Isabelle sighed deeply, reached into the little fabric bag hanging across her shoulder, and slowly pulled out a crumpled five-euro note.
Anke felt as though she had woken up in the middle of an action movie and missed the beginning.
She decisively snatched the crumpled five-euro note.
“Your egg. And now get out… all of you! I want coffee!”
Apparently, her words had the desired effect, because suddenly everyone started moving.
“This will have consequences,” Käthe Kruse muttered importantly, dragging Mrs. Lieblich toward the road with her.
“I’ve been saying for years there’s something wrong with those chickens,” Petersen could still be heard saying while Taranis continued to keep a suspicious eye on the flowerpot.
Isabelle jumped to her feet, emptied the contents of her cup into the geraniums beside the bench, and grabbed her thermos.
“The universe will be eternally grateful to you,” she declared solemnly before disappearing toward the village square with the egg in her hand.
Holger Grünwald was about to leave as well, but Anke grabbed his arm.
“The three eggs.”
Holger clutched the carton to his chest like a treasure chest.
“They’re mine.”
“You haven’t paid.”
Holger closed his eyes briefly, muttered something into his nonexistent beard, and finally, with great reluctance, counted out two euros and forty cents onto the little table.
Anke was still holding on to him.
“You’re short.”
“What?” Holger blinked in confusion.
“The egg. One twenty. You bid that yourself just now.”
Holger stared at her in disbelief.
A short distance away, Taranis barked loudly.
“This can’t be happening,” Holger growled.
With a heavy sigh, he pulled another euro twenty from his pocket and placed the money on the table with a pained expression.
Three euros sixty.
Anke looked at the coins with satisfaction.
Slowly, peace returned to her world.
She sighed and looked out toward the North Sea, which today wore a sparkling blue dress beneath the sunlight. Seagulls circled a fishing boat.
She looked down at the money in her palm.
Eight euros sixty for four eggs.
Not such a bad start to the day, really.
But now she would have given anything for a coffee and a peaceful morning on her bench.
She was just about to open the front door when she heard the squeal of brakes by the garden fence.
Nils.
“You?”
“Yep.”
In a cheerful mood, the boy swung himself off his bicycle. A laptop was tucked under his arm.
Anke was already heading toward the kitchen.
Nils followed her as naturally as though he had been part of the household furniture for years.
“Don’t you have school?” she asked, sliding a mug under the coffee machine.
“I do. Technically.”
Anke took a second mug from the cupboard.
“Want one?”
Nils politely declined.
“What do you mean, technically? And untechnically?” Anke eyed him suspiciously while the coffee machine grumbled away into her mug.
“They let us go home,” Nils explained. “The principal said he’d heard there might be some kind of epidemic coming. As a precaution, he sent us home for the day.”
Without a word, Anke took the carton of milk from the refrigerator.
“Yes. The bubonic plague, probably.”
Had the world gone mad?
Carrying her milky coffee, she returned outside to the bench.
By now, the morning felt like a bad dream with seagulls.
“Have you got a cigarette?”
Nils immediately glanced around to make sure nobody was nearby.
He pulled a small mint-colored device with a mouthpiece and digital display from his trouser pocket.
Anke regarded the thing suspiciously.
“What’s that?”
“My vape.”
“Your what?”
“I don’t smoke. I vape.” He held it out to her. “Here. Take a puff.”
“Does that thing have nicotine in it?”
“Yeah.”
Anke took the little device skeptically.
“So I suck on it and then blow the smoke back out?”
Nils shrugged. “How else?”
Anke cautiously took a puff and immediately pulled a face in disgust.
“That’s sweet!”
She leaned back with a groan.
Eggs that wanted to be read.
Cigarettes in little boxes that tasted like strawberries.
What next?